John Calvin on the Christian's Social Responsibility: Cultural Activist or “Modest Social Reformer”?

Recently there have been heated discussions between Reformed theologians who embrace the two‐kingdoms doctrine and proponents of the Neo‐Calvinist tradition on whether Calvin held social transformationist views. This article examines the debate and argues that Calvin did not interpret the kingdom as a progressive social‐transforming reality that gradually establishes God's future eschatological reign on earth. Instead, he regarded Christ's present reign as a “backward”‐reaching reality that restores God's original created order. At the same time Calvin did not make a sharp categorical distinction between the spiritual and civil realms but depicted the civil and spiritual order as two regiments of God's one reign that mutually aid and assist each other.     

A Dangerous Subject: The Fashion Model and the Beauty/Narcissism Double Bind

In the wake of modernity, women's sexuality was positioned in a way that created a beauty/narcissism double bind that is still with us today. My concern in this article is that the subject position of “fashion model” serves as a constant reminder of this split, which is directed at all women and weakens the generalized woman's political agency. Fashion models themselves experience harassment and humiliation as well as pleasure and desire in their work as fashion models. However, the small portion of feminist work that has engaged explicitly with the fashion‐model business sees it mainly as an enterprise that is alienating and hostile to women. Although I do not entirely disagree with this analysis, it neglects the meaning of beauty and what beauty does to us with regard to creativity and pleasure. I wish to explore how some of the work experience of fashion models intersects with and challenges the beauty/narcissism double bind. I suggest that rather than grounding our understanding of the subject position “fashion model” and the fashion business solely in their reinforcement of the beauty/narcissism double bind, we should pay attention to the importance of what beauty and aspects of narcissism may mean.     

Decoding dyadic interactive nonverbal behaviour in Chinese and Australian cohorts: A novel dyadic puzzle‐solving task

The current study used a novel problem‐solving task in which the solution could only be reached via interactions between members of dyads. The study aimed to systematically examine how nonverbal interactive behaviour was related to the cultural background of the dyads, the participant's role in the dyad (viz., instructor, problem solver) and task repetition. Twenty‐one Australian dyads and 32 Chinese dyads performed the dyadic puzzle‐solving task while their interactions were video‐recorded. In each dyad, one instructor and one problem solver worked together to solve a seven‐piece puzzle. Six trials, each comprising a different puzzle, were completed. Results indicate that the Australian instructors engaged in significantly more eye gazing and displayed more hand gestures but smiled less than the Chinese instructors. The Australian problem solvers maintained longer eye gazing, displayed more hand gestures and more echoing than their Chinese counterparts. Over trials, the Chinese instructors reduced their total talking time, hand gestures, nodding behaviour and smiling during self‐talking more than the Australian instructors. Moreover, the problem solvers in the dyads from both countries significantly reduced their smiling across trials. The current study shows that nonverbal behaviours during dyadic interactions are related to one's cultural background, role in the task and task repetition.     

Effects of repeated retrieval on long-term retention in a nonverbal learning task in younger children

Many studies have shown the benefits for long term retention of repeated retrieval during learning in verbal tasks, but few have shown its effectiveness using nonverbal materials. The aim of this study was to examine whether the retention benefits of repeated retrieval extend to preschool children performing a spatial location memory task. In this task, the children first studied where eight small toys were located in a partitioned box. Then, in the repeated retrieval condition, the children were asked to put each one of the toys in its place by themselves three times successively with feedback, whereas in the repeated study condition, they were asked to put each toy in its place with the experimenter showing them the correct location. Half of the children were then immediately tested and the remaining half tested after one day. The results showed that the 5 and 6 year old children in the retrieval condition retained location memory for the toys longer than those in the study condition in a memory task involving spatial content and enactment components. These findings have deep theoretical implications for the critical role of retrieval effort in long-term retention, and highlight the efficacy of repeated retrieval for different developmental ages and tasks.     

