Understanding African American’s Religious Beliefs and Organ Donation Intentions

African Americans are overrepresented on the organ transplant waiting list and underrepresented among organ and tissue donors. One of the most highly noted reasons for lack of donation is the perception that donation is contrary to religious beliefs. The purpose of this cross-sectional study is to explore the complexities of religion (beliefs, religiosity, and religious involvement) and its association with willingness to donate and the written expression of donation intentions. Findings from a sample of 505 African American participants suggest that religion is a multidimensional construct and results differ depending on how the construct is measured and operationalized.     

As I See It: A Study of African American Pastors’ Views on Health and Health Education in the Black Church

The Black Church is the only institution that has consistently served the interest of African Americans, and there is no other institution in the African American community that rivals its influence (Camara, 2004). The spiritual well-fare, social support, health, and well-being of its people have been one of its main goals. With health disparities of African Americans still at an alarming rate, the Black Church has used informal education as a means to impart knowledge on health, as well as other non-religious and religious topics. One of the avenues least researched within the Black Church is the pastor’s perception of its educational role in health and wellness and its efforts to reduce health discrimination and health disparities between African American and European Americans in the U.S. Since social justice appears as a theme and concern in the traditions of many churches, it is only appropriate that, among other things, the Black Church should address the issue of health education and interventions. The purpose of this study was to explore African American pastors’ perceptions of the role of the Black Church in providing health care, health education, and wellness opportunities to African Americans. Many pastors reported their church provided some form of health education and/or health screenings. Their perceptions about the important issues facing their congregants versus African Americans in general were quite similar.     

The Relationship between Medicine,Spirituality and Religion: Three Models for Integration

The integration of medicine and religion is challenging for historical, ethical, practical and conceptual reasons. In order to make more explicit the bases and goals of relating spirituality and medicine, we distinguish here three complementary perspectives: a whole-person care model that emphasizes teamwork among generalists and spiritual professionals; an existential functioning view that identifies a role for the clinician in promoting full health, including spiritual well-being; and an open pluralism view, which highlights the importance of differing spiritual and cultural traditions in shaping the relationship.     

School absenteeism and mental health among sexual minority youth and heterosexual youth

Adolescent school absenteeism is associated with negative outcomes such as conduct disorders, substance abuse, and dropping out of school. Mental health factors, such as depression and anxiety, have been found to be associated with increased absenteeism from school. Sexual minority youth (youth who are attracted to the same sex or endorse a gay, lesbian, or bisexual identity) are a group at risk for increased absenteeism due to fear, avoidance, and higher rates of depression and anxiety than their heterosexual peers. The present study used longitudinal data to compare sexual minority youth and heterosexual youth on excused and unexcused absences from school and to evaluate differences in the relations between depression and anxiety symptoms and school absences among sexual minority youth and heterosexual youth. A total of 108 14- to 19-years-old adolescents (71% female and 26% sexual minority) completed self-report measures of excused and unexcused absences and depression and anxiety symptoms. Compared to heterosexual youth, sexual minority youth reported more excused and unexcused absences and more depression and anxiety symptoms. Sexual minority status significantly moderated the effects of depression and anxiety symptoms on unexcused absences such that depression and anxiety symptoms were stronger predictors of unexcused absences for sexual minority youth than for heterosexual youth. The results demonstrate that sexual minority status and mental health are important factors to consider when assessing school absenteeism and when developing interventions to prevent or reduce school absenteeism among adolescents.     

Transfer effects between moral dilemmas: A causal model theory

Evaluations of analogous situations are an important source for our moral intuitions. A puzzling recent set of findings in experiments exploring transfer effects between intuitions about moral dilemmas has demonstrated a striking asymmetry. Transfer often occurred with a specific ordering of moral dilemmas, but not when the sequence was reversed. In this article we present a new theory of transfer between moral intuitions that focuses on two components of moral dilemmas, namely their causal structure and their default evaluations. According to this theory, transfer effects are expected when the causal models underlying the considered dilemmas allow for a mapping of the highlighted aspect of the first scenario onto the causal structure of the second dilemma, and when the default evaluations of the two dilemmas substantially differ. The theory’s key predictions for the occurrence and the direction of transfer effects between two moral dilemmas are tested in five experiments with various variants of moral dilemmas from different domains. A sixth experiment tests the predictions of the theory for how the target action in the moral dilemmas is represented.     

What factors underlie children’s susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories? Investigating the roles of language skills and auditory short-term memory

Two experiments investigated the cognitive skills that underlie children’s susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott procedure ( and ). In Experiment 1, performance on the Verbal Similarities subtest of the British Ability Scales (BAS) II (Elliott, Smith, & McCulloch, 1997) predicted correct and false recall of semantic lures. In Experiment 2, performance on the Yopp–Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation (Yopp, 1988) did not predict correct recall, but inversely predicted the false recall of phonological lures. Auditory short-term memory was a negative predictor of false recall in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. The findings are discussed in terms of the formation of gist and verbatim traces as proposed by fuzzy trace theory (Reyna & Brainerd, 1998) and the increasing automaticity of associations as proposed by associative activation theory (Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009).     

The Structured Employment Interview: Narrative and Quantitative Review of the Research Literature

In the 20 years since frameworks of employment interview structure have been developed, a considerable body of empirical research has accumulated. We summarize and critically examine this literature by focusing on the 8 main topics that have been the focus of attention: (a) the definition of structure; (b) reducing bias through structure; (c) impression management in structured interviews; (d) measuring personality via structured interviews; (e) comparing situational versus past‐behavior questions; (f) developing rating scales; (g) probing, follow‐up, prompting, and elaboration on questions; and (h) reactions to structure. For each topic, we review and critique research and identify promising directions for future research. When possible, we augment the traditional narrative review with meta‐analytic review and content analysis. We concluded that much is known about structured interviews, but there are still many unanswered questions. We provide 12 propositions and 19 research questions to stimulate further research on this important topic.     

On the Limitations of Using Situational Judgment Tests to Measure Interpersonal Skills: The Moderating Influence of Employee Anger

Many authors have suggested that situational judgment tests (SJTs) are useful tools for assessing applicants because SJT items can be written to assess a number of job‐related knowledges, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs). However, SJTs may not be appropriate for measuring certain KSAOs for some applicants. We posit that using SJTs to measure interpersonal skills may lead to invalid inferences about applicants with higher levels of angry hostility (AH), and thus, AH should moderate the relation between interpersonally oriented SJTs and job performance. Three studies, using samples of healthcare workers (n = 225), police officers (n = 54), and medical doctors (n = 92), provided support for hypotheses in that that relations between SJT scores and performance criteria were significantly weaker among employees higher in AH compared to those lower in AH. In addition, none of the other facets of neuroticism tested (self‐consciousness, anxiety, depression, immoderation, or vulnerability to stress) consistently moderated SJT validity, providing support for the uniqueness of AH. Implications for practice, and for future research studying the relations between interpersonal skills as measured by SJTs and job performance, are discussed.