Do Trust-Based Beliefs Mediate the Associations of Frequency of Private Prayer with Mental Health? A Cross-Sectional Study

Significant associations of private prayer with mental health have been found, while mechanisms underlying these associations are largely unknown. This cross-sectional online study (N = 325, age 35.74, SD 18.50, 77.5 % females) used path modeling to test if trust-based beliefs (whether, when, and how prayers are answered) mediated the associations of prayer frequency with the Anxiety, Confusion, and Depression Profile of Mood States-Short Form scales. The association of prayer and depression was fully mediated by trust-based beliefs; associations with anxiety and confusion were partially mediated. Further, the interaction of prayer frequency by stress was associated with anxiety.     

Correction for Range Restriction in Meta‐Analysis Revisited: Improvements and Implications for Organizational Research

In this study, we present a more accurate method for correcting for range restriction (Case V) that expands upon Bryant and Gokhale's (1972) method. We further present detailed steps to incorporate the Case V method into Schmidt and Hunter's (2015) psychometric meta‐analysis methods (both individual correction and artifact distribution approaches). We then evaluate the accuracy of the Case V method vis‐à‐vis existing methods. Monte‐Carlo simulation results indicate that the Case V method provides very accurate estimates for the mean true score correlation and reasonably accurate estimates for the true standard deviation. More important, Case V almost always provides more accurate results than alternative methods (particularly, Case IV). To illustrate how the Case V method works with real data, we conduct a reanalysis of Judge, Heller, and Mount's (2002) meta‐analysis examining the relationships between the Big 5 personality traits and job satisfaction. Results indicate that the true score correlations between the Big 5 traits and job satisfaction have been underestimated, whereas their true standard deviations have been overestimated. Implications for range restriction corrections in organizational research are discussed.     

Visual perspective in remembering and episodic future thought

According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, remembering and episodic future thinking are supported by a common set of constructive processes. In the present study, we directly addressed this assertion in the context of third-person perspectives that arise during remembering and episodic future thought. Specifically, we examined the frequency with which participants remembered past events or imagined future events from third-person perspectives. We also examined the different viewpoints from which third-person perspective events were remembered or imagined. Although future events were somewhat more likely to be imagined from a third-person perspective, the spatial viewpoint distributions of third-person perspectives characterizing remembered and imagined events were highly similar. These results suggest that a similar constructive mechanism may be at work when people remember events from a perspective that could not have been experienced in the past and when they imagine events from a perspective that could not be experienced in the future. The findings are discussed in terms of their consistency with—and as extensions of—the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis.     

Multi-Modal CTL: Completeness,Complexity, and an Application

We define a multi-modal version of Computation Tree Logic (ctl) by extending the language with path quantifiers E ^δ and A ^δ where δ denotes one of finitely many dimensions, interpreted over Kripke structures with one total relation for each dimension. As expected, the logic is axiomatised by taking a copy of a ctl axiomatisation for each dimension. Completeness is proved by employing the completeness result for ctl to obtain a model along each dimension in turn. We also show that the logic is decidable and that its satisfiability problem is no harder than the corresponding problem for ctl. We then demonstrate how Normative Systems can be conceived as a natural interpretation of such a multi-dimensional ctl logic. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Teachers' choice of punishment as a function of a student's gender,age, race,and IQ level

Evidence suggests that teachers treat students differently according to various characteristics, including demographic factors and academic labels. An attempt was made to discover whether teachers' recommendations of punishment would differ according to the students' age, race, gender, IQ level, and type of offense. Punishment was recommended for a hypothetical student in a fighting, a stealing, and a cheating situation. The results revealed that southern white female teachers generally reported that they would recommend more severe punishment for males than for females and for white males than for black males. It was noted that these results occured despite the fact that teachers differed in age, number of years of teaching experience, grade levels taught, and education level.     

Anorexia Nervosa and the Analyst’s Paternal Function: Response to Schoen,Zerbe, and Boulware

To expand upon the commentaries by Schoen, Zerbe, and Boulware (this issue), I clarify my thinking about the entropic body as a defensive structure. I then introduce my own theorizing about the relationship between agency and anorexia nervosa. In agreement with Schoen that these patients relegate their agency to the somatic realm, I highlight the aggressivity of that agency. Amplifying Zerbe’s recognition of the patient’s “father hunger,” I point out the importance of the paternal presence in helping these patients to modulate their aggression and, in the process, develop their agency.     

The Entropic Body: Primitive Anxieties and Secondary Skin Formation in Anorexia Nervosa

This paper develops a metapsychological view of anorexia nervosa, including not only its symptomatic presentation but also its etiology and characteristic psychic and relational styles. Because patients with anorexia are understood as not having internalized maternal comforting functions in the period of separation-individuation, they are unable to digest trauma experiences of infancy. I argue that the anorexic patient’s disturbed relationship with food reflects distortions in transitional object usage. Lacking the ability to contain intense anxieties about disintegration and falling apart, patients with anorexia must find other ways to hold themselves together. The fear of getting fat expressed by these patients is one way that this fear of disintegration is expressed. Furthermore, the almost addictive experience of emaciation holds the personality together. Elaborating this idea, I develop the notion of the entropic body, a particular version of the false body (Goldberg, 2004) employed by patients with anorexia nervosa in an attempt to compensate for absent maternal comforting functions. This body-state (Petrucelli, 2014), which develops against a background of profound early trauma, eschews hunger and dependence in favor of omnipotently controlled protection.