Comparison of classical and modern methods for measuring and correcting for acquiescence

Likert-type self-report scales are frequently used in large-scale educational assessment of social-emotional skills. Self-report scales rely on the assumption that their items elicit information only about the trait they are supposed to measure. However, different response biases may threaten this assumption. Specifically, in children, the response style of acquiescence is an important source of systematic error. Balanced scales, including an equal number of positively and negatively keyed items, have been proposed as a solution to control for acquiescence, but the reasons why this design feature worked from the perspective of modern psychometric models have been underexplored. Three methods for controlling for acquiescence are compared: classical method by partialling out the mean; an item response theory method to measure differential person functioning (DPF); and multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) with random intercept. Comparative analyses are conducted on simulated ratings and on self-ratings provided by 40,649 students (aged 11–18) on a fully balanced 30-item scale assessing conscientious self-management. Acquiescence bias was explained as DPF and it was demonstrated that: the acquiescence index is highly related to DPF; balanced scales produce scores controlled for DPF; and MIRT factor scores are highly related to scores controlled for DPF and the random intercept is highly related to DPF.     

Darwinizing debunking arguments

To ‘Darwinize’ a debunking argument is to broaden and thereby strengthen it in ways inspired by Charles Darwin. It is to employ Darwinian strategies that converge on the conclusion that certain putative phenomena – the reality of stance‐independent moral properties, for instance – are illusory or epistemically problematic for animals like us. The aim of this essay is to defend one such strategy and illustrate its power relative to most evolutionary debunking arguments currently on offer.     

The Urge to Splurge Revisited: Further Reflections on Applying Terror Management Theory to Materialism and Consumer Behavior

We respond to commentaries by Maheswaran and Agrawal (2004) and Rindfleisch and Burroughs (2004) on the application of terror management theory to understanding conspicuous consumption and consumer behavior. Specifically, we consider individual differences in terror management research; the possibility of cultural variation (or lack thereof) in terror management processes; the viability of materialism as a pathway to securing existential meaning; and the different and, at times possibly conflicting, motivations that may be evoked by the awareness of death.     

Appreciation as Audience Response: Exploring Entertainment Gratifications Beyond Hedonism

This article elaborates upon the notion of media enjoyment in the context of film viewing by proposing a complementary type of gratification that we conceptualize as appreciation. Three studies were conducted to tap into the multidimensionality of viewers' entertainment gratifications with a special focus on the domain of more serious, poignant, and pensive media experiences typically associated with genres such as drama, history, documentary, or art films. These studies provide evidence of and measurement for gratifications related to fun and suspense, but also gratifications related to moving and thought‐provoking entertainment experiences, with all three gratifications leading to perceptions of entertainment having a more long‐lasting or enduring effect. The results are discussed with regard to the theoretical conceptualization of entertainment gratification.     

The Sign Redeemed: A Study in Christian Fundamental Semiotics

A Christian engagement with the question of the nature of the sign has to begin in a theology of the creation. Signs exhibit features of both reference and address. The meaning of the incarnation is that in a world of God's making the referring signs which constitute the world also implicitly function as divine address. The words of institution of the Lord's Supper, taken as an integral part of the Passion narrative, are the fulfilment of this addressive function of the world and thus also mark the point at which the Church is constituted as the human community who are called to receive the divine address.     

The ‘Divine Names’ and the ‘Attributes of Deity’: On the (Infinite) Analogical Interval in Forty-Six Aphorisms

For the modern tradition of analytic philosophy of religion (that this article rejects), goodness, beauty, wisdom, and so on are divine attributes, whereas, for the classical tradition of Christian theology, they are divine names. This crucial distinction between attributes and names helps to explain why feminist philosopher Grace Jantzen’s charge of an identification of the male self with the divine self in Anglo-American philosophy of religion leads on, directly, to a critique of the ‘doctrine’ of analogy. Jantzen’s critique of ‘classical theism’ is directed against the (largely modern) reduction of God to a (male) superbeing. Here, God’s ‘attributes’ are merely human ones, even if extended to a superlative degree. I distinguish the analogical reflections of Aquinas (following Dionysius) and his heirs from the anthropomorphic dissolutions of the divine in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Theology’s analogical speech, I argue, has the potential to answer – at least partially – the feminist critique of God as a ‘pure projection’ of ‘man’. For Aquinas, God’s perfections must be qualitatively different and not merely quantitative maximisations of our own. I contend that feminist philosophy of religion cannot afford to dismiss the potential of the way of analogy, especially in its negative or apophatic dimensions.