Phenomenology, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pokémon Go</Emphasis>, and Other Augmented Reality Games

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects on the everyday world of actual Augmented Reality games which introduce digital objects in our surroundings from a phenomenological point of view. Augmented Reality is a new technology aiming to merge digital and real objects, and it is becoming pervasively used thanks to the application for mobile devices Pokémon Go by Niantic. We will study this game and other similar applications to shed light on their possible effects on our lives and on our everyday world from a phenomenological perspective. In the first part, we will show how these digital objects are visualised as merged in the surroundings. We will point out that even if they are visualised as part of the everyday world, they are not part of it because they are still related to the fictional world generated by the game. In the second part, we will show how the existence of these objects in their fictional world has effects on the everyday world where everybody lives. The goal of Augmented Reality is not reached yet because these objects are not part of the everyday world, but it already makes our lives embedded with digital elements. We will show if these new objects have effects on our world and on how we live our lives.     

The perception of digital objects and their impact on development

Clinical work with adolescents and young people over the last decade has indicated that an intense relationship to digital objects was a major aspect of their mental lives. Digital objects have become embedded, inextricably, within our psychology, emphasising the earliest drives and phantasies at some moments, yet giving rise to less familiar phenomena at other times. The aim of this paper is to consider how the rise in digital media and social networking is impacting upon the lives of young people and influencing the course of their development, with particular reference to the impact of visual media within social networks and how this has a distinct influence on mental functioning. In attempting to describe these processes, it is hoped that we can become more able to accompany younger or older people in their exploration of the digital world, which will be as important to them in their future adult lives as their mastery of the physical, external world was in early childhood. The need is pressing, since access to the digital world has significantly increased through the use of mobile, connected devices, and the further evolution of new technologies, such as ‘the internet of everything’ and ‘wearable tech’, are almost upon us.     

Contractualism and the Non-Identity Problem

This paper argues that T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism can provide a solution to the non-identity problem. It first argues that there is no reason not to include future people in the realm of those to whom we owe justification, but that merely possible people are not included. It then goes on to argue that a person could reasonably reject a principle that left them with a barely worth living life even though that principle caused them to exist, and that current people could not justify creating people with barely worth living lives on the grounds that it caused those people to exist.     

PLURALISM, TOLERATION, AND ETHICAL PROMISCUITY

This paper argues that from an ethical point of view tolerance, which is simply one of a number of possible responses to ethical pluralism, is not an acceptable ideal. It fails to acknowledge and appreciate the good in other forms of life and thereby does not adequately respect the people who live these lives. Toleration limits the range of goods we might appreciate in our own lives and in the lives of those we care most about, and it tends to lead to a number of deformations or personal failures of character. In place of tolerance, we should embrace ethical promiscuity—a view that not only acknowledges ethical pluralism but also offers good reasons to celebrate this state of affairs.     

Are the Descendants of Slaves Owed Compensation for Slavery?

The compensatory-justice justification of affirmative action requires a comparison of the actual world in which the injured person lives with a relevantly similar possible world in which this person lives but where the unjust injuring act never occurred, in order to identify the degree of harm brought about by the unjust injurious act. The problem is that some unjust injuring acts, particularly acts of slavery, led to intercourse and the later creation of the ancestors of many members of minority groups. Hence, there is no possible world in which these individuals exist and in which the injustice, e.g., slavery, did not occur. As a result, the counterfactual test does not allow us to measure or even understand the existence of a compensatable injury to these persons. I provide an inheritance-based account of compensation that escapes this.     

