The Virgin and the Whore – An Interreligious Challenge for Our Times

The boundaries of religious belonging are often based upon essentialist patriarchal conceptions of decency and morality that have been shaped into doctrine; those who are deemed indecent are marginalized to locations of struggle and often met with violence – thus presenting an interreligious challenge for our times. This paper will explore the gendered politics of religious belonging through an intersectional lens, focusing on the virgin/whore dichotomy in Christianity. It aims to undress exclusive notions of religious belonging and expose the hegemonic systems that have created ideological boundaries intended to control the bodies of women. It will then look to the narrative of Tamar and Judah in the book of Genesis, where prostitution, Levirate marriage, widowhood, childbirth, ethnicity, honour killing, and sexual desires shape the text and force the reader to confront questions of morality, justice, and the politics of religious belonging.     

Gödel's Argument for Cantorian Cardinality

On the first page of “What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?”, Gödel argues that Cantor's theory of cardinality, where a bijection implies equal number, is in some sense uniquely determined. The argument, involving a thought experiment with sets of physical objects, is initially persuasive, but recent authors have developed alternative theories of cardinality that are consistent with the standard set theory ZFC and have appealing algebraic features that Cantor's powers lack, as well as some promise for applications. Here we diagnose Gödel's argument, showing that it fails in two important ways: (i) Its premises are not sufficiently compelling to discredit countervailing intuitions and pragmatic considerations, nor pluralism, and (ii) its final inference, from the superiority of Cantor's theory as applied to sets of changeable physical objects to the unique acceptability of that theory for all sets, is irredeemably invalid.     

Caregivers’ emotional competence and behavioral responsiveness as correlates of early childcare workers’ relationships with children in their care

In the current study, we examined associations among early childcare workers’ emotional competence, observed responsiveness, comfort with socioemotional teaching practices, and the quality of their relationships with children in their care. The participants were 100 early childcare workers (72 center-based Early Head Start teachers and 28 family childcare providers). Results showed that caregivers’ emotion regulation ability was positively associated with caregiver–child relational closeness. Understanding and regulation of emotion were both positively associated with childcare workers’ comfort with socioemotional teaching practices. Their observed responsiveness was positively related to relational closeness and negatively related to relational conflict. Findings are consistent with aspects of the prosocial classroom model, which asserts that educators high in emotional and social competence tend to adopt childcare practices that result in supportive relationships with children. Results provide insight into whether childcare workers’ responsiveness to young children and their perceived socioemotional teaching practices provide a pathway between emotional competence and the quality of caregiver–child relationships.     

Ethical and Regulatory Considerations for Using Social Media Platforms to Locate and Track Research Participants

As social media becomes increasingly popular, human subjects researchers are able to use these platforms to locate, track, and communicate with study participants, thereby increasing participant retention and the generalizability and validity of research. The use of social media; however, raises novel ethical and regulatory issues that have received limited attention in the literature and federal regulations. We review research ethics and regulations and outline the implications for maintaining participant privacy, respecting participant autonomy, and promoting researcher transparency when using social media to locate and track participants. We offer a rubric that can be used in future studies to determine ethical and regulation-consistent use of social media platforms and illustrate the rubric using our study team’s experience with Facebook. We also offer recommendations for both researchers and institutional review boards that emphasize the importance of well-described procedures for social media use as part of informed consent.     

Slavery in the White Psyche

This article was born out of the hypothesis that slavery—as historical reality, signifier, and symbol—has deep psychological implications for contemporary white Americans. Using data collected in an exploratory, qualitative study, my participants’ responses serve to illuminate the psychic structure of whiteness, which functions as a distortion that gets passed down intergenerationally (and horizontally) through a white collective unconscious. Housed in individual psyches, I suggest that this distorted structure of self actively resists and prevents white Americans (as a collective) from making contact with the racialized realities, both past and present, that would potentially lead to opportunities for choice, reparation, and transformation.     

The Perceived Value and Impact of the Transference of a U.S. Model of Accreditation to National Christian Schools in Latin America

This study uses mixed methodology of the convergent design to examine stakeholder perceptions toward a transferred model of accreditation for national Christian schools in Latin America. Parents, teachers, and leaders from five accredited schools participated in an accreditation survey. One parent, teacher, and leader from each of the five accredited schools were selected for a semi-structured interview. Survey results were very positive toward the accreditation, but there were significant statistical differences in the perceptions of the stakeholder groups. Interview results were also very positive with five themes that were confirmed by all participants. Stakeholders acknowledged that the transferred model was appropriate for the region, but the model needed to be further contextualized.     

Improved low-cost,MR-compatible olfactometer to deliver tobacco smoke odor

We describe a low-cost, MRI-compatible olfactometer that delivers fresh cigarette smoke odor, a challenging odorant to present, as well as other odorants. This new olfactometer retains all of the advantages of an earlier design that was capable of only delivering volatile odors (Lowen & Lukas, Behavior Research Methods, 38, 307–313, 2006). The new system incorporates a novel switching mechanism that allows it to deliver fresh smoke generated from a burning cigarette during a stimulus presentation paradigm that might be employed in a cue-reactivity experiment. An evaluation study established that the olfactometer reliably delivered smoke to the participants and that tobacco smoke was discriminated from other odorants; there were no adverse reactions to the device.     

When Empathy Matters: The Role of Sex and Empathy in Close Friendships

Based on prior theory and research (Ciarrochi & Heaven, 2009; Eagly & Wood, 1999), we hypothesized that the link between empathy and friendship would be moderated by sex: Girls will nominate empathic boys as friends, whereas boys will not tend to nominate empathic girls. We collected measures of empathy, friendship social support, and close friendship nominations in grade 10 across 1,970 students in 16 schools (M_age = 15.70, SD = .44; males = 993, females = 977). Multilevel models revealed that boys high in cognitive empathy attracted an average of 1.8 more girl friendship nominations than did their low empathy counterparts, whereas empathic girls did not attract a greater number of opposite‐sex friends. In addition, the more friendship nominations a boy received from either boys or girls, the more they felt supported by their friends; the number of friendship nominations received by girls, in contrast, had no effect on their felt support by friends. Regardless of the quantity of friendship nominations, empathy was linked to more supportive friendships for both males and females. These results inform a contextual understanding of the role of empathy in selecting and maintaining friendships.