Luther as a reader of Dionysius the Areopagite

Dionysius the Areopagite has been an important point of orientation for the debate on how humans appropriately approach God. Among his avid readers is Martin Luther, whose understanding of Dionysius is investigated in this article. Luther is a critical reader, but his criticism is founded on a basic identification with Dionysius' central tenets. His main objection is that he finds Dionysius too theoretical. For Luther, God is incessant activity; the question of approaching God correctly therefore for Luther is an existential question. This is an aspect he does not find adequately integrated in Dionysius' apophatic dialectics. Luther also found faults with Dionysius' Christology. For Luther, the experience of not being properly related to God is a terrifying experience. This can be read as a reinterpretation of Dionysius' Mystical Theology, showing both influence (Luther knew this work almost by heart) and independence. Central aspects of Luther's thought thus present themselves as a reinterpretation of Dionysian mysticism.     

Xenophobia and Tolerance Toward Immigrants in Adolescence: Cross-Influence Processes Within Friendships

To what extent do adolescents and their friends socialize each others’ attitudes toward immigrants? Can friends’ positive attitudes toward immigrants counter adolescents’ negative attitudes toward immigrants, and do friends’ negative attitudes decrease adolescents’ positive attitudes? These questions were examined by following a large (N?=?1,472) friendship network of adolescents (49.2 % girls; M _age?=?13.31 at first measurement) across three annual measurements. Selection and influence processes regarding tolerance and xenophobia were distinguished with longitudinal social network analyses, controlling for effects of age, gender, and immigrant background. Findings showed that friends’ tolerance predicted increases in adolescents’ tolerance and friends’ xenophobia predicted increases in adolescents’ xenophobia. Moreover, friends’ tolerance predicted a lower likelihood of adolescents’ xenophobia increasing. The current results suggest that interventions should distinguish between tolerance and xenophobia, as these appear to represent two separate dimensions that are each influenced in specific ways by friends’ tolerance and xenophobia.     

Decision Making with Uncertain Reinforcement in Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Reward-related processes are impaired in children with ADHD. Whether these deficits can be ascribed to an aversion to delay or to an altered responsiveness to magnitude, frequency, valence, or the probability of rewards still needs to be explored. In the present study, children with ADHD and normal controls aged 7 to 10 years performed a simple probabilistic discounting task. They had to choose between alternatives where the magnitude of rewards was inversely related to the probability of outcomes. As a result, children with ADHD opted more frequently for less likely but larger rewards than normal controls. Shifts of the response category after positive or negative feedback, however, occurred as often in children with ADHD as in control children. In children with ADHD, the frequency of risky choices was correlated with neuropsychological measures of response time variability but unrelated to measures of inhibitory control. It is concluded that the tendency to select less likely but larger rewards possibly represents a separate facet of dysfunctional reward processing, independent of delay aversion or altered responsiveness to feedback.     

Time-Based Prospective Memory Performance and Time-Monitoring in Children with ADHD

The current study investigated prospective memory (PM) performance in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and controls and aimed at exploring possible underlying factors of PM performance. Twenty-two children with ADHD and 39 age- and ability-matched typically developing children performed a computerized time-based PM task. As predicted, children with ADHD had fewer correct PM responses than controls. Neither differences in overall ongoing task performance nor, remarkably, differences in overall frequency and accuracy of time monitoring were found. Exploratory analyses suggest that individual differences in time monitoring in the final interval before target times may be related to PM performance in ADHD.     

The precuneus and the insula in self-attributional processes

Attributions are constantly assigned in everyday life. A well-known phenomenon is the self-serving bias: that is, people’s tendency to attribute positive events to internal causes (themselves) and negative events to external causes (other persons/circumstances). Here, we investigated the neural correlates of the cognitive processes implicated in self-serving attributions using social situations that differed in their emotional saliences. We administered an attributional bias task during fMRI scanning in a large sample of healthy subjects (n = 71). Eighty sentences describing positive or negative social situations were presented, and subjects decided via buttonpress whether the situation had been caused by themselves or by the other person involved. Comparing positive with negative sentences revealed activations of the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Self-attribution correlated with activation of the posterior portion of the precuneus. However, self-attributed positive versus negative sentences showed activation of the anterior portion of the precuneus, and self-attributed negative versus positive sentences demonstrated activation of the bilateral insular cortex. All significant activations were reported with a statistical threshold of p ≤ .001, uncorrected. In addition, a comparison of our fMRI task with data from the Internal, Personal and Situational Attributions Questionnaire, Revised German Version, demonstrated convergent validity. Our findings suggest that the precuneus and the PCC are involved in the evaluation of social events with particular regional specificities: The PCC is activated during emotional evaluation, the posterior precuneus during attributional evaluation, and the anterior precuneus during self-serving processes. Furthermore, we assume that insula activation is a correlate of awareness of personal agency in negative situations.     

