Psychology Commons^™

Outlier, Or A Statistical Explanation Of Fear, Erika Dyquisto

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Postscript

As a seventh grader, I would sit in algebra class thinking I understood what my teacher had explained -- the order of operations or how to factor a polynomial -- but I would get home, try to do my homework, and my “knowledge” was gone. I had a vague idea that these formulas were about complicated relationships: the division and commonalities of beings. But just as I didn’t have the experience to allow me to discern the true nature of the human relationships these abstract concepts could represent, I didn’t know how to apply these new calculations to anything …

Fall To Grace, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Fall to Grace (2013) directed by Alexandra Pelosi.

Touchy Feely, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Touchy Feely (2013) directed by Lynn Shelton.

Exploring Four Barriers Experienced By African Americans In Healthcare: Perceived Discrimination, Medical Mistrust, Race Discordance, And Poor Communication, Adolfo Gabriel Cuevas

Dissertations and Theses

For many health conditions, African Americans bear a disproportionate burden of disease, injury, death, and disability compared to European Americans. African Americans also use health services less frequently than do European Americans and this underuse of services contributes to health disparities in the United States. Studies have shown that some disparities are present not as a result of poor access to care, but, to a certain extent, as a result of the experiences patients have at their doctors' offices. It is, therefore, essential to understand African American patients' perspectives and experiences with healthcare providers. Past studies have shown that four …

The Effect Of Argumentative Task Goal On The Quality Of Argumentative Discourse, Merce Garcia-Mila, Sandra Gilabert, Sibel Erduran, Mark Felton

Faculty Publications

In argumentative discourse, there are two kinds of activity-dispute and deliberation-that depend on the argumentative task goal. In dispute the goal is to defend a conclusion by undermining alternatives, whereas in deliberation the goal is to arrive at a conclusion by contrasting alternatives. In this study, we examine the impact of these tasks goals on the quality of argumentative discourse. Sixty-five junior high school students were organized into dyads to discuss sources of energy. Dyads were formed by members who had differing viewpoints and were distributed to one of two conditions: 31 dyads were asked to discuss with the goal …

Religion And Spirituality In Mental And Physical Well-Being Of Korean And White Americans, Mila Kil

Wayne State University Dissertations

An increasing number of researchers have confirmed the important role of religion and spirituality, not only in the psychological and emotional domains but also in physical health. Several researchers note that various forms of spirituality and religiousness can help Asian immigrants cope with the upheavals of immigration, adaptation to a new country, and other difficult personal and social transformations related to being in a new culture. Especially for Korean immigrants, churches and religious organizations act as a powerful support group. However, few empirical studies have paid attention to this topic, considering the importance of religion and spirituality to most individuals. …

Music And Movement Share A Dynamic Structure That Supports Universal Expressions Of Emotion, Beau Sievers, Larry Polansky, Michael Casey, Thalia Wheatley

Dartmouth Scholarship

Music moves us. Its kinetic power is the foundation of human behaviors as diverse as dance, romance, lullabies, and the military march. Despite its significance, the music-movement relationship is poorly understood. We present an empirical method for testing whether music and movement share a common structure that affords equivalent and universal emotional expressions. Our method uses a computer program that can generate matching examples of music and movement from a single set of features: rate, jitter (regularity of rate), direction, step size, and dissonance/visual spikiness. We applied our method in two experiments, one in the United States and another in …

There Is No Normal, Meghan Donohoe

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Honorable Mention

Dear Christopher, Abby Shelley

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Second Place

The Importance Of Female Choice: Evolutionary Perspectives On Constraints, Expressions, And Variations, David Frederick, Tania A. Reynolds, Maryanne L. Fisher

Psychology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

This chapter introduces the reader to some of the influential perspectives on female mate choice in human evolutionary biology, including parental investment theory. We then present two key theories in evolutionary psychology that have been applied to understand variations in women’s mating preferences and choices: sexual strategies theory and strategic pluralism theory. Although the importance of female choice has gained widespread acceptance in the biological sciences, the influence that female choice has on mating systems can be limited by many factors, such as control over mating decisions by parents and men’s control over women’s sexuality. Despite these constraints on female …

An Introduction To The Kpsa Commonwealth Review Of Political Science, Michael Hail

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

It is an honor to serve as the Senior Editor for this inaugural issue of the Commonwealth Review of Political Science. In my capacity as Executive Secretary-Treasurer of KPSA, I was given the responsibility to develop the initial plans for the journal and then to implement its establishment and operations. While this task has been greater than imagined, the support from numerous colleagues has been equally great in bringing the journal to realization. I am writing this article to explain the development and purpose of this journal, but also to acknowledge the many leaders of KPSA that helped to make …

(Marxian-Psychoanalytic) Biopolitics & Bioracism, A. Kiarina Kordela

German Studies Faculty Publications

The full issue can be found at http://re-press.org/books/penumbra.

