Confession in the Movies: The Transmission of Sacramental Tradition Through Film

Not unlike confessional role-playing among seminarians or pre-sacramental practice sessions between parents and children, cinematic confession scenes re-present Penance as a traditional performance, making a teachable cultural moment out of a rite which, when performed in solemnity, cannot be observed or examined directly by a third party. For this reason, movies can be a useful tool for introducing Catholic penitential belief and practice to students in the secular education classrooms, as the author discovered in working with Catholic and non-Catholic students at the University of Toledo. Confession scenes from six films can be related to themes in medieval exempla, church teachings, and folklore related to the Sacrament of Penance

Replication Research

6 pagesThe ability to reproduce an effect — whether through natural observation or a carefully controlled experiment — is generally viewed by scientists as a prerequisite for declaring the effect’s existence. Replication research focuses on the extent to which previously observed effects can be reproduced. This type of research ranges in scope from identical reproduction of reported results using the exact same methods, equipment, conditions, or data to more nuanced explorations of the ways an effect is altered by the use of different methods (sensitivity analyses) or is conditional upon the presence of specific circumstances (generalizability). Though replication research has often failed to proceed smoothly in psychology for several important reasons, the availability of many new resources for replication research bodes well for a more promising future than the recent past

The association between neighborhood social vulnerability and cardiovascular health risk among Black/African American women in the InterGEN Study

BACKGROUND : Black/African American women in the United States are more likely to live in neighborhoods with higher social vulnerability than other racial/ethnic groups, even when adjusting for personal income. Social vulnerability, defined as the degree to which the social conditions of a community affect its ability to prevent loss and suffering in the event of disaster, has been used in research as an objective measure of neighborhood social vulnerability. Black/African American women also have the highest rates of hypertension and obesity in the United States. OBJECTIVES : The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between neighborhood social vulnerability and cardiovascular risk (hypertension and obesity) among Black/African American women. METHODS : We conducted a secondary analysis of data from the InterGEN Study that enrolled Black/African American women in the Northeast United States. Participants’ addresses were geocoded to ascertain neighborhood vulnerability using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index at the census tract level. We used multivariable regression models to examine associations between objective measures of neighborhood quality and indicators of structural racism and systolic and diastolic blood pressure and obesity (body mass index > 24.9) and to test psychological stress, coping, and depression as potential moderators of these relationships. RESULTS : Seventy-four percent of participating Black/African American women lived in neighborhoods in the top quartile for social vulnerability nationally. Women living in the top 10% of most socially vulnerable neighborhoods in our sample had more than a threefold greater likelihood of hypertension when compared to those living in less vulnerable neighborhoods. Objective neighborhood measures of structural racism (percentage of poverty, percentage of unemployment, percentage of residents >25 years old without a high school diploma, and percentage of residents without access to a vehicle) were significantly associated with elevated diastolic blood pressure and obesity in adjusted models. Psychological stress had a significant moderating effect on the associations between neighborhood vulnerability and cardiovascular risk. DISCUSSION : We identified important associations between structural racism, the neighborhood environment, and cardiovascular health among Black/African American women. These findings add to a critical body of evidence documenting the role of structural racism in perpetuating health inequities and highlight the need for a multifaceted approach to policy, research, and interventions to address racial health inequities.http://journals.lww.com/nursingresearchonlinehj2022Psycholog

Personality Predictors of Emergency Department Post-Discharge Outcomes

20 pagesPersonality traits are important predictors of health behaviors, healthcare utilization, and health outcomes. However, we know little about the role of personality traits for emergency department outcomes. The present study used data from 200 patients (effective Ns range from 84 to 191), who were being discharged from the emergency department at an urban hospital, to investigate whether the Big Five personality traits were associated with post-discharge outcomes (i.e., filling prescriptions, following up with primary care physician, making an unscheduled return to the emergency department). Using logistic regression, we found few associations among the broad Big Five domains and post-discharge outcomes. However, results showed statistically significant associations between specific Big Five items (e.g., “responsible”) and the three post-discharge outcomes. This study demonstrates the feasibility of assessing personality traits in an emergency medicine setting and highlights the utility of having information about patients’ personality tendencies for predicting post-discharge compliance.This research was supported by a pilot grant awarded to Daniel K. Mroczek and Mitesh B. Rao from the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, as well as grants from the National Institute of Aging awarded to Daniel K. Mroczek (AG018436; AG064006

Confirmation: a folklore ethnography of Roman Catholic parish practice in Newfoundland

This thesis describes and interprets the practice of the sacrament of confirmation in the context of one Roman Catholic parish in Newfoundland. This sacrament affords a researcher unique opportunities to explore folk-official dynamics in Catholicism. Confirmation often brings the highest official in a diocese, a bishop, into contact with adolescents. As a sacrament of initiation, confirmation draws together persons who are accustomed to "practicing" Catholicism in different ways. -- Historically, Christian bishops in the Western Rite toured extensive areas to bless previously baptized candidates, anoint them with holy oil, and lay hands upon them. Through these actions, candidates were recognized to have received the Holy Spirit and its gifts, as fully initiated Christians. In 1991, 114 candidates were confirmed at St. Cecilia's, a Roman Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of St. John's. -- Unlike theology or sacramental history, more common approaches to this topic, this study approaches the meaning of confirmation from the perspectives of adolescent candidates, their families, and parish leaders. Like recent studies of confirmation by Scandinavian ethnologists, this investigation draws upon oral accounts of confirmations and other data collected through participant observation and interviewing. References to written sources such as city newspaper accounts, local church histories, and archdiocesan reports help portray the significance of confirmation in the context of Newfoundland history. Local beliefs and practices are presented and analyzed to critique theological representations of this Roman Catholic sacrament. Special attention is paid to adolescents' conformative and non-conforrnative play at a preparatory retreat, and to the structure and function of confirmation costume

