How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind

For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub‐disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition. First, we show that although adults explicitly discriminate supernatural minds from human minds, their implicit responses reveal far less discrimination. Next, we demonstrate that children's religious cognition often matches adults' implicit responses, revealing anthropomorphic notions of God's mind. Together, data from children and adults suggest the intuitive nature of perceiving God's mind as human‐like. We then propose three complementary explanations for why anthropomorphism persists in adulthood, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be (a) an instance of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic; (b) a reflection of early testimony; and/or (c) an evolutionary byproduct.     

Robert Baker: The Structure of Moral Revolutions: Studies of Changes in the Morality of Abortion,Death, and the Bioethics Revolution

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Understanding the richness of brand relationships: Research dialogue on brands as intentional agents

This essay offers some perspectives on Kervyn et al.'s insightful research on brand relationships and the role of perceived intentions and ability. After briefly discussing the importance of brand knowledge and functionality in understanding the diversity of brand relationships, some other antecedents and consequences of brand relationships are reviewed. Three antecedents of corporate credibility — expertise, trust, and likability — are suggested as another means to differentiate how consumers view different brands. Brand resonance — an intense, active loyalty relationship — is also suggested as an important outcome of brand relationships. The essay concludes by noting that any concept as complex as brand relationships lends itself to multiple concepts, perspectives, and analysis.     

Emotions and Emotion Regulation Among Novice Military Parachutists

Soldiers (N = 95) reported emotions and emotion regulation strategies experienced in their first parachute jump and other challenging situations. Results indicated an emotional profile characterized by feeling anxious, energetic, and happy before parachuting and playing sport. However, this pattern was not similar to the emotional responses experienced at work or in life in general. Participants reported greater use of strategies to increase unpleasant emotions an hour before parachuting than in other situations. Findings suggest that developing training protocols to increase the flexibility and versatility of emotion regulation skills might enhance the preparation of novice soldiers for military duties.     

Standing Out From the Crowd: How Comparison to Prototypes Can Decrease Health-Risk Behavior in Young Adults

This research tested whether social comparison can encourage adolescents to make less risky health decisions. Two studies demonstrated that when young adults compare themselves with drinkers, they become less willing to drink if they perceive dissimilarity between themselves and those drinkers. When participants in Study 1 compared with someone who drinks regularly, their perceived similarity to prototypical drinkers was positively related to their willingness to drink. In Study 2, participants identified or contrasted themselves with prototypical drinkers; those encouraged to contrast who also felt less similar to the prototype reported less willingness to drink. These studies support the prototype/willingness model's assumption that prototypes affect willingness to drink through social comparison.     

Providing information about diagnostic features at retrieval reduces false recognition

In the following study, participants encoded blocked DRM word lists and we varied whether they received information before test about the utility of mnemonic features that potentially discriminate between veridical and false memories. The results of three experiments revealed that this manipulation successfully reduced false recognition of critical theme words. We also found that this manipulation was effective for younger but not older adults. Furthermore, calling attention to the features in test instructions alone was sufficient for reducing false recognition and its effectiveness was not enhanced by also asking participants to rate their phenomenal experience. We argue that providing diagnostic information before test allows participants to establish more accurate expectations about the task and thus improves the efficacy of retrieval and monitoring processes that are subsequently engaged.     

Child Find Practices in Christian Schools

The 1997 Amendments of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that children placed in private schools by their parents are no longer afforded the right to special education services. However, IDEA does state that child find activities between public school representatives and private schools are to remain intact. This study used an open-ended questionnaire design in order to understand Christian school representatives' perspectives regarding current child find practices.