The physics of evolution: From chaos to evolution and deep ecology

This paper summarizes the various physical science elements of the evolutionary story. The “nonlinear” revolution includes chaos, self‐organization theory, the thermodynamics of evolution, and biological evolution. The key result of the revolution is a physical understanding of how order emerges and change is driven. This paper brings the lessons of each branch of the revolution together into a single easily understood thread. The unexpected result of this revolution is an understanding of evolution as a single inexorable physical process that has given rise to everything from molecules to humankind. Here evolution is driven by energy flow and involves increasing efficiency, the growth of complexity, and the acceleration of change. This paper ties the resulting physical insights to an evolving ecological world view, looks at its ties to spirituality and applies the rules that govern the growth of complexity to business and its current crisis. The net result of the nonlinear revolution is a radical change in our everyday understanding of how the world works, a shift away from classical science's machine world to the vision of an evolving deeply ecologically intertwined world.     

The orientation of evolution and the intellect

Prediction has been central in the development of both science and society. Chaos theory, however, has given rise to the widespread belief that in all but the most stable situations prediction of the future is impossible. But this belief is contradicted by theory and findings over many years of the psychology of prediction as well as by the findings of the new field of chaos psychology and the experience of entrepreneurs in business and political leaders. At stake is a belief central to an enormous body of “law” in all scientific fields as well as to business, political, and governmental managers and leaders concerned with governance of economic and political systems in a time of global social chaos. At its core, the problem is a critical one for the development of a General Evolution Theory that can span the findings of natural science and social science to find “laws” consonant with systems requirements at both pre‐human and human evolutionary levels. This paper analyzes the problem in terms of chaos theoretical views of the limits of predictability, evidence from the fields of psychology and brain research of human predictive abilities that transcend these limits, and the practical consequence of a resolution of this conflict for science and society.     

The Road to Creative Achievement: A Latent Variable Model of Ability and Personality Predictors

This study investigated the significance of different well‐established psychometric indicators of creativity for real‐life creative outcomes. Specifically, we tested the effects of creative potential, intelligence, and openness to experiences on everyday creative activities and actual creative achievement. Using a heterogeneous sample of 297 adults, we performed latent multiple regression analyses by means of structural equation modelling. We found openness to experiences and two independent indicators of creative potential, ideational originality and ideational fluency, to predict everyday creative activities. Creative activities, in turn, predicted actual creative achievement. Intelligence was found to predict creative achievement, but not creative activities. Moreover, intelligence moderated the effect of creative activities on creative achievement, suggesting that intelligence may play an important role in transforming creative activities into publically acknowledged creative achievements. This study supports the view of creativity as a multifaceted construct and provides an integrative model illustrating the potential interplay between its different facets. © 2013 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology.     

The concept of evolution and revolution

We hypothesize that there exist certain similarities between the strategies adopted by a biological organism, an individual or a social group, when faced by an aggressor. These strategies consist in either minimizing the aggression or else combating it immediately, in order to preserve, in the short term, the identity of the system under attack. One of the strategies commonly adopted for this purpose is retrocession, permitting the biological, neurobiological organism, or the social individual or group to elude certain environmental elements and return to a situation in which other escape routes may be taken.

In the long term, preservation of the external identity is accomplished by modification of the internal identity. Man uses in vivo or, after “extrusion,” ex vivo immunizing and cognitive functions to cope with the environment. He is thus able to create, ex vivo, therapeutic techniques by manipulating internal identity. In order to accomplish this, a profound knowledge is needed, at the level of each individual, of the functional mechanisms of biological and neurobiological identities.

Though social and biological sciences are progressing, they have great difficulties in finding the common language necessary to communicate productively. Analogies between these two domains, that we shall attempt to illustrate, may contribute to facilitating such communication.     

The economics of paradox: a response to armour-garb

‘Those ice cubes melted because by melting total entropy increased and entropy increase has a very high objective chance.’ What role does the chance in this explanation play? I argue that it contributes to the explanation by entailing that the melting was almost necessary, and defend the claim that the fact that some event was almost necessary can, in the right circumstances, constitute a causal explanation of that event.     

