The impact of a rural or urban context in eating awareness and self‐regulation strategies in children and adolescents from eight European countries

Complex relationships exist between eating behaviour and personal and environmental factors. Rural and urban geographic contexts seem to play a role in eating behaviour, and therefore deserve a deeper study. A healthy eating behaviour and the conditions that promote it are a major issue in the promotion of adolescent health. The study aims to investigate the associations between the area of residence (urban vs. rural), self‐regulation strategies (TESQ‐E) and eating behaviours among children and adolescents. A total of 11,820 adolescents (50.6% girls) participated in the study, with a mean age of 13.30 years (SD= 2.13). Nine countries (The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Poland, Portugal, Denmark, Romania, Germany, Finland and Belgium) completed a questionnaire in the school context, asking about the use of self‐regulation strategies, eating behaviour awareness/care and sociodemographic questions such as age, gender and residential area. Both areas of residence (urban vs. rural) are associated with eating awareness/care in Romania and Portugal, controlling for age, gender and self‐regulation strategies. In some European countries at least, and most probably around the world, health promotion should focus on an ecological approach that includes the understanding of the effect of both environmental factors and personal skills on eating behaviour/awareness.     

MORALITY AND NATURE: EVOLUTIONARY CHALLENGES TO CHRISTIAN ETHICS

Christian ethics accentuates in manifold ways the unique character of human nature. Personalists believe that the mind is never reducible to material and physical substance. The human person is presented as the supreme principle, based on arguments referring to free‐willed actions, the immateriality of both the divine spirit and the reflexive capacity, intersubjectivity and self‐consciousness. But since Darwin, evolutionary biology slowly instructs us that morality roots in dispositions that are programmed by evolution into our nature. Historically, Thomas Huxley, “Darwin's bulldog,” agreed with Darwin on almost everything, except for his gradualist position on moral behavior. Huxley's “saltationism” has recently been characterized by Frans de Waal as “a veneer theory of morality.” Does this mark the end of a period of presenting morality as only the fruit of socialization processes (nurture) and as having nothing in common with nature? Does it necessarily imply a corrosion of personalist views on the human being or do Christian ethics have to become familiar again with their ancient roots?     

Is Moral Responsibility Essentially Interpersonal? A Reply to Zimmerman

According to Michael Zimmerman, no interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal captures a significant truth. He raises several worries about the Strawsonian view that moral responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes and claims that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. He outlines three problems. First, the existence of self-reactive attitudes may be incompatible with the interpersonal nature of moral responsibility. Secondly, Zimmerman questions the significance of the interpersonal nature of moral responsibility, according to the Strawsonian view. Thirdly, he argues that that view may be taken to suggest the wrong kind of priority relation between ‘P is morally responsible’ and ‘it is appropriate to adopt some reactive attitude toward P’. I discuss each of these problems in turn and conclude that Strawsonians can respond to all three problems raised by Zimmerman. The Strawsonian view supports a significant interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal.     

Conversation: The challenges of teaching in a “nano department”

A panel at the 2016 American Academy of Religion conference staged, taped, transcribed, and edited this conversation about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a “nano department” – an undergraduate religion or religious studies department (or combined religion and philosophy department) with only one, two, or three faculty members. Two things quickly become evident: one is the impossibility of coverage of the full religious studies curriculum, and the other is the necessity for collaboration with other departments. Neither of these is unique to nano departments, but there exists an intimacy between students and faculty in small departments, a necessary freedom to rethink the place of the study of religion in the liberal arts curriculum, and a disruptive value in what can be critiqued and contributed from a marginalized position. Arguably, nano departments are the canaries in the academic coal mine, charting the future of the humanities that cannot be discerned from the vantage point of Research‐1 contexts.     

The development and validation of an implicit measure of competence need satisfaction

Research on self-determination theory has typically relied on explicit measures when examining the concept of competence need satisfaction. As a result, we know relatively little about competence need satisfaction that arises under conditions of automaticity. Across four studies, we developed and validated implicit measures of competence need satisfaction by drawing on two tasks: a relational variant of the implicit association test (IAT; Study 1, 3, and 4) and the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP; Study 2–3). Results across these studies revealed that both implicit measures were either unrelated or moderately related to their explicit counterpart. They were also unrelated to one another. Unlike the IRAP, the IAT was found to be reliable, to display discriminant validity, and to yield meaningful but modest relations with constructs in a nomological network. Together, these results provide modest support for the usefulness of the competence need satisfaction IAT but not of the competence need satisfaction IRAP as an implicit measure of the need for competence. Future research examining the unique predictive value of this IAT is needed, together with research on possible explanations for the low reliability of the IRAP.     