The importance of including quality-of-life indices in international social and economic development activities

Psychology has not been a visible player in international social and economic development efforts. Through its demonstrated commitment to the concept of quality of life, psychology has an opportunity to help shape foreign policy and to improve the lives of countless people around the globe. Poverty has reached unacceptable limits of humanitarian tolerance and political consequence throughout the world. The United Nations estimates that 20% of the world's population now lives in conditions of absolute poverty in which there is an absence of even the bare essentials for living. Social and economic development efforts have often failed despite good intentions because they have often concentrated on improving peoples' material level of living but not their quality of life. This article addresses the need to include quality-of-life (QOL) indices in international social and economic development efforts. In addition, the article calls attention to the need to use valid cross-cultural measurement strategies (i.e., culturally equivalent) when assessing QOL across cultural and national boundaries. Current approaches to social and economic development rely heavily on interventions that do not reflect the actual peoples' perceptions of life satisfaction and subjective well-being. Self-serving political and economic national interests have kept new approaches to development from being implemented. New interventions must be holistic, decentralized, integrated, empowering, participatory, and human-resource directed, and must include culturally equivalent objective and subjective quality-of-life indices as the arbiters of success.     

Freedom and Disability Rights: Dependence,Independence, and Interdependence

The increasing focus on disability rights—as found, for instance, in the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)—challenges philosophical imaginaries. This article broadens the philosophical imaginary of freedom by exploring the relation of dependence, independence, and interdependence in the lives of people with disabilities. It argues (1) that traditional concepts of freedom are rather insensitive to difference within humanity, and (2) that the lives of people with severe disabilities challenge philosophers to argue and conceptualize freedom not only as independence and interdependence but also as dependence. After tracing this need through a Hegelian understanding, via Julia Kristeva's work on disability, and finally the CRPD, it concludes that a unified solution might not be possible. Hence, it argues that disability issues necessitate philosophical modesty.     

The religion paradox: if religion makes people happy, why are so many dropping out?

As we estimate here, 68% of human beings--4.6 billion people--would say that religion is important in their daily lives. Past studies have found that the religious, on average, have higher subjective well-being (SWB). Yet, people are rapidly leaving organized religion in economically developed nations where religious freedom is high. Why would people leave religion if it enhances their happiness? After controlling for circumstances in both the United States and world samples, we found that religiosity is associated with slightly higher SWB, and similarly so across four major world religions. The associations of religiosity and SWB were mediated by social support, feeling respected, and purpose or meaning in life. However, there was an interaction underlying the general trend such that the association of religion and well-being is conditional on societal circumstances. Nations and states with more difficult life conditions (e.g., widespread hunger and low life expectancy) were much more likely to be highly religious. In these nations, religiosity was associated with greater social support, respect, purpose or meaning, and all three types of SWB. In societies with more favorable circumstances, religiosity is less prevalent and religious and nonreligious individuals experience similar levels of SWB. There was also a person-culture fit effect such that religious people had higher SWB in religious nations but not in nonreligious nations. Thus, it appears that the benefits of religion for social relationships and SWB depend on the characteristics of the society.     

Spirituality in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Pastoral Psychology - In today’s world, Western medicine has a dominant place in most people’s lives, and that is true in contemporary China. However, many Chinese people also seek...     

In search of the silver lining: the justice motive fosters perceptions of benefits in the later lives of tragedy victims

Past research has demonstrated that people's need to perceive the world as fair and just leads them to blame and derogate victims of tragedy. The research reported here shows that a positive reaction--bestowing additional meaning on the lives of individuals who have suffered--can also serve people's need to believe that the world is just. In two studies, participants whose justice motive was temporarily heightened or who strongly endorsed the belief that reward and punishment are fairly distributed in the world perceived more meaning and enjoyment in the life of someone who had experienced a tragedy than in the life of someone who had not experienced tragedy, but this pattern was not found for participants whose justice motive was not heightened or who did not strongly endorse a justice belief. These results suggest that being motivated to see the world as just--a motivation traditionally associated with victim derogation--also leads people to perceive a "silver lining" to tragic events.     

The Role of Music in Everyday Life: Current Directions in the Social Psychology of Music

Music is a crucial element of everyday life. People spend hours listening to it and billions of dollars buying it. Yet despite the pervasiveness of music, mainstream social‐personality psychology has hardly given any attention to this universal social phenomenon. Why is music important to people? What role does music play in everyday life? This article reviews research in fields outside mainstream psychology concerned with the social and psychological factors that influence how people experience and use music in their daily lives. The research in this area shows that music can have considerable effects on cognition, emotion, and behavior. It also indicates that people use music to serve various functions, from emotion regulation to self‐expression to social bonding. Research in this emerging field reveals how social‐personality psychology can inform our understanding of music, and in doing so it highlights the real‐world relevance of mainstream theory and research.     

