The medial temporal lobe and visual working memory: Comparisons across tasks, delays, and visual similarity

Whether the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe (MTL) play any important role in visual working memory is a relatively new and controversial research question. The primary goal of this study was to assess working memory for faces over very short delays in patients with MTL damage. Patients and matched controls were required to remember one face that was parametrically morphed to be more or less similar to a probe face, over either a 1- or an 8-sec delay. Memory was assessed using both forced choice and old-new recognition tasks. The results show that MTL damage impairs both speed and accuracy of visual working memory across tasks. We speculate that the hippocampus is generally necessary for memory encoding.     

Family metaphors and moral intuitions: how conservatives and liberals narrate their lives

This research examines life-narrative interviews obtained from 128 highly religious and politically active adults to test differences between political conservatives and liberals on (a) implicit family metaphors (G. Lakoff, 2002) and (b) moral intuitions (J. Haidt & C. Joseph, 2004). Content analysis of 12 key scenes in life stories showed that conservatives, as predicted, tended to depict authority figures as strict enforcers of moral rules and to identify lessons in self-discipline. By contrast, liberals were more likely to identify lessons learned regarding empathy and openness, even though (contrary to prediction) they were no more likely than conservatives to describe nurturant authority figures. Analysis of extended discourse on the development of religious faith and personal morality showed that conservatives emphasized moral intuitions regarding respect for social hierarchy, allegiance to in-groups, and the purity or sanctity of the self, whereas liberals invested more significance in moral intuitions regarding harm and fairness. The results are discussed in terms of the recent upsurge of interest among psychologists in political ideology and the value of using life-narrative methods and concepts to explore how politically active adults attempt to construct meaningful lives.     

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.     

The Confidence of Eyewitnesses in Their Identifications From Lineups

The confidence that eyewitnesses express in their lineup identifications of criminal suspects has a large impact on criminal proceedings. Many convictions of innocent people can be attributed in large part to confident but mistaken eyewitnesses. Although reasonable correlations between confidence and accuracy can be obtained under certain conditions, confidence is governed by some factors that are unrelated to accuracy. An understanding of these confidence factors helps establish the conditions under which confidence and accuracy are related and leads to important practical recommendations for criminal justice proceedings.     

Implicit learning of evaluative vs. non-evaluative covariations: The role of dimension accessibility

Implicit covariation learning, the development of simple associations without awareness, has been demonstrated repeatedly along the evaluative dimension [De Houwer, J., Thomas, S., & Baeyens, F. (2001). Associative learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 853-869], but associations involving other dimensions appear more difficult to learn implicitly. The present research highlights the unique properties of the evaluative dimension that may predispose it to implicit learning. We provide evidence in the first experiment that implicit covariation learning occurs along the evaluative dimension, but does not spontaneously occur along non-evaluative dimensions. In Experiment 2, implicit learning along non-evaluative dimensions occurred when participants were subliminally primed with the to-be-learned dimension. In the discussion, we integrate findings from implicit evaluative conditioning research with the broader implicit learning literature.     

Market Share and Religious Competition: Do Small Market Share Congregations and Their Leaders Try Harder?

A central claim of the religious economies model is that religious competition affects levels of religious participation and commitment primarily because religious competition pushes the suppliers of religion (religious leaders and organizations) to market their faith more vigorously and effectively. We examine whether U.S. congregations experiencing greater religious competition measured by their smaller religious market share do more to recruit new members, offer more services to current followers, and whether their clergy work longer hours. The efforts of congregations and clergy do vary substantially, but this variation is not related to their denomination's market share. The variations are also not due to religious pluralism, intradenominational competition, or evangelical market share. Members of small market share congregations are more committed, but this higher commitment does not appear to arise because religious suppliers are responding to religious competition. Several alternative explanations for the higher commitment levels of small market share groups are offered with a discussion of the implications for theories of religious competition.     

Female voices of aggression in Tonga

Tonga, a Polynesian society, is characterized by a social order and by Christian beliefs that work to constrain aggressive action and conflict. Violence does take place in Tonga but there is active discouragement of any behavior that may be socially disruptive. Tongan women in particular are allowed only a limited number of contexts in which acceptable expression of aggression can take place. In response, Tongan women rely on rather covert forms of aggression in processes of competition and conflict. A speech given during an inter-denominational religious feast controlled by the women of one village provides an example of a woman aggressively empowering herself through discourse clothed within the language of Tongan charity and Christian love.     

The family on television: Evaluation of gender roles in situation comedy

This study investigated whether television domestic comedies’ depictions of gender roles within the family have changed in the past 40 years. Ten domestic comedies were selected based on their popularity and the inclusion of siblings. These series were divided into two groups—pre and post 1984, given the time span covered by the series and the series’ setting. College students screened three representative episodes and made subsequent judgments on the portrayals of similarity, equality, and dominance, family satisfaction and family stability in the spousal, sibling, and familial relationships. Results indicated the depictions of gender roles fluctuated throughout the period, with peaks in satisfaction and stability ratings in the 1950s and mid-1980s. More recent domestic comedies contained less positive depictions, specifically displaying more dominance and less satisfaction and stability. Subjects reported families that were more distressed were less desirable and less like their own.