The Contribution of Professor Ninian Smart to Religious Education

Religious Experience Reconsidered was premised on the idea that experience is a site of contested meaning and value for subjects (and scholars). Although the concept of specialness has drawn considerable attention, my goal in writing the book was to update efforts to use attribution theory to bridge between religious studies and the psychology of religion. I intended the focus on micro-social processes to complement analysis at the macro-social level. The need for a broader, more generic second order term, such as specialness, emerged in the context of working out an attributional approach and can and should be extended more broadly. While anything can be set apart as special and an analysis of the politics of deeming is essential, we can still ask if there is empirical evidence to suggest that humans are more likely to set some things apart than others within or across cultures. When we take experience as a site for study, we do not have to limit ourselves to describing the range of views held by our subjects, but can also legitimately seek to explain experience in terms that make sense to us as researchers. The breaking of taboos against explaining experience in naturalistic terms will only have apocalyptic consequences if we assume a special/ordinary binary; viewed on a continuum, we can still find special meaning and value in experiences that are not protected by taboos.     

Intelligence is associated with criminal justice processing: Arrest through incarceration

Findings flowing from empirical research consistently indicate that IQ is associated with criminal involvement, with persons of relatively lower IQ being more likely to engage in various types of crime when compared with persons of relatively higher IQ. As with all research, however, there are a number of limitations with the existing literature that may bias the IQ–crime connection in unknown ways. Specifically, previous research has generally analyzed sub-samples drawn from non-nationally representative samples, has relied on a narrow range of criminal justice measures, has not fully examined whether the IQ–crime link is observed across demographic subgroups, and has not always ruled out the effects of potential confounds. The current study is designed to overcome the most serious of these limitations and offer new evidence of the link between IQ and criminal involvement. Analysis of data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) provides strong evidence indicating that IQ and crime are linked even after addressing various shortcomings of previous research. Limitations of the study are discussed and directions for future research are offered.     

Estimating the effect of gang membership on nonviolent and violent delinquency: a counterfactual analysis

This study reconsiders the well‐known link between gang membership and criminal involvement. Recently developed analytical techniques enabled the approximation of an experimental design to determine whether gang members, after being matched with similarly situated nongang members, exhibited greater involvement in nonviolent and violent delinquency. Findings indicated that while gang membership is a function of self‐selection, selection effects alone do not account for the greater involvement in delinquency exhibited by gang members. After propensity score matching was employed, gang members maintained a greater involvement in both nonviolent and violent delinquency when measured cross‐sectionally, but only violent delinquency when measured longitudinally. Additional analyses using inverse probability of treatment weights reaffirmed these conclusions. Aggr. Behav. 36:437–451, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Work Sample Exams and Gender Adverse Impact Potential: The influence of self‐concept,social skills,and written skills

We clarify the existing literature on gender differences in work sample exams by disentangling such differences on work sample exams from other predictors (e.g., situational judgment tests). In fact, we note that there are only two articles specifically related to gender differences in work sample exams. Based on theory and literature from social psychology, neuropsychology, and applied psychology, we propose that the three constructs of self‐concept, social skills, and writing skills are likely to influence work sample gender differences. We tested our hypotheses on two samples of managers. We found in one instance that males scored higher on a technical exercise, but there was stronger support for females, on average, scoring higher on exercises that involved social skills and on exercises that involved writing skills. Work samples that targeted a broad array of knowledge, skills, and abilities were associated with higher overall scores for females (ds of ?.37 and ?.34) and, thus, were unlikely to be associated with gender‐based adverse impact against females.     

Investigating the Moderating Role of Cultural Practices on the Effect of Selection Fairness Perceptions

Utilizing a sample of applicants to positions in a global corporation, we examined whether cultural practices moderate the effect of selection fairness perceptions on organizational attractiveness and job choice. Positive relationships were anticipated between fairness perceptions and outcomes, and performance orientation and uncertainty avoidance cultural practices were hypothesized to moderate the effects of structural and information sharing perceptions, respectively. Structural fairness perceptions were positively associated with both outcomes, but information‐sharing perceptions were significantly related only to organizational attractiveness. National variability in the effect of selection fairness perceptions was observed only for the effect of structural perceptions on organizational attractiveness. Performance orientation moderated this effect such that the strongest relationship was seen among applicants from more performance‐oriented countries.     

Potentiation by a taste of toxicosis-based context conditioning: Effects of varying the test fluid

Rats that drank water in a distinctive environment and were then injected with lithium chloride (water-lithium condition) were compared with those given an added taste on those conditioning sessions (sucrose-lithium condition). In three experiments this taste potentiated a conditioned aversion to the context, as measured by suppression of intake of another solution: either a novel sour taste (Experiments 1 and 2) or a familiar saline solution (Experiment 3). In contrast, this potentiation effect was not detected when subjects were tested with water, whether a high or low dose of lithium was used (Experiment 2). Instead, in Experiments 1 and 2 water-lithium subjects drank less water than did the sucrose-lithium subjects on such tests i.e. an apparent overshadowing effect, which was the opposite outcome to that found previously using almost identical procedures. Intake on recovery sessions in another context suggested that, when water is used as the test fluid, potentiation can be masked by two factors: a context-dependent aversion to water in water-lithium subjects, and a conditioned inhibition effect of water in sucrose-lithium subjects. These may account for previous failures to detect potentiation of context conditioning.     

Divine Unity and the Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian Theology in its Psychological Context

In the last hundred years Gregory of Nyssa's Trinitarian theology has received a substantial amount of attention. Unfortunately, it has been appropriated because of its perceived psychological content—so much so that Gregory's Trinitarian theology becomes re–stated as the Trinity as "personal relationship" or as "locating consciousness(es) in the Trinity." To be sure, a knowledge of Gregory's psychology reveals its role in his Trinitarian theology; however, it also makes clear that personal relationship or consciousness are not important, substantial psychological concepts in the way that they are often taken to be by contemporary interpreters. Rather, Gregory's psychology takes its fundamental shape from a concern for the integrity of the will in its action.