DISCREPANCY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTITUDINAL FREEDOM

The present research varied threats to attitudinal freedom and initial receiver attitude at four discrepancy intervals from the position advocated in a persuasive communication: extreme agreement; moderate agreement; moderate disagreement; and extreme disagreement. Results indicated that receivers in moderate disagreement and extreme agreement shifted toward the recommended position, with no difference as a function of message threat level. In contrast, significant attitude change away from the position advocated in a threatening message occurred among receivers in moderate agreement and extreme disagreement. The significance of these results for the importance of the freedom to agree or disagree with a persuasive communication is discussed.     

ARE LIBERALS AND EVANGELICALS SINGING FROM THE SAME SONG SHEET?

Characterising Liberal and Evangelical theology as positions on a continuum or spectrum is common within Protestant circles. I argue that Liberals and Evangelicals do not share a common conceptual framework but embody competing and incommensurable conceptual schemes. Liberal theology then is not a distortion of true Biblical Christianity, as is often supposed, but rather is an entirely different approach to doing theology, indeed, to seeing the world. What I hope to achieve by way of this paper is to provide a context within which to better understand both Liberal and Evangelical claims, and to offer an explanation as to why the debates between the two schools are seemingly intractable. Further, I hope to encourage Liberals and Evangelicals to pursue the difficult task of understanding each other's position so that genuine dialogue can take place.     

Schadenfreude as a mate‐value‐tracking mechanism: Replication and extension of Colyn and Gordon (2013)

The present research provides a replication and extension of L. A. Colyn and A. K. Gordon's (2013) study on gender differences in schadenfreude. An experiment—in which both the gender of the unfortunate other and the dimension on which the misfortune occurred were manipulated—showed that female participants reported more schadenfreude when a same‐gender other (vs. an opposite‐gender other) experienced a misfortune on the dimension of physical attractiveness (vs. social status), whereas male participants reported more schadenfreude when a same‐gender other (vs. an opposite‐gender other) experienced a misfortune on the dimension of social status (vs. physical attractiveness). In the discussion, differences between our results and those of Colyn and Gordon are discussed.     

The National Spiritual Transformation Study

The first nationally representative study of spiritual transformations documents that spiritual/religious change is a common and powerful experience in America. About half of all adult Americans report having had such an experience. Such change is strongly related to current religious beliefs and behaviors, but shows little relationship to most nonreligious demographics. A series of open-ended items indicates that the leading causes of spiritual/religious change are normal religious activity and having had a serious personal problem, most often an illness or accident to oneself or someone close or the death of someone close. A strengthening of faith is the most common consequence of this experience. This is followed by changes in character (e.g., being more understanding, helpful) and the stopping of perceived bad habits (e.g., drinking, partying). The lasting importance of such spiritual/religious change is also shown by closed-ended measures and the predictive power that the variable has in explaining various beliefs and behaviors even when controlling for other religious variables.     

Memory Representations of Compliance-Gaining Strategies and Tactics

An important step in the development of cognitive theories of message processing is to detail the manner in which information relevant to this task is represented in memory. Given this, the present research sought to examine memory for various features of compliance-gaining messages. The results of these five studies indicate that people are generally proficient at remembering the tactical instantiations in a message but that memory for strategies (i.e., sequences of tactical acts) is generally poor. The effects of warned versus incidental memory tests and duration of retention interval were also examined. The results of these studies are explained by recourse to an associative network model of long-term memory.