团队任务冲突与团队领导行为及团队学习的关系研究

本研究旨在探讨项目团队领导基于角色的不同行为对团队内部的任务冲突互动,以及团队学习的影响.以128个项目团队为研究对象进行的问卷调查结果表明,在领导行为与团队学习的关系中任务冲突存在显著的中介效应.其中,团队领导的促进者与指挥者角色行为完全通过任务冲突的中介传导,对团队学习产生影响,;而领导的创新型行为则通过任务冲突的部分中介作用,产生对团队学习的正向影响.     

The interactive evolution of human communication systems

This paper compares two explanations of the process by which human communication systems evolve: iterated learning and social collaboration. It then reports an experiment testing the social collaboration account. Participants engaged in a graphical communication task either as a member of a community, where they interacted with seven different partners drawn from the same pool, or as a member of an isolated pair, where they interacted with the same partner across the same number of games. Participants' horizontal, pair-wise interactions led "bottom up" to the creation of an effective and efficient shared sign system in the community condition. Furthermore, the community-evolved sign systems were as effective and efficient as the local sign systems developed by isolated pairs. Finally, and as predicted by a social collaboration account, and not by an iterated learning account, interaction was critical to the creation of shared sign systems, with different isolated pairs establishing different local sign systems and different communities establishing different global sign systems.     

小学生创造性科学问题提出能力的发展研究

运用实验的方法,对371名小学生创造性科学问题提出能力的发展进行了研究。结果表明:(1)小学生创造性科学问题提出能力整体呈上升趋势;(2)男女生的创造性科学问题提出能力发展趋势基本相同,男生整体上要略高于女生,差异不显著;(3)小学生创造性科学问题提出能力的学校类型差异主要表现在发展趋势上,城市小学二到三年级停滞不前,乡村小学则迅速发展,之后发展趋势相同;(4)三到四年级是小学生创造性科学问题提出能力发展的“关键期”。     

小学生创造性数学问题提出能力的发展研究

运用实验的方法,对371名小学生创造性数学问题提出能力的发展进行了研究。结果表明:1)小学生创造性数学问题提出能力整体呈现波浪式上升的趋势;2)男女生在创造性数学问题提出能力上不存在显著差异;3)城乡小学生创造性数学问题提出能力的发展差异显著,城市小学学生发展比乡村小学学生发展早一年。     

Narrowing the Creativity Gap: The Moderating Effects of Perceived Support for Creativity

This article examines the role of 3 types of perceived support for creativity in moderating the relation between creative self-efficacy and self-perceived creativity. The findings suggest significant interaction effects for perceived work-group support and supervisor support, but not for perceived organizational support. This study is among the first to (a) examine the importance of perceived support for creativity in unlocking creative potential and increasing creativity in organizations and (b) use interaction terms in structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate moderator effects in an applied research setting. These results imply that organizational interventions focused on training supervisors and work-group members to support creativity in the workplace may be more effective than broader and less focused interventions at the organizational level.     

A partial resolution of the paradox of interference: The role of integrating knowledge

It has been noted that models of memory that posit retrieval interference imply that the more one knows about a topic, the harder it is to retrieve any one of these facts. Smith, Adams, and Schorr (Cognitive Psychology, 1978, 10, 438–464) regard this to be a paradox and postulate that people use world knowledge to integrate various facts about a concept and thereby avoid interference. Exploring this issue further in two experiments we discovered that integration of facts alleviates interference only when a person can perform his memory task by simply making a consistency judgment and can avoid the need to retrieve a specific fact. When foils force subjects to retrieve the specific assertion, the interference occurs among integrated facts as among unrelated facts. It appears that, when possible, subjects will judge whether they have seen a fact simply by judging if it is related to (consistent with) a theme they have studied. In other words, people judge themes rather than facts. Consistent with this interpretation, we found interference among themes; that is, the more themes were associated with a concept, the greater the interference.     