Somatic Complaints in Girls: A Longitudinal Perspective

This report presents results from a study of the dimensionality and longitudinal stability of some common self-reported somatic complaints in teenage girls. Data were supplied by the Swedish longitudinal research program “Individual Development and Adaptation”. At four age levels (age 10, 13, 15, and 16 years) a representative sample of approximately 500 girls filled out questionnaires on various adjustment problems, including some typical somatic complaints. A separate dimension of somatic complaints was identified at each age level through factor analysis of the questionnaire data. Correlational stability of somatic complaints was not high until middle adolescence. At this age fairly stable patterns of somatic complaints were also found at the individual level; different somatic complaints were not found to be interchangeable. The results support the interpretation of girls' somatic complaints as a single, meaningful dimension in late childhood and adolescence. This dimension may be hypothesized to constitute a psychological process, somatization, manifesting itself in fairly stable patterns at the individual level in middle adolescence.     

Do core self-evaluations and coping style influence the perception of job insecurity?

Over the last few decades, increased flexibility and lack of stability in employment has made job insecurity a work stressor that affects more and more employees. Since worrying about potential job loss (quantitative job insecurity) or possible loss of valued job features (qualitative job insecurity) constitutes a subjective perception, it has been claimed that personality factors may be decisive for job insecurity perceptions. Furthermore, the perception of a stressor, in this case job insecurity, could be argued to be dependent on appraisals of available coping resources. This study investigates whether core self-evaluations predict job insecurity perceptions, and whether coping mediates this relationship, in a two-wave data set from a Swedish sample of white-collar workers (N = 425). The results show that core self-evaluations had a negative total effect on both qualitative and quantitative job insecurity. Core self-evaluations were positively related to problem-focused coping but not to emotion-focused coping. However, there was no mediating effect of coping style on the association between core self-evaluations and job insecurity.     

Perceived job autonomy and turnover intention: The moderating role of perceived supervisor support

Perceived job autonomy has been recognized as a central tenet of work design, leading to a range of positive outcomes. Still, scholars have rightfully questioned its predictive role for several outcomes, including turnover intention as the two have been found to be virtually unrelated. In line with calls for more complex research on the predictive role of perceived job autonomy on employee outcomes, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether the relationship between perceived job autonomy and turnover intention may be prone to contextual influences. Two cross-sectional surveys among 680 Norwegian employees from different public service organizations showed that the relationship between perceived job autonomy and turnover intention was moderated by perceived supervisor support. In support of our hypothesis, the form of the moderations revealed that perceived job autonomy was negatively related to turnover intention only for employees reporting high levels of perceived supervisor support. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.     

Role stressors and exposure to workplace bullying: Causes or consequences of what and why?

Stressful working environments are commonly assumed to create conditions that can lead to bullying. Although environmental factors may relate to both exposure to and perpetration of workplace bullying, empirical knowledge is still limited regarding how environmental factors and bullying is causally linked. In line with interpretations of previous cross-sectional findings, the present study investigated an individual-level target-oriented model of role stressors as antecedents of exposure to workplace bullying, applying a two-wave longitudinal sample of the Norwegian working population. Results from structural regression analyses failed to identify any significant relationships between the role stressors and subsequent exposure to workplace bullying. However, prior exposure to workplace bullying accounted for subsequent variation in role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload alike. The findings of the present study question conclusions regarding causality made in previous cross-sectional research on work-related factors as antecedents of exposure to workplace bullying. We argue that future research may benefit from adopting multilevel and actor-oriented perspectives in order to more fully understand how causal relationships between environmental factors and workplace bullying unfold.