Christian Commitment and Personal Well Being: Exploring the Connection Between Religious Affect and Global Happiness Among Young Churchgoers in Australia

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess the connection between religious affect (as a measure of Christian commitment) and global happiness (as a measure of personal well being) among a sample of 6,194 young churchgoers in Australia between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a range of denominations, including Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, Pentecostal, and other Protestant churches. Employing the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity and the Powell Index of Global Happiness, the data demonstrate a significant positive correlation between religious affect and global happiness, after controlling for individual differences in sex and age.     

Introverts and Extraverts Reflecting on the Experience of Parish Ministry: Conversation Between Training Incumbents and Curates

Psychological type theory suggests that introverts and extraverts may approach Christian ministry somewhat differently. This theory was tested within the context of a residential workshop attended by 15 curates, 12 of whom were accompanied by their training incumbents. Twelve themes were identified within responses to the question, “What does talk about introversion and extraversion illuminate in the ministry of incumbent and curate and in the life of the parish?” The themes from the perspective of introverts included experiencing and managing tiredness and exhaustion and difficulties experienced dealing with extravert church members. The themes from the perspective of extraverts included reflection and reflective practice, and engagement with others as a source of inspiration.     

Infant Emotion Regulation Strategy Moderates Relations between Self‐Reported Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Infant HPA Activity

Children of mothers with depressive symptoms often have high cortisol levels. Research shows that various child characteristics (e.g., attachment pattern, internalizing behaviours, and temperament) moderate this association. We suggest that these characteristics share common variance with emotion regulation strategy. Therefore, we examine infant emotion regulation strategy as a moderator of the association between maternal depressive symptoms and infant hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) function. We hypothesize that infants who utilize more independent emotion regulation strategies and have mothers who report higher depressive symptoms will exhibit elevated cortisol levels. Participants were 193 mothers and infants (15 months old) recruited from the community. Self‐reported maternal depressive symptoms were assessed. Infant independent regulatory behaviours (withdrawal, wandering away, distraction, scanning, orienting to another object) were coded in the context of a Toy Frustration Task. Infant cortisol was collected via saliva samples at baseline, +20, and +40 minutes. Results indicate that infant emotion regulation strategy moderates the relation between mothers' self‐reported depressive symptoms and infant total cortisol output (AUC_G) and cortisol reactivity (AUC_I). Infants who employed more independent regulatory behaviours and have mothers with higher depressive symptoms experience greater cortisol secretion. We discuss the findings in relation to parent‐infant interactions and the adaptive nature of emotion regulation strategies, as they relate to HPA regulatory capacities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Systems factorial technology with R

Systems factorial technology (SFT) comprises a set of powerful nonparametric models and measures, together with a theory-driven experiment methodology termed the double factorial paradigm (DFP), for assessing the cognitive information-processing mechanisms supporting the processing of multiple sources of information in a given task (Townsend and Nozawa, Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39:321–360, 1995). We provide an overview of the model-based measures of SFT, together with a tutorial on designing a DFP experiment to take advantage of all SFT measures in a single experiment. Illustrative examples are given to highlight the breadth of applicability of these techniques across psychology. We further introduce and demonstrate a new package for performing SFT analyses using R for statistical computing.     

Resilience Among Women with HIV: Impact of Silencing the Self and Socioeconomic Factors

In the U.S., women account for over a quarter of the approximately 50,000 annual new HIV diagnoses and face intersecting and ubiquitous adversities including gender inequities, sexism, poverty, violence, and limited access to quality education and employment. Women are also subjected to prescribed gender roles such as silencing their needs in interpersonal relationships, which may lessen their ability to be resilient and function adaptively following adversity. Previous studies have often highlighted the struggles encountered by women with HIV without focusing on their strengths. The present cross-sectional study investigated the relationships of silencing the self and socioeconomic factors (education, employment, and income) with resilience in a sample of women with HIV. The sample consisted of 85 women with HIV, diverse ethnic/racial groups, aged 24–65 enrolled at the Chicago site of the Women’s Interagency HIV Study in the midwestern region of the United States. Measures included the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale -10 item and the Silencing the Self Scale (STSS). Participants showed high levels of resilience. Women with lower scores on the STSS (lower self-silencing) reported significantly higher resilience compared to women with higher STSS scores. Although employment significantly related to higher resilience, silencing the self tended to predict resilience over and above the contributions of employment, income, and education. Results suggest that intervention and prevention efforts aimed at decreasing silencing the self and increasing employment opportunities may improve resilience.     

