Initial goals,goal trajectories,and serial argument resolvability: A growth curve analysis

This study examines dyadic patterns of goal pursuit during a serial argument interaction and their associations with perceived argument resolvability. The authors utilize a growth curve framework to highlight how both initial importance and trajectories (i.e., over‐time increases/decreases) of goal importance predicted perceived resolvability. Seventy‐six heterosexual couples discussed a current serial argument and reported their goals at 1‐min increments, using a video‐assisted recall method. Both initial importance and increases in actors' partner‐focused goals were positively associated with perceived resolvability, and increases in a partners' self‐focused goal importance across the course of the interaction were negatively associated with actors' postinteraction resolvability perceptions. Results suggest that partners should attend to both initial goals and trajectories of goal pursuit during argumentative interactions.     

The Problem of Criteria and the Necessity of Natural Theology

Most streams of Christianity have emphasized the unknowability of God, but they have also asserted that Christ is the criterion through whom we may have limited access to the depths of God, and through whose life and death we can formulate the doctrine of God as Triune. This standpoint, however, leads to certain complications regarding ‘translating’ the Christian message to adherents of other religious traditions, and in particular the question, ‘Why do you accept Christ as the criterion?’, is one that Christian thinkers have attempted to answer in different ways. There are two influential responses to this query in recent Christian thought: an ‘evidentialist’ approach which gradually moves from a theistic metaphysics to a Christ‐centred soteriology, and an ‘unapologetic’ standpoint which takes God's self‐disclosure in Christ as the perspectival lens through which to view the world. The opposition between these two groups is primarily over the status of ‘natural theology’, that is, whether we may speak of a ‘natural’ reason, which human beings possess even outside the circle of the Christian revelation, and through which they may arrive at some minimalist understanding of the divine reality. I outline the status of ‘natural theology’ in these strands of contemporary Christian thought, from Barthian ‘Christomonism’ to post‐liberal theology to Reformed epistemology, and suggest certain problems within these standpoints which indicate the need for an appropriately qualified ‘natural theology’. Most of the criticisms leveled against ‘natural theology’, whether from secular philosophers or from Christian theologians themselves, can be put in two groups: first, the arguments for God's existence are logically flawed, and, second, even if they succeed they do not point to the Triune God that Christians worship. In contrast to such an old‐fashioned ‘natural theology’ which allegedly starts from premises self‐evidently true for all rational agents and leads through an inexorable logic to God, the qualified version is an attempt to spell out the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity such as the existence of a personal God who interacts with human beings in different ways, and outline the reasons offered in defence of such statements. In other words, without denying that Christian doctrines operate at one level as the grammatical rules which structure the Christian discourse, such a natural theology insists on the importance of the question of whether these utterances are true, in the sense that they refer to an objective reality which is independent of the Christian life‐world. Such a ‘natural theology’, as the discussion will emphasize, is not an optional extra but follows in fact from the internal logic of the Christian position on the universality of God's salvific reach.     

Guards Gone Wild: A Self-Report Study of Correctional Officer Misconduct and the Effect of Institutional Deviance on “care” within the Texas Prison System

This is a study of the treatment of patients who are in severe medical distress. A code refers to the designation that stands for the range of treatments that the patient will be given. Code blue involves the full range of medical treatment to prevent death. No code involves denial of life‐extending treatments. Previous research has documented that social factors are related to the treatment of terminally ill patients. This study uses interviews with registered nurses and secondary sources to address the nature of patient codes (their location in the hospital, the perceptions of nurses relative to these codes, the interaction among health care professions relative to codes, etc.). It is suggested that there are normative (code blue) and nonnormative (slow code) codes given to these patients. The normative practices are outlined. Then some social, psychological, and medical factors that conflict with these normative codes are addressed (e.g., the physician's view of death as a failure). Finally, the non‐normative practice of slow code is analyzed. In the slow code, the medical staff goes through the rituals of a code blue, but in a deliberate manner. Nurses’ perceptions of nonnormative codes are explored. Some alternatives to the use of slow codes are discussed.     

prison guard predators: an analysis of inmates who established inappropriate relationships with prison staff, 1995-1998

Recently, media accounts have shed light on a number of correctional employees who were terminated for engaging in "inappropriate relationships" with prisoners. This study employed face-to-face interviews of 32 inmate "turners" who were investigated for engaging in inappropriate relationships with security officers. We found that many inmate manipulators share similar attitudes and beliefs regarding inappropriate relationships. Our findings indicate that there are three distinct types of inmate "turners," each exhibiting an entirely different set of motivations and behavior from one another. We conclude that inmates are very persistent in attempting to initiate an inappropriate relationship with prison employees.