SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION,HEALING, AND ALTRUISM: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

This essay introduces the five articles that follow, whose aim is to show how altruism emerges out of spiritual transformation and is integral to healing process in four kinds of ritual healing systems—popular, folk, an indigenous religious healing tradition, and complementary and alternative medicine represented by consciousness transformation movements. In this introduction I situate these largely marginalized religious and spiritual practices within the context of the religion‐science discourse, which has focused for the most part on the relationship between the established, mainstream religions and the dominant biomedical system. Antecedents of two of these types of religious practices, Spiritism and consciousness transformation movements, were part of the development of the psychological sciences in the nineteenth century but lost ground in the twentieth. Despite discrimination and persistent negative attitudes on the part of the established religions and biomedicine, these healing traditions have not only survived through the twentieth century but appear to have gained both followers and interest in the twenty‐first. In future decades, at least for complementary and alternative medical practices and perhaps also for spirit healing centers, there may be a reversal in status through greater acceptance of their unique combination of scientific and religious perspectives.     

The Unhappy Marriage of Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics

The proposal that care ethic(s) (CE) be subsumed under the framework of virtue ethic(s) (VE) is both promising and problematic for feminists. Although some attempts to construe care as a virtue are more commendable than others, they cannot duplicate a freestanding feminist CE. Sander‐Staudt recommends a model of theoretical collaboration between VE and CE that retains their comprehensiveness, allows CE to enhance VE as well as be enhanced by it, and leaves CE open to other collaborations.     

Assessment of sensory substitution prosthesis potentialities in minimalist conditions of learning

Pattern recognition with a prosthesis substituting vision by audition was investigated. During 15 1‐hour sessions, nine blindfolded sighted subjects were trained to recognise 2D patterns by trial and error. In addition to a global assessment, recognition of pattern element nature (vertical bars, horizontal bars…), element size and element spatial arrangement were independently assessed for each pattern. Influence of experimental parameters (complexity level of patterns, exploration number of a pattern) on recognition was studied. Performances improved over sessions. As a rule, patterns element nature was less well recognised than element size and spatial arrangement. Experimental parameters influenced pattern recognition performance. Results are discussed in relation with auditory and visual perception as well as in the perspective to implement a learning protocol for future users of prosthesis. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Activities on Companies With Bad Reputations

Based on theories of attribution and suspicion, three experiments highlight the mediating role of perceived sincerity of motives in determining the effectiveness of CSR activities. CSR activities improve a company's image when consumers attribute sincere motives, are ineffective when sincerity of motives is ambiguous, and hurt the company's image when motives are perceived as insincere. Variables affecting perceived sincerity include the benefit salience of the cause, the source through which consumers learn about CSR, and the ratio of CSR contributions and CSR‐related advertising. High benefit salience of the cause hurts the company, in particular when consumers learn about it from a company source. This backfire effect can be overcome by spending more on CSR activities than on advertising that features CSR.     

Country‐of‐Origin Influences on Product Evaluations: The Impact of Animosity and Perceptions of Industriousness Brutality on Judgments of Typical and Atypical Products

When a product's country of origin has a reputation for manufacturing high‐quality products, there may be a positive impact on product judgments. If people feel animosity toward a country as a result of its political or social policies, they may react negatively to the products it produces. These opposing effects may depend in part on the subset of country‐relevant knowledge that is accessible in memory at the time of judgment. When a product was not one on which Germany or Japan had built its reputation for manufacturing high‐quality products, associating the product with these countries increased its evaluations when industriousness had been activated as part of an unrelated experiment. However, when concepts associated with brutality had been primed, the product's country of origin had a negative effect on judgments. When the product was typical of those manufactured in the country, however, identifying its country of origin increased product evaluations regardless of whether industriousness or brutality had been primed. Thus, animosity toward a product's country of origin had an adverse effect on reactions to it only if the product was not one on which the country's reputation was based.     

Predicting Intention to Save Water: Theory of Planned Behavior,Response Efficacy,Vulnerability, and Perceived Efficiency of Alternative Solutions1

These 2 studies attempted to predict people's intention to save water. Study 1 used a model based on Ajzen's (1991) theory of planned behavior (TPB) and other variables: vulnerability, 2 collective efficacy variables, and subjective effectiveness of alternative solutions (SEAS) to ease drought impact. Study 2 tested a model similar to that of Study 1, but with 2 personal efficacy variables added. Respondents in both studies were residents of Taiwan (Ns= 166 and 210). Analysis indicated that the modified models (R²>.32) were better than the TPB model (R²<.19), and SEAS and response efficacy had crucial effects on people's intentions to retrofit. The studies also found some significant but inconsistent effects of income, dwelling, and education.     

Justice Perceptions as Predictors of Customer Satisfaction: The Impact of Distributive,Procedural, and Interactional Justice1

This article attempts to extend prior research by testing the effects of justice components (distributive, procedural, and interactional) on customer satisfaction beyond the expectancy disconfirmation paradigm. To this end, two separate field survey studies were conducted. A total of 568 customers were surveyed in 38 hotels and 40 restaurants. The results showed that distributive justice was critical in predicting customer satisfaction, while the influence of procedural and interactional justice was secondary. Justice concepts were also robust against the simultaneous inclusion of disconfirmation and performance in the satisfaction equation. The article concludes with theoretical and managerial implications, as well as opportunities for future research.     

The Relationship of Promotion Focus,Need for Cognitive Closure,and Categorical Accessibility in American and Hong Kong Chinese University Students

Categorical accessibility is a cognitive factor that limits the extent of creative conceptual expansion. In the present study, we sought to establish the categorical accessibility norms in five conceptual domains among American and Hong Kong Chinese university students. In addition, we predicted that the tendency to access normatively inaccessible exemplars in a conceptual domain is positively related to the motivation to maximize the likelihood of attaining positive outcomes (promotion focus) and negatively related to the need for cognitive closure. We obtained the predicted relationships among both American and Hong Kong Chinese university students. These findings were discussed in terms of their implications for promoting creativity across cultures.     

Religious identity development of adolescents in religious affiliated schools. A theoretical foundation for empirical research

The question, how religious affiliated schools for secondary education shape religious education and what effects this education has on the religious identity development of pupils, is relevant in a time when the position of religious affiliated schools is highly disputable. In earlier empirical research on religious identity development of adolescence, hardly any attention was paid to the theoretical framework of this question. Therefore, connections are sought with the identity theory of Erikson and with operationalizations of his theory by Marcia and others. The key concepts are ‘exploration’ and ‘commitment’. Religious identity development is seen from a pragmatic perspective in which the transactional relation of individuals and environment is stressed.