Does Personality Smell? Accuracy of Personality Assessments Based on Body Odour

People are able to assess some personality traits of others based on videotaped behaviour, short interaction or a photograph. In our study, we investigated the relationship between body odour and the Big Five personality dimensions and dominance. Sixty odour samples were assessed by 20 raters each. The main finding of the presented study is that for a few personality traits, the correlation between self‐assessed personality of odour donors and judgments based on their body odour was above chance level. The correlations were strongest for extraversion (.36), neuroticism (.34) and dominance (.29). Further analyses showed that self–other agreement in assessments of neuroticism slightly differed between sexes and that the ratings of dominance were particularly accurate for assessments of the opposite sex. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influence of Religiosity on the Quality of Life and on Pain Intensity in Chronic Pancreatitis Patients After Neurolytic Celiac Plexus Block: Case-Controlled Study

The quality of life in patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP) is reduced due to their suffering of high levels of pain. It has been presented that quality of life can also be linked to religiosity and/or spirituality. The aim of this study is to assess the influence of religious practices on the quality of life and on the subjective level of pain in CP patients. Ninety-two patients (37 women and 55 men) with chronic pancreatitis were treated invasively for pain with neurolytic celiac plexus block (NCPB). The religiosity of the patients was recorded and served as a dichotomizer. Group 1 was for patients who claimed to have no contact with the church or to have very sporadic contact (N = 35 patients). Group 2 was for patients who claimed to have deep faith and were regular participants at church activities (N = 57 patients). Visual analogue scale was used to assess pain, while the quality of life was measured by using QLQ C-30 questionnaire adapted for chronic pancreatitis patients in Polish population. The patients were assessed prior to the pain-relieving intervention and subsequently 2 and 8 weeks after it. The intensity of pain was reduced in both groups significantly after performing the NCPB. Patients who declared a deep faith reported higher level of pain on the VAS scale prior to intervention than non-religious patients. Quality of life in both groups of patients significantly improved after NCPB. Following NCPB, global quality of life in patients who declared higher religiosity/church attendance was significantly higher (79.88) than for those patients who have no contact or sporadic contact with the church (44.21, P < 0.05). NCPB resulted in significant reduction of pain and increase in quality of life in both groups of patients with CP. Nevertheless, in the group declaring higher religiosity/church attendance, reported pain was higher, but, despite that, quality of life better. It may be concluded that religious practices might serve as an additional factor improving quality of life and coping in patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis.     

Deduction and Reduction Theorems for Inferential Erotetic Logic

The concepts of question evocation and erotetic implication play central role in Inferential Erotetic Logic. In this paper, deduction theorems for question evocation and erotetic implication are proven. Moreover, it is shown how question evocation by a finite non-empty set of declaratives can be reduced to question evocation by the empty set, and how erotetic implication based on a finite non-empty set of declaratives can be reduced to a relation between questions only.     

The ‘living dead’ — Survivors of torture and psychosis

Regardless of all differences between patients who have suffered from psychotic breakdowns and those with the sequelae of torture, our experience have shown that some common features can be recognized. We can attempt to understand patients' experience of being ‘living dead’ in terms of regression to the ‘psychotic core’ in the personality, and in terms of actualisation and enactment of archaic relations to primary objects. The major difference between thee two categories of patients deals with a located, limited, and concrete traumatic event in the life of the torture-survivor, whilst in the schizophrenic individual the trauma also emanates from within through own destructiveness and rage. Regressive forms of relations toward distorted, aggressively cathected and persecutory primary objects are reestablished in both cases, leading to a more or less stable reorganisation of the ego. Difficulties in psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients and torture-survivors are here discussed as a consequence of the patients' persistently holding onto the distorted and regressive forms of relating to primary objects, when the projections of the patients' own destructiveness and hate is followed by a strong tendency to symbiotic merging.     

Milestones and Russian intellectual history

Milestones was a manifesto of rightwing, anti-revolutionary liberalism, according to which the political events of 1905 should have officially concluded the intelligentsia’s battle against autocracy and inaugurated the intelligentsia’s cooperation with Russia’s “historical rulers” to turn the country into an economically and culturally strong “state of law.” All the Milestones’ authors agreed that Russia’s intellectual history was not identical with the traditions of the radical intelligentsia, and that there was need for a new intellectual canon focused on religious thought and efforts to define the Russian national identity.     

作为一种新人文主义的后现代自由主义

在欧洲,理性信念曾经走过一段辉煌的历程。最重要的因素存在于开端,存在于伟大的希腊哲学家们对所有各种无法控制的东西,以及对所有各种威胁人、使人堕落到内心的混沌或者外在的混沌之中去的东西所具有的憎恶之中。这种东西既可能是肉体方面的各种感情,也可能是对群氓的非理性意志的服从。必须用某种由于始终保持不变、因而能够抵制永远变化的逻辑的东西,来祛除这个世界所具有的不稳定性和脆弱性。这种作为古代哲学的典型特征而存在的态度,导致了对理性和真理的热爱,也导致了对绝对确定性的希冀、导致了有关发现存在于所有各种事物背后的原…