Mission for/as Reconciliatory Emancipation

Since Christian mission in the way of Jesus Christ is best understood and experienced in the fringes of the society, it is imperative that we listen to and learn from marginalized voices. Keeping this in mind, this article looks at the relevance of the theology of mission of the Dalit theologian and activist Masilamani Azariah, who served as a Bishop of the Church of South India in the 1990s. It seeks to highlight his pioneering work, which was discomforting for some dominant caste Indian Christians, in challenging the Indian church as well as the global ecumenical movement to speak up and act against untouchability and caste discrimination. Using Azariah's radical perspectives of mission as a lens, and employing the framework of reconciliatory emancipation, a theological concept explicated by the American political theologian Mark Taylor, this essay proposes that the mission of the church that endeavours to be holistic and Christ-centred would and should be committed to the empowerment and healing of the oppressed, driven by a burning prophetic rage against injustice, even while retaining the space for forgiveness and repentance, with the ultimate goal of building the kingdom of God that transcends divisive and discriminating boundaries.     

A review and empirical comparison of motivation scoring methods: An application to self-determination theory

Motivation and Emotion - Self-determination Theory differentiates various types of motivation, each of which have different consequences for well-being and behavior. Despite broad agreement...     

Time,tense and special relativity

In this essay I address the issue of whether Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity counts against a tensed or “A-series” understanding of time. Though this debate is an old one, it continues to be lively with many prominent authors recently arguing that a genuine A-series is compatible with a relativistic world view. My aim in what follows is to outline why Special Relativity is thought to count against a tensed understanding of time and then to address the philosophical attempts to reconcile the two theories. I conclude that while modern physics on its own does not rule out the possibility of a real A-series, the combination of Einstein's theory and the philosophical arguments against tense is decisive. The upshot is that the tenseless or “B-series” view of time is the best one.     

Religious Homogamy, Marital Conflict, and Stability in Same-Faith and Interfaith Jewish Marriages

This study examined the relationship between a couple's similarity in religious beliefs and practices and their level of marital conflict and stability. One-hundred-fifty-five adult children of same-faith and interfaith Jewish marriages reported on each of their parents' religious beliefs and behaviors. Religious homogamy was defined as similar attitudes and beliefs about specific religious practices. The parents' level of marital conflict was obtained by having their adult children fill out the Children's Perception Questionnaire (Emery and O'Leary 1982). The major hypotheses tested were that a positive correlation would exist between religious homogamy and marital stability and this relationship would be mediated by the level of marital conflict. That is to say, as marital conflict increases, marital stability should decrease. It was expected that these correlations would still hold after controlling for religious denomination (same-faith and interfaith). Partial support for the model was found: more disagreement on Jewish issues predicted higher levels of marital conflict. Higher conflict, in turn, predicted less marital stability.     

Reaching for Virtue, Stumbling on Sin: Concepts of Good and Evil in a Postmodern Era

Although our culture struggles to understand the origins and nature of good and evil behavior, the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis contribute to the discourse primarily indirectly. By examining early Judaism and Christianity, the authors seek to clarify the foundation of contemporary understanding of good and evil in Western society. Looking through the multiple filters of religion, philosophy, psychoanalysis and psychology, groundwork is laid for definitions of good and evil, which can be understood subjectively and measured objectively. As we investigate morality, will, and choice in the varied ologies and across time, we note how much emotion and volition are secondary in modern thinking about evil. Moreover, the place of will as a positive force in development is largely ignored, except by prescient thinkers like Otto Rank. To grasp evil's nature we need to integrate past with present, contrast conscious to unconscious desires, and allow that being bad is not necessarily unnatural or pathological, but can be a transitional stage in the growth of one's conscience.     

Information selection and use in hypothesis testing: What is a good question,and what is a good answer?