Confession in the Movies: The Transmission of Sacramental Tradition Through Film

Not unlike confessional role-playing among seminarians or pre-sacramental practice sessions between parents and children, cinematic confession scenes re-present Penance as a traditional performance, making a teachable cultural moment out of a rite which, when performed in solemnity, cannot be observed or examined directly by a third party. For this reason, movies can be a useful tool for introducing Catholic penitential belief and practice to students in the secular education classrooms, as the author discovered in working with Catholic and non-Catholic students at the University of Toledo. Confession scenes from six films can be related to themes in medieval exempla, church teachings, and folklore related to the Sacrament of Penance

Impossible knowledge - extraordinary simultaneous experience narratives as vernacular forms of philosophy

This thesis presents the hypothesis that extraordinary simultaneous experience narratives (ESENs) constitute a category of narrative which may be argued to have existed for many centuries. Emphasis on precise or probable simultaneity between intuitive knowing and a distant crisis, such as death or illness—whether such emphasis is literal or rhetorical in any given version—is a primary, and philosophically important, characteristic of these narratives. This characteristic distinguishes them, in many cases, from stories of prophecy and premonition. Whereas precognition accounts may portray tragedies which arrive some time more clearly after the moment of their anticipation—a day, a week, or a year later, perhaps—ESENs portray correspondences which approach precise simultaneity, separated at most by mere seconds, minutes, or hours within a day—if by any time at all. While premonition stories often describe human crises envisioned before they come to pass, ESENs emphasize the wonder of synchronicity, between crises and their intuitions elsewhere. As such, ESENs sustain a number oi fundamentally different philosophical explanations and beliefs about causality than do precognition stories. Unlike a premonition, an intuition of a distant simultaneous tragedy cannot be explained by folklorists' concept of foreknowledge or what a philosopher might regard, more skeptically, as “backward causation, for it is not the future which appears, so impossibly, to be known. Neither can the fleeting vision of a person dying at that very moment in a distant place be attributed confidently to the agency of any ghost—in time, a death has not yet occurred: the beliefs the stories inspire must conform to the stories' temporality. -- Distinguishing between such story types on the basis of temporality (along with other general thematic features) allows hybrid versions—for example, a story about an ongoing feeling of nameless fear weeks prior to an unexpected death, culminating in a extraordinary simultaneous dream or vision—to be understood and discussed more clearly in terms of philosophical arguments and folk beliefs about causality. This kind of distinction also adds kindling to the interpretive debate surrounding all stories of extraordinary or supernatural experience, a debate in which scholars and storytellers are equally authoritative participants, on the subject of the stories' meanings and possible causes. -- While I have found only one passage in the New Testament which matches the ESEN pattern, many New Testament passages demonstrate that beliefs about the holiness of coincidence existed in early Christianity. Narratives of holy simultaneities are more plentiful in medieval collections of exempla and legend, but these texts carry on the conventions of hour notation and envisioning death and suffering as a moment, conventions which are established in the New Testament. The persistence of these narratives in increasingly secularized contexts for centuries afterward, up to and including 20th-century academic literature and informal North American oral narration, may be explained by the fact that the stories manage to sustain many different interpretations, sacred and secular—psychological and biological ones, alongside the religious and the supernatural. -- Over forty informants participated in this study, in St. John's, Newfoundland, and in Amherst, Massachusetts. Their explanations draw upon multiple belief paradigms—twin biology, genetics, divine intervention, the psychology of divided consciousness, parapsychological processes, and various understandings of coincidence. Most informants explored or at least considered explanations which proceeded from natural, supernatural, and religious premises, rather than limiting themselves to a single line of explanation. For these and other reasons, I present these stories and the speculation they inspire in informal conversation as vernacular forms of philosophy. -- Key words: Death, illness, token, twins, coincidence, narrative, philosophy, telepathy, simultaneity, synchronicity, Newfoundlan

Dollars and Sense: Examining the RFP Process

While the Request for Proposal (RFP) is not an activity that all librarians encounter continually, it is an endeavor that all library service groups and companies undertake as an essential part of their ongoing operations. This article summarizes the 2015 Charleston session entitled “Dollars and Sense: Examining the RFP Process” which delved into the RFP process from multiple viewpoints, serving both as a review of the process itself and as an investigation of how the process can generate positive results for all parties involved. The panel consisted of a librarian from a large academic library, a librarian from a medium‐sized academic library, a vendor representative, and an individual with considerable consortia experience. The academic librarians reviewed the generic and the institution‐specific items that contribute to a successful RFP. The vendor representative discussed how the vendor reviews and crafts a response that fulfills the requirements of the RFP while providing contractual guarantees for themselves. The consortia representative looked at both how they respond to an RFP as well as what they require in an RFP; having a unique perspective of both sending out and receiving RFPs

On replication research

The ability to reproduce an effect — whether through natural observation or a carefully controlled experiment — is generally viewed by scientists as a prerequisite for declaring the effect’s existence. Replication research focuses on the extent to which previously observed effects can be reproduced. This type of research ranges in scope from identical reproduction of reported results using the exact same methods, equipment, conditions, or data to more nuanced explorations of the ways an effect is altered by the use of different methods (sensitivity analyses) or is conditional upon the presence of specific circumstances (generalizability). Though replication research has often failed to proceed smoothly in psychology for several important reasons, the availability of many new resources for replication research bodes well for a more promising future than the recent past