The Experience of Foster Care and Long-Term Attachment

Abstract

There are almost half a million children currently in foster care in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to study the linkage between foster care alumni and long-term attachment. In this qualitative study, six foster care alumni were interviewed. Nine themes emerged: trauma, stolen childhood, relationship style, trust issues, anxieties, current parenting concerns, broken system, coping strategies, and implications for counseling. The results of this study indicate that there are attachment implications for foster care alumni and that the experience of being in foster care was generally perceived as negative.     

In Search of Bandhood: Consultation with Original Music Groups

Original music groups present a unique and under-explored example of self-initiated task groups. The intragroup life and negotiation of creative differences in three diverse original music groups from New York City were explored. Establishment of a shared group ideology and management of organizational tensions, identified in Murnighan and Conlon's study of professional string quartets, appeared central in the bands' cohesion. The role of group therapist, as a band consultant, was examined.     

Coherence,Brain Evolution,and the Unity of Consciousness: The evolution of Planetary Consciousness in the Light of Brain Coherence Research

The law of coherence helps us understand the physical force behind the increasing complexity of the evolutionary process, from quanta, to cells, to self-awareness and collective consciousness. The coherent electromagnetic field is the inner glue of every system, the “intelligent” energy–information communication that assures a cooperative and synergic behavior to all the components of the system, as a whole, allowing harmonious evolution and unity of consciousness. Neuropsychological experiments show that the different brain areas communicate with more or less coherence according to different states of consciousness: high values are correlated with states of psychophysical integrity and well-being, whereas low values with states of conflict and depression. If we expand isomorphically these brain discoveries, we will have four main general states of coherence: from disgregation to unity, which represents an important element, in the General System Theory, to differentiate between inanimate and animate system, and to understand how billions cells become a single living organism, and then how billions of human beings could eventually generate planetary consciousness. In this light the resolution of the global ecosystem crisis implicates human transformation from a low to a highly coherent state of consciousness. The key to the entire process seems to be the coherent nature of consciousness.     

积极心理治疗模式与发展趋势

积极心理治疗是在跨文化的基础上以冲突为中心的治疗模式,治疗中关注个人实际的和潜在的能力,并借助东方寓言故事哲理,用跨文化的认知观点解释冲突。这种符合人性特点的心理治疗模式,为心理治疗开辟了新的途径,促进了心理治疗的发展。     

学习因素对语义信息加工性质的影响

本研究通过两个行为实验,采用句子核证作业,将SAD技术和范畴学习范式有机地结合起来,对语义信息加工进程以及学习因素在其中的作用进行了考察。实验一研究了熟悉性对语义信息加工的影响。结果表明,高熟悉句的部分信息积累具有离散的趋势;低熟悉句的部分信息积累是连续性的。实验二采用范畴学习。并结合SAD技术的句子核证作业．考察了在学习过程中语义加工性质的变化。结果发现：过度学习比初始学习有更多的部分信息积累,并随信号间隔的延长而逐渐增加;过度学习表现出部分信息积累的离散性变化;初始学习则表现出连续累积的趋势。说明学习确实造成了连续性加工向离散性质的过渡。     

利益冲突的调节机制

利益的平衡取决于相关利益群体参与政策过程的能力的平衡.成立患者权利保护协会,使患者以组织化方式有效参与卫生改革的政策过程,制衡相关利益群体的利益最大化诉求,是平衡卫生服务领域利益冲突的根本途径.     

应聘者非言语信息对面试官评分的影响:解释、测量和控制

应聘者非言语信息是影响结构化面试中面试官准确评分的一个重要因素。社会互动理论和拟剧论从面试官角度,社会影响理论和相互依赖理论从应聘者角度分别解释了非言语信息对面试官评分的影响。对非言语信息的测量,除了传统的自陈式问卷,一些新兴的计算机识别技术也被使用。为了消除非言语信息对面试评分准确性的影响,通常会从面试前、面试中和面试后三个阶段对其进行控制。未来可以基于机器学习和大数据分析,探索非言语信息对结构化面试评分的影响,建构新的理论以解释影响过程。