DIVINE PURPOSE AND EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES

When Darwin's theory of natural selection threatened to put Paley's Designer out of a job, one response was to reemploy God as the author of the evolutionary process itself. This idea requires an account of how God might be understood to act in biological history. I approach this question in two stages: first, by considering God's action as creator of the world as a whole, and second, by exploring the idea of particular divine action in the course of evolution. As creator ex nihilo God acts directly in every event as its sustaining ground. Because God structures the world as a lawful order of natural causes, God also acts indirectly by means of creatures. More controversially, God might act directly within the world to affect the course of events; this action need not take the form of a miraculous intervention, if the natural order includes the right sort of indeterministic chance. In each of these ways God's purposes can shape evolutionary processes.     

ERNAN MCMULLIN ON CONTINGENCY,COSMIC PURPOSE,AND THE ATEMPORALITY OF THE CREATOR

This article reviews, and offers supportive reflections on, the main points of Ernan McMullin's provocative 1998 article, “Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution,’’ reprinted in this issue of Zygon. In it he addresses the important science‐theology issue of how the Creator's purpose and intention to assure the emergence of human beings is consonant with the radical contingency of the evolutionary process. After discussing cosmic and biological evolution and critically summarizing recent solutions to this question by Keith Ward, John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Alvin Plantinga, and others, who presuppose in different ways that God is subject to time, McMullin compellingly argues for the traditional position, that God is unconditioned by time, and this enables God to work purposefully through contingency, randomness, and chance just as easily as through law‐like regularity.     

Factors influencing infants’ ability to update object representations in memory

Remembering persisting objects over occlusion is critical to representing a stable environment. Infants remember hidden objects at multiple locations and can update their representation of a hidden array when an object is added or subtracted. However, the factors influencing these updating abilities have received little systematic exploration. Here we examined the flexibility of infants’ ability to update object representations. We tested 11-month-olds in a looking-time task in which objects were added to or subtracted from two hidden arrays. Across five experiments, infants successfully updated their representations of hidden arrays when the updating occurred successively at one array before beginning at the other. But when updating required alternating between two arrays, infants failed. However, simply connecting the two arrays with a thin strip of foam-core led infants to succeed. Our results suggest that infants’ construal of an event strongly affects their ability to update memory representations of hidden objects. When construing an event as containing multiple updates to the same array, infants succeed, but when construing the event as requiring the revisiting and updating of previously attended arrays, infants fail.     

Busy lifestyles and mammography screening: Time pressure and women’s reattendance likelihood

Time pressure is often cited as a reason for non-attendance at mammography screening, although evidence from other areas of psychology suggests that time pressure can improve performance when barriers such as time pressure provide a challenge. We predicted that time pressure would negatively predict attendance in women whose self-efficacy for overcoming time pressure is low, but positively predict attendance when self-efficacy is high. Time pressure was operationalised as the self-reported number of dependent children and others, and average number of working hours per week. Australian women were surveyed after being invited to attend second or subsequent screenings at a free public screening service, and subsequent attendance monitored until six months after screening was due. The majority (87.5%) attended screening. Women with more dependent children and higher self-efficacy showed greater attendance likelihood, and women with fewer non-child dependants and lower self-efficacy were less likely to attend. Working hours did not predict attendance. Findings provide partial support for the idea that time pressure acts as a challenge for women with high self-efficacy.     

Engagement with meditation as a positive health trajectory: Divergent narratives of progress in male meditators

Objective: Studying personal narratives can generate understanding of how people experience physical and mental illness. However, few studies have explored narratives of engagement in health positive behaviours, with none focusing on men specifically. Thus, we sought to examine men’s experiences of their efforts to engage in and maintain healthy behaviours, focusing on meditation as an example of such behaviour.

Design: We recruited 30 male meditators, using principles of maximum variation sampling, and conducted two in-depth interviews with each, separated by a year. Main outcome measures: We sought to elicit men’s narratives of their experiences of trying to maintain a meditation practice.

Results: We identified an overall theme of a ‘positive health trajectory,’ in particular, making ‘progress’ through meditation. Under this were six main accounts. Only two articulated a ‘positive’ message about progress: Climbing a hierarchy of practitioners, and progress catalysed in other areas of life. The other four reflected the difficulties around progress: Progress being undermined by illness; disappointment with progress; progress ‘forgotten’ (superseded by other concerns); and progress re-conceptualised due to other priorities.

