Giving everything for athletic success! – Sports-specific risk acceptance of elite adolescent athletes

ObjectivesGood health is the basic foundation for peak performance in elite sports, yet athletes are often conflicted between protecting their health for the sake of being able to compete and risking their health in the form of potential injuries to achieve even higher levels of performance. Adolescent athletes, who are in a sensitive phase of development, are especially prone to negative consequences like injuries or illnesses due to risky behaviors. In an effort to prevent lasting damage, the present study aims to identify groups of athletes who are particularly willing to take risks and the possible determinants of athletes' risk acceptance.Design and methodIn our German Young Olympic Athletes' Lifestyle and Health Management (GOAL) Study, we examined 1138 German national squad members, aged 14–18, representing all Olympic sports. Classification tree analyses enabled us to detect determinants of high and low risk groups concerning sports-specific psychosocial and physical risk acceptance.ResultsWe found several high risk groups. In general, the degree of inclusion in the elite sports system correlates positively with risk acceptance. Athletes who are extremely willing to take physical risks attached high importance to their sports environment and minor importance to their non-sports environment (n = 94; 8%). Athletes who are perfectionists and very focused on their performance were particularly willing to accept physical (n = 142; 13%) and social risks (n = 75; 7%).ConclusionBy identifying extreme groups with an especially high or low willingness to take risks and the determinants of these groups, we can give a more precise picture of elite adolescent athletes' risk acceptance.     

Image of God and personality pathology: An exploratory study among psychiatric patients

The associations between personality pathology according to DSM-IV, symptomatology and God image were examined among a group of 46 psychiatric patients. Features of personality disorders were assessed using the 'Questionnaire to Assess Personality Pathology', a self-report screener. God image was measured by means of the 'Questionnaire God Image'. Symptomatology was assesed by means of the SCL-90. The more personality pathology present, the more negative the image of God. The negative image of God appeared to be associated with personality pathology, in particular with pathology from the DSM-IV A- and C-cluster, even after controlling for the influence of symptomatology, suggesting that the association between symptomatology and the God image is mediated by personality pathology. When symptoms of the A-cluster are present God is experienced as detached and passive. When C-cluster symptoms prevail, God is experienced as a harsh judge. Results are discussed both from a psychodynamic object-relational as well as from a cognitive schema focused perspective.     

Understanding Islamic Perspective of Mental Health and Psychotherapy

This paper is an attempt to provide foundational information about Islamic perspective of mental health and psychotherapy. It further highlights the historical contribution of Muslim philosophers and physicians to the field of psychotherapy. In the aftermath of the 9/11 and 7/7 tragedies, there has been a growing need to understand the Islamic perspective of mental health and gain insight into the followers of this faith otherwise perceived as ‘mysterious and Far Eastern’. A case example illustrates how counselors/therapists can effectively incorporate religious-cultural aspects of Islam in their work with Muslim clients so that they could work more effectively with their Muslim clients in the post 9/11 climate. Health care professionals must be sensitive to and fully aware of the unique religious traditions, cultural norms and gender sensitive values of their Islamic psychiatric patients so that they could introduce modern therapeutic interventions with less resistance from their clients.     

Theology and Mathematics—Key Themes and Central Historical Figures

This article provides a survey of the history of the dialogue between the disciplines of mathematics and theology. It identifies three principal historical periods—the ancient, the scientific revolution, and modern. It identifies five key themes—the ontological status of mathematics; mathematics as a bridge to a noumenal world; God's relationship to the physical universe and how mathematics is part of this; truth—its nature, how we know it, certitude; and the role of mathematics in culture. The author develops these themes by exploring the thinking of several major historical figures.     

Normand Laurendeau: Spirituality and Science at the Apex of His Life's Vision

Abstract

This article discusses the noteworthy approach of a twentieth-century Muslim scholar, Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1877–1960), to the issue of Qur'an and science. Nursi points out the “problem of authoritarianism” in both religious and secularist discourses, arguing that many of the clashes between faith and reason result from a misunderstanding of spheres of expertise. Nursi also argues that even at the height of scientific and technological development, the Qur'an remains indispensable in humankind interpreting the world around them. Nursi's case illustrates that the task of relating the modern science and the Qur'an requires attention to their interpretive dimensions.     

