Prayer as a cause of recovery from illness

This research aimed to examine the developmental trajectory of the beliefs about the power of prayer to aide recovery from illness. One hundred and sixty children and young adults divided in four age groups participated in the study. Participants were interviewed with vignettes presenting two sick individuals who differed in terms of prayers that they received from their friends in order to recover from their illness. The results showed that children and pre-adolescents strongly believe in the power of prayer to recover from illness while only about half of the university students share this belief. Thus, contrary to the framework theory approach, children, adolescents, and young adults did not replace these beliefs (as naive explanations), with the scientific explanations. Instead, they continue to hold these beliefs in parallel to their scientific explanations.     

Thyme to touch: Infants possess strategies that protect them from dangers posed by plants

Plants have been central to human life as sources of food and raw materials for artifact construction over evolutionary time. But plants also have chemical and physical defenses (such as harmful toxins and thorns) that provide protection from herbivores. The presence of these defenses has shaped the behavioral strategies of non-human animals. Here we report evidence that human infants possess strategies that would serve to protect them from dangers posed by plants. Across two experiments, infants as young as eight months exhibit greater reluctance to manually explore plants compared to other entities. These results expand the growing literature showing that infants are sensitive to certain ancestrally recurrent dangers, and provide a basis for further exploration.     

Positive beliefs about worry: A psychometric evaluation of the Why Worry-II

Positive beliefs about worry are theorized to maintain excessive and uncontrollable worry, the hallmark of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The Why Worry-II (WW-II) is a 25-item revised questionnaire designed to measure five positive beliefs about worry. These five beliefs are that worry: (1) facilitates problem solving; (2) enhances motivation; (3) protects against negative emotions; (4) prevents negative outcomes; and (5) reflects a positive personality trait. The main goal of this study was to assess the WW-II’s psychometric properties, including its factor structure. Undergraduate participants (N = 309) completed the WW-II, and measures of worry, depression, anxiety, and positive and negative beliefs about worry. Overall, the results suggest that the five-factor model is a good fit to the data. The WW-II demonstrated excellent internal consistency, good test–retest reliability at six weeks, and evidence of convergent and divergent validity. The WW-II also uniquely predicted worry severity. Overall, our findings suggest that the WW-II has a five-factor structure congruent with theoretical predictions, sound psychometric properties, and a unique relationship to excessive worry. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Malleability of weight-biased attitudes and beliefs: A meta-analysis of weight bias reduction interventions

Weight bias exists across many important life domains, necessitating interventions designed to reduce weight-biased attitudes and beliefs. Though the effectiveness of weight bias interventions has been questioned, to our knowledge no meta-analysis of these interventions has been conducted. This meta-analysis evaluated the impact of weight bias interventions on weight-biased attitudes and beliefs and explored potential moderators. Interventions were eligible if they used an adult sample and a validated measure of weight-biased attitudes, which resulted in the inclusion of 30 studies represented in 29 articles. A random effects approach using inverse weights resulted in a mean effect size estimate of g = −0.33 (lower scores indicate less weight bias) for both attitudes and beliefs. Intervention type, publication type, and population type were not significant moderators but demonstrated noteworthy trends. Results reveal a small, positive effect of weight bias interventions on weight-biased attitudes and beliefs and provide useful information for future interventions.     

Why global justice matters

Why does global justice as a philosophical inquiry matter? We know that the world is plainly unjust in many ways and we know that something ought to be done about this without, it seems, the need of a theory of global justice. Accordingly, philosophical inquiry into global justice comes across to some as an intellectual luxury that seems disconnected from the real world. I want to suggest, however, that philosophical inquiry into global justice is necessary if we want to address the problems of humanity. First, in some cases, a theory of global justice is needed for identifying what counts as legitimate problems of justice. Second, even in obvious cases of injustices, such as the fact of preventable extreme poverty to which we know we have an obligation to respond, we cannot know the content and the limits of these obligations and who the primary bearers of these obligations are without some theoretical guidance. However, I acknowledge that philosophical inquiry on global justice risks becoming a philosophical parlor game if it loses sight of the real-world problems that motivate the inquiry in the first place. If global justice is to provide the tools for addressing the problems of humanity, it must remain a problems-driven enterprise.     

Demographic correlates of normative beliefs about aggression among adolescents from low income communities in South Africa

The present study investigated the association of age, gender, and family size with normative beliefs about aggression among South African adolescents from low-income areas. Adolescents (n = 229; mean age = 16 years; female = 61%) completed the Normative Beliefs about Aggression Scale. Step-wise regression analyses were conducted with age, gender, and family size as predictors of normative beliefs about aggression. Boys demonstrated greater endorsement of physical, non-physical, and relational aggression; as compared to girls. Living in an extended family was associated with less approval of aggression. Aggression reduction interventions with children from disadvantaged areas need to consider the role of gender and family-related factors.     

Natural Reflection,Phenomenological Reflection and Hyperreflexivity

This paper examines critically the notion of reflection as self-objectification and points out its insufficiency in accounting for the pathological phenomenon of hyperreflexivity. It proposes an understanding of reflection as situated and motivated from within a world and having a normative aspect that concerns the very life of the reflecting person. On this account, the paper argues, on the one hand, that both phenomenological reflection and hyperreflexivity can be viewed as forms of reflection characterized by loss of the world. On the other hand, by construing the phenomenological loss as imaginative vis-à-vis the real loss of hyperreflexivity, the paper emphasizes a difference between the two domains.     

Authoritarian Disbeliefs in Diversity

Ethnic diversity poses a threat to authoritarians, as it indicates non-conformism to group norms and poses a threat to group conformity. According to authoritarian dynamic theory, threats elicit authoritarian reactions in people with authoritarian predispositions. In the present article we tested a mediation model derived from authoritarian dynamic theory in a sample of 171 students. As expected, authoritarian predisposition negatively predicted diversity beliefs. This effect was fully mediated by an authoritarian manifestation, that is, authoritarian aggression. The two other components of right-wing authoritarianism, authoritarian submission and conventionalism, did not mediate the effect. Results confirm contemporary research on authoritarianism and the differentiation of authoritarian predispositions and its manifestations.     

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? The interweaving of values and science

The role of values in the scientific process is widely debated. But evidence and values cannot be neatly separated. Instead, values infuse the entire scientific process, starting with the choice of research questions. Research avenues are selected based on prior beliefs about the workings of the world. In fact, informally assigned prior probabilities and normalizing constants play an essential role in distinguishing causes from correlations and ignoring irrelevant associations that would otherwise be suggested by raw data. But since these initial probabilities often have a heterogeneous pedigree – often not all that went into their formation is known or knowable – it becomes difficult to cleanly separate evidence from values. At the same time, this reality does not undermine science’s unique status in generating knowledge. This is because it is not the evidence per se generated by science, but rather the method by which science generates it, that justifies science’s privileged role.