Religiosity and Premarital Sexual Behaviors Among Adolescents: An Analysis of Functional Form

While numerous studies show a persistent inverse association between religion variables and adolescents’ sexual behaviors, the nature of this relationship is not well understood. Specifically, many previous studies presuppose that the associations between adolescent religiosity and sexual behaviors are linear. However, a number of studies have also identified important nonlinearities of religious influence during adolescence, with highly religious individuals being distinct from their peers. Incorporating this knowledge into a theoretically motivated modeling approach, this article provides a comparative analysis of functional forms describing the relationships between religiosity and adolescent sexual behaviors. Using data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion, a linear functional form is compared with nonlinear alternatives that link multiple religion measures to outcomes of sexual activity. Results show that the majority of these relationships are best defined by nonlinear functional forms, suggesting that the influence of religiosity increases as individuals become more religious.     

‘Just black sometimes’, part 2: reflections on an adolescent's journey

In this second article about work at a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in Berlin, the author discusses his encounter with Syrian and Afghani adolescents who were enrolled in the program. Issues around adaptation to a new culture are explored with attention to the dynamics of conformity and marginalization. The questions of what happens to adolescent refugees separated from their families, and how their identity formation is shaped by this burden is explored in relation to the author's meeting with a Syrian adolescent living in Berlin. To illustrate the long reach of a missing father who has been left behind, characters from Virgil's Aeneid are discussed to amplify heroic and spiritual aspects within father‐son relationships. The interplay between needing help and allowing for resilience is explored as an important aspect of refugees’ transitions, while also considering variables such as dependence and independence, foreign and familiar, being with or without family, and adjusting to the present and/whilst relating to the past; tensions between these alternatives can create various psychosocial challenges for adolescent refugees.     

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Process Research: A quick ride through what you should know about process (research)

This paper gives an overview of psychoanalytic process research, which brings to light the complexity of psychotherapy sessions. This complexity is so rich that many instruments intended to make the process measurable failed in the past because they initially used a strategy of complexity reduction. This method however did not help to further our understanding of the complexity involved. Three former presidents of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (Stiles, Hill, Elliot 2015) decided to solve the following equivalence paradox: many therapies work successfully though they all follow different theories, produce a heterogeneity of processes and often enough a misfit between what theories maintain to be a good process and their realization in the treatment room. As theories are often compared to maps, a driver would wonder which route to take. But therapists‐as‐drivers go undaunted ‐ and nevertheless achieve their goals together with their patients. Norcross and Wampold (2018) found that good therapists invent new therapies with every new patient. They hypothesize that it is because of conversation. This is in accord with the 3 former presidents’ proposal to return to detailed single case analyses including the micro‐analytic power of conversation analysis of which a few insights are outlined in this article.     

Response to bullying (RTB): Behavioral skills and in situ training for individuals diagnosed with intellectual disabilities

This study evaluated behavioral skills training (BST) and in situ training (IST) to teach a response to bullying (RtB) to four adults with intellectual disabilities who were victims of bullying. The RtB consisted of refraining from retaliating, stating disapproval, walking away, and telling a staff member. In situ assessments were conducted in the natural setting to assess the effects of BST and IST. BST alone was successful in teaching the RtB to two participants. When BST did not result in the use of the RtB, IST was effective for one participant, and IST plus an incentive was effective for the other participant. The results of this study are consistent with previous BST and IST research.     

A test of positive and negative extended intergroup contact in a Chinese minority with perceived group norms and intergroup anxiety as mediators

This article is aimed to examine the effect of Uyghur's (minority group) positive and negative extended contact with Han (majority group) within the background of China. One affective (intergroup anxiety) and two cognitive (perceived in‐group and out‐group norms) variables were tested as potential mediators. A sample of 875 Uyghur minority college students ranging in age from 17 to 25 years completed self‐reported measures of direct contact, positive and negative extended contact, intergroup anxiety, perceptions of in‐group and out‐group norms, out‐group attitudes, and contact intentions. Results revealed that both positive and negative extended contact were associated with out‐group attitudes and contact intentions, over and above the effect of direct contact. The effects of both forms of extended contact were mediated by intergroup anxiety, perceived in‐group, and out‐group norms. Notably, positive extended contact exerted larger effects than negative extended contact. This research highlights the significance of considering both positive and negative extended contact and the potential of extended contact as a means to ameliorate intergroup relations from the perspective of minority groups.     

Revisiting interreligious relations: The convergence of global context and ecclesial developments

Following the important work of the 1980s and 1990s by the US churches and ecumenical bodies in developing interfaith statements and policies, significant events in both the US and international arenas were coincidental and motivational for US Christians to reconsider their interreligious engagement in a new context. This article examines the major contextual factors, as well as ecumenical developments with particular attention to the United Church of Christ and the National Council of Churches, which also will consider new statements in 2019.     

Mitigating the Harmful Effect of Perceived Organizational Compliance on Trust in Top Management: Buffering Roles of Employees’ Personal Resources

This study considers how employees’ POC—defined as their beliefs that the organizational climate stifles change and values compliance with the status quo—reduce their trust in top management, as well as how this negative relationship might be buffered by access to two personal resources that support organizational change: openness to experience and affective commitment to change. Data from a sample of Pakistan-based organizations reveal that POC reduce trust in top management, but this effect is weaker at higher levels of openness to experience and affective commitment to change. These findings are significant in that they indicate that employees who operate in organizational climates marked by “yea-saying” can counter the difficulty of improving their job situation by drawing from adequate personal resources.     

Why So Low?

Empirical evidence indicates that women philosophers tend to submit their work to journals substantially less often than their male colleagues. This paper points out that this difference in submission behavior comes with other specific aspects of women philosophers’ behavior, such as a tendency to be reluctant to participate in discussions, to be willing to do work low in prestige, and to specialize in certain research topics, and it argues that these differences can be understood as indirect effects of social biases: namely, effects on the working behavior of members of targeted social groups. Recent findings from philosophy journals’ book review sections and from other academic disciplines known to suffer from gender problems, especially from STEM disciplines, lend additional weight to this hypothesis.     

Permanent Contributions in Philosophy

Has any school or movement in all of Western philosophy made a permanent contribution, permanent in the sense that it will last as long as philosophy does? More narrowly, has there ever been put forward a thesis that has achieved lasting consensus? After carefully defining “philosophical thesis” and “consensus,” so as to forestall uninteresting answers, this paper argues that the ancient Greeks made one or two such contributions, and the Analytic philosophers (ca. 1890–1960) made a few, but there have been no others. Moreover (a) the Analytic contributions were more empirical than philosophical, and (b) they were almost entirely negative. So, the basic short answer to our question is “no.” The paper concludes by asking in what way(s) there has been progress in philosophy.