The process of hypothesis testing entails both information selection (asking questions) and information use (drawing inferences from the answers to those questions). We demonstrate that although subjects may be sensitive to diagnosticity in choosing which questions to ask, they are insufficiently sensitive to the fact that different answers to the same question can have very different diagnosticities. This can lead subjects to overestimate or underestimate the information in the answers they receive. This phenomenon is demonstrated in two experiments using different kinds of inferences (category membership of individuals and composition of sampled populations). In combination with certain information-gathering tendencies, demonstrated in a third experiment, insensitivity to answer diagnosticity can contribute to a tendency toward preservation of the initial hypothesis. Results such as these illustrate the importance of viewing hypothesis-testing behavior as an interactive, multistage process that includes selecting questions, interpreting data, and drawing inferences.     

Ethnic Identity, Legitimizing Ideologies, and Social Status: A Matter of Ideological Asymmetry

This paper examines the ideological asymmetry hypothesis with respect tothe interface between legitimizing ideologies and psychological attachment to one's ethnic group. The ideological asymmetry hypothesis suggests that hierarchy-enhancing legitimizing ideologies should be positively associated with ingroup attachment among high-status groups, but that among low-status groups these associations should be either less positive in magnitude (isotropic asymmetry) relative to high-status groups or negative in direction (anisotropic asymmetry). The opposite pattern should be found with respect to the interface between hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing ideologies and ingroup attachment: Among high-status groups these associations should be negative, but among low-status groups these associations should be either less negative in magnitude (isotropic asymmetry) relative to high-status groups or positive in direction (anisotropic asymmetry). The presence of isotropic versus anisotropic asymmetry is hypothesized to depend on the degree of disparity in status between the groups being compared: Wider status gaps should tend toward anisotropic asymmetries. The relationships between legitimizing ideologies and ingroup attachment were compared for (1) relatively high-status ethnic groups (European and Asian Americans) versus relatively low-status ethnic groups (Latinos and African Americans) in the United States, (2) the higher-status Jewish ethnic group (Ashkenazim) versus the lower-status Jewish ethnic group (Mizrachim) in Israel, and (3) the high-status Israeli Jews versus the low-status Israeli Arabs. The data were largely consistent with the ideological asymmetry hypothesis. The implications of these findings are discussed within the theoretical frameworks of social dominance theory and other approaches to intergroup relations.     

A multimedia HyperCard stack for the computerized investigation of chromesthetic associations

Most researchers investigating the perceptual similarities between visual and auditory stimuli have used different presentation methods for the two stimulus modalities. In contrast, a HyperCard stack has been developed which provides an integrated, fully computerized method for examining the chromesthetic associations of auditory stimuli (both pure tones and musical excerpts) and visual stimuli (48 colored rectangles). Advantages of the stack include control over the presentation of stimuli, control for order effects, a user-friendly interface, limited opportunities for demand characteristics or procedural errors, and simplified data compilation. The multimedia capabilities of HyperCard make it an excellent platform for cross-modal research.     

Two forms of retinal disparity

The retinal disparities in stereograms where the vertical alignment of pairs of homologous points in one eye differs from that in the other eye were found to be more effective than disparities that do not involve that kind of binocular difference. The presence of such “transverse disparities” was found to shorten the time elapsed until perceived depth was reported in four instances, in two simple stereogram pairs and in two different pairs of random dot pattern stereograms. In an experiment where binocular parallax was in conflict with an effect of past experience, the presence of transverse disparities caused binocular parallax to prevail. The presumption that the amount of perceived depth depends only on the amount of disparity (provided distances from the eyes are unchanged) and not on the configuration in which it manifests itself was found not to hold in stereograms containing transverse disparities.     

The constancy of the orientation of the visual field

Evidence is presented that the perceived immobility of the environment during tilting of the head from side to side results from a compensating process. This compensating process operates well only when peripheral vision is present. An objectively stationary environment was, for instance, not perceived as immobile during head tilting when vision was confined to the macular region of the retina. The compensating process could be rapidly altered by exposure to environmental tilting during and dependent on head tilting. Such adaptation had the result that some environmental tilting that normally is perceived led to apparent immobility.