What are Churches For? Toward an Ecclesiology of the Cross after Christendom1

Abstract : This essay applies pressure to Douglas John Hall's use of Luther's theologia crucis in his calls for the church to become an ecclesia crucis. In my analysis, the theology of the cross is best used not as a hermeneutical key for discerning Christendom's end and the church's new beginning, but as training in developing the capacity to discern both God and church as they hide under opposite signs. By drawing on Hall, two feminist Lutheran theologians, and Stanley Hauerwas, the essay suggests that the practices of the institutional church might be exactly what is needed for the formation of theologians of the cross.     

Social comparison after success and failure: Biased search for information consistent with a self-serving conclusion

Based on the traditional and attributional perspectives on social comparison, it was hypothesized that the search for social comparison information after performance outcomes is biased so as to provide evidence consistent with a favorable self-evaluation. In Experiment 1, subjects were led to believe that they obtained 16 or 8 out of 20 items correct on a bogus social sensitivity test and were then led to expect that most other students performed either well or poorly on the test. They were then given the opportunity to inspect up to 50 scored answer sheets from previous subjects. Consistent with the hypothesis, failure subjects requested more information when they expected it to reveal that most students performed poorly than when they expected it to reveal that most students performed well; success subjects showed little interest in this additional information, regardless of their expectancies as to what it would reveal. Experiment 2 employed a different approach to manipulating performance outcomes and led subjects to expect that most other subjects performed better, the same, or worse than themselves. Regardless of their own performance, subjects showed the least interest in additional information in the higher score expectancy condition and the most interest in additional information in the lower score expectancy condition. The role that this information search bias may play in producing self-serving attributions for success and failure and maintaining positive self-evaluations was discussed.     

Psychometric intelligence and adaptive competence in rural Philippine children

Psychometric intelligence and adaptive competence constructs were compared in 5-to 7-year-old children in a rural Philippine barrio. Individual psychometric subtests of intelligence, indigenous with respect to content, and a form for obtaining adults' ratings of children's adaptive competencies (skill in, or adaptation to, the natural and social demands of their environment) were developed. Acceptable reliabilities, increases in performance with age, and reasonable patterns of scale intercorrelations indicate that the two ecologically relevant measures are reasonably reliable and construct-valid operationalizations of the psychometric intelligence and adaptive competence constructs. Concurrent validities of the psychometric intelligence subtests versus school grades demonstrate the meaningfulness of the psychometric intelligence construct in this setting and associate it with “scholastic aptitude,” as in Western settings. Verbal/intellective aspects of adaptive competence—as compared to the children's competence in everyday barrio skills and responsibilities (e.g., domestic and livelihood tasks, personal-care functions)—were found to be more related to school performance and psychometric intelligence.     

The more things change…: Metamorphoses and conceptual structure

Given that mythmakers must construct stories that are comprehensible to their audience, it is reasonable to expect stories to be conceptually natural even when their topics deal with the supernatural. Thus, as stories are adapted to human conceptual structure, they should reflect characteristics of that structure. An examination of the types of magical transformations in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Grimms' Fairy Tales suggests that this is the case. It was possible to predict the patterns of transformations on the basis of structural properties of ontological knowledge, which is knowledge of the basic categories of existence (e.g., conscious beings, animals, plants, events). Other characteristics of the transformations seem to reflect the conceptual distinction between animates and inanimates as well as the relative prototypicality of various taxonomic classes of animals. It appears that aspects of conceptual structure can constrain patterns of thinking even during “the willing suspension of disbelief.”     

Latent inhibition and conditioning after preexposure to the training context

Experiment 1, using the conditioned suppression technique with rats, showed that the retardation of learning produced by prior exposure to a stimulus (latent inhibition) was more marked in subjects given an initial phase of preexposure to the training context. This effect was confirmed and extended in Experiment 2 in which an appetitive conditioning procedure was used. Experiments 3 and 4, again using conditioned suppression, found no effect of preexposure to the context on the acquisition of suppression when training was given with a novel stimulus, either immediately after preexposure or after a delay; but context preexposure was again found to be effective when exposure to the to-be-conditioned stimulus was given in the delay interval between context preexposure and conditioning. The implications of these findings for accounts of the role of contextual factors in latent inhibition are discussed.     

The working mother: A critique of the research

This article provides a critique of the research on the working mother. Three major areas of research are reviewed: (1) the effects of maternal employment on preschoolers; (2) the working mother and school age children; and (3) working mothers, identity development, and life satisfaction. It was concluded that the research on maternal employment provided very few definitive answers regarding the effects of a mother's working on her family, children, and herself. Guidelines for conducting future research on maternal employment are presented.     

Locus of control and career self-management among nonsupervisory employees in industrial settings

The effects of locus of control on career self-management and career experiences of nonsupervisory workers were examined in different organizational environments. In organizational settings which encouraged personal initiative in career development through personnel policies and promotion practices. Internals played a more active role in their career progress than Externals by initiating their own job searches, and they had more favorable career experiences. In situations which hampered self-initiative, locus of control had little effect on career self-management and subsequent job experiences.