BACKGROUND Infertility has been shown to have considerable psychological effects on the well-being of couples, especially women. Religion has been found as a resource used by infertile women to cope with their distress. Little research has examined the influence of religious coping on psychological distress among infertile women in Ghana. This study examines the relationship between positive an...

Symbols represent information we have previously learned or experienced, but they can also serve to encourage thoughts and behaviors that are consistent with this knowledge/experience in order to maintain social cohesion (Guthrie, 1996). Pictures (e.g., American Red Cross image) representing moral rules (e.g., ‘save lives’) have been shown to influence moral decisions (Broeders, van den Box, Mu...

This article aims to open a new line of debate about religion in public schools by focusing on religious ideals. The article begins with an elucidation of the concept ‘religious ideals’ and an explanation of the notion of reasonable pluralism, in order to be able to explore the dangers and positive contributions of religious ideals and their pursuit on a liberal democratic society. We draw our ...

Religious economies theory, which views religious organizations as akin to single-unit firms competing for adherents in local markets, has three shortcomings that we solve by reconceptualizing religious organizations and developing a new theory of religious mobilization. First, we treat religious organizations as multi-unit entities operating in interdependent markets in a national field. Secon...

Social psychologists are increasingly interested in the growth of irreligion, defined by Lugo (2015) as identification with no particular religious affiliation. Findings that suggest that religion is a product of evolution have influenced this social psychological research, warranting the question: If religious tendencies were strictly a product of evolution, then how does one explain the pheno...

Many studies have examined the influence on sexual attitudes and behavior of religious belief (i.e., religious denomination) or religiosity (e.g., attendance at services, subjective importance of religion). However, few studies have examined the combined effects of religion and religiosity on sexual attitudes and behavior. This study examined such effects in a representative sample of 19,307 Au...

Future mission plans for the space program call for complex autonomous systems that must be able to perform with high levels of reliability. Features of proposed missions include wide-scale distribution of agents, partial observability, and interaction between large numbers of active platforms. These domain features prove to be difficult for traditional planning algorithms. We are developing a ...

Results from recent space missions, in particular Spitzer and Herschel, have lead to significant progress in our understanding of the formation and transport of water from clouds to disks, planetesimals, and planets. In this review, we provide the underpinnings for the basic molecular physics and chemistry of water and outline these advances in the context of water formation in space, its trans...

What would it mean to describe James Bond as a man in his element? As an expression in English, being “in one’s element” usually refers to someone or something well suited to what they are doing. The term often conveys, when a human actor is involved, a sense of comfort, enjoyment, and even pleasure. Conversely, when we note that someone or something is “out of their element”, we highlight othe...

BACKGROUND Religious participation or belief may predict better mental health but most research is American and measures of spirituality are often conflated with well-being. AIMS To examine associations between a spiritual or religious understanding of life and psychiatric symptoms and diagnoses. METHOD We analysed data collected from interviews with 7403 people who participated in the thir...