Family response to traumatic brain injury

The stress experienced by families with a member who has experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) has recently been addressed in the counselling and rehabilitation literature. Given that rehabilitation centres have physical restoration of the patient as a primary mandate, the emotional and social adjustment needs of family members are often overlooked. Information on TBI and its effect on families will help counsellors and psychologists contribute to the family adjustment process.     

Responsibility and iterated knowledge

I defend an iterated knowledge condition on responsibility for outcomes: one is responsible for a consequence of one's action only if one was in a position to know that, for all one was in a position to know, one's action would have that consequence.     

Psychological Perspectives on Entrepreneurship: Cognitive and Social Factors in Entrepreneurs' Success

Why are some entrepreneurs so much more successful than others in starting new companies—ones that create wealth for their societies as well as themselves? Growing evidence suggests that the answer involves the influence of both cognitive and social factors. Successful entrepreneurs appear to think differently than other persons in several respects (e.g., they are less likely to engage in counterfactual thinking but more likely to show overconfidence in their judgments). Similarly, successful entrepreneurs appear to be higher in social competence —the ability to interact effectively with others (e.g., they are better at social perception and adapting to new social situations). These results suggest that the principles and findings of psychology can be invaluable to researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, providing important insights into the factors that influence entrepreneurs' success.     

Back to the actual future

The purpose of the paper is to rethink the role of actuality in the branching model of possibilities. We investigate the idea that the model should be enriched with an additional factor—the so-called Thin Red Line—which is supposed to represent the single possible course of events that gets actualized in time. We believe that this idea was often misconceived which prompted some unfortunate reactions. On the one hand, it suggested problematic semantic models of future tense and and on the other, it provoked questionable lines of criticism. We reassess the debate and point to potential pitfalls, focusing on the semantic dimension of the Thin Red Line theory. Our agenda transcends the semantics, however. We conclude that semantic considerations do not threaten the Thin Red Line theory and that the proper debate should be carried in the domain of metaphysics.

     

Psychological maladjustment mediates the link between remembrances of parental rejection in childhood and loneliness in adulthood: A cross-cultural comparative study

Drawing stimulus from interpersonal acceptance-rejection theory, this multicultural study examined relations between men's versus women's remembrances of maternal and paternal acceptance-rejection in childhood and their current level of loneliness, as mediated by adults' self-reported psychological maladjustment. Adults (N = 899) from five nations (Iraq, Italy, the Netherlands, Pakistan, and the United States) responded to the Adult version of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire-short form for mothers and fathers, the Adult version of the Personality Assessment Questionnaire-short form, and the Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Loneliness Scale. Adults' remembrances of maternal and paternal rejection in childhood significantly and independently predicted feelings of loneliness but remembered paternal rejection was more strongly related to these feelings than were remembrances of maternal rejection. Psychological maladjustment fully mediated the effect of remembered maternal rejection but only partially mediated the effect of remembered paternal rejection on loneliness. There were no significant differences in these results across the five countries or genders. Overall, the results suggest that adults' remembrances of parental rejection in childhood—along with the theoretically expected development of psychological maladjustment—are likely to be associated panculturally with the experience of loneliness in adulthood.     

The curious case of spacetime emergence

Philosophical Studies - Work in quantum gravity suggests that spacetime is not fundamental. Rather, spacetime emerges from an underlying, non-spatiotemporal reality. After clarifying the type of...     

Grounding at a distance

Philosophical Studies - What distinguishes causation from grounding? One suggestion is that causation, but not grounding, occurs over time. Recently, however, counterexamples to this simple...