Explaining the Relationship between Religiosity and Political Participation: The Mediating Roles of Transcendent Accountability and Religiopolitical Awareness

Prior research tends to find a positive relationship between religiosity and political participation. Explanations of this relationship have focused mostly on religiosity-generated organizational resources (e.g., civic skills), while paying less attention to psychological resources. We simultaneously examined different aspects of religiosity (belief, behavior, and belonging) and political participation (electoral and nonelectoral) in a structural equation model with two psychological resources as mediators: (1) “transcendent accountability”—seeing oneself as responsible to God or a higher power for one's impact on other people and the environment, and (2) “religiopolitical awareness”—perceiving the influence of one's religion and/or spirituality on one's political views and activities. Results from analyzing survey data from a US representative sample showed that transcendent accountability and religiopolitical awareness, whether together or awareness only, mediated positive relationships between religiosity (belief, private and public behaviors, and membership) and political participation (voting and other political activity), highlighting key psychological motivators of political participation.     

The Acuity for Numerosity (but Not Continuous Magnitude) Discrimination Correlates with Quantitative Problem Solving but Not Routinized Arithmetic

Approximate number sense (ANS) acuity refers to the ability to non-symbolically recognize, estimate and operate upon large numerosities. ANS acuity has been reported to be correlated with math achievement in children and adolescents. However, reports of this relationship in adults have been inconsistent. The present study aimed to resolve the inconsistency in the relationship between adults’ ANS acuity and math achievement by contrasting between different kinds of mathematical problem solving. We hypothesized that the correlation between ANS acuity mathematical performance would be stronger when deep quantitative processing is required during problem solving. In Experiment 1, ANS acuity was correlated with Mathematical Reasoning but not Directed Calculation performance. In Experiment 2, ANS acuity was correlated with Two-digit Subtraction (but not Addition) performance only when Regrouping (i.e., borrowing) was required. The results from two experiments demonstrated that ANS acuity was correlated with mathematical performance only when problem solving involved effortful, quantitative processing that goes beyond automatized, routinized arithmetic. In addition, ANS acuity was distinguishable from Area acuity regarding its unique relationship with math achievement, which was unconfounded by the influence of demographic variables and fluid intelligence. Overall, the present results help resolve the inconsistency in previous reports of the correlation between ANS acuity and math achievement in adults.     

Intracerebroventricular Administration of Mineralocorticoid Receptor Antisense Oligonucleotides Attenuates Salt Appetite in the Rat

The anterior ventral third ventricle (AV3V) region of the brain contains high concentrations of mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) and glucocorticoid receptors (GR) that are important in the maintenance of body fluid and electrolyte balance as well as other physiological processes. Daily intracerebroventricular pulse injections of MR antisense oligonucleotides significantly suppressed deoxycorticosterone acetate (DOCA) induced salt appetite in a dose-related manner. Similar administration of GR antisense or scrambled/sense oligonucleotide into the third ventricle failed to inhibit salt appetite. Salt appetite aroused after adrenalectomy was not suppressed by MR antisense oligonucleotide treatments but was suppressed by an antisense oligonucleotide directed against the angiotensin II AT1 receptor subtype. Receptor binding analysis demonstrated that MR and GR oligonucleotide treatments each reduced their respective receptor subtypes. Finally, although GR antisense oligonucleotide treatment was ineffective in suppressing DOCA-induced salt appetite, this treatment did increase stress induced corticosterone release as well as delayed the recovery of corticosterone to basal levels after stress.     

Heritability of the Big Five Personality Dimensions and Their Facets: A Twin Study

ABSTRACT The genetic and environmental etiology of the five-factor model of personality as measured by the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) was assessed using 123 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of fraternal twins. Broad genetic influence on the five dimensions of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness was estimated at 41%, 53%, 61%, 41%, and 44%, respectively. The facet scales also showed substantial heritability, although for several facets the genetic influence was largely nonadditive. The influence of the environment was consistent across all dimensions and facets. Shared environmental influences accounted for a negligible proportion of the variance in most scales, whereas nonshared environmental influences accounted for the majority of the environmental variance in all scales.     

