Infants attribute false beliefs to a toy crane

The mentalistic view of early theory of mind posits that infants possess a robust and sophisticated understanding of false belief that is masked by the demands of traditional explicit tasks. Much of the evidence supporting this mentalistic view comes from infants’ looking time at events that violate their expectations about the beliefs of a human agent. We conducted a replication of the violation‐of‐expectation procedure, except that the human agent was replaced by an inanimate agent. Infants watched a toy crane repeatedly move toward a box containing an object. In the absence of the crane, the object changed location. When the crane returned, 16‐month‐old infants looked longer when it turned toward the object's new location, consistent with the attribution of a false belief to the crane. These results suggest that infants spontaneously attribute false beliefs to inanimate agents. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/qqEPPhd9FDo     

Childhood Sexual Abuse and Intimate Partner Violence in a Clinical Sample of Men: The Mediating Roles of Adult Attachment and Anger Management

This study examined the association between men’s experience of childhood sexual abuse and later perpetration of intimate partner violence, considering the roles of attachment insecurity and poor anger regulation. The sample was 302 Canadian men undergoing counseling for relationship difficulties or aggression. They completed questionnaires assessing childhood sexual abuse, the two dimensions of attachment insecurity (anxiety and avoidance), anger regulation processes, physical and psychological aggression, and social desirability bias. Path analyses showed that men who experienced childhood sexual abuse scored higher on attachment anxiety, which in turn was associated with aggressive behaviors directly and through four anger-related variables (trait anger, anger-in, anger-out, and low anger control). Attachment-related avoidance predicted psychological aggression, but not physical aggression, through men’s trait anger and anger-in.     

Book reviews

Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. Peter L. Berger, 1997 Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 216 pp., £13.40 (hb) ISBN 3–11–015562–1

Reflections on Sociology and Theology. David Martin, 1997 Oxford: Clarendon Press viii +257 pp., £30.00 ISBN 0–19–827384–3

Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth‐Century Theology and Philosophy. Stanley Hauerwas, 1997 Oxford: Westview Press/Harper Collins 242 pp., £21.50 (hb) ISBN 0–8133–3349–0

The Longing for Home. Leroy Rouner, ed., 1997 Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 17 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 248 pp., US$34.00 (hb) ISBN 0–268–01310–1

The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Bernard Spilka, Bruce Hunsberger & Richard Gorsuch, 1996, 2nd edition New York, London: Guilford Press 546 pp., US$70.00, £45.00 (hb) ISBN 1–57230–116–3

America's Communal Utopias. Donald E. Pitzer, ed., 1997 Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press 537 pp., US$60.00 (hb), US$24.95 (pb) ISBN 0–8078–2299‐X (hb), ISBN 0–8078–4609–0 (pb)

Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium. Donald E. Miller, 1997 Los Angeles, CA: California University Press 254 pp, US$ 27.50 (hb) ISBN 0–520–20938–9

Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States: Mapping Cultural Change since 1970. Mark A. Shibley, 1996 Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press 156 pp., US$24.95 ISBN 1–57003–106–1

Struggle for the Spirit: Religious Transformation and Popular Culture in Brazil and Latin America. David Lehmann, 1996 Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press xiv +244 pp., £39.50 (hb) ISBN 0–7456–1784–0

The Soul of Development: Biblical Christianity and Economic Transformation in Guatemala. Amy L. Sherman, 1997 Oxford: Oxford University Press 224 pp., £37.99 ISBN 0–19–510671–7

Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders. Diane J. Austin‐Broos, 1997 With a Foreword by Raymond T. Smith Chicago; The University of Chicago Press 328 pp., US$19.95, £15.95 (pb), US$50.00, £39.95 (hb) ISBN 0–226–03286–8 (pb), ISBN 0–226–03284–1 (hb)

Black God: The Afro‐Asian Roots of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Religions. Julian Baldick, 1997 London, New York: I.B.Tauris 198 pp., £39.50 (hb) ISBN 1–86064–123–7

Image of the Prophet Muhammad in the West: A Study of Muir, Margoliouth and Watt. Jabal Muhammad Buaben, 1996/1417 AH. Markfield: The Islamic Foundation 394p., £ 9.50 (pb); £19.50 (hb) ISBN 0–86037–261–8 (pb), ISBN 0–86037–260‐X (hb)

New Religious Movements in Western Europe: An Annotated Bibliography. Bibliographies and Indexes in Religious Studies, No. 41 Elisabeth Arweck & Peter B. Clarke, 1997 Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press xliii + 381 pp., £71.50 (hb) ISBN 0–313–24324–7

The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Paul Heelas, 1996 Oxford: Blackwell 266 pp., £45.00, US$49.95 (hb); £13.99; US$21.95 (pb) ISBN 0–631–19331–6 (hb), ISBN 0–631–19332–4 (pb)

New Age Religion and Western Culture. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1996 Leiden & New York: E. J. Brill 580 pp., NLG 235.00, US$ 147.50 (hb), NLG 80.00, US$51.75 (pb) ISBN 90–04–10695–2 (hb), ISBN 90–04–10696–0 (pb)

Embers of Wan Letters from a Quaker Relief Worker in War‐Torn Germany. Grigór McClelland, 1997 London: British Academic Press 230 pp., £25.00 (hb) ISBN 8–6064–312–4

Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ. William A. Christian Jr., 1996 Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press xxii + 544 pp. £32.00 ISBN 0–520–20040–3

The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia. Gerdien Jonker, 1995 Leiden: E. J. Brill xiii + 284 pp., c. £66.00 ISBN 90–04–10162–4

Faith in History: Armenians Rebuilding Community. Susan Paul Pattie, 1997 Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press 282 pp., £38.25 ISBN 1–56098–629–8

The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society. Tanya M. Luhrmann, 1996 Cambridge, MA & London, England: Harvard University Press xi +317 pp., £33.50 (hb), £15.50 (pb) ISBN 0–674–35675–6 (hb), ISBN 0–674–35676–4 (pb)

The Feast of the Sorcerer Practices of Consciousness and Power. Bruce Kapferer, 1997 Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press 367 pp., US$65.00, £51.95 (hb), US$27.50, £21.95 (pb) ISBN 0–226–42411–1 (hb), ISBN 1–226–42413–8 (pb)

Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth. P.F. Kornicki & I.J. McMullen, eds., 1996 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xxv +315 pp., £40.00, US$59.95 ISBN 0–521–55028–9

Teaching Right and Wrong: Moral Education in the Balance. Richard Smith & Paul Standish, eds., 1997 Stoke on Trent, England: Trentham Books 157 pp., £13.95 (pb) ISBN 1–85856–084–5     

Standing up to be counted: understanding Pagan responses to the 2011 British censuses

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, Paganism as a religious identification has grown in Britain and Pagan groups have begun to enter the mainstream of public religious life. The numbers identifying as Pagan increased between the 2001 and 2011 British censuses, but despite Paganism's increased public profile not all Pagans feel willing or confident about openly declaring their Paganism. Census numbers fall well below estimates from other sources. In May 2013, a questionnaire was distributed to Pagans in Britain exploring how they completed the religion question in the 2011 censuses. Some 1700 responded, the largest survey so far of the Pagan community in Britain. This paper discusses Pagans' motivations for identifying or not identifying as Pagan in the censuses and the implications of their responses for the development of Paganism in Britain. More widely, it provides a case study for those seeking to understand the increasing phenomenon in contemporary societies of religious and spiritual communities that are unstructured, amorphous and post-institutional. It demonstrates that censuses and large-scale surveys can become social and community events that shape as well as measure those who participate in them.