Is Easy Access Related to Better Life? Walkability and Overlapping of Personal and Communal Identity as Predictors of Quality of Life

Two studies (N?=?190 and N?=?447) were conducted to investigate the link between living in walkable neighborhoods and satisfaction with life in a city. Additionally, we explore possible mediators of this relationship. In both studies walkability was a significant predictor of perceived quality of life in a city, and overlap between personal and communal identity (in Study 1 and Study 2) and city identification (Study 2) were mediators of the walkability—quality of life relation. Implications for research on environmental qualities of neighborhoods and on self-concept and communal identity are discussed.     

Education for Critical Community and the Pedagogy of Asylum: Two Responses to the Crisis Of University Education

Studies in Philosophy and Education - The current heated debate on the deteriorating status of the university raises a range of pertinent questions, including: What role can the humanities play in...     

Depression and appearance-related distress in functioning with lipedema

Lipedema is a chronic, progressive adipose tissue disorder that may impact the quality of life of women who suffer from it. The main aim of this study was to asses the role of perceived symptom severity, physical and psychological functioning with the disease in predicting quality of life in patients with lipedema. We conducted an online study with 329 participants who responded to five questionnaires measuring quality of life (World Health Organization Quality of Life BREF), lipedema symptom severity, mobility (Lower Extremity Functional Scale), depression (Patients Health Questionnaire-9), and appearance-related distress (Derriford Appearance Scale 24). Multiple hierarchical regression analyses showed that appearance-related distress and depression explained significantly more variance in quality of life when added to the symptom severity and mobility. Lower quality of life was predicted by higher symptom severity, lower mobility, higher appearance-related distress and higher depression severity. Appearance-related distress and depression constitute important aspects of psychological functioning in women with lipedema. Considering their relationship with quality of life, their assessment should be included in lipedema treatment with appropriate interventions aimed at decreasing appearance-related distress, as well as preventing and addressing depression.     

Disparate roads to certainty processing strategy choices under need for closure

This paper describes a programme of research addressing an intriguing inconsistency in research findings about cognitive processes under a high need for cognitive closure (NFC). While early studies demonstrated that individuals who seek closure opt for closed-minded cognitive strategies, a growing body of research has identified a number of circumstances in which individuals who are high in NFC engage in effortful, open-minded information processing to an even greater extent than their low NFC counterparts. This has posed the challenge of delineating the circumstances under which people motivated to reduce uncertainty (i.e., attain closure) engage in effortful and open-minded cognition from those situations in which they rely on simplistic, low-effort strategies. This also calls for theoretical advancement in NFC theory. We discuss our proposed solution to this puzzle and the implications of this model for real-world social phenomena.     

Traveling Through the Unthinkable and the Nameless: Discussion of Gómez and Kovalskys

In this response to the paper “Reencounter With History Through a Therapeutic Process” written by Elena Gómez and Juana Kovalskys, I comment in some aspects that are to be addressed while working with patients traumatized by social and political violence. I started by reflecting the inevitability of facing horror and death in the experience of remembering the foreclosed experience of trauma and the need and effects of working from the personal; how the personal wrecked history is interweaved with the ruptures of the big History, and how trauma is stablished not only from the violence of a single human over another, but by the catastrophic lose of the social bond. I conclude by commenting around the place of words in the field of the unthinkable and the nameless experiences.