“Four Gods” in Maximum Security Prison: Images of God,Religiousness, and Worldviews Among Inmates

This paper extends research on images of God, which prior researchers based mostly on national survey data, to a study of offenders in prison. We first explore whether the distribution of Froese and Bader’s (America’s four gods: What we say about god–& what that says about us, Oxford University Press, New York 2010) four images of God among prison inmates is similar to that in the general population. We then examine whether an inmate’s image of God is associated with the inmate’s worldviews: beliefs and attitudes toward the law, other inmates, moral responsibility, and ultimate meaning and purpose in life. Finally, we test whether an inmate’s belief in a forgiving God and religiousness explain the association. We analyzed data from a survey of 2249 inmates at America’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary. We found the distribution of God-images among inmates was the same as that in national samples in terms of rank order. As hypothesized, we also found inmates with an image of an engaged God tended to report lower levels of legal cynicism and sense of illegitimacy of punishment and higher levels of collective efficacy, existential belief, and moral responsibility than those with images of a disengaged God or no God. Finally, we found an inmate’s belief in a forgiving God and religiousness to mediate partly relationships between images of God and the inmate’s worldviews.     

Entitlement, value and rationality

In this paper I discuss two fundamental challenges concerning Crispin Wright’s notion of entitlement of cognitive project: first, whether entitlement is an epistemic kind of warrant since, seemingly, it is not underwritten by epistemic reasons, and, second, whether, in the absence of such reasons, the kind of rationality associated with entitlement is epistemic in nature. The paper investigates three possible lines of response to these challenges. According to the first line of response, entitlement of cognitive project is underwritten by epistemic reasons—and thus supports epistemic rationality—because, when P is an entitlement, trust in P is a dominant strategy with respect to promotion of epistemic value. The second line of response replaces dominance with maximization of expected utility. I argue that both of these proposals are flawed and develop an alternative line of response.     

Effects of Self-Compassion and Social Support on Lesbian,Gay, and Bisexual College Students' Positive Identity and Career Decision-Making

The purpose of this study was to explore the serial mediating effects of self-compassion and social support on the relationship between positive identity and career decision-making self-efficacy (CDMSE) among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) college students. A total of 222 LGB (109 bisexual, 113 lesbian/gay) students participated in the study. Results supported the mediating roles of self-compassion and social support. Specifically, self-compassion and social support sequentially mediated the relationship between positive identity and CDMSE, and the patterns of the sequence of the mediators were different between the bisexual and lesbian/gay groups. Implications for career counselors and future research are discussed.     

Substance and artifact in the higher-order factors of the Big Five

J. M. Digman (1997) proposed that the Big Five personality traits showed a higher-order structure with 2 factors he labeled alpha and beta. These factors have been alternatively interpreted as heritable components of personality or as artifacts of evaluative bias. Using structural equation modeling, the authors reanalyzed data from a cross-national twin study and from American cross-observer studies and analyzed new multimethod data from a German twin study. In all analyses, artifact models outperformed substance models by root-mean-square error of approximation criteria, but models combining both artifact and substance were slightly better. These findings suggest that the search for the biological basis of personality traits may be more profitably focused on the 5 factors themselves and their specific facets, especially in monomethod studies.     

Changes of brain potentials in response to smoking-induced stimuli in smokers.

Changes in P300 amplitude were used as an indicator of reactivity to smoking-related stimuli in smokers. The amplitude of P300--a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by 10 smoking-related (craving), 10 antismoking (aversive) and 10 neutral stimuli-- was recorded in smokers (n=10) and nonsmokers (n=10). Electroencephalography (EEG) data were obtained by the Laxtha EEG-monitoring device in the EEG recording room, and were recorded at F3, F4, C3, and C4. Three-way repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was computed on the P300 amplitudes. The factors were group (smokers, nonsmokers), stimulus (craving, aversive, neutral), and electrode location (F3, F4, C3, and C4). The main effects of stimulus were significant, but the group effects did not show significant interactions with other factors. An interesting observation was the similarity between P300 waveforms for craving and aversive stimuli in smokers. These findings could indicate that the antismoking-related response is similar to the smoking-related one.