Diminished heart rate complexity in adolescent girls: a sign of vulnerability to anxiety disorders?

Background and Objectives: Diminished heart rate variability has been found to be associated with high anxiety symptomatology. Since adolescence is the period of onset for many anxiety disorders, this study aimed to determine sex- and anxiety-related differences in heart rate variability and complexity in adolescents.

Methods: We created four groups according to sex and anxiety symptomatology: high-anxiety girls (n?=?24) and boys (n?=?25), and low-anxiety girls (n?=?22) and boys (n?=?24) and recorded their cardiac function while they performed regular school activities. A series of two-way (sex and anxiety) MANOVAs were performed on time domain variability, frequency domain variability, and non-linear complexity.

Results: We obtained no multivariate interaction effects between sex and anxiety, but highly anxious participants had lower heart rate variability than the low-anxiety group. Regarding sex, girls showed lower heart rate variability and complexity than boys.

Conclusions: The results suggest that adolescent girls have a less flexible cardiac system that could be a marker of the girls’ vulnerability to developing anxiety disorders.     

Qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance: a bidirectional longitudinal relationship?

This study adds to the understanding of the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and employee in-role performance, by analysing the association longitudinally. While social exchange theory predicts that the relationship should be negative and bidirectional, the job preservation motivation model indicates a self-correcting mechanism, where job insecurity leads to increased performance, which, in turn, could decrease job insecurity. We developed competing hypotheses and examined them using structural equation modelling in a heterogeneous sample of 337 employees. For employees with a higher professional level, results pointed towards a reciprocal causal relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance, indicating a loss cycle. For employees with a lower professional level, results showed a small positive direct causal relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance, while the negative direct path from in-role performance to qualitative job insecurity did not reach statistical significance. This is the first study to test the diverging theoretical predictions of social exchange theory and the job preservation motivation model, with regard to the relationship between qualitative job insecurity and in-role performance. Being longitudinal, our study only allows us to hint at possible causal relationships between the involved variables, the chronological order being necessary, but not sufficient to prove causality.     

Team innovation and team effectiveness: The importance of minority dissent and reflexivity

Past research suggests that minority dissent in teams may foster team innovations. It is hypothesized, however, that minority dissent would predict team innovations only when teams have high levels of reflexivity - the tendency to overtly reflect upon the group's objectives, strategies, and processes and adapt them to current or anticipated circumstances. This hypothesis was tested in a field study involving a heterogeneous sample of 32 organizational teams performing complex, ill-defined tasks. Results showed more innovation and greater team effectiveness under high rather than low levels of minority dissent, but only when there was a high level of team reflexivity. Avenues for future research are discussed.     

Does imminent threat capture and hold attention?

According to models of attention and emotion, threat captures and holds attention. In behavioral tasks, robust evidence has been found for attentional holding but not for attentional capture by threat. An important explanation for the absence of attentional capture effects is that the visual stimuli used posed no genuine threat. The present study investigated whether visual cues that signal an aversive white noise can elicit attentional capture and holding effects. Cues presented in an attentional task were simultaneously provided with a threat value through an aversive conditioning procedure. Response latencies showed that threatening cues captured and held attention. These results support recent views on attention to threat, proposing that imminent threat captures attention in everyone.     

Fitting longitudinal reduced-rank regression models by alternating least squares

An alternating least squares method for iteratively fitting the longitudinal reduced-rank regression model is proposed. The method uses ordinary least squares and majorization substeps to estimate the unknown parameters in the system and measurement equations of the model. In an example with cross-sectional data, it is shown how the results conform closely to results from eigenanalysis. Optimal scaling of nominal and ordinal variables is added in a third substep, and illustrated with two examples involving cross-sectional and longitudinal data.Financial support by the Institute for Traffic Safety Research (SWOV) in Leidschendam, The Netherlands is gratefully acknowledged.