Mothers' Impact on Daughters' Cardiovascular Reactivity in a High‐Threat Context: An Immersive Virtual Environment Study

Applying Attachment Theory, research on confirmation, the Entropy Model of Uncertainty, and the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat, this investigation examined the role of mothers' communication on adolescents' cardiovascular response to threat. An experimental design allowed for the manipulation of maternal response to daughters experiencing a rapidly approaching wildfire in an immersive virtual environment. Results revealed complexities in the relative benefits of maternal vocalic presence during high‐threat situation, with the mother's history of confirming feedback playing an important role in daughters' cardiovascular response. Implications for knowledge are addressed and methodological possibilities of using immersive virtual environments are noted.     

Sexuality and Christian Tradition

This essay aims to clarify the debate over same‐sex unions by comparing it to the fourth‐century conflict concerning the nature of Jesus Christ. Although some suppose that the council of Nicaea reiterated what Christians had always believed, the Nicene theology championed by Athanasius was a dramatic innovation that only won out through protracted struggle. Similarly, despite the widespread assumption that Christian tradition univocally condemns homosexuality, the concept of sexuality is a nineteenth‐century invention with no exact analogue in the ancient world. Neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality is addressed directly in Christian tradition; for this reason, the significance of older authorities for the modern debate is necessarily indirect. The dichotomy between progressive and conservative positions is therefore misguided: it is necessary neither to abandon tradition for the sake of progress nor to oppose innovation for the sake of fidelity.     

Prayer Behavior in Rural Kilimanjaro,Tanzania

Theories and empirical evidence regarding prayer behavior generally emerge from studies of survey respondents in developed countries. The research we describe here adds to the literature by exploring links between demographic characteristics and the frequency and content of prayers for respondents in rural Tanzania. We surveyed 349 Christian households from six villages in the country's Kilimanjaro region. In some aspects our findings match results from survey research conducted elsewhere, and in other aspects our results differ from those commonly reported in the literature. We suggest that local cultural and socioeconomic conditions may account for the differences in outcomes. These results suggest a need for caution in applying to poor countries theories and expectations drawn from the developed country context.     

Drawing to reconstruct: Pilot study on acknowledging prisoners' internal and external resources in a penitentiary institution

Since the first offender rehabilitation treatments, all theoretical approaches have been focusing on reducing risk factors that may influence recidivism, without satisfactory results. Recent resilience research has instead shown the important mediating or moderating role of protective factors and provided the theoretical principles for the Good Lives Model Comprehensive. This holistic model suggests the importance of integrating the reduction of risk factors with the reinforcement of protective factors in offenders' treatment programs. This combined action is considered the main condition through which offenders are motivated to change their life and develop a sense of agency on their current life conditions. This article presents a pilot study, aimed at analyzing the feasibility of a psychosocial intervention, based on graphic workshops. The purpose of the intervention is helping prisoners strive toward adaptation in jail, and facilitating the redesign of their life beyond bars. Drawing activities allowed prisoners to enhance their own internal and external resources, and recognize risk and protective factors that could influence their successful reintegration into society. The main limit of this study is directly linked to the setting of the penitentiary institution where the study was conducted, which is characterized by a high prisoners' turn over.     

How does anybody live in this strange place? A reply to Samantha Vice

Abstract

Samantha Vice has argued that ‘white’ South Africans are so tainted by the history of racial oppression in their country that they are incapable of attaining a great degree of moral virtue. She recommends that they should live in humility and political silence. There are a number of flaws in her argument. First, none of the characteristics of ‘white’ South Africans that she says provides the basis for these conclusions can distinguish (almost) all ‘white’ South Africans from (almost) all ‘black’ South Africans. Second, because it is not only ‘white’ South Africans but everybody in the world who either perpetrates serious injustice or is tainted by others’ perpetration of it, her argument, if sound, would imply that nobody is capable of great virtue and that everybody ought to be politically silent. Finally, her recommendation that ‘white’ South Africans should be politically silent is a very dangerous one.     

THE ANIMAL BODY MULTIPLE: SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE INVENTION OF HALAL STUNNING

This article proposes a specific kind of ontological investigation in the field of science and religion. I argue that science and religion can create distinct practices that enact multiple realities, and thus they should be seen as more than different views of the same world. By analyzing the details of scientific experiments crucial for the invention of halal stunning, I demonstrate that religion and science are both permeable to the social, the biological, and to each other, and that seemingly incommensurable realities can co-occur in the body of an animal. Here, animals’ modes of existence are interdependent with the technologies being used, and with the web of interactions that they are drawn into. In the process of inventing halal stunning, it is not so much about the same animal body that is thought about differently as it is about animals spanning across multiple, physiological, realities as they are recruited into different webs of interactions to create a new slaughter method.     

DISPENSER OF THE MERCY OF THE GOVERNMENT: Pardons,Justice, and Felony Disenfranchisement

I argue that the aporetic character of clemency must be understood in terms of its unmerited and merited character to achieve the underlying purposes of justice within criminal justice: justice as fairness (punishment must be deserved and proportionate) and justice as restoration (repair of the harm to victims and society and the reintegration of offenders) are paramount goals. Rather than destabilizing political order, pardons can render productive potential tensions between justice as fairness and justice as restoration. Taking as my conceptual point of departure Paul Ricoeur's claims about the suprajuridical and supraethical character of pardon, I develop the argument through three central sections: an excursus into historical and contemporary practices of clemency in the United States; a critical analysis of the merited and unmerited aspects of clemency with respect to remorse and atonement theories within theological and legal discourse; and a normative engagement with pardons and felony disenfranchisement.     

Unique associations between anxiety,depression and motives for approach and avoidance goal pursuit

This study investigated the shared and distinct associations between depressive and anxious symptoms and motives for pursuing personal goals. One hundred and thirty-six undergraduates generated approach and avoidance goals and rated each on intrinsic, identified, introjected and external motives. Anxious and depressive symptoms showed significant unique associations with distinct motives. Specifically, depressive symptoms predicted significant unique variance in intrinsic motivation for approach goals (but not avoidance goals), whereas anxious symptoms predicted significant unique variance in introjected regulation for approach and avoidance goals. Some of these findings were moderated by gender. The findings broadly support the notion that depression is uniquely characterised by reduced enjoyment of approach goal pursuit whereas anxiety is uniquely characterised by pursuit of goals in order to avoid negative outcomes. We suggest that these findings are compatible with regulatory focus theory and suggest that motives for goal pursuit are important in understanding the relation between goals and specific mood disorder symptoms.     

Towards a unified model of aesthetic pleasure in design

In this study we test the Unified Model of Aesthetics (Hekkert, 2014), which posits that the aesthetic sense has evolved to identify and value prospects for safety and accomplishment. The principles of unity-in-variety, most-advanced-yet-acceptable and autonomous-yet-connected are considered manifestations of these conflicting urges at separate levels of stimulus processing. We empirically integrate these principles to gauge their unique contribution to the aesthetic experience, using two distinct surveys (study 1–300 respondents and 20 stimuli, study 2–60 respondents and 24 stimuli). Both surveys confirm the three principles constituting the Unified Model of Aesthetics. The principles are found to operate independently and jointly, although unity-in-variety has the strongest impact on aesthetic pleasure.     

Believers and Their Disbelief

Several recent Roman Catholics who were known for their devotion have left accounts of their troubled faith. I consider three of these: St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Then I tell of the troubled atheism of Jean‐Paul Sartre. Finally, I use texts of Sartre and Teilhard to understand the unsettled nature of belief.