Owning It

What is the distinction, if any, between who we are as people and what we believe and how we practice as psychoanalysts? For me, art played a vital affirmation that there was a world full of larger ideas and feelings in contrast to the desiccated environment my parents had created. From grade school, through my training as an analyst to the present, art has not only elucidated who I am but expanded my sense of being a creative individual. From the procession of viewing art and engaging with it, to making and acquiring art pieces, the discovery was not only that I owned these pieces but that their impact challenged the ‘who’ I thought I was if I was willing to own up to it. The information that informs our personal beliefs and practice in psychoanalysis comes from such an openness to new experiences from many directions in our daily lives, and challenges who we believe we are. Art adds to analytic knowledge, not by giving us an interpretation for our lives, but by stimulating the genuinely creative process of self-reflection.     

R?ume der Gewalt

Violence is everywhere, just as love and the need for sexual satisfaction are omnipresent, nowadays just as it was 1,000 years ago. However, one is taken for granted as a part of fundamental human behavior and needs no explanation, while violence is considered an anomaly which should disappear from our lives. People who live in peace are irritated when they hear of massacres and violent acts which do not occur in their world. They cannot believe that people kill, abuse and sexually assault each other for no apparent reason and that some actually gain pleasure from this. Then the belief that violence is abnormal behavior under any circumstances helps them to imagine its reality as a space in which argumentation triumphs over fists. Humans, however, will not be what they are: they have always been complete. Violence is a human capability: that was always so and everywhere. It is a resource for action which is not only available for everybody but can also be used by everyone. Even the smallest can achieve an increase in power and gain respect by the use of the fists. The source of violence lies in the fundamentals of the powers of imagination. All atrocities can be imagined and what has once become engraved in the memory can never be removed. When one has understood what violence does to man and what man does with violence, it can no longer only be comprehended as an expression of ideas, intentions and programs, as a deviation which can be redressed by moral persuasion but as a consequence of an unlocking of safety measures which protect people from killing and injuring each other. Even in the future violence will be part of our lives. The belief in the healing powers of civilization is nothing more than romantic idealism. It always concerns only situations and people. Undoubtedly a depressing outlook but when one has comprehended that violence is an integral part of life, measures can also be taken to enclose it. Violence is an experience which creates order because death means the end of everything. For dreamers who crave eternal peace, this recognition is depressing but for realists it is a comfort.     

灾区民众的公正观与幸福感及其与非灾区的比较

作为公德的社会公正与作为私情的个人幸福,是个体作为社会成员的两个方面,二者在逻辑上是统一的,以往的心理学研究也证实了这一点,但在低标准下,二者却可能出现分离。本研究探讨了灾区民众的公正观和幸福感及其与非灾区的对比,以及中国本土文化背景下二者的关系。本研究发现,与非灾区相比,处在灾区的民众持有更高的公正观与更平和的情感状态,男性尤其如此,并且其情感幸福对公正观有微弱的正向预测（主要是积极情感）,但八个月后随着公正观与幸福感的回落,这种关联变得不显著。民众的情感幸福与公正观在常态下表现为分离的关系,但生活满意度这一幸福感的认知因素却与公正观一直有正向的关联。总之,情感幸福、认知幸福与社会认知的矛盾、变换关系,暗示了建立在私情基础之上的、在灾难中不断强化的中国人特定的情感与理性诉求。     

Some reflections on potential abuses of psychology’s knowledge and practices

This article identifies ten implicit and explicit assumptions of Western psychology that are rooted within its cultural history, traditions, and values. Unfortunately, these assumptions have informed and dominated the knowledge and practice of psychology across the world because of historic, cultural, political, and economic reasons. It is now clear, however, that the indiscriminate acceptance and application of Western psychological knowledge and practices constitutes a serious abuse for non-Western people and for ethnic/racial minorities in Western nations. This abuse is often transmitted and exacerbated via the training of international and ethnic minority students who learn to accept Western psychology as universal. In a global community in which all our lives have become interdependent, it is essential Western psychology be re-considered as a “cultural construction” with all the ethnocentric limitations this implies. As a counter, efforts must be made to acknowledge, develop, and transmit the diverse indigenous/national psychologies from across the world.     

