The Concept of Family Resilience: Crisis and Challenge

The concept of resilience, the ability to withstand and rebound from crisis and adversity, has valuable potential for research, intervention, and prevention approaches aiming to strengthen couples and families. Resilience has been viewed as residing within the individual, with the family often dismissed as dysfunctional. This article advances a systemic view of resilience in ecological and developmental contexts and presents the concept of family resilience, attending to interactional processes over time that strengthen both individual and family hardiness. Extending our understanding of normal family functioning, the concept of family resilience offers a useful framework to identify and fortify key processes that enable families to surmount crises and persistent stresses. There are many pathways in relational resilience, varying to fit diverse family forms, psychosocial challenges, resources, and constraints. Shared beliefs and narratives that foster a sense of coherence, collaboration, competence, and confidence are vital in coping and mastery. Interventions to strengthen family resilience have timely relevance for weathering the rapid social changes and uncertainties facing families today.     

Probability as a Theory Dependent Concept

It is argued that probability should be defined implicitly by the distributions of possible measurement values characteristic of a theory. These distributions are tested by, but not defined in terms of, relative frequencies of occurrences of events of a specified kind. The adoption of an a priori probability in an empirical investigation constitutes part of the formulation of a theory. In particular, an assumption of equiprobability in a given situation is merely one hypothesis inter alia, which can be tested, like any other assumption. Probability in relation to some theories – for example quantum mechanics – need not satisfy the Kolmogorov axioms. To illustrate how two theories about the same system can generate quite different probability concepts, and not just different probabilistic predictions, a team game for three players is described. If only classical methods are allowed, a 75% success rate at best can be achieved. Nevertheless, a quantum strategy exists that gives a 100% probability of winning. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Against Desert as a Forward-Looking Concept

Fred Feldman and, more recently, David Schmidtz have challenged the standard view that a person's desert is based strictly on past and present facts about him. I argue that Feldman's attempt to overturn this 'received wisdom' about desert's temporal orientation is unsuccessful, since his examples do not establish that what a person deserves now can be based on what will occur in the future. In addition, his forward-looking account introduces an unnecessary asymmetry regarding desert's temporal orientation in different contexts. Schmidtz advances a promissory account of desert, only part of which presents a strong challenge to the received wisdom. After disambiguating the two main elements of his account, I examine Schmidtz's arguments for forward-looking desert. I find these arguments to be unconvincing because they seem to either rely on past or present facts about people, including people's dispositions, or they give us desert without desert bases. I briefly examine the relationship between desert and merit, and I argue that some dispositions might be desert bases and others might be merit bases. I conclude the paper with a summary of the arguments against desert as a forward-looking concept.     

Frustration Intolerance as a Multidimensional Concept

The Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) concept of frustration intolerance is briefly reviewed and placed in historical context. It is argued that this concept includes a wide range of belief content, and is best considered as a multidimensional construct. A multidimensional model is presented, and the implications for theory and practice discussed.     

Language as a Family-Resemblance Concept in Wittgenstein

Philosophia - The article begins by considering Wittgenstein’s notion of family-resemblance concepts. The article purports to defend that there is something wrong with the idea that language...     

Children's Resilience as Assets for Safe Schools

In this article I argue that employing positive psychology conceptions in research allows for a continuum of findings for educational psychology. I illustrate my contention by means of a participatory action research (PAR) survey-based case study in which methodological decisions were informed by an asset-focused resilience conceptual framework. First I provide a rationale, as well as contextual information for the article. Then I explicate asset-focused resilience as a conceptual framework. Subsequently, I present the methodological background of the PAR survey-based case study, after which I align the scope of the findings to the contention of my article. I conclude that the choice of a positive psychology theoretical stance enriched the scope of the findings.     

