SCHOLARS,AMATEURS, AND ARTISTS AS PARTNERS FOR THE FUTURE OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE

We recommend that the future of religion and science involve more partnerships between scholars, amateurs, and artists. This reimagines an underdeveloped aspect of the history of religion and science. Case studies of an undergraduate course examining religious ritual and technology, seminarians reflecting on memory and identity in light of Alzheimer's disease, environmentalists responding to their guilt and shame about climate change, and Chicagoans recognizing the presence of nature in the city show how these partnerships respect insights and experiences of our varied partners, identify and resolve community problems, and advance scholarship. Sourdough starter, a new metaphor, describes these collaborative, nourishing partnerships.     

A Preliminary Study for Exploring Different Sources of Guilt in a Sample of Veterans Who Sought Chaplaincy Services

Limited research has suggested that experiencing guilt may contribute to the risk of suicidal behavior in some veteran populations. Using data collected by chaplains, this study compared the frequency with which 94 veterans with a history of suicide ideation experienced guilt relative to 670 veterans without a history of ideation. We then compared main sources of guilt reported by ideators and nonideators. Ideators reported experiencing guilt significantly more often than nonideators. No differences were noted for the source of guilt among those who reported frequently experiencing this emotion. Ideators with an infrequent experience of guilt significantly more often named life and the military as the main source of this emotion. Clinicians should be mindful of the need to appropriately assess for and address guilt among veterans at increased risk of suicide. A variety of sources, not limited only to military experiences, may contribute to a veteran’s sense of guilt.     

Neighborhood Collective Efficacy Moderates the Association between Maternal Adverse Childhood Experiences and Marital Conflict

In a socio‐demographically diverse sample of 501 caregivers participating in a longitudinal birth cohort study during the childbearing years, we examined whether neighborhood collective efficacy moderated the association between maternal adverse childhood experience (ACEs) and marital conflict. Maternal ACEs were assessed via retrospective reports. Neighborhood collective efficacy was measured via maternal and paternal reports at 2 months, and maternal reports of marital conflict were collected at infant age 2 and 18 months. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that maternal ACEs were associated with increased marital conflict. Neighborhood collective efficacy moderated the association between early maternal ACEs and marital conflict, such that mothers experiencing ACEs had lower levels of marital conflict when exposed to high levels of neighborhood collective efficacy. Results suggest that extra‐familial sources of social support and control, such as feelings of security, trust, order, and connectedness with others, may buffer the effects of early adversity on marital discord.     

Men of Honor Don't Talk: The Relationship Between Masculine Honor and Social Activism Against Criminal Organizations in Italy

Criminal organizations have a strong influence on social, political, and economic life in Italy and other parts of the world. Nonetheless, local populations display collective passivity against organized crime, a phenomenon known as omertà. Omertà is linked to the concepts of honor and masculinity. That is, in order to fit ideological constructions of manliness, individuals should display indifference toward illegal activities and should not collaborate with legal institutions. In two studies, we investigated the link between endorsement of a masculine honor ideology and collective action intentions against criminal organizations (antimafia). Study 1 (N = 121) involved a Northern Italian sample, and Study 2 (N = 301) involved a Southern Italian sample. Across studies, results showed that endorsement of masculine honor ideology was associated with lower willingness to engage in social activism against criminal organizations. This relationship was mediated by attitudes toward criminal organizations (Study 1 and 2) and, in line with the notion of omertà, by lower levels of collective motive and more anxiety about interacting with police (Study 2). Directions for future research are discussed.     

Accused for Involvement in Collective Violence: The Discursive Reconstruction of Agency and Identity by Perpetrators of International Crimes

This study explores discourses about involvement in violent intergroup conflict and international crimes from the perspective of perpetrators. Through a critical discourse analysis of 12 personal interviews carried out with individuals accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes committed during the Yugoslav conflicts, we uncover how their discourse reveals conceptions of lacking agency and powerlessness during the conflict, how it reconstructs power relationships within and between ethnic groups, and how it reflects identity management strategies destined to elude blame and responsibility. Our findings demonstrate how discourses are tainted by the legitimizing framework in which the conflict unfolded but also how they are shaped by the particular context of the communicative situation. Findings are discussed in terms of their significance for international criminal justice and its stated objectives.     

