METHODOLOGICAL CHOICES IN KELSEY'S ECCENTRIC EXISTENCE

This article explores the methodological choices that shape David Kelsey's magnum opus Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (2009). These choices are explicit, and elucidated by Kelsey primarily in the introductory sections of this work. Considered in turn are Kelsey's rejection of a modern, apologetical approach to the theological task, his recovery of a premodern commitment to explaining the logic of beliefs rather than the logic of coming to belief, his explication of theological anthropology through a God‐centered, Trinitarian, understanding of the biblical plot, and his decision to elucidate the human person theologically through an appreciation of the canonical Wisdom literature, which valorizes humanity's created goodness. It concludes by assessing Kelsey's project as an unsystematic systematic theology, a notion he develops as well in his earlier Imagining Redemption (2005).     

Gender Differences in the Effects of Extrinsic Motivation on Creativity*

Four studies were conducted to assess gender differences in the effects of extrinsic motivation on creativity. The first study replicated an earlier one (Baer, 1997) in which expectation of evaluation lowered the creativity of middle school girls, but not boys. The second study investigated the effects of doing work for reward; again, middle school girls' creativity suffered, but not boys'. The third study, also with middle school subjects, investigated the impact of expecting ungraded feedback; this reduced both the overall negative impact of expecting evaluation and the gender difference in this regard. The fourth study investigated the impact of evaluation expectation on second-grade subjects and found that boys', but not girls', creativity was increased when they expected evaluation.