Prayers, spiritual support, and positive attitudes in coping with the September 11 national crisis

This study was designed to help fill gaps in faith-related and positive psychology research. Psychologists have called for precise assessment of effective faith factors inherent within spiritual experiences that may explain their beneficial effects. Positive psychologists suggest the need to examine social and faith-related origins of optimism. Based on previous research, we redefined spiritual support and developed a new assessment. The study is a survey of 453 graduate and undergraduate students 3 months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The results showed that participants, who believed in diverse spiritual entities, used various types of prayer for coping. A structural equation model showed that a linkage of spiritual support and positive attitudes mediated the effect of faith-based and secular factors on post-September 11 distress. Higher levels of initial negative emotional response were associated with the use of prayer for coping, which was, in turn, related to less distress through the pathway of the above linkage.     

Moral absolutism and abortion: Alan Donagan on the hysterectomy and craniotomy cases

Reynolds argues that the nonconsequentialist moral theory proposed by Alan Donagan in his book The Theory of Morality (University of Chicago Press; 1977) does not resolve the cases in which craniotomy or removal of a cancerous uterus appears necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman. Donagan's absolute prohibition against the murder of the innocent and his rejection of the principle of double effect have led him to view the fetus as a pursuer or assailant or to assert the theory of proleptic agreement--that in risk taking ventures the parties may agree that killing one person to save the lives of the others will be accepted. Reynolds holds these arguments to be inapplicable in therapeutic abortions involving craniotomy or hysterectomy and concludes that Donagan's absolutist theory must be reexamined.     

China,Gender Issues,Medical Philosophy and Measurement Scales

Journal of Religion and Health - In this fourth issue of the Journal of Religion and Health for 2022, four key themes are explored: (1) religious and spiritual issues in China, (2) gender-related...     

From Biology to Consciousness to Morality

Abstract. Social animals are provisioned with prosocial orientations that operate to transcend self‐interest. Morality, as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the biological traits that undergird awareness and our emergent human forms of mind. We suggest that our moral frames of mind emerge from our primate prosocial capacities, transfigured and valenced by our symbolic languages, cultures, and religions.     

Sleep Quality and the Stress‐Buffering Role of Religious Involvement: A Mediated Moderation Analysis

Although several studies have documented an inverse association between stressful events and sleep quality, much less is known about the factors that might moderate or buffer against the adverse effects of psychosocial stress on sleep. Building on previous research, we employ national cross‐sectional survey data from the 2017 Baylor Religion Survey (n= 1,410) to test whether the association between recent stressful events and sleep quality varies according to several dimensions of religious involvement. We also formally assess whether any attenuation of the association between stressful events and sleep quality is at least partially mediated or explained by lower levels of depressive symptoms (mediated moderation). Our moderation analyses indicate that the inverse association between stressful events and sleep quality is in fact attenuated by religious cognitions (secure attachment to God and assurance of salvation), but not religious attendance or private religiousness. We also observe direct evidence of mediated moderation through depressive symptoms for both religious cognitions. Taken together, our results demonstrate that religious cognitions may buffer against stress‐related sleep disturbance by helping people avoid symptoms of depression.     

Gender differences in memory for the appearance of others

Five studies investigated gender differences in the accurate recall of the appearance of others. The greater interpersonal orientation and interpersonal sensitivity of women were predicted to give women an advantage over men in appearance accuracy. Under both directed- and incidental-learning conditions, women more accurately recalled information concerning the appearance of their social targets than did men, participants' memory for the appearance of female targets was more accurate than it was for male targets, and neither gender was found to be a relative advantage in recalling the appearance of same-gender targets. The motivational and knowledge-based factors that might underlie a gender difference in appearance accuracy are discussed.     

A model of the neural mechanisms underlying multisensory integration in the superior colliculus

Much of the information about multisensory integration is derived from studies of the cat superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain structure involved in orientation behaviors. This integration is apparent in the enhanced responses of SC neurons to cross-modal stimuli, responses that exceed those to any of the modality-specific component stimuli. The simplest model of multisensory integration is one in which the SC neuron simply sums its various sensory inputs. However, a number of empirical findings reveal the inadequacy of such a model; for example, the finding that deactivation of cortico-collicular inputs eliminates the enhanced response to a cross-modal stimulus without eliminating responses to the modality-specific component stimuli. These and other empirical findings inform a computational model that accounts for all of the most fundamental aspects of SC multisensory integration. The model is presented in two forms: an algebraic form that conveys the essential insights, and a compartmental form that represents the neuronal computations in a more biologically realistic way.     

Separation, Sickness, and Depression: A New Perspective on an Old Animal Model

ABSTRACT— Studies of prolonged separation from the attachment figure that were conducted with infant monkeys during the middle of the 20th century identified a passive behavioral response, termed "despair," that appeared to model human depressive illness. Studies in guinea pigs, which exhibit filial attachment that resembles attachment in monkeys, have described a similar passive response to briefer periods of maternal separation. Recent evidence indicates that elements of the immune system mediate the passive behavioral response of guinea pigs. These findings accord well with current ideas that immune responses contribute to depressive illness, suggest new hypotheses about how maternal separation might promote depression, and give us a rodent model in which such hypotheses might be tested.     

Serving God and Country? Religious Involvement and Military Service Among Young Adult Men

Despite important connections between religion and military action throughout world history, scholars have seldom explored the association between religiosity and military enlistment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we used a person‐oriented analysis to categorize young men according to patterns of adolescent religious involvement. Youth indentified as “highly religious evangelical” are more likely to enlist in the military compared to their “highly religious nonevangelical” and “nonreligious” counterparts; however, these findings hold only for those young men without college experience. These findings are discussed along with study limitations and promising directions for future research.