Predicting Political Biases Against the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements

Accusations of hypocrisy have flown against both supporters and opponents of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Tea Party movements. Integrating the ideologically objectionable premise model (IOPM), a newly devised model of political judgment, with political tolerance research, we find that how the political activities of OWS and Tea Party demonstrators are described determines whether or not biases against these groups emerge among people low and high in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). Specifically, people low in RWA were more biased against the Tea Party than OWS regardless of whether the groups engaged in normatively threatening or reassuring political behavior, whereas people high in RWA were more biased against OWS than the Tea Party when the groups engaged in normatively threatening (and therefore objectionable), but not normatively reassuring (and therefore acceptable) behavior. These findings further support the IOPM's contention that premise objectionableness, not right‐wing orientation, determines biases in political judgment.     

Correlation between inspection time and psychometric abilities: A personal interpretation

More than 25 years of research suggests that the measure inspection time (IT) does capture low-level aspects of cognitive functioning that contribute to human intelligence. However, recent evidence does not support earlier claims that IT estimates the speed of a single mechanism like “sampling input” or “apprehension.” Rather, together with other tasks that employ pattern backward masking to limit the duration for which information is available for processing, IT is probably sensitive both to focused attentional capacities to detect organization and change under severe time constraints and to decision processes, ongoing beyond mask onset, that monitor responding. Among normal young adults, IT is correlated with the broad psychometric factor Gs (“speediness”). This mediates correlation with general intelligence. In this group, IT is not correlated with Gf. However, whether this outcome generalizes to samples of persons with an intellectual disability, to young children, or to elderly persons is not yet known. Psychological processes underpinning IT are currently only speculatively defined, but it should prove possible to unravel these by experimentation. To this end, backward masking procedures are arguably more theoretically tractable than reaction time tasks because they reduce the impact of higher-level cognitive strategies on performance. On this basis, IT may hold promise as a means for developing partial explanations for intelligence in psychological terms. However, whether this is realized depends on identifying the psychological functions that support IT.     

Organizational Politics and Deviance: Exploring the Role of Political Skill

Building on social exchange theory, this study examines the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and employee performance and interpersonal skills. We hypothesized that perceptions of organizational politics create an imbalance in the exchange relationship between employee and organization, which leads to organizational deviance. We also hypothesized that supervisors may attempt to rebalance the exchange relationship by providing lower performance and interpersonal skills ratings. Finally, we suggest that politically skilled employees avoid an increase in negative ratings. The present study demonstrates that perceptions of organizational politics may lead to negative employee behaviors and reduced supervisors’ ratings in an effort to rebalance the exchange relationship. In addition, politically skilled employees may avoid increased negative ratings when politics perceptions are high.     

Flashing the Yellow Traffic Light: Choices Forced Upon Us by Gene Editing Technologies

The 2018 birth of two designer babies in China has sparked an immediate global controversy over the ethics of gene editing. For the longer range future, however, we must assess how CRISPR/Cas9, like so many other new bio-technologies, is forcing choice—moral choice—on a large scale. Gene editing for purposes of medical therapy, human enhancement, engineering of future children, and even creating a posthuman species, confront our society with the inescapable necessity of making moral choices. The task for churches in partnership with universities is not to decide in advance what is right or wrong. Rather, it is to prepare our people to make responsible choices.     

Political Tolerance and Religion: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis, 1984–2014

Using data from the 1984–2014 General Social Survey, we employ cross classified random effects models to examine age-period-cohort changes in political tolerance by religion, incorporating religious belief, belonging, and behavior into the analyses. The results show large cohort and period based changes in political tolerance of the various religious traditions. The results also suggest that the primary driver of changes over time in political tolerance is best attributed to period effects, not cohort replacement, although there is some evidence of a cohort effect among Roman Catholics. Finally, our results demonstrate that aggregate data analyses can lead to noticeably different results and thus can mask substantial differences between groups.     

Action relevance induces an attentional weighting of representations in visual working memory

Information maintained in visual working memory (VWM) can be strategically weighted according to its task-relevance. This is typically studied by presenting cues during the maintenance interval, but under natural conditions, the importance of certain aspects of our visual environment is mostly determined by intended actions. We investigated whether representations in VWM are also weighted with respect to their potential action relevance. In a combined memory and movement task, participants memorized a number of items and performed a pointing movement during the maintenance interval. The test item in the memory task was subsequently presented either at the movement goal or at another location. We found that performance was better for test items presented at a location that corresponded to the movement goal than for test items presented at action-irrelevant locations. This effect was sensitive to the number of maintained items, suggesting that preferential maintenance of action relevant information becomes particularly important when the demand on VWM is high. We argue that weighting according to action relevance is mediated by the deployment of spatial attention to action goals, with representations spatially corresponding to the action goal benefitting from this attentional engagement. Performance was also better at locations next to the action goal than at locations farther away, indicating an attentional gradient spreading out from the action goal. We conclude that our actions continue to influence visual processing at the mnemonic level, ensuring preferential maintenance of information that is relevant for current behavioral goals.     

TECHNO‐SECULARISM,RELIGION, AND THE CREATED CO‐CREATOR

Abstract. I take up the challenge posed by John Caiazza (2005) to face down the religiously vacuous ethics of techno‐secularism. Techno‐secularism is not enough for human fulfillment let alone human flowering. Yet, communities of faith based on the Bible have a positive responsibility to employ science and technology toward divinely appointed ends. We should study God's world through science and press technology into the service of transforming our world and our selves in light of our vision of God's promised new creation. This warrants invocation of the concept of the human being as the created co‐creator developed in the theology of Philip Hefner.