When immigrant groups “misbehave”: The influence of perceived deviant behavior on increased threat and discriminatory intentions and the moderating role of right‐wing authoritarianism

In two studies, we tested the relationship between non‐immigrant individuals' perceptions of deviant behavior carried out by Muslims and foreigners and discriminatory intentions towards these outgroups. Based on a longitudinal and a representative cross‐sectional sample, we showed that two different types of perceived deviant behavior (Study 1, Muslims' unwillingness to integrate; and Study 2, foreigners' hostility towards the non‐immigrant majority group) are related to increased intergroup threat, which in turn is related to increased intentions to show passive discrimination (i.e., avoidance) towards these outgroups. In line with theorizing about an increased sensitivity for threat in authoritarian individuals, the relationship between perceptions of deviant behavior and threat was especially strong among high authoritarian individuals. Theoretical and practical implications of our results are discussed.     

‘Of the group’ and ‘for the group’: How followership is shaped by leaders' prototypicality and group identification

Previous research has focused on the importance of leaders being seen to be of the group (i.e. to be prototypical of a group) but less on the impact of leaders' own degree of identification with the group. Also, little is known about the combined impact of leader prototypicality and leader identification on followers' responses. This paper reports two studies that address these lacunae. Study 1 shows experimentally that perceived leader identification and prototypicality interact to determine followers' personal identification with leaders and their perceptions of leader charisma. Findings indicate that high identification can compensate for low prototypicality such that high‐identified leaders are able to inspire followership when leaders are low prototypical. Study 2 replicates these findings in the field by examining followers' responses to workgroup leaders. In addition, results demonstrate that the aforementioned responses are more pronounced for highly identified followers. The present research extends social identity theorizing by demonstrating that leaders' inability to inspire followership derives as much from their failure to project a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ as part of their self‐concept as from a failure to exemplify group‐typical attributes. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Equipping the Equippers: The Pedagogical and Programmatic Implications of The Christians' Callings in the World Project

When five theological schools realized (a) their graduates affirmed vocation as central to their theology and practice, yet (b) the parishioners of their graduates nevertheless did not feel called, they knew they had to do something. For six years, faculty teams from these schools conducted a variety of experiments in pedagogy, curriculum reform, and program development in order to train their graduates to equip all of God's people to claim and live their vocational identity in the world. This article introduces the identified challenge and necessary theological and pedagogical shift and then describes five of those experiments in greater detail.     

Verified hormone therapy improves episodic memory performance in healthy postmenopausal women

Studies of hormone therapy (HT) and cognition have yielded conflicting results. The aim of this observational study was to examine the effect of estradiol, via serum verified HT (estradiol, estriol, progesterone) and endogenous estradiol, on 108 healthy postmenopausal women's cognitive performance. The results demonstrated that the 43 HT-users performed at a significantly higher level than non-users on episodic memory tasks and on a verbal fluency task, whereas HT-users and non-users did not differ on tasks assessing semantic memory and spatial visualization. In addition, there was a positive relationship between serum estradiol level and episodic memory performance, indicating that postmenopausal HT is associated with enhanced episodic memory and verbal fluency, independent of age and education. These observational results suggest that HT use may be sufficient to exert small, yet positive effects on female sensitive cognitive tasks. Hormone therapy compliance and formulation is discussed as confounding factors in previous research.     

Effectiveness of dialectical behaviour therapy for borderline personality disorder in an inpatient setting

This study evaluates the effectiveness of dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) for borderline personality disorder (BPD) in an unselected, comorbid population seeking 3-month inpatient treatment. We studied 50 consecutively admitted individuals (44 women, six men) with BPD as defined by DSM-IV at three time points (at admission, at discharge, and at the 15-month follow-up). For the clinical diagnoses, we used the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) and compared the frequencies of comorbid axis I and axis II disorders at admission and at the 15-month follow-up. Overall, participants showed a high degree of comorbidity. Psychopathology was significantly reduced at post-treatment and at follow-up. Effect sizes for outcome measures were within the range of those of previous studies. Our findings support the notion that the results of the DBT efficacy research can be generalized to an inpatient setting and to patients with BPD disorder with high comorbidity.     

Agreement and movement: a syntactic analysis of attraction

This paper links experimental psycholinguistics and theoretical syntax in the study of subject-verb agreement. Three experiments of elicited spoken production making use of specific characteristics of Italian and French are presented. They manipulate and examine its impact on the occurrence of 'attraction' errors (i.e. incorrect agreement with a word that is not the subject of the sentence). Experiment 1 (in Italian) shows that subject modifiers do not trigger attraction errors in free inverted VS (Verb Subject) structures, although attraction was found in VS interrogatives in English (Vigliocco, G., & Nicol, J. (1998). Separating hierarchical relations and word order in language production. Is proximity concord syntactic or linear? Cognition, 13-29) In Experiment 2 (in French), we report stronger attraction with preverbal clitic object pronouns than with subject modifiers. Experiment 3 (in French) shows that displaced direct objects in the cleft construction trigger attraction effects, in spite of the fact that the object does not intervene between the subject and the verb in the surface word order (OSV). Moreover, attraction is stronger in structures with subject-verb inversion (...). These observations are shown to be naturally interpretable through the tools of formal syntax, as elaborated within the Principles and Parameters/Minimalist tradition. Three important constructs are discussed: (1) the hierarchical representation of the sentence during syntactic construction, and the role of intermediate positions by which words transit when they move; (2) the role of specific hierarchical (c-command) but also linear (precedence) relations; and (3) the possibility that agreement involves two functionally distinct components. A gradient of computational complexity in agreement is presented which relates empirical evidence to these theoretical constructs.     

Context-dependent Abduction and Relevance

Based on the premise that what is relevant, consistent, or true may change from context to context, a formal framework of relevance and context is proposed in which