How Religion Influences Peacemaking

Although a large amount of scholarly and popular attention has been devoted to understanding the relationship between religion and violence, comparatively less attention has been paid to the relationship between religion and peace. Yet, there are many reasons to believe that religion can be a powerful force for peacemaking. Qualitative research indicates that religious leaders and religious people are often credible peace brokers who are respected in their communities, have ready access to cultural peace-promoting concepts like reconciliation and forgiveness, and may be motivated by non-partisan factors like fulfilling religious obligations or furthering God’s will. Despite this promising research, little large-scale quantitative data has yet been collected from individuals engaged in peacemaking. In this study, the relationship between religion and peacemaking is explored using survey data collected from 171 international peacemakers, the majority of whom are Christian and white. The results indicate that religion influences peacemaking in at least two non-mutually exclusive ways: through motivating religious individuals to participate in peacemaking and through the use of religious tactics by those engaged in peacemaking. Through both means, religion influences commitment to continuing peacemaking, subjective evaluations of success by peacemakers, and hope for success in the future

Maternal behaviours and adult offspring behavioural deficits are predicted by maternal TNFα concentration in a rat model of neurodevelopmental disorders

Exposure to inflammatory stressors during fetal development is a major risk factor for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in adult offspring. Maternal immune activation (MIA), induced by infection, causes an acute increase in pro-inflammatory cytokines which can increase the risk for NDDs directly by inducing placental and fetal brain inflammation, or indirectly through affecting maternal care behaviours thereby affecting postnatal brain development. Which of these two potential mechanisms dominates in increasing offspring risk for NDDs remains unclear. Here, we show that acute systemic maternal inflammation induced by the viral mimetic polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid (poly I:C) on gestational day 15 of rat pregnancy affects offspring and maternal behaviour, offspring cognition, and expression of NDD-relevant genes in the offspring brain. Dams exposed to poly I:C elicited an acute increase in the pro-inflammatory cytokine tumour necrosis factor (TNF; referred to here as TNFα), which predicted disruption of key maternal care behaviours. Offspring of poly I:C-treated dams showed early behavioural and adult cognitive deficits correlated to the maternal TNFα response, but, importantly, not with altered maternal care. We also found interacting effects of sex and treatment on GABAergic gene expression and DNA methylation in these offspring in a brain region-specific manner, including increased parvalbumin expression in the female adolescent frontal cortex. We conclude that the MIA-induced elevation of TNFα in the maternal compartment affects fetal neurodevelopment leading to altered offspring behaviour and cognition. Our results suggest that a focus on prenatal pathways affecting fetal neurodevelopment would provide greater insights into the mechanisms underpinning the TNFα-mediated genesis of altered offspring behaviour and cognition following maternal inflammation

Instructor Presence and Student Satisfaction Across Modalities: Survey Data on Student Preferences in Online and On-Campus Courses

Post-COVID-19, many, if not most, college and university instructors teach both online and face-to-face, and, given that online courses historically have higher attrition rates, designing and facilitating effective online courses is key to student retention. Students need online and on-campus courses that are well designed and facilitated, but even well-designed classes can be ineffective if students feel lost in the course or disengaged from the instructor. We surveyed 2,007 undergraduate students at a public, metropolitan university in the United States about the best and worst classes they had taken at the university. The resulting data revealed important consistencies across modalities—such as the importance of clear instructions and instructor availability. However, students responded that instructors matter more in face-to-face courses, where they can establish personal relationships with students, whereas assignments “stand in” for instructors in online classes. These findings support the need for increased faculty professional development in online course design and facilitation focused on student experience as well as faculty expertise

In the wake of a terrorist attack, do Americans’ attitudes toward Muslims decline?

When a terrorist attack occurs, a natural response may be increased public concern about terrorism. But when a self-described Muslim perpetrates a terrorist attack, do negative attitudes toward Muslims also increase? If so, is this effect conditional on the nature of people’s past personal experiences with Muslims? We present natural experiment data based on a 2015 web-based survey of 2105 non-Muslims in the US, a survey that happened to span the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November and San Bernardino on 2 December. We thus test Americans’ feelings toward Muslims immediately before and after both an international and a domestic terrorist attack. We find that, although the attacks significantly affected Americans’ concerns about radicalism both in the US and abroad, they did not negatively affect Americans’ thermometer feelings toward Muslims in the aggregate—a null finding conditioned only slightly by the nature of past personal experiences with Muslims