Positive and Negative Religious Beliefs Explaining the Religion–Health Connection Among African Americans

Theory and literature suggests that the reason religiously involved people tend to have good health outcomes is because they have healthy lifestyles and behaviors in accord with religious beliefs. Other literature suggests that religious involvement may play a negative role in health outcomes due to beliefs about illness originating as punishment for sins. These ideas were tested as part of a theoretical model of the religion–health connection in a national sample of African Americans. Outcomes included a variety of health-related behaviors. Study participants (N = 2,370) randomly selected from a U.S. national call list completed a telephone survey assessing religious involvement, health behaviors, and demographic characteristics. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze study data. Findings indicate that perceived religious influence on health behavior mediated the relationship between religious beliefs and behaviors and higher fruit consumption and lower alcohol use and smoking. Belief that illness is the result of punishment for sin mediated the relationship between (a) religious beliefs and higher vegetable consumption and lower binge drinking and (b) religious behaviors and lower vegetable consumption and higher binge drinking. These findings could be applied to health education activities conducted in African American faith-based organizations, such as health ministries, in the effort to eliminate health disparities.     

Spirit books: promoting conversation with picture books

The focus of this article is an annotated bibliography of over seventy select picture books and guidelines for adults reading these books to children ages three through nine. Preceding these is an essay which contextualizes and explains them. Following the bibliography is a set of twenty ‘Guidelines for Reading Aloud and Talking about Books’ to help adults validate and support the spiritual experiences of children. The annotated bibliography – The Spirit Book List– includes picture books which are inclusive, interfaith, and cross-cultural (although all are in English). They have been chosen to stimulate conversation between adults and children ranging in age from three to nine years on spirituality, specifically on the following six themes: (1) The Golden World (awe and reverence in the face of Creation); (2) Alone Unplugged the value of solitude and silence; (3) Widening the Circle (embracing other beings, both animal and human, and recognizing one’s interdependence with other life forms); (4) Wisdom-seeking (seeking true value); (5) Becoming Your Own Person (discovering one’s uniqueness and one’s place in the world); and (6) Peace-making (promoting peace between individuals and countries). All these books also meet high standards for both text and illustrations.     

WORLDLY AND UNWORLDLY FEELINGS,FABRICATION AND LETTING GO

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a framework for understanding vedanā and emotion in relation to each other, and both of them in relation to awakening. The vedanā (or feeling tone) that arises in mental experience will be shown to be central to emotion. Western views of emotion will be examined alongside some of the Buddha’s teachings on vedanā. The paper will show mental vedanā, and human emotion in the context of the two psychological orientations of ‘fabrication’ and ‘letting go’, which are then correlated with the Buddha’s notions of ‘worldly’ and ‘unworldly’ feelings. The paper proposes that such contextualisation is useful towards the development of a clear intellectual understanding of the nature of feelings, while (more importantly) it could support practitioners in a process of meditative inquiry and transformation.     

Child Sexual Abuse History and Feminine Gender-Role Identity

The association between child sexual abuse (CSA) and feminine gender-role identity was examined among 75 women with and 107 without a history of CSA. Undergraduates and hospital employees from a university in the Southern United States completed questionnaires on the internet. Three aspects of feminine identity were assessed, including how much participants identified with feminine versus masculine traits, endorsed stereotypes about women, and viewed themselves as meeting feminine self-standards. Participants with a history of CSA reported greater feminine self-discrepancy and endorsed more derogatory stereotypes about women than the comparison group. CSA was also linked to identifying with more feminine than masculine traits, but only among hospital employees. Results suggest that feminine identity is a meaningful construct to consider in the adjustment of CSA survivors.     

The Mediating Role of Executive Functioning in the Relation Between Difficult Temperament and Physical Aggression

The present investigation tested the hypothesis that executive functioning (EF) would mediate the relation between difficult temperament (DT) and aggressive behavior. This model was tested in 310 adult men and women. DT was measured using the Dimensions of Temperament Scale—Revised, EF was measured using 7 well-established neuropsychological tests, and aggression was assessed using the Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire. EF successfully mediated the DT–aggression relation for men, however, the model did not hold for women. Results are discussed with regard to how they influence current models of aggressive behavior as well as their implications for future violence prevention efforts.     

Action methods in systemic therapy: dramatizing ideal futures and reformed pasts with couples

This article presents a method for conducting a couple session that illustrates a theoretically valid role for action techniques (as opposed to verbal methods) in post-Milan systemic interviewing. Useful in an opening meeting or in consultation, it pointedly activates client resources while deemphasizing current problems. The interview format begins with contracting for ground-rules and listing clients' strengths. Each partner then creates and enacts: a scene illustrating that partner's ideal future for the relationship; a related past painful scene (usually from childhood); and a "reform" of that scene "as it should have occurred." Both partners play multiple roles in all scenes. Last and least, each partner succinctly describes his or her view of the current problem. In the enactments, rapid shifts in time dimension and multiple novel roles played by both partners efficiently promote in the couple the release from constraining beliefs and interactional patterns that is ordinarily sought by purely verbal methods in Milan-derived systemic interviews.     

Are early verbal communicative intentions universal? A preliminary investigation

This longitudinal study was conducted to provide preliminary information about the universality of early verbal communicative intentions. Three children whose native languages differ were videotaped in spontaneous mother-child interactions at 2-week intervals between MLU 1.0 and 2.0. The languages studied were American English, Danish, and Serbo-Croatian. Each child utterance was coded for the communicative intention expressed using a modified version of Dale's (1980) taxonomy. Findings indicate that all subjects used the full range of intentions. Overall, the intentions used most frequently were Naming and Attributes. Crosslinguistic similarities were also noted in patterns of intention usage as a function of increasing MLU. Results support the view that early verbal intentions are language-learning universals. However, no support was found for the universal-sequence hypothesis.     

Motivational factors in nonincarcerated sexually aggressive men

Research on convicted rapists has demonstrated the importance of several key motivational factors in male sexual aggression. In particular, anger at women and the need to dominate or control them have been repeatedly implicated. Although anger and power have also been shown to be important in understanding college men who report sexually aggressive behavior, there has been little research on what underlies these motives. This research combined questions assessing these underlying motivational factors, as well as questions dealing with underlying sexual motivation and disinhibition, with a slightly modified version of the Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss & Oros, 1982). In Study 1, subjects were 184 male undergraduates. Factor analysis of the questions composing the four scales yielded four slightly modified scales. Scales measuring underlying anger, underlying power, and disinhibition significantly differentiated sexually aggressive from nonaggressive men but did not distinguish between men who were coercive, manipulative, or nonaggressive. In a replication on a smaller sample (n = 70), underlying anger, underlying power, and disinhibition again differentiated sexually aggressive from nonaggressive men.