A Pilot Study of Emotion Regulation Therapy for Generalized Anxiety and Depression: Findings From a Diverse Sample of Young Adults

Emotion regulation therapy (ERT) for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and accompanying major depressive disorder (MDD) is a theoretically derived, evidence-based treatment that integrates principles from traditional and contemporary cognitive-behavioral and experiential approaches with basic and translational findings from affect science to offer a blueprint for improving intervention by focusing on the motivational responses and corresponding self-referential regulatory characteristics. Preliminary evidence supports the efficacy of a 20-session version of ERT. However, previous trials of ERT and other traditional and contemporary cognitive-behavioral therapies have often utilized relatively homogeneous samples. Various contextual and demographic factors may be associated with challenges that increase risk for negative mental and social outcomes for young adults ages 18–29, particularly for individuals from diverse backgrounds. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the effectiveness of a briefer 16-session version of ERT in a racially and ethnically diverse sample of young adults. Participants (N = 31) were enrolled at an urban-based, commuter college who consented to treatment for anxiety, worry, or depression at an on-campus counseling center. Open-trial results demonstrate strong ameliorative changes in worry, rumination, self-reported and clinician-rated GAD and MDD severity, social disability, quality of life, attentional flexibility, decentering/distancing, reappraisal, trait mindfulness, and negative emotionality from pre- to posttreatment. These gains were maintained throughout a 3- and 9-month follow-up. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the efficacy of ERT in treating a racially and ethnically heterogeneous population. Further, this study highlights comparable effectiveness of a briefer 16-session version of ERT.     

Building capacity or enforcing normalcy? Engaging with disability scholarship in Africa

In contemporary South African academia, “community engagement” is a valued commodity. My work as a nondisabled white man with disability activists and as editor of the African Journal of Disability is viewed as good for my career, and as an appropriate form of engagement and empowerment. In this article, I engage critically with the question of the extent to which capacity building is simply about increasing capacity. I ask whether capacity building inevitably involves elements of disavowal of the experience and competencies of less powerful people. I compare capacity building to the enforcement of normalcy, a process which disability scholars criticize with justification. I ask whether it is possible in unequal social contexts to engage with the politics of voice without imposing a hegemonic narrative on nondominant voices. I suggest links between the politics of engaged scholarship and processes of domestication of troubling bodies and minds.     

Bullshit as a practical strategy for self-deceptive narrators

This paper argues that bullshit is a practical resource for self-deceiving individuals, or those who merely prefer to avoid self-examination, insofar as it is able to provide a mask for poor doxastic hygiene. While self-deception and bullshit are distinct phenomena, and bullshit does not cause self-deception, bullshit disrupts the capacity to interrogate the motivational biasses that fuel deception. The communicative misdirection engaged in by ordinary social bullshitters is applied reflexively by the self-deceiver to distort, evade, and obfuscate the self-deceiver's self-accounting. This discussion presupposes a broadly narrative approach to self-awareness and discusses how a motivated susceptibility to bullshit offers an explanation how our reports about ourselves can be frequently at odds with reality, and suggests that a complacency about rational validation of belief outside of self-certainty, i.e., the prevalence of bullshit, is even more of a threat than Frankfurt thought it to be.     

Reliability and Validity of a French Translation of a Short Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity

The reliability and validity of a French translation of the 7-item short form of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was examined among a sample of 462 female French university students. Analysis supports the reliability and validity of the scale and commends it for further use among French speaking samples.