Longitudinal Course Of Female Eating Disorder Risk At Brigham Young University, Lane Fischer, Jacob Fischer, Lanae Valentine, Erin Winters, Joy Wiechmann, Karen Gochnour, Kristina Hansen, Maren Kanekoa

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

Three cohorts of entering freshman women were assessed over the course of four years at Brigham Young University (BYU). The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26) and the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ) were administered at the beginning of each fall and winter semester. Results showed (a) steadily decreasing average levels of eating disorder risk and body shape dissatisfaction over time, which was mirrored in each cohort; (b) significantly lower eating disorder risk than other college samples; (c) a typically high percentage of women with clinically significant body shape dissatisfaction; (d) significant correlation between the EAT-26 and the BSQ; and (e) notable subgroups …

Wisdom From A Lost Friend To A New Friend, Veronica Murphy

Common Reading Essay Contest Winners

Third Place

Relationship Adjustment In African American/White Interracial Couples, Elizabeth Rose Muino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interracial intimate partnerships are at greater risk for relationship dissolution (i.e., divorce or permanent separation in cohabitating couples) than their endogamous counterparts (Bratter & King, 2008). However, a disparity in dissolution rates exists between African American male/White female pairings and African American female/White male pairings. This study sought to elucidate psychological variables that may be related to this sizable discrepancy. It was hypothesized that differences between these pairings exist with regard to color-blindness, empathy, sexism, and relationship adjustment. It was further hypothesized that color-blindness, empathy, and sexism, as controlled for by gender and race, would predict relationship adjustment.

Participants included …

Do You Have The Personality For Teaching Music?, David W. Snyder

Faculty Publications - Music

Six different classes of music education majors enrolled in a large Midwestern university were asked to take an online personality survey and then were tracked through graduation. Personality types, as determined by the Myers- Briggs Personality Type test, were then examined for how they related to choice of major and attrition within the music education degree program. The hope was to combine these findings with other research done on personality and get a snap shot of what personality types are drawn to teaching choir and further what types persist through graduation.

Contemplative Inquiry In Movement: Managing Writer´S Block In Academic Writing, Eva Bojner Horwitz, Cecilia Stenfors, Walter Osika

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This exploratory study stems from a meditation exercise in contemplative inquiry with transdisciplinary researchers. A master’s student with writers block was asked to perform body movements reflecting a thesis writing process over time. An interview with a phenomenological hermeneutic method was used to uncover the significance of the student’s experience during the exercise, including bodily sensations, feelings, and thoughts. New embodied knowledge helped the student to enable identification and acceptance of both adverse and blocking information. By systematically using a “thinking in movement” approach after applying body movements, new self-confidence was generated in the writing process. The interpretation of the …

The Ethno-Epistemology Of Transpersonal Experience: The View From Transpersonal Anthropology, Charles D. Laughlin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper introduces the topic of ethno-epistemology with regards to transpersonal experiences. The distinction between polyphasic and monophasic cultures is introduced and the interaction between a society’s world view and individual transpersonal experience is explained using the cycle of meaning model. A link to philosophical work on “natural epistemology” is made and the importance of the “projectability” of cultural theories of experience is discussed. The individual contributions to this special section of the journal are introduced.

Dreaming And Reality: A Neuroanthropological Account, Charles D. Laughlin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

In what sense is dreaming real to people of different cultures? How do they come to conclude that dreaming is real, and how do they use dreams to expand their knowledge and control of real events? The reader is introduced to dream anthropology and shown that there are universal patterns to how dreams are experienced, expressed, and used by societies. The distinction between monophasic and polyphasic cultures is described, the latter being the majority of societies that consider dreaming as being in some sense real. Neuroscience supports the notion that there is a natural realism behind the experience of reality …

The Self: A Transpersonal Neuroanthropological Account, Charles D. Laughlin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

The anthropology of the self has gained momentum recently and has produced a significant body of research relevant to interdisciplinary transpersonal studies. The notion of self has broadened from the narrow focus on cultural and linguistic labels for self-related terms, such as person, ego, identity, soul, and so forth, to a realization that the self is a vast system that mediates all the aspects of personality. This shift in emphasis has brought anthropological notions of the self into closer accord with what is known about how the brain mediates self-as-psyche. Numerous examples from the ethnography of the self are given, …

Dream-Spirits And Innovation In Aboriginal Australia’S Western Desert, Robert Tonkinson

