Advancing Community-Based Research with Urban American Indian Populations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

The US has witnessed significant growth among urban American Indian (AI) populations in recent decades, and concerns have been raised that these populations face equal or greater degrees of disadvantage than their reservation counterparts. Surprisingly little urban AI research or community work has been documented in the literature, and even less has been written about the influences of urban settings on community-based work with these populations. Given the deep commitments of community psychology to empowering disadvantaged groups and understanding the impact of contextual factors on the lives of individuals and groups, community psychologists are well suited to fill these gaps in the literature. Toward informing such efforts, this work offers multidisciplinary insights from distinct idiographic accounts of community-based behavioral health research with urban AI populations. Accounts are offered by three researchers and one urban AI community organization staff member, and particular attention is given to issues of community heterogeneity, geography, membership, and collaboration. Each first-person account provides “lessons learned” from the urban context in which the research occurred. Together, these accounts suggest several important areas of consideration in research with urban AIs, some of which also seem relevant to reservation-based work. Finally, the potential role of research as a tool of empowerment for urban AI populations is emphasized, suggesting future research attend to the intersections of identity, sense of community, and empowerment in urban AI populations.     

When a Theological Institution Becomes Ecumenical: A Focus on the Process and Experience

Det teologiske menighetsfakultet, or MF Norwegian School of Theology, has undergone an extensive development. From representing a strong Lutheran confessionalism, the new face of the faculty has changed to be more ecumenical in character. This article presents this story, gives insights into the historical process, and presents the current experiences of opening the school to non‐Lutheran students and teachers. On the basis of this “case study,” the article reflects on ecumenical perspectives that could be constructive for the twenty‐first century.     

The role of health anxiety in online health information search

This article is one of the first to empirically explore the relationship between health anxiety and online health information search. Two studies investigate how health anxiety influences the use of the Internet for health information and how health anxious individuals respond to online health information. An exploratory survey study with 104 Dutch participants indicates that health anxiety is related to an increase in online health information search. Moreover, results suggest that health anxious individuals experience more negative consequences from online health information search. Findings from an experimental study (n=120) indicate that online health information results in greater worries among health anxious individuals compared to nonhealth anxious individuals only if the information stems from a trustworthy governmental Web site. Information from a less trustworthy online forum does not lead to greater worries among health anxious individuals. In sum, the Internet appears to play a pivotal role in the lives of health anxious individuals.     

Walter the banker: the conjunction fallacy reconsidered

In a famous experiment by Tversky and Kahneman (Psychol Rev 90:293–315, 1983), featuring Linda the bank teller, the participants assign a higher probability to a conjunction of propositions than to one of the conjuncts, thereby seemingly committing a probabilistic fallacy. In this paper, we discuss a slightly different example featuring someone named Walter, who also happens to work at a bank, and argue that, in this example, it is rational to assign a higher probability to the conjunction of suitably chosen propositions than to one of the conjuncts. By pointing out the similarities between Tversky and Kahneman’s experiment and our example, we argue that the participants in the experiment may assign probabilities to the propositions in question in such a way that it is also rational for them to give the conjunction a higher probability than one of the conjuncts.     

Judgment aggregation and the problem of tracking the truth

The aggregation of consistent individual judgments on logically interconnected propositions into a collective judgment on those propositions has recently drawn much attention. Seemingly reasonable aggregation procedures, such as propositionwise majority voting, cannot ensure an equally consistent collective conclusion. In this paper, we motivate that quite often, we do not only want to make a factually right decision, but also to correctly evaluate the reasons for that decision. In other words, we address the problem of tracking the truth. We set up a probabilistic model that generalizes the analysis of Bovens and Rabinowicz (Synthese 150: 131?C153, 2006) and use it to compare several aggregation procedures. Demanding some reasonable adequacy constraints, we demonstrate that a reasons- or premise-based aggregation procedure tracks the truth better than any other procedure. However, we also illuminate that such a procedure is not in all circumstances easy to implement, leaving actual decision-makers with a tradeoff problem.     

Moving along the mental time line influences the processing of future related words

Abstract concepts like numbers or time are thought to be represented in the more concrete domain of space and the sensorimotor system. For example, thinking of past or future events has a physical manifestation in backward or forward body sway, respectively. In the present study, we investigated the reverse effect: can passive whole-body motion influence the processing of temporal information? Participants were asked to categorize verbal stimuli to the concepts future or past while they were displaced forward and backward (Experiment 1), or upward and downward (Experiment 2). The results showed that future related verbal stimuli were categorized faster during forward as compared to backward motion. This finding supports the view that temporal events are represented along a mental time line and that the sensorimotor system is linked to that representation. We showed that body motion is not just an epiphenomenon of temporal thoughts. Passive whole-body motion can influence higher-order temporal cognition.