A Discussion Regarding Various Animals\u27 Abilities to Make Music and Move Rhythmically to Songs

This project involves exploring the presence of music and rhythmic abilities in specific animal species. The main subjects are whales, sea lions, gorillas, elephants, birds, and mice. The goal of this project was to compare their abilities to those of humans, and overall, determine whether such abilities are considered musical. Cases where animals demonstrate the ability, both learned and innate, to move to a beat are analyzed, along with animals who demonstrate musical vocal abilities naturally in the wild. The previously unknown frequencies of whales, mice, and elephants, are brought to light. These findings bring up the possibility of even more animals having musical abilities than those examined in this project

National Collaborative Research on How Students Learn Integration: Final Report

A relational attachment model of how students learn integration at Rosemead and Fuller was replicated with clinical psychology doctoral students at George Fox University and Wheaton College (Illinois). Struc- tural equation modeling of multitrait-multimethod matrices tested how well faculty members could recognize what students readily identify in professors as most useful to students’ integration, and Latent Semantic Anal- ysis interpreted what students found most important

Effect of Religiosity and Combat Exposure on Combat Veteran Posttraumatic Growth

Investigates two research questions

A Gratitude Intervention in a Christian Church Community

This field experiment examined the effects of a gratefulness intervention in the context of a Christian church congregation. Two Christian congregations with comparable demographic and socio-economic characteristics were enrolled and assigned to the experimental and comparison conditions. The gratitude intervention was developed collaboratively with church leaders. Though within-subject effects were found for psychological well-being, spiritual well-being, life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, daily spiritual experiences, and favorable views of psychology and interdisciplinary collaboration, the comparison group showed similar increases to the intervention group. Thus, the effects of the gratitude intervention were supported within but not across groups. No significant changes occurred on measures of interpersonal engagement. This research represents the first quasi-experiment to study a gratitude intervention within a faith congregation. In spite of methodological limitations, it highlights the potential benefit of gratitude interventions designed in collaboration with clergy

Psychologists’ Attitudes and Ethical Concerns Regarding the Use of Social Networking Web Sites

Most psychologists seek to control self-disclosures they make to patients, but the Internet’s rapid development and widespread use over the past decade have introduced new problems for psychologists trying to avoid inappropriate disclosures. A total of 695 psychology graduate students and psychologists were surveyed about their current use of social networking Web sites (SNWs), opinions regarding regulation of online activities by the American Psychological Association (APA), and interactions in clinical work as a result of online activities. Established psychologists seldom use SNWs and may lack the experience to provide relevant supervisory guidance. No consensus about the need for APA guidelines emerged. Historically, APA has not issued guidelines in technological areas of rapid change. Thus, graduate training and continuing education should address the ethics of SNWs

Resolving Anger toward God: Lament as an Avenue toward Attachment

Psychologists have mostly overlooked the topic of anger toward God. The current study tested an intervention based on the biblical psalms of lament, a consisting of 20 devotional readings and weekly experiential assignments, delivered electronically over a four-week period. A total of 192 college students at Christian institutions across the United States completed the study, and were randomly assigned to the experimental condition, an attention control condition, or a no-contact condition. The expected findings--that the experimental intervention would cause decreased feelings of anger and complaint toward God, as well as increased intimacy with God over time--were not confirmed. However, those participants who reported maximum compliance with the intervention showed increased ratings on Communion with God. Implications are discussed

The Effects of Grace Interventions in Church Communities

Grace remains little studied though several recent studies have developed promising ways to measure grace. Here we report two studies involving grace interventions as part of an ongoing investigation of positive psychology in the context of Christian church communities, Study One used a crossover design in which two congregations were measured on grace and other variables at the outset, and again after phases one and two. One congregation received a grace intervention during phase one and the second during phase two. Results showed increased scores on grace but not an expected increase in marital satisfaction among married participants. Study Two used a similar design with two additional congregations to assess effects of a grace intervention on selfforgiveness. As expected, congregants receiving the grace intervention showed increases in trait self-forgiveness when compared to those in the wait-list

Experiencing Grace: A Review of the Empirical Literature

Positive psychologists have used science to understand many virtues but have only just started to study grace, recently defined as ‘ . . . the gift of acceptance given unconditionally and voluntarily to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver’. The purpose of the current article is to provide a systematic review of all empirical studies (published and unpublished) on grace. Broadly, the empirical study of grace has focused on what people believe and how people experience both divine and human grace. Additionally, empirical attention has shifted to explore outcomes of grace-based interventions (e.g., congregation-wide interventions, marital interventions). In general, beliefs and experiences of grace were associated with (a) positive mental health outcomes, (b) religiosity, (c) virtue development, and (d) interpersonal functioning. Human grace has not been extensively explored and divine grace has been studied mostly among Christians; future studies should address these limitations and explore causal relationships