Defining Islamic modernity through creative writing: a case study of Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong

Indonesian domestic workers (IDWs) have been frequently stereotyped as uneducated and submissive women with little or no bargaining power in transnational labour migration. This article examines why and how literacy practices help foster the activism of IDWs in Hong Kong. In particular, I seek to understand the significance of IDWs’ writing in relation to Islamic modernities. Using the framework of alternative modernities, I argue that the creative process of IDWs’ writing sheds light to their attempts to exercise individual and collective agency. Specifically, the article looks at the role of Forum Lingkar Pena (Pen Circle Forum, FLP) Hong Kong, an IDW writing community, to reveal how its collective literacy practices help affirm Islamic values as part of a modernisation process on IDWs’ own terms.     

Preschool girls' distress and mothers' sensitivity in Japan and Germany

Cultures differ in their beliefs about emotions and related emotional expressions. Cultures with an interdependent model of self prefer more socially engaged emotions, and cultures with an independent model of self perceive socially disengaged emotions as more important. Such differences in individual emotional expression can be seen as outcomes of different socialization practices in children's development of emotions. Mothers' sensitivity was assumed to promote culturally valued ways of children's emotional expressions. The present cross-cultural study aimed to test distress reactions of young children in Japan and Germany in self-focused and other-focused conditions. German and Japanese preschool girls (N = 50) were observed in two distress conditions. Distress was evoked by the child's own failure (self-focused distress) and by the experience of another person's distress (other-focused distress). The mothers were present in the failure condition. The girls' intensity of distress expression was coded before and directly after the emotion-eliciting event (immediate expression) as well as at the end of each situation (change of expression over time). Mothers' sensitivity was coded during the failure condition. No cultural differences occurred for girls' intensity of immediate distress expression but for the change of expression over time in both situations in the expected culture-specific way. Furthermore, maternal sensitivity was also related to the daughter's change of distress expressions in a culture-specific way. These results point to effects of universal and culture-specific emotion socialization.     

Scene perception and memory revealed by eye movements and receiver-operating characteristic analyses: Does a cultural difference truly exist?

Cultural differences have been observed in scene perception and memory: Chinese participants purportedly attend to the background information more than did American participants. We investigated the influence of culture by recording eye movements during scene perception and while participants made recognition memory judgements. Real-world pictures with a focal object on a background were shown to both American and Chinese participants while their eye movements were recorded. Later, memory for the focal object in each scene was tested, and the relationship between the focal object (studied, new) and the background context (studied, new) was manipulated. Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves show that both sensitivity and response bias were changed when objects were tested in new contexts. However, neither the decrease in accuracy nor the response bias shift differed with culture. The eye movement patterns were also similar across cultural groups. Both groups made longer and more fixations on the focal objects than on the contexts. The similarity of eye movement patterns and recognition memory behaviour suggests that both Americans and Chinese use the same strategies in scene perception and memory.     

Cultural differences in emotion regulation during self-reflection on negative personal experiences

Reflecting on negative personal experiences has implications for mood that may vary as a function of specific domains (e.g., achievement vs. interpersonal) and cultural orientation (e.g., interdependence vs. independence). This study investigated cultural differences in the social-cognitive and affective processes undertaken as Easterners and Westerners reflected on negative interpersonal and performance experiences. One hundred Asian Americans and 92 European-American college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: interpersonal rejection, achievement failure, or a control condition. Results revealed that Asian Americans experienced greater distress than European Americans after self-reflecting over a failed interpersonal experience, suggesting cultural sensitivity in the relational domain. Consistent with theoretical predictions, analysis of the social cognitive and affective processes that participants engaged in during self-reflection provided some evidence that self-enhancement may buffer distress for European Americans, while emotion suppression may be adaptive for Asian Americans.     

Culture,gender, and the bipolarity of momentary affect: A critical re-examination

This paper re-examines Yik's (2007) hypothesis that dialectic thinking moderates aggregated but not momentary ratings of affect. A reanalysis of Yik's (2007) correlation coefficients shows that culture is a significant moderator of the correlation between ratings of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) for two of the three response formats, and for the latent correlations reported in the original article. The effect size of this difference is similar to the effect size in previous publications with aggregated measures of affect. It is concluded that Asian dialectic thinking styles moderate the correlation of both aggregated and momentary reports of PA and NA.