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Among the Mardu Aborigines, dreams (kapukurri; jukurrpa) may carry at least the same weight as the events of waking life. ‘Travelling’ in dream-spirit form enhances the possibility of revelations both dangerous and enlightening. In the Australian case, a major cultural dilemma is to accommodate and rationalize an inevitable dynamism when the dominant ideology is one of timelessness and stasis. Two key cultural symbols, the Dreaming and the Law, still substantially shape worldviews and behaviour of the Martu people, who live in the remote Western Desert region. Much of my focus is on a category of popular, largely public contemporary ritual …

Understanding Bohm’S Holoflux: Clearing Up A Conceptual Misunderstanding Of The Holographic Paradigm And Clarifying Its Signifigance To Transpersonal Studies Of Consciousness, Mark A. Schroll

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Throughout the past 31 years transpersonal anthropologists and transpersonal psychologists seeking a scientific language to discuss anomalous phenomena and the farther reaches of human nature (or to invoke a discussion of ultimate reality, universal mind or cosmic consciousness) have referred to the holographic paradigm, the conceptual origin of which is directly related to David Bohm’s implicate order theory. In 1982 and 1984 Bohm discussed the holographic paradigm’s limitations (and more specifically his concept of holomovement) to accurately represent his implicate order theory, suggesting instead the more precise conceptual reference holoflux; yet the limited publication of this correction has not been …

Searching For Wild Elephants In The North Georgia Forests: The Saga Of Writing A Transpersonal Dissertation At A Mainstream University, Harris L. Friedman

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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Editor's Introduction, Glenn Hartelius

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

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“Say From Whence You Owe This Strange Intelligence”: Investigating Explanatory Systems Of Spiritualist Mental Mediumship Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Elizabeth C. Roxburgh, Chris A. Roe

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Walsh and Vaughan (1993) defined transpersonal experiences as those “in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche or cosmos” (p. 203). One population who regularly report such experiences are mediums. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten spiritualist mediums to explore their lived experience, such as how they communicate with the deceased, the meaning of spirit guide phenomena, and the role of mediumship, regardless of the actual ontology of mediumship. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) identified three themes: explanatory systems of mediumship, spirit guides as transcendental …

Implications And Consequences Of Post-Modern Philosophy For Contemporary Perspectives On Transpersonal And Spiritual Experience I. The Later Foucault And Pierre Hadot On A Post-Socratic This-Worldly Mysticism, Harry Hunt

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

While Michel Foucault is chiefly known for his historical relativism and his critique of modern institutional power over the individual, his late writings, as further extended by Pierre Hadot, centered on the post-Socratic spiritual practices of the experience of here and now presence or Being in the Stoics, Epicureans, and Cynics. For Foucault the positive, expansive self-actualization common to these traditions, and contrasting with Christian self-renunciation, offers a guidance for a contemporary spiritual crisis in valuation of the person. For Hadot each of the post-Socratic traditions was based on the imitation and further development of key characteristics of Socrates, much …

Robert Frost's "Mending Wall" As An Allegory Of Tolerance: Understanding, Acceptance, And Invitation, Kristina Hansen

Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy

Lane Fischer’s discussion of the nature of law in Turning Freud Upside Down (2005) describes tolerance as the combination of understanding, acceptance, and invitation to do better. This conceptualization of tolerance is equated to love for the other. The poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost is analyzed as an allegory of tolerance so defined.

Belief Is Not Experience: Transformation As A Tool For Bridging The Ontological Divide In Anthropological Research And Reporting, Bonnie Glass-Coffin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

For more than a hundred years, anthropologists have recorded stories of beliefs in other-than-human sentience and consciousness, yet we have most frequently insisted on contextualizing these stories in terms of cultural, epistemological, or ontological relativism. In this paper, I ask why we have had such a hard time taking reports of unseen realms seriously and describe the transformative role of personal experience as a catalyst for change in anthropological research and reporting.

Bowling Online: The Internet And The New Social Capital, Jason Gainous, Kevin M. Wagner

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

The decline thesis proponents in the social capital literature have largely ignored the fastest growing venue for new social capital formation - the Internet. We argue that the Internet is making a larger impact than the current research acknowledges. Using survey data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project combined with a survey of college students, we confirm a strong positive relationship between online social networking and political participation. Further, we present evidence that, at least in 2008 election, there was a bias toward voting for Democrats among those who utilized online social networking services including Facebook and Twitter. …

Imperium Et Sacerdotium: Universalism, Fragmentation, And New Medievalism, Jeremy Wells

Commonwealth Review of Political Science

Contemporary international relations theory suffers from a stubborn reliance on the Westphalian notion of the state system. Theoretically, the sovereign state is the supreme political unit in world politics and is the only political unit with access to international decision-making. However, in the real world, globalization has led to the development of a myriad of transnational associations. Added to the complex of regional, international, and even supranational governing structures, these organizations and associations have created a web of interaction that works above, below, and across states. While skeptics question the political ramifications of globalization, it is without doubt that modern …