The influence of mastery‐avoidance goals on performance improvement

Two experiments focused on examining the influence of mastery‐avoidance goals on performance improvement, and more specifically, on mastery‐avoidance goals grounded in an intrapersonal standard. That is, herein, mastery‐avoidance goals entail striving to avoid doing worse than one has done before. Both experiments demonstrated that in a multiple‐trial context, mastery‐avoidance goals are deleterious for performance improvement relative to mastery‐approach, performance‐approach, and performance‐avoidance goals, and a no goal baseline. The findings were shown to be independent of participants' perceptions of goal difficulty, and were consistent not only across methodology but also across type of participant (undergraduates versus individuals in the workforce), and type and length of achievement task (a verbal skills task versus an ecologically valid managerial competencies exercise). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the link between different combinations of Negative Affectivity (NA) and Positive Affectivity (PA) and job performance

Despite the assumed orthogonality of Negative Affectivity (NA) and Positive Affectivity (PA), the effects of the different combinations of NA and PA on work-related outcomes such as job performance have been neglected. The present study among 42 employees of a local social services department in the Netherlands was conducted to fill this gap. The results show that a negative link between NA and job performance (as assessed by the immediate supervisor) exists only when PA is low. This finding elucidates the role of dispositional affect in organizational research and emphasizes that the interaction between both affectivity dimensions should be included when studying how affect relates to job performance and other work-related outcome variables.     

Performing great and the purpose of performing better than others: on the recursiveness of the achievement goal adoption process

The purpose of the present research is to complement and extend previous achievement goal research by emphasizing that great performance may serve as an antecedent of performance‐approach goal adoption, that is, the wish to outperform others. A consistent finding across the three studies is, indeed, that great (perceived) performance and high performance expectancies are associated with the adoption of performance‐approach goals. It is concluded that the process of goal adoption is a dynamic, recursive process in which performance attainment is most likely to operate as both an antecedent and a consequence of goal adoption. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Go with the flow: conforming to others in the face of existential threat

In three studies we investigate the impact of mortality salience on conformity and show that people have a greater preference to conform to the opinions of others when mortality is salient. Study 1 shows that mortality salience increases the degree to which judgments of abstract drawings are influenced by the majority's opinion. Study 2 shows that mortality salience causes people to change their opinions towards societal issues, so that these fit the attitudes they think others have. Study 3 replicates the findings of the first study and additionally shows that people do not conform to the attitude of outgroup members. Our findings extend previous Terror Management Theory research and suggest that conforming to the group is a means to buffer the fear that may otherwise arise in existentially threatening situations. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of context changes on the reinstatement of extinguished conditioned behavior in a conditioned suppression task with humans

Reinstatement refers to the return of previously extinguished conditioned responses to test trials of a conditional stimulus (CS) when presentations of the unconditional stimulus (US) alone are given following extinction. Four experiments were conducted to determine whether reinstatement could be found in a conditioned suppression task with humans and whether contextual changes can abolish it. Experiment 1 demonstrated the reinstatement of conditioned suppression when acquisition, extinction, US alone, and test trials were all given in the same context. Experiments 2 and 3 suggested that the reinstatement effect was still present when the US alone presentations were given in a different context to the subsequent test trials. Experiment 4 replicated this effect using additional controls over the amount of exposure to the various contexts. The results suggest that reinstatement can be robust across changing contexts. Aspects of the conditioned suppression task that promote the transfer of learning across contexts or the establishment of configural context-CS stimuli may underlie the apparent lack of contextual control over reinstatement.     

A randomized control trial to investigate the impact of the Lidcombe Program on early stuttering in German-speaking preschoolers

In order to investigate whether the Lidcombe Program effects a short-term reduction of stuttered speech beyond natural recovery, 46 German preschool children were randomly assigned to a wait-contrast group or to an experimental group which received the Lidcombe Program for 16 weeks. The children were between 3;0 and 5;11 years old, their and both of their parents’ native language was German, stuttering onset had been at least 6 months before, and their stuttering frequency was higher than 3% stuttered syllables. Spontaneous speech samples were recorded at home and in the clinic prior to treatment and after 4 months. Compared to the wait-contrast group, the treatment group showed a significantly higher decrease in stuttered syllables in home-measurements (6.9%SS vs. 1.6%SS) and clinic-measurements (6.8%SS vs. 3.6%SS), and the same increase in articulation rate. The program is considered an enrichment of currently applied early stuttering interventions in Germany.

Educational objectives: Readers will discuss and evaluate: (1) the short-term effects of the Lidcombe Program in comparison to natural recovery on stuttering; (2) the impact of the Lidcombe Program on early stuttering in German-speaking preschool children.