You promised you'd change: How incremental and entity theorists react to a romantic partner's promised change attempts

Research from multiple domains suggests that individuals benefit from having other people in their lives who endorse an incremental mindset, believing in humans' capacity to change and improve through effort. We hypothesize, however, that people high in incrementalism may have unrealistic expectations about the ease of change, leading them to become frustrated with others who promise change (change-strivers) but achieve only partial success. In a longitudinal study, change-strivers made promises of change to their romantic partners and attempted to keep those promises over two weeks. Romantic partners who were higher in incrementalism were initially more optimistic that change-strivers would successfully change, but subsequently more distrustful toward change-strivers whose change attempts failed. Furthermore, partners high in incrementalism were more likely to attribute failure to the change-striver's lack of effort, rather than to the difficulty of the behaviors. The findings highlight circumstances when incremental mindsets may have costs in relationships.     

Fire drill: Inattentional blindness and amnesia for the location of fire extinguishers

Fire extinguishers can save lives and are placed in locations that make them easily accessible and in plain view in case of an emergency. However, despite having viewed these bright red objects many times, people may be unaware of their precise locations or even of the fact that they have seen them so often in their workplace environment. We tested the ability of occupants of an office building to recall the location of the nearest fire extinguisher, as well as other objects (e.g., clock, drinking fountain). Despite years of exposure to it, a majority failed to remember the location of the nearest fire extinguisher, although they were able to locate it relatively quickly when asked to search for it. The results support an important distinction between seeing and noticing objects and reveal a novel form of inattentional amnesia for salient objects. The study also created an important learning event via failed retrieval, which could be essential to survival.     

Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship: Reflections from the Vantage Points of the Marginalized People

“Mission from the margins” is neither a mere perspectival approach nor an option but an inevitable way of being church in God's mission. Likewise, the marginalized people are neither a broad category of people on the fringes of the society nor mere objects of charity and victims of circumstances. They are prophets and pathfinders indicting the world for its injustice through their lives of suffering and striving for its transformation through their struggles. As signs of hope testifying to the movement of the Spirit amidst despair and death, they help us to see God's mission not as a mere religious activity but as a spirituality of resistance and transformation for the sake of life and God's world. Reclaiming discipleship from the vantage of the marginalized, therefore, offers an opportunity for the churches to rediscover themselves afresh from being mere communities of believers and power structures to networks of partners for God's justice, participating in the larger struggles for the transformation of the world. As the gospels tell us, Jesus did not commission his disciples to call people to a belief system but to a covenantal relationship through a vocation of striving for the realization of God's reign. Such a sense of vocation is possible only when there is a radical change in Christian self‐understanding. It involves, first, interrogating and reimagining the ways in which churches affirm and practise their faith; second, leaving aside their captivity to certain belief systems and turning toward Jesus of Nazareth to teach the way – to be active partners with God rather than being passive believers; third, appropriating discipleship beyond the language and sphere of transformation of persons; and fourth, learning from and being enriched by the visions and resources of the marginalized in living out the call to be one in God's mission of transformation of the world.     

The congruence problem in John Holland's theory of vocational decisions

John Holland's theory of vocational choice has been a dominant one in careers psychology for many years, especially in North America. A key construct in the theory is congruence between person and environment. Yet research has failed to find as strong a link as might be expected between congruence and outcomes such as satisfaction and performance. This could present a major challenge to the theory. Fourteen possible reasons for the weak associations between congruence and outcome measures are identified and discussed under three broad headings: the theory, the research and the world. It is concluded that the most important reasons are (1) that Holland's measures of people and environments partially neglect some important constructs; (2) that environments have not been conceptualized or measured entirely appropriately; and (3) the data that are used in the calculation of congruence indices are insufficiently precise or comprehensive. It is suggested that Holland's theory and associated measures should be developed further, and that the processual elements of it need more attention.