Revitalizing Narcissistic Perfectionism: Evidence of the Reliability and the Validity of an Emerging Construct

Theorists have long speculated about narcissistic perfectionism—an outwardly directed need for perfection marked by grandiosity, entitlement, and lofty expectations for others. This study provides evidence of reliability and predictive validity for an emerging model of narcissistic perfectionism using two waves of measurement and multiple data sources (self-report and informant-report) in a sample of 155 undergraduate students. As hypothesized, confirmatory factor analysis showed manifest indicators of narcissistic perfectionism cohered together as a constellation of traits while showing reliability and factorial validity across time and source. Hierarchical multiple regression indicated narcissistic perfectionism uniquely and incrementally predicted anger beyond competing measures of other-oriented perfectionism and narcissism. Informant-reports of narcissistic perfectionism uniquely predicted anger beyond self-reports. These results offer promising empirical support for the often discussed, but seldom tested, concept of narcissistic perfectionism.     

Schellenberg on the epistemic force of experience

According to Schellenberg, our perceptual experiences have the epistemic force they do because they are exercises of certain sorts of capacity, namely capacities to discriminate particulars—objects, property-instances and events—in a sensory mode. She calls her account the “capacity view.” In this paper, I will raise three concerns about Schellenberg’s capacity view. The first is whether we might do better to leave capacities out of our epistemology and take content properties as the fundamental epistemically relevant features of experiences. I argue we would. The second is whether Schellenberg’s appeal to factive and phenomenal evidence accommodates the intuitive verdicts about the bad case that she claims it does. I argue it does not. The third is whether Schellenberg’s account of factive evidence is adequate to capture nuances concerning the justification for singular but nondemonstrative perceptual beliefs, such as the belief that’s NN, where NN is a proper name. I argue it is not. If I am right, these points suggest a mental-state-first account of perceptual justification, rather than a capacity-first account, and one which treats the good and bad cases alike in respect of justification and complicates the relation between perceptual content and what one is justified in believing.     

The Role of Leisure Interest and Engagement for Subjective Well-Being

During the last decades, the association between leisure engagement and subjective well-being (SWB) has been examined. Yet, the role of the interest in specific leisure activities for SWB has been neglected. Thus, we examined whether the pure leisure engagement or the opportunity to realize the longing to pursue a leisure activity is linked to well-being. A sample of 402 participants completed an online survey about interests and the frequency of engagement in diverse leisure activities as well as physical, cognitive, and affective well-being. The study revealed that leisure engagement showed stronger associations with all aspects of well-being than leisure interest per se. More specifically, interest and engagement in social activities and sports showed robust associations with different facets of well-being. Furthermore, a high individual fit between leisure interest and engagement across diverse activities incrementally predicted SWB beyond leisure engagement per se. Analyses of nonlinear associations indicated that too much leisure engagement was associated with lower levels of SWB, but high interest in leisure activities buffered this effect. Thus, the intrinsic motivation to leisure activities may play an important role for well-being in addition to the sheer leisure engagement.     

Privilege and Oppression in Counselor Education: An Intersectionality Framework

Multiculturalism and social justice are considered major forces in the counseling profession, revolutionizing the complexity of social identity, cultural identity, and diversity. Although these major forces have influenced the profession, many challenges exist with their implementation within counselor education curriculum and pedagogy. A major challenge is the complex dynamics of privilege and oppression that both counselor educators and counseling students face. This article discusses the use of intersectionality to approach counselor education pedagogy and practice. El multiculturalismo y la justicia social están considerados como fuerzas importantes con las que la profesión de la consejería está revolucionando la complejidad de la identidad social, la identidad cultural y la diversidad. Aunque estas fuerzas importantes han influido en la profesión, existen desafíos relacionados con su implementación en los planes curriculares y pedagogía de la educación de consejeros. Un desafío significativo es la compleja dinámica entre privilegio y opresión que enfrentan tanto los formadores de consejeros como los estudiantes de consejería. Este artículo discute el uso de la interseccionalidad para enfocar la pedagogía de la educación de consejeros y la práctica.     

Sound Body,Sound Mind? The Interrelation Between Health Change and Personality Change in Old Age

Personality development is characterized by increasing maturation, that is, people become more conscientious, agreeable and emotionally stable as they age. In late life, however, these trends seem to be reversed. Because many changes and transitions in older age are related to health, we investigated correlated changes in health problems and personality traits, the sources of health changes in later life and the directionality of effects. Our sample consisted of older adult twins, aged 64–85 years at time 1 (n = 410; 135 male/275 female; 134 monozygotic/63 dizygotic twin pairs), assessed at two different time points about five years apart, and we ran bivariate latent change and latent change twin model analyses. Increasing health problems were associated with decreases in agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability and conscientiousness. Changes in health problems were only due to environmental influences, implying that the association between health and personality changes was exclusively environmental. Directional effects were largely absent, but health and personality were significantly related at the second measurement occasion (age 69–89 years). Our results support the link between health change and personality change in late life and spark the assumption of normative personality adaptations to deterioration of health status as a means of developmental regulation. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Does Funding Impact Our Research? Causality,Normativity, and Diversity in 40 Years of U.S. Sociology of Religion

In this article we use a sample of 40 years of sociology journal articles (N = 1,024) on religion to ask what role funding plays in some of the leading trends in the subdiscipline. Our analysis reveals a considerable increase in the number of published articles on religion with funding over the past 40 years as well as a shift away from public funding as the primary source of funding. Engaging our findings in previous analyses of this database, we surprisingly find a positive correlation between public funding and positive socio‐evaluative findings in articles on religion, but not between private funding and positive socio‐evaluative findings. We also find a positive correlation between funding from religious organizations and research on religion in the United States and a weak, but negative, correlation between funding from religious organizations and research on non‐Christian religious traditions. We do not find a relationship between funding and causal order.     

Looks and Perceptual Justification

Imagine I hold up a Granny Smith apple for all to see. You would thereby gain justified beliefs that it was green, that it was apple, and that it is a Granny Smith apple. Under classical foundationalism, such simple visual beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning your experience. Under dogmatism, some or all of these beliefs are justified immediately by your experience and not by reasons you possess. This paper argues for what I call the looks view of the justification of simple visual beliefs. According to the looks view, such beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning how the relevant things look. Unlike under classical foundationalism, under the looks view as I develop it, these reasons are public. They are public with respect to both their content and possession: with respect to content, they are not about ourselves and our experiences, and with respect to their possession, many people can have the very same looks‐related reasons.