Neuroticism and self-reported somatic health: a twin study

Using a twin sample (N?=?188; 53 monozygotic and 39 dizygotic twin pairs, and 4 single twins whose co-twin did not participate), this study sought (1) to estimate heritabilities of neuroticism and of somatic complaints rated on the basis of two different time frames ('the last week' vs. 'in general'); (2) to estimate the genetic association between neuroticism and the complaints indices and (3) to examine to what extent somatic complaints are aetiologically distinct from neuroticism. Using models with common additive genetic (A) and individual-specific environmental (E) factors, the heritabilities for neuroticism and complaints 'in general' and during 'the last week' were 0.46 (0.20-0.65), 0.44 (0.22-0.62), and 0.45 (0.22-0.63), respectively. Nearly 60% of the phenotypic correlation between neuroticism and somatic complaints were accounted for by A. Furthermore, a substantial part of the variance in somatic complaints was due to unique genetic and individual-specific environmental influences unrelated to neuroticism. These results suggest that somatic complaints are moderately heritable and that a considerable portion of the covariance between neuroticism and complaints measures is due to genetic factors. Yet, the findings also suggest that these two attributes are distinct entities with overlapping, but not identical, underlying genetic and environmental influences.     

Sufficiency and Satiable Values

This article identifies value‐satiability sufficientarianism as a distinctive version of the sufficiency view, which has been ignored in the literature on distributive justice. This is unfortunate because value‐satiability sufficientarianism is much better equipped than alternative sufficiency views to cope with the standard objections against sufficiency. Most often, sufficientarianism refers to satiability as a feature of moral principles and reasons. But value‐satiability sufficientarianism also invokes satiability in the space of value‐theory, as it determines the sufficiency threshold at the point where justice‐relevant values have been completely fulfilled. The article gives examples of how this view is widely apparent in the literature, and it provides some reasons in its favour. It then presents the two standard objections against sufficientarianism – the threshold objection and the indifference objection – and argues that these critiques do not apply to value‐satiability sufficientarianism. The general argument of the article therefore proves sufficientarianism more difficult to refute than is commonly credited.     

Transforming churches: the lived religion of religious organizations in a contemporary context

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes patterns of transformation in a specific majority religious institution, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark (ELCD), through a case study of communicative actions related to new church practices. The argument is that the patterns most often identified in the study of the religion of late-modern individuals, which is an “ever-changing, multifaceted, often messy—even contradictory—amalgam of beliefs and practices” (McGuire 2008, 4), are also relevant when scholars describe changes at the level of religious organizations. Meredith McGuire’s concepts are supplemented with other discussions of the transformation of traditions in a contemporary context. Our research question is: what characterizes the communicative actions concerning the transformation of traditions within the ELCD today? The empirical material consists of communicative actions related to practices associated with Halloween and Valentine’s Day from two distinct contexts: 1) the public debate about the Church in the newspaper The Christian Daily and 2) public announcements in the official online Church calendar. This leads to a discussion of the creative agency of religious institutions as part of the complex pattern of contemporary religion. The article argues in favor of an increased focus on the development of new practices in churches as examples of lived religion at the level of institutional religion.     

The cost–benefit trade-off in young children's overimitation behaviour

In overimitation, an observer reproduces a model's visually causally redundant actions in pursuit of an object-directed outcome. There remains an assumption that costs involved in adopting redundant actions renders them maladaptive in the immediate context. Here, we report on an experiment designed to evaluate whether or not overimitating is costly in this way. One hundred and eight children from two contrasting cultural groups (Australian Western vs. South African Bushman) observed an adult open an apparatus using a process that locked one side and opened another. Two toys were then inserted in the locked side and one in the open side. Copying the model meant access only to the lower quantity reward would be possible. This process was repeated for a second trial. Contrary to expectation, children retrieved similar numbers of toys regardless of whether they reproduced the model's actions or not, suggesting that in contexts like that presented here, overimitation is not costly in the ways commonly assumed.