Clergy Affairs: Emotional Investment,Longevity of Relationship and Affair Partners

While there has been a growing body of research on clergy infidelity behavior (Blackmon, 1984; Muck, 1988; Thoburn & Balswick, 1999), factors predicting infidelity (Blackmon, 1984; Steinke, 1989; Thoburn & Balswick, 1994) and attitudes related to clergy infidelity (Steinke, 1989; Thoburn & Balswick, 1999), little research has been done identifying the nature of clergy sexual misconduct relationships. Research with a multi-denominational group of male Protestant ministers examined a) whether clergy affairs are of short or long duration, b) the kinds of persons that clergy have affairs with i.e. counselees, church members, church staff, friends, strangers or prostitutes, c) whether there was an emotional quality to the affair, and d) the potential impact that marital dissatisfaction might have on the clergy affair.     

The impact of domain and subject specialization on knowledge organization

Thematic organization is the association of information that is observed within a given time frame or event, and taxonomic organization is characterized by class membership based on featural overlap. Research in cognitive psychology has suggested a developmental progression in preference from thematic organization to taxonomic organization, with a preference for taxonomic organization seen as cognitively more advanced. However, recent research has found thematic preferences in adults and shown that organizational preference can be influenced by context and experience. This study expanded on previous findings of individual differences and explored preferences across different domains. Specifically, preferences for knowledge organization were measured between student type (history and psychology) and across content type (general and history). The results indicated that history material was more likely to be organized thematically than general material.     

A receiver operator characteristics analysis of treatment outcome in binge eating disorder to identify patterns of rapid response

The purpose of this study was to perform a receiver operator characteristics (ROC) analysis on a treatment sample from a randomized controlled treatment trial of participants with binge eating disorder (BED). An ROC analysis was completed with 179 adults in a 20-week treatment trial for BED to predict abstinence from binge eating at end of treatment. Percent reductions in binge eating episodes were examined following weeks 1 through 10 of treatment. The rate of percent decrease in binge eating episodes during treatment for BED was a significant predictor of clinical outcome at end of treatment. Participants who demonstrated a 15% reduction in binge eating episodes at week one were more likely to respond positively to treatment and achieve clinical remission. Findings from the current study suggest that a significant reduction in binge eating during the first week of treatment may be predictive of end of treatment remission in those with BED.     

The effects of priming legal concepts on perceived trust and competitiveness, self-interested attitudes, and competitive behavior

Socio-legal scholars have suggested that, as a ubiquitous social system, law shapes social reality and provides interpretive frameworks for social relations. Across five studies, we tested the idea that the law shapes social reality by fostering the assumptions that people are self-interested, untrustworthy, and competitive. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that people implicitly associated legal concepts with competitiveness. Studies 3-5 showed that these associations had implications for social perceptions, self-interested attitudes, and competitive behavior. After being primed with constructs related to the law, participants perceived social actors as less trustworthy and the situation as more competitive (Study 3), became more against a political issue when it conflicted with their normative self-interest (Study 4), and made more competitive choices during a prisoner’s dilemma game when they believed that social relations were basically zero-sum in nature (Study 5). The implications and applications of these results are discussed.     

Moral virtue and practical wisdom: theme comprehension in children, youth, and adults

The authors tested 3 hypotheses about the relation of moral comprehension to prudential comprehension by contrasting comprehension of themes in moral stories with comprehension of themes in prudential stories among third-grade, fifth-grade, and college students (n = 168) in Study 1, and among college students, young and middle-aged adults, and older adults (n = 96) in Study 2. In both studies, all groups were statistically significantly better at moral theme comprehension than prudential theme comprehension, suggesting that moral comprehension may develop prior to prudential comprehension. In Study 2, all groups performed equally on moral theme generation whereas both adult groups were significantly better than college students on prudential theme generation. Overall, the findings of these studies provide modest evidence that moral and prudential comprehension each develop separately, and that the latter may develop more slowly.     

Origins of spatial, temporal and numerical cognition: Insights from comparative psychology

Contemporary comparative cognition has a large repertoire of animal models and methods, with concurrent theoretical advances that are providing initial answers to crucial questions about human cognition. What cognitive traits are uniquely human? What are the species-typical inherited predispositions of the human mind? What is the human mind capable of without certain types of specific experiences with the surrounding environment? Here, we review recent findings from the domains of space, time and number cognition. These findings are produced using different comparative methodologies relying on different animal species, namely birds and non-human great apes. The study of these species not only reveals the range of cognitive abilities across vertebrates, but also increases our understanding of human cognition in crucial ways.     

Prosperity Beliefs and Value Orientations: Fueling or Suppressing Entrepreneurial Activity

Entrepreneurs tend to think differently than nonentrepreneurs. Among the differences are values prizing achievement and self‐direction, while downplaying tradition and conformity. Religion is an important correlate to human values. Nevertheless, previous research has failed to explore adequately the connections among religious beliefs, human values, and entrepreneurial outcomes. The purpose of this study is to test these relationships with a focus on beliefs that God rewards the faithful with material prosperity. We test eight hypotheses using a national survey of working adults. Results of a multigroup path model reveal that value orientations of self‐enhancement, openness to change, and conservation are associated with entrepreneurial attitudes of opportunity recognition and risk willingness. These attitudes likewise correlate with new business creation. Prosperity beliefs moderate the impact of values and entrepreneurial attitudes on the likelihood of starting a new business, but prosperity beliefs by themselves show little direct impact on entrepreneurial attitudes or action.     

The intentionality and intelligibility of moods

This article offers an account of moods as distinctive kinds of personal level affective–evaluative states, which are both intentional and rationally intelligible in specific ways. The account contrasts with those who claim moods are non‐intentional, and so also arational. Section 2 provides a conception of intentionality and distinguishes moods, as occurrent experiential states, from other states in the affective domain. Section 3 argues moods target the subject's total environment presented in a specific evaluative light through felt valenced attitudes (the Mood‐Intentionality thesis). Section 4 argues some moods are experienced as rationally intelligible responses, and so epistemically appropriate, to the way “the world” presents itself (the Mood‐Intelligibility thesis). Finally, Section 5 discusses the epistemology of moods.     

Themes of Hope and Healing: Infertile Couples' Experiences of Adoption

Using a qualitative approach, the authors explored the experiences of becoming parents through adoption after unsuccessful infertility treatments. During in‐depth narrative interviews, 39 infertile couples shared their stories of how they determined that adoption was an acceptable parenting option, the vicissitudes of the adoption process, and their experiences of becoming adoptive parents. Phenomenological analysis of these data revealed 3 overarching themes. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for counselors who work with infertile couples considering adoption, clients engaged in the adoption process, and those who have recently made the transition to parenthood through adoption.     

Source monitoring and suggestibility to misinformation: adult age‐related differences

We compared young and older adults' source monitoring performance on an explicit source identification test using the misinformation paradigm. Several age‐related differences in source memory were demonstrated: (a) older adults were more likely than were young adults to say that they saw information that was actually only suggested to them; (b) older adults were more confident in their false memories than were young adults; (c) older adults were less confident in their accurate memory for the source of information than were young adults. Together, the data suggest that older adults either lacked or failed to use helpful diagnostic source information (e.g. perceptual details or temporal information), and that their confidence in their false memories reflected an over‐weighting of semantic information. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.