Conclusion: Men’s narratives reveal the way they experience and construct their engagement with meditation – as an example of health behaviour – in terms of progress.     

Psychology,health and health care

This article traces the development of the World Health Organization's emphasis on psychological and behavioural factors in health and notes its encouragement of recognition of these factors by member states. The article further outlines the reasons for this increasing recognition and stresses the important role of psychological and behavioural factors in the maintenance of health and prevention of illness.     

Being and feeling liked by others: How social inclusion impacts health

This study examined the effects of perceived and actual social inclusion on health across and within individuals from a network perspective. During the first semester, 75 freshmen students provided bi-weekly ratings on their perceived social inclusion and health. To capture actual social inclusion, each student nominated liked and disliked fellow students. Perceived social inclusion mediated the effect of actual social inclusion on health. Specifically, students with more ‘likes’ perceived more social inclusion and those with higher perceived inclusion reported a better health status (between-person effect). In addition, at time points, when students received more ‘likes’ they also perceived more social inclusion. They reported better health at times when they felt more included (within-person effect). Thus, the perception of social inclusion is rooted in reality and actual social inclusion has an impact on health when passing the filter of perception.     

Socio-economic health inequalities: Their origins and implications

Abstract

Evidence attests to substantial variations in health contingent on socioeconomic position. It is argued that these effects cannot be dismissed as artefact nor can they be explained, in the main, by either social selection or an unequal distribution of accepted behavioural risk factors among different social groups. The most likely explanation would seem to be social causation. However, it is continuing social and material inequality that appears most implicated; accounts which locate the effects in childhood social and material causes are far less compelling. The persistence of socioeconomic health differentials into the materially better-off social strata and the possible determining role of relative as well as absolute living standards suggest that psychological, in addition to material, variables are likely to be involved. Isolating the key psychological variables and identifying the nature of their influences will not be easy tasks, although social relations, psychological stress, uplifts, and control have emerged as possible candidates. However, psychological mediators of this sort most probably constitute surface rather than basic causes. Socio-economic inequality, it is contended, remains the basic cause, and, as such, the proper target for intervention. Psychological interventions are unlikely to yield much in the way of dividends in this context and indeed could inadvertently contribute to victim blaming.     

A survey of smoking status and cancer risk perceptions among participants attending a hospital-based head and neck screening program

Abstract

Screening for head and neck cancer is underutilized. Given that lack of knowledge of the risk factors may partially account for screening underutilization. we surveyed subjective risk and knowledge of risk factors for head and neck cancer among 124 individuals who attended a free. hospital-based head and neck cancer screening. Few participants were current smokers. Most attendees perceived their risk as similar to others of their age and sex. Personal health habits comprised almost all of the risk-decreasing factors, yet less than half of the risk-increasing factors. generated. Personal habits were less frequently endorsed than factors such as pollution and heredity. Those who mentioned a risk behavior, or a family cancer history, reported higher subjective risk. Those who mentioned a personal health habit reported lower subjective risk. Results highlight needed efforts to increase screening among high-risk individuals through targeted education messages.     

‘Them’ and ‘us’: The experiences of women with metastatic disease in mixed-stage versus stage-specific breast cancer support groups

The objective of this study was to explore the experiences of women with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) in mixed-stage and stage-specific groups. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to examine 15 interviews from eight women with MBC. The interviewees felt that their experiences were very much different from those of women with primary breast cancer (BC), because of their different prognoses. In mixed-stage groups, the interviewees described feeling silenced, marginalised and helpless. They did not receive support in these groups because survivors of primary BC are often afraid to face the idea of metastasis. In stage-specific MBC groups, on the other hand, women were able to talk openly and were understood by others with whom they identified. They became more informed about issues related to their illness. Seeing others living well despite MBC made them feel more hopeful. Although there are some disadvantages of participating in stage-specific groups, the findings suggest that, overall, stage-specific groups are more helpful to women with MBC than mixed-stage groups. These findings have implications for the provision of group support for this population.