A Religious Interpretation of Emergence: Creativity as God

Thinking of God today as creativity (instead of as The Creator) enables us to bring theological values and meanings into significant connection with modern cosmological and evolutionary thinking. This conception connects our understanding of God with today's ideas of the Big Bang; cosmic and biological evolution; the evolutionary emergence of novel complex realities from simpler realities, and the irreducibility of these complex realities to their simpler origins; and so on. It eliminates anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism from the conception of God, thus overcoming one of the major reasons for the implausibility of God-talk in today's world—here viewed as a highly dynamic reality (not an essentially stable structure), with God regarded as the ongoing creativity in this world. This mystery of creativity—God—manifest throughout the universe is quite awe-inspiring, calling forth emotions of gratitude, love, peace, fear, and hope, and a sense of the profound meaningfulness of human existence in the world—issues with which faith in God usually has been associated. It is appropriate, therefore, to think of God today as precisely this magnificent panorama of creativity with which our universe and our lives confront us.     

When Your Race Is Almost Run,but You Feel You're Not Yet Done: Application of the Propulsion Theory of Creative Contributions to Late‐career Challenges

The propulsion theory of creative contributions is a theory that focuses on how a creative act or product builds on and adds to knowledge in various fields. In this article, we apply the propulsion theory of creative contributions not to creative discoveries or inventions, but rather to late‐career decisions about future directions in which one can steer one's career. We consider eight different kinds of career decisions one can make—replication, redefinition, forward incrementation, advance forward incrementation, redirection, reconstruction/redirection, reinitiation, and synthesis. Each offers a viable option for closing out a creative career.     

Unique Ways in Which the Quality of Friendships Matter for Life Satisfaction

Journal of Happiness Studies - The quality of individuals’ social relationships consistently predicts greater well-being. But little is known about the relative importance of different...     

Contemporary perspectives on the study of psychological climate: A commentary

At the individual level of analysis, we address how work environment perceptions (psychological climate) are conceptualized and measured with respect to three perspectives in the applied psychology literature: (1) social constructionist, (2) general psychological, and (3) multiple stakeholder. Similarities and differences between these perspectives regarding the hypothesized bases of work environment perceptions, factor models for capturing these perceptions, and the generality/specificity of psychological climate factors are discussed. A general framework for conceptualizing and measuring climate perceptions with respect to different referents, organizational levels, industries or sectors, and stakeholder groups is then presented. This framework is posited to include core, generalizable dimensions associated with each relevant stakeholder group. Finally, we recommend methods and discuss future research directions related to the aggregation of individual level climate perceptions to organizational levels.     

Effects of Question-Wording Style and Research Context on Attributions for Success and Failure

Although a substantial body of research exists concerning the patterns of causal attributions that are made to explain achievement outcomes, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects that measurement techniques have on the attributions they elicit. Two methodological factors—question-wording style and research context—were hypothesized to affect the results of attribution studies. Participants made informational (e.g., "How hard did you try?") and causal (e.g., "To what extent was effort a cause of your outcome?") attributions to outcomes in either an experimental (anagram-task) or natural (classroom-examination) research context. Significant outcome effects were found for (a) informational but not causal attributions to ability and to the task and for (b) attributions to ability in the natural but not in the experimental context. The implications of these findings for attribution theory and research are discussed.     

“Why Didn't They Keep Me?”: The Search For Belonging in the Analysis of a Four Year Old Adopted Child

The purpose of this clinical article is to discuss aspects of the analysis of a child whose adoption functioned as organizer of her personality. Her fantasy life, defensive organization, sense of self and other, and object relations were all organized around a personal mythology surrounding her adoption. These organizing myths took various forms that emerged in the course of the analysis. Her adoptive parents also created a mythology that had a critical impact on the child's development and on their development as parents. The analytic work demonstrates how these organizing mythologies governed the parent–child relationship and how the collision of their mythologies led to a breakdown in the child's development and in parental functioning. In the course of the analysis, the child developed the capacity to grieve and to react to loss in an organized way as progressive development was restored and she was able to feel valued and loved. Her parents began to grieve the dual loss of not having biological children or a perfect adoption, and to develop more motherly and fatherly feelings for their child.     

Gender Differences in Academic Achievement: Is Writing an Exception to the Gender Similarities Hypothesis?

The gender similarities hypothesis by J. S. Hyde (2005 Hyde, J.S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581–592.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), based on large-scale reviews of studies, concludes that boys and girls are more alike than different on most psychological variables, including academic skills such as reading and math (J. S. Hyde, 2005 Hyde, J.S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60, 581–592.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Writing is an academic skill that may be an exception. The authors investigated gender differences in academic achievement using a large, nationally stratified sample of children and adolescents ranging from ages 7–19 years (N = 2,027). Achievement data were from the conormed sample for the Kaufman intelligence and achievement tests. Multiple-indicator, multiple-cause, and multigroup mean and covariance structure models were used to test for mean differences. Girls had higher latent reading ability and higher scores on a test of math computation, but the effect sizes were consistent with the gender similarities hypothesis. Conversely, girls scored higher on spelling and written expression, with effect sizes inconsistent with the gender similarities hypothesis. The findings remained the same after controlling for cognitive ability. Girls outperform boys on tasks of writing.