The Political Attitudes and Activities of Mainline Protestant Clergy in the Election of 2000: A Study of Six Denominations

This study examines clergy across six mainline Protestant denominations in terms of their social characteristics, their theological positions, and their political attitudes and behavior. The analysis is based on data collected through random surveys of clergy in each denomination conducted in 2001 using the same instrument. The predominant focus of the article is on the nature and level of political activities exhibited by mainline Protestant clergy in the election year of 2000. The analysis revealed that mainline Protestant clergy are indeed relatively active politically, but that, despite their commonality of belonging to the same broad religious tradition, the nature and level of such political activities varies across the six denominations. Variation in the level of political activity is related to a number of different variables. And, while multivariate analysis reduces the number of significant factors that account for such differences, the remaining significant factors are associated with each of the major theoretical approaches that have been advanced to account for differences in participation levels.     

Clergy and the Politics of Gender

Using data from a new survey of mainline Protestant clergy, we explore the extent to which a political gender gap exists between male and female mainline Protestant ministers. Analysis reveals major partisan, ideological, attitudinal, and participatory disparities among clergymen and clergywomen. Women are far more liberal than their male counterparts, and even though they face the constraint of being a professional minority, clergywomen tend to participate in politics at higher rates than clergymen.     

Perfectionism as an Explanatory Construct in Comorbidity of Axis I Disorders

Understanding comorbidity is an important challenge for psychopathology researchers and diagnostic systems given the repeated finding of very high comorbidity rates among Axis I disorders in psychiatric samples. This paper proposes that perfectionism may be a critical factor for understanding levels of comorbidity, and a conceptual argument for the importance of perfectionism as an explanatory construct for comorbidity is advanced. The link between perfectionism and comorbidity in a large sample of patients (N = 345) who attended an anxiety disorders clinic is examined using a variety of methods. Diagnoses were established using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-IV), and perfectionism was assessed using both the Hewitt and Flett and Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scales. Overall, scores on both the Hewitt and Flett and Frost perfectionism scales were correlated with the number of diagnoses, and a logistic regression analysis, controlling for current symptoms, showed that maladaptive evaluative concerns perfectionism in particular predicted higher levels of comorbidity.     

The Parents Matter! Program: Building a Successful Investigator-Community Partnership

We examine the issues involved in creating and maintaining a successful collaboration between university-based researchers and community members when designing and implementing the Parents Matter! Program (PMP). The roles of focus groups, community advisory boards, and community liaisons are highlighted. PMP provides an illustration of the ongoing process of collaboration between investigators and community members and the benefits and challenges of such a partnership.     

A database for semantic, grammatical, and frequency properties of the first words acquired by Italian children.

The CFVlexvar.xls database includes imageability, frequency, and grammatical properties of the first words acquired by Italian children. For each of 519 words that are known by children 18-30 months of age (taken from Caselli & Casadio's, 1995, Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory), new values of imageability are provided and values for age of acquisition, child written frequency, and adult written and spoken frequency are included. In this article, correlations among the variables are discussed and the words are grouped into grammatical categories. The results show that words acquired early have imageable referents, are frequently used in the texts read and written by elementary school children, and are frequent in adult written and spoken language. Nouns are acquired earlier and are more imageable than both verbs and adjectives. The composition in grammatical categories of the child's first vocabulary reflects the composition of adult vocabulary. The full set of these norms can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Trichotillomania: Assessment,Diagnosis, and Treatment

This article examines the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of trichotillomania (the recurrent desire to pull out one's hair). The authors provide a brief review both of proposed etiologies of trichotillomania and of the diagnostic and assessment issues related to this disorder, and they discuss interventions and treatments that have been shown to be most efficacious when working with clients diagnosed with trichotillomania.     

Right Hemisphere Positivity Bias in Preconscious Processing: Data From Five Experiments

Using a signal detection paradigm, participants’ sensitivity to emotionally toned stimuli was evaluated in five experiments. A tachistoscope was used to present stimuli to one hemisphere at a time, too rapidly for conscious identification. Pictures, words, and faces were pretested for emotional valence and familiarity. Stimulus selection was based on obtaining the largest possible difference between the positive and negative valence ratings, keeping familiarity equal. Each experiment used a 2×2×2 mixed groups design. The within-subject variables were the hemispheric presentation (right and left) and the emotional tone of the stimuli (positive and negative). Gender of the participant was the between-subjects variable. The results of these studies indicate greater sensitivity in the right than in the left hemisphere, and greater sensitivity to positive than to negative stimuli. Interpretations focus on the automatization of affect and the brain lateralization of emotional processing.     

Exploring the rabbit hole of possibilities by myself or with my group: The benefits and liabilities of activating counterfactual mind‐sets for information sharing and group coordination

The current experiment explored the effect of activating a counterfactual mind‐set on the discussion of unique information and group judgment accuracy. Evidence suggests that a counterfactual mind‐set is characterized by a focused, analytic mental state and, when activated at the group level, improves group judgment accuracy in the murder mystery paradigm (a hidden profile task). We hypothesized that the beneficial effect of the counterfactual mind‐set would only help group problem‐solving tasks if the mind‐set had been activated at the group level, allowing the analytical mind‐set to play out in an atmosphere of synergistic coordination. In contrast, if this highly focused mental state is activated at the individual level, it could impair group judgment quality because inwardly focused analytical individuals may fail to coordinate their behavior with other group members. Consistent with our hypothesis, activating a counterfactual mind‐set at the individual level had a debilitating effect on the group judgment task, whereas activating a counterfactual mind‐set at the group level had a facilitative effect, increasing information sharing, synergistic coordination and judgment accuracy. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A database for semantic,grammatical, and frequency properties of the first words acquired by Italian children

The CFVlexvar.xls database includes imageability, frequency, and grammatical properties of the first words acquired by Italian children. For each of 519 words that are known by children 18–30 months of age (taken from Caselli & Casadio’s, 1995, Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory), new values of imageability are provided and values for age of acquisition, child written frequency, and adult written and spoken frequency are included. In this article, correlations among the variables are discussed and the words are grouped into grammatical categories. The results show that words acquired early have imageable referents, are frequently used in the texts read and written by elementary school children, and are frequent in adult written and spoken language. Nouns are acquired earlier and are more imageable than both verbs and adjectives. The composition in grammatical categories of the child’s first vocabulary reflects the composition of adult vocabulary. The full set of these norms can be downloaded fromwww.psychonomic.org/archive/.     

Resilience in the Face of Catastrophe: Optimism, Personality, and Coping in the Kosovo Crisis

Optimism, personality, and coping styles may alter the effects of stressful events through appraisal and stress reduction. The 1999 Kosovo crisis offered an opportunity to test this proposition under real-life, traumatic stress conditions. Dispositional optimism, personality, and coping contributions were predicted based on geographical distance and degree of reported stress for 3 groups: Kosovar refugees, Albanian citizens helping the refugees in Albania, and Albanian immigrants living in the United States. Results showed Kosovars significantly higher on all stress measures, and on maladjustment. Reduced optimism and reduced control coping were related to higher levels of maladjustment. Pessimism and escape coping showed no relation to psychological adjustment. Resilience was related to a combination of higher optimism, extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and control coping, paired with lower neuroticism.