Practitioners of the Divine: Greek Priests and Religious Officials from Homer to Heliodorus

This review essay considers three recent introductory textbooks on Sikhism by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh (Sikhism: An Introduction. New York: I.B. Taurus, 2011), Doris Jakobsh (Sikhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012), and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair (Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). The review begins with a brief historical précis of the early production of texts on Sikhs and Sikhism in North America, as well as the politicized contexts in which they were produced. As heirs to this (and earlier) history, the textbooks examined in the present review share a common premise: namely, each seeks to unsettle what their respective authors understand as the enduring specter of colonialism. The authors and their textbooks recognize the need to better reflect Sikh experience and self-understanding. At the same time, these textbooks illustrate a tremendous range of pedagogical trajectories and heuristic orientations: feminist and aesthetic, disparity and diversity, and conceptual and linguistic. Having used all three of these textbooks in undergraduate classes, the reviewer concludes with some reflections on pedagogy drawn from his own experiences and student responses to the texts.     

What,and Where,Luck is: A Response to Jennifer Lackey

In ‘What Luck Is Not’, Lackey presents counterexamples to the two most prominent accounts of luck: the absence of control account and the modal account. I offer an account of luck that conjoins absence of control to a modal condition. I then show that Lackey's counterexamples mislocate the luck: the agents in her cases are lucky, but the luck precedes the event upon which Lackey focuses, and that event is itself only fortunate, not lucky. Finally I offer an account of fortune. Fortune is luck-involving, and therefore easily confused with luck, but it is not itself lucky.     

Internet Infidelity

SUMMARY

We used a multi-phase Delphi methodology to identify and explore critical issues, interventions, and gender differences in the treatment of Internet infidelity. We developed three representative vignettes related to Internet infidelity and asked twenty experts in extramarital affairs and/or sex addiction to respond to them, both through ratings and open-ended comments. We found little agreement among the experts. We discuss the unique features of Internet relationships, the areas of agreement and disagreement that we found among the experts, and the implications of our findings and the nature of Internet infidelity for both practice and training in marriage and family therapy.     

Metanoia

SUMMARY

The author draws on her experience working with individual men who are violent to their partners to think about the problem of international violence. A parallel is drawn between a man's feeling of “entitlement” to forcefully keep his partner “in line” and feelings of national entitlement to engage in violence to force one group's agenda on another. The differences between morals and taboos are discussed underscoring the community value of that which becomes socially and ethically “unthinkable.”     

Ethnic Differences in Parents' Attitudes toward Girls' Use of Aggression

Few studies have attempted to explain ethnic differences in female aggression. The degree to which ethnic differences exist in the influence of parents' approval of aggression on their preadolescent daughters' use of physical, verbal, and relational aggression was explored in a sample of 97 parent-child dyads. Results indicate that European American parents were more disapproving of their daughters' aggressive behavior than were African American parents. Parents' attitude toward aggression was predictive of European American girls' use of physical and verbal aggression and African American girls' use of relational aggression. Implications for aggression prevention and intervention for girls are discussed.     

The Role of Parenting in Relational Aggression and Prosocial Behavior among Emerging Adults

This study investigated the role of remembered parenting styles and parental psychological control in the prediction of relational aggression and prosocial behavior in a college student sample (N = 323). Participants’ retrospective ratings of how they were parented were related to relational aggression and prosocial behavior; however, somewhat different relationships emerged for African American and White participants. Permissive parenting, authoritative parenting, and parental psychological control predicted relational aggression. Participant race and all 3 parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive) predicted prosocial behavior. Participant race moderated the relationship between psychological control and prosocial behavior. Specifically, parental psychological control was inversely related to prosocial behavior for African American, but not White, participants.     

Predictors of Relational Aggression and the Moderating Role of Religiousness

Predictors of relational aggression and the moderating role of religiousness on associations between relevant predictors and relational aggression were examined in a sample of 244 university students. Increased childhood relational aggression, increased adult relational victimization, lower agreeableness, and lower emotional stability significantly predicted increased adult relational aggression. Prayer moderated the relationship between agreeableness and adult relational aggression and the association between relational victimization and aggression, and religious service attendance moderated the relationship between emotional stability and relational aggression. Results are discussed in terms of the higher level latent personality constructs of self-regulation and communion, which suggest a potential protective function for religiousness in association with relational aggression.     

Relational and Social Aggression and Reflective Processing in a University Sample

This study examined whether the dimension of reflective processing (e.g., deep and elaborative processing) was connected to the use of relational aggressions, social aggression, or both. A convenience sample of 629 college students (66% female, 91.6% White) was surveyed to ascertain the relation between self-reported relational and social aggression and deep and elaborative processing. The overall multivariate regression model was significant, Wilks’s λ = .12, F(4, 2162) = 1010.80, p < .001. Univariate results were used to show that the two predictors (relational and social aggression) significantly and strongly positively predicted the use of deep processing, R² = .81, p < .001, as well as the use of elaborative processing, R² = .87, p < .001. In summary, higher levels of social and relational aggression were related to higher levels of deep and elaborative processing. Implications for these findings are presented.     

Eye gaze patterns reveal how we reason about fractions

ABSTRACT

Fractions are defined by numerical relationships, and comparing two fractions’ magnitudes requires within-fraction (holistic) and/or between-fraction (componential) relational comparisons. To better understand how individuals spontaneously reason about fractions, we collected eye-tracking data while they performed a fraction comparison task with conditions that promoted or obstructed different types of comparisons. We found evidence for both componential and holistic processing in this mixed-pairs task, consistent with the hybrid theory of fraction representation. Additionally, making within-fraction eye movements on trials that promoted a between-fraction comparison strategy was associated with slower responses. Finally, participants who performed better on a non-numerical test of reasoning took longer to respond to the most difficult fraction trials, which suggests that those who had greater facility with non-numerical reasoning attended more to numerical relationships. These findings extend prior research and support the continued investigation into the mechanistic links between numerical and non-numerical reasoning.