Unus Mundus: A New Approach to The Reading of Complexity

In the last decades of the twentieth century, there was quite a change in the scientific approaches as far as humankind and nature are concerned. The recent discoveries of quantum physics with the phenomenon of entanglement and of the neurosciences with the holographic theory of mind have furthermore amplified the epistemological perspectives of complexity, introducing completely new and amazing hypotheses concerning the human­–universe relationship. Therefore, on the basis of these quantum specifications by Bohm, we can postulate the hypothesis that if all the matter of the universe is also entangled, living matter and the cognition entangled to it, which are at the basis of the network of life, do not represent but a giant living hologram provided with specific information prerogative which, generally speaking, can flow by means of the continuous interaction of the corporeal matter of humankind together with the wider network of the whole. This interaction of humankind with the universe is studied by Ecobiopsychology, which qualifies in the “panorama” of complexity like a new discipline, which relates the informative codes of the living world and their specific languages (the ecological aspect) to the analogous languages of the human body, which sediments in itself the phylogenesis of the world (the biological aspect), to then recover the relationship between the “world” and the human “bios” in its psychological and cultural aspects expressed in myths, in the history of religions, and in the collective images of humanity (the psychological aspects). Ecobiopsychology, referring to the most recent developments of complexity, considers humankind as an organized totality provided with a meaning that can be justified only if contextualized in the relationships with its body, its mind, and its social and cultural dynamics without any of these aspects being privileged the human being, the human unit is to be seen as a node within a broader network. The human­-unity is provided with a specific organization, schema, structure, and process, the outcome of that manifestation of strength and information flowing in a continuous dynamism. The ecobiopsychological model focusing on the constant relationship between the unconscious and the body, in referring to the information “physicality” of the archetype and in evaluating the importance of the synchronicity as a rule able to bind among themselves the information of existential events together with the categories of the different forms of the universe, by means of the vital analogies and the symbols, proposes a holistic Weltanschauung of humankind. This is similar to the most modern conceptions of quantum physics.     

Can psychoanalysis help us to understand the causes and prevention of violence?

As the most adequate theory of human personality yet created, including our propensity for irrational, self-defeating, and self-destructive behavior patterns, psychoanalysis is in a unique position to help us solve the most serious crisis that the human species has been confronted by at any point in its evolutionary history: the threat to its own survival that is caused by its own behavior, namely the compulsion to engage in violence on the largest scale that its technology makes possible, even when that causes the death of the self as well as of others. This continually expanding behavior pattern, which reduces even genocide to a minor footnote compared with the self-extinction of our whole species, is created not only by “apocalyptic” fundamentalism and terrorism (“suicide bombers”), but also by the increasing and only partially preventable proliferation of thermonuclear weapons to national rulers of questionable sanity, and the apparently unpreventable continuation of industrial/economic policies and practices that will, if not reversed, make our own small planet uninhabitable. What makes people place a higher value on the continuation of these behaviors than they place on their own physical survival (or that of their children)? That is the question to which this article proposes at least the beginnings of an answer: that when a person feels shamed and humiliated to a degree that threatens the survival of that fragile and vulnerable psychological construct called his “self” (or of the religious or cultural group with which his self has identified), he will eagerly sacrifice his body (and other peoples’) in the attempt to, as he sees it, save his soul, i.e. his self and his self-esteem. The question then becomes: what are the social and psychological determinants of overwhelming shame and humiliation, and how can we protect people from being exposed to those conditions, or at least enhance their ability to respond to them in ways that are life-preserving rather than life-destroying?     

Collective Narcissism Predicts Hypersensitivity to In‐group Insult and Direct and Indirect Retaliatory Intergroup Hostility

Results of five studies (N = 1596) linked collective narcissism—a belief in in‐group exaggerated greatness contingent on external validation—to direct and indirect, retaliatory hostility in response to situations that collective narcissists perceived as insulting to the in‐group but which fell well beyond the definition of an insult. In Turkey, collective narcissists responded with schadenfreude to the European economic crisis after feeling humiliated by the Turkish wait to be admitted to the European Union (Study 1). In Portugal, they supported hostile actions towards Germans and rejoiced in the German economic crisis after perceiving Germany's position in the European Union as more important than the position of Portugal (Study 2). In Poland, they supported hostile actions towards the makers of a movie they found offensive to Poland (Studies 3 and 5) and responded with direct and indirect hostility towards a celebrity whose jokes about the Polish government they found offensive (Study 4). Comparisons with self‐positivity and in‐group positivity indices and predictors of intergroup hostility indicated that collective narcissism is the only systematic predictor of hypersensitivity to in‐group insult followed by direct and indirect, retaliatory intergroup hostility. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Stereotypical beliefs and psychological well-being of African American adolescent girls: Collective self-esteem as a moderator

African American women are often times characterized by stereotypes that can be traced back to slavery. Those stereotypes have been found to affect many outcomes in an array of domains related to work, intimate relationships, and personal well-being. The literature does not address how these stereotypes may affect adolescent African American girls. This study aimed to fill that gap by examining how the endorsement of stereotypes affects the psychological well-being, specifically stress, in 144 African American adolescent girls (N = 144) who ranged from 12–19 years old. This study goes a step further to investigate whether collective self-esteem can serve as a buffer between endorsement of stereotypes and perceived stress. Using combined mediation–moderation model, the analysis showed that there is a significant positive relationship between stereotypic beliefs and perceived stress that is buffered by moderate to high levels of collective self-esteem. Implications for treatment and policy, as well as educational recommendations are discussed.     

Influence of social context on the relationship between guilt and prosocial behaviour

While some previous researchers have found that guilt encourages prosocial behaviour towards a victim at the expense of other people, others have found the opposite, that is, people allocate resources at the expense of themselves. The present research used a hypothetical scenario method to determine which of these patterns would be replicated in the collectivistic context of Japanese society. In addition, we separated the cause of feelings of guilt into having caused harm and being at fault, and examined in more detail the effect of guilt on prosocial behaviour. Our results show that, in line with the second set of previous researchers, participants who were induced to feel guilt for having caused harm were more likely to allocate their resources to their victim at the expense of themselves than were individuals in the no‐harm condition. This suggests that differences in social context influence the effect of guilt on prosocial behaviour in different ways.