Moving Beyond Self‐Report: Implicit Associations about Death/Life Prospectively Predict Suicidal Behavior among Veterans

Reliance on self‐report limits clinicians' ability to accurately predict suicidal behavior. In this study the predictive validity of an objective measure, the death/suicide Implicit Association Test (d/sIAT), was tested among psychiatrically hospitalized veterans. Following acute stabilization, 176 participants completed the d/sIAT and traditional suicide risk assessments. Participants had similar d/sIAT scores regardless of whether they had recently attempted suicide. However, d/sIAT scores significantly predicted suicide attempts during the 6‐month follow‐up above and beyond other known risk factors for suicidal behavior (OR = 1.89; 95% CI: 1.15–3.12; based on 1SD increase). The d/sIAT may augment the accuracy of suicide risk assessment.     

Reflecting on Participatory,Action‐Oriented Research Methods in Community Psychology: Progress,Problems, and Paths Forward

This paper provides a critical reflection on participatory action research (PAR) methods as they pertain to community psychology. Following a brief review of the fundamental aspects of PAR, key developments in the field are examined. These developments include the redefinition of the research enterprise among groups such as Indigenous and consumer/survivor communities, challenges that attend the “project” framing of PAR, academic and practice context challenges, and important domains in which PAR methods need to become more engaged (e.g., social media and disenfranchised youth). Three illustrative case studies of programs of work in the areas of youth homelessness, consumer/survivor engagement, and Indigenous research are provided to illustrate these contemporary challenges and opportunities in the field. The authors make the argument that without an effort to reconsider and redefine PAR, moving away from the stereotypical PAR “project” frame, these methods will continue to be poorly represented and underutilized in community psychology.     

Investigating the Effects of Applicant Justice Perceptions on Job Offer Acceptance

Drawing on extant recruitment and organizational justice theory, this research examines the effects of justice perceptions on job acceptance decisions across 2 samples (n = 332 and 2,974) of applicants to jobs within the U.S. military. More specifically, we examine justice–job offer acceptance relations relative to other pertinent recruitment predictors including, organizational image, familiarity, person–organization (P–O) fit perceptions, and recruiter behaviors. Findings from both studies support the importance of justice perceptions in influencing job offer acceptance. Fairness perceptions accounted for 29.37% and 19.22% of the unique variance in job offer acceptance, in Studies 1 and 2, respectively. The results of this research provide much needed empirical evidence to the scant literature on actual job acceptance and highlight important practical implications for employers.     

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.     

Plagues,Pagans, and Christians: Differential Survival,Social Networks,and the Rise of Christianity

In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark argues that the early Christian church indirectly benefitted from the plagues that struck the early Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Common Era. In particular, he argues that the early church's doctrines concerning love, charity, and social service would have led Christians to enjoy higher survival rates than pagans, which would have left the social networks of the former relatively intact, while those of the latter in disarray. Moreover, since recruitment to new religious movements occurs largely through social ties, the probability that an average pagan would have converted to Christianity would have been greater after the plagues than before. In this article, we use computer modeling to test Stark's hypothesis. Not only do we find support for his hypothesis, we also show that higher survival rates for either group not only would have benefitted their respective social networks but also would have benefitted their competitor's social networks, highlighting how network effects often flow in multiple and unexpected ways. We conclude with suggestions for future research, in particular how scholars can build upon our analyses and explore alternative assumptions.     

Fan fiction and early Christian apocrypha

This article applies insights from the study of contemporary fan fiction to the early Christian Jesus tradition, in particular to so-called apocryphal literature. Both fan fiction and the apocrypha are representative of hypertextual literary practices where authors rewrite already existing narrative universes. In modern-day fandom, fan fiction is used for myth maintenance, for social and cultural identification and criticism, and for sharing interpretations of the shared narrative universe within the fan community. The article introduces the reader to fan fiction and fan fiction studies and discusses how these modern phenomena may shed heuristic light on the literary strategies and functions of early Christian apocrypha.     

Shut-Up and Listen: Implications and Possibilities of Albert Memmi’s Characteristics of Colonization Upon the “Natural World”

This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies (bad faith), and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, to the exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice(s) required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet.