Video games as meaningful entertainment experiences

We conducted an experiment to examine individuals’ perceptions of enjoyable and meaningful video games and the game characteristics and dimensions of need satisfaction associated with enjoyment and appreciation. Participants (N = 512) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups that asked them to recall a game that they found either particularly fun or particularly meaningful, and to then rate their perceptions of the game that they recalled. Enjoyment was high for both groups, though appreciation was higher in the meaningful- than fun-game condition. Further, enjoyment was most strongly associated with gameplay characteristics and satisfaction of needs related to competency and autonomy, whereas appreciation was most strongly associated with story characteristics and satisfaction of needs related to insight and relatedness

Creator and Creation: Artistic Development in Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, the Ambiguities and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

This study focuses on the primary protagonists of Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, the Ambiguities (1852) and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Pierre Glendinning and Stephen Dedalus, as well as Isabel Banford, a supporting character in Melville’s novel, to illustrate how the tensions of contemporary society have a direct influence on the artist-hero’s representations and perspectives on self-realization. This thesis will draw on the major concepts of the artist and artist fiction as put forth in Otto Rank’s Art and Artist (1916), Herbert Marcuse’s “Der Deutsche Künstlerroman” (“The German Artist Novel”, 1922), and Maurice Beebe’s Ivory Towers and Sacred Founts (1964). The the specificities of the artistic nature development are analyzed according to each character and the importance of environment and experience for the artistic realization and the essential relations between artistic creation and the growth of personality are addressed

Why “Good” Followers Go “Bad”: The Power of Moral Disengagement

Moral disengagement answers the question of why “good” followers (those with high personal standards) go “bad” (engage in unethical and illegal activities). In moral disengagement, actors set aside the self-condemnation they would normally experience in order to engage in immoral activities with a clear conscience. Moral disengagement mechanisms encourage individuals to justify harmful behavior, to minimize personal responsibility for harm, and to devalue victims. The follower role makes individuals more vulnerable to moral disengagement. While all followers are susceptible to moral disengagement, some are more vulnerable than others due to such personal antecedents as lack of empathy, rigid and authoritarian beliefs, low self-esteem, and fear and anxiety. Retaining a sense of moral agency is the key to resisting moral disengagement. Exercise of moral agency can be encouraged by recognizing personal vulnerability; by never losing sight of the fact that “I” am at the center of any action, and by the on-going practice of self-questioning, such as modeled by the Quakers (Society of Friends)

Remembering Esperanza: a cultural-political theology for North American praxis

Reviewed Book: Taylor, Mark Lewis. Remembering Esperanza: a cultural-political theology for North American praxis. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990

Mary Slessor’s Legacy: A Model For 21st Century Missionaries

The story of Miss Mary Mitchell Slessor is not a story of a clairvoyant legend who existed in an abstract world but a historical reality that worked around the then Old Calabar estuary and died on the 15th of January, 1915 at Ikot Oku Use, near Ikot Obong in the present day Akwa Ibom State and was buried at “Udi Mbakara” (Whiteman’s grave) in Calabar, Cross River State. Mary was one of those early missionaries that went to villages in the then Old Calabar where few missionaries dared to go in order to bring hope and light to the people that were in darkness. Through her evangelistic efforts, schools and hospitals were erected on her initiative, babies and twins saved from death, barbaric rites and customs stopped because of her undaunted love and passion for God and the people. After a centenary of death, one can easily conclude that what immortalizes a person is not what he does for himself but what he does for others. Mary Slessor’s name, work and care for twins can never be forgotten even in another century to come. The tripartite purpose of this paper is to first examine the stepping out of Mary Slessor from her comfort zone to Calabar (her initial struggle), her passion for the people of Old Calabar and her relational method of evangelism that endeared her to the heart of the people