"身心合一"之"仁"与儒家德性伦理--郭店竹简"(身心)"字及儒家仁爱的构成

有关儒家“仁爱”思想的研究,人们比较关注的问题之一,是“仁”这个字的起源,即它最初的构形以及与此相联的本义。战国玺印文“”的发现和释读,①使人们看到了“仁”字的新的构形,也使重新理解“仁”的意义有了可靠依据。郭店竹简中所有的“仁”字(七十多个)都写作“”,不仅进一步确证了古“”字的存在,而且提供了有关儒家“仁爱”观念的新文献,为研究“仁”带来了新的途径和活力。大家围绕“身心之仁”的讨论,主要集中在此字的构形与《说文》“从千从心”之“仁”和“从人从二”之“仁”之间的关系及其意义,但还不能令人信服。本文在…     

Shopping-Life Balance: Towards a Unifying Framework

Based on a review of the literature we introduce a conceptualization of shopping-life balance, defined as a state of balanced satisfaction between shopping life and other life domains. The new construct involves two dimensions: engagement in shopping life and minimal conflict between social roles in shopping life and roles in other life domains. We argue that engagement in shopping life contributes to satisfaction in shopping life, which in turn contributes to subjective well-being through a bottom-up process. However, engagement in shopping life can lead to role conflict, which causes dissatisfaction in other life domains (e.g., family life, social life, financial life), and in turn detracts from subjective well-being through a bottom-up process. Role conflict may also detract from shopping engagement, thereby reducing satisfaction in shopping life. In the context of this unifying framework we explain much of the research conducted in relation to both shopping engagement and role conflict—predictors or antecedents of shopping engagement and role conflict, namely personal, situational, institutional, and cultural factors involved in shopping-life balance. Research and policy implications are also discussed.

     

论气节——中华气节观的意蕴、内涵与作用

气节概念从肯定方面看指称着我们民族每个道德主体对心中道德理想的一种坚守,从否定方面看则是对所有不合价值理想的外在压力之抗拒.从内涵上看气节观包含主体自觉、应有的理想与道德原则、对外在压力的抗拒与对内在理想的执着和坚守、道与道义、自由选择与责任意识、献身精神、自觉的行为操守诸方面内容.气节观从个人层面看使人的主体性得到彰显,从社会层面看能够砥砺风气,教化社会,激励和引导人们向遵循这些价值理想和社会规范的方向努力,从而对社会与文化起到整合作用.中华气节观在历史上常具有正面的作用,但也包含着负面因素与糟粕.     

Personality as Risk and Resilience in Physical Health

ABSTRACT— Research on the association between personality characteristics and subsequent physical health has produced several consistent findings and identified other tentative relationships. Chronic anger/hostility and neuroticism/negative affectivity are the best established personality risk factors for poor health. Optimism, social dominance, and other traits also appear to influence risk. Several mechanisms have been identified as possibly underlying these effects, but few have been evaluated definitively. Future research may be well served by incorporation of concepts and methods from current personality research.     

Unifying Moral Methodology

This article argues that the best way to pursue systematic normative ethical theorizing involves metaethical enquiry. My argument builds upon two central claims. First, I argue that plausible metaethical accounts can have implications that can help to resolve the methodological controversies facing normative ethics. Second, I argue that metaethical research is at least roughly as well supported as normative ethical research. I conclude by examining the implications of my thesis. Inter alia, it shows that the common practice of engaging in systematic normative theorizing uninformed by metaethical commitments offers a significant and troubling hostage to metaethical fortune.     

Resilience and Coping as Predictors of Well-Being in Adults

Well-being is one of the keys to successful and optimal development across the lifespan. Based on the idea that development involves changes in individuals’ adaptive capacity to meet their needs over time, the changes that occur in the second half of life require effort to adapt to the new reality. This study used a structural model to test the effects of coping strategies and resilience on well-being in a sample of 305 mid-life adults. Several constructs were measured: coping strategies, resilience, and well-being. A final model was obtained with good fit indices; psychological well-being was positively predicted by resilience and negatively by emotional coping. Moreover, positive reappraisal and avoidance form part of both coping strategies (problem-focused and emotion-focused). Considering the characteristics of the model, educational intervention programs could be developed to promote skills that favor good adaptation at this stage in the life cycle and contribute to promoting successful aging.     

Unifying the Intellectual Virtues

The intellectual virtues include two seemingly quite different types of traits: reliable faculties on the one hand and inquiry‐regulating traits of intellectual character like conscientiousness and openmindedness on the other. Extant virtue theories do not appear to have provided a single account that adequately covers both types of virtue. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which a trait or disposition can contribute to our cognitive goal of acquiring significant true beliefs. I propose that the two types of virtues can be understood as contributing in different ways to our cognitive goal, and develop a general framework for understanding their value.