Edmund Husserl, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Logical Investigations. Volume I. Prolegomena to Pure Logic</Emphasis>

This is a translation from Russian to English of Nikolai Onufriyevich Lossky’s review of the first Russian translation of volume one of Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen (the “Prolegomena to Pure Logic”), which was translated by E. A. Berstein and published in 1909 by a Petersburgian editor. The review appeared in the Muscovite philosophical journal Pyccкaя мыcль (Russian Thought) in 1909. In this short text, Lossky expresses his agreement with Husserl’s early anti-psychologism in logic. He also manifests his stance against logical and axiological relativism and naturalism. As an ontological realist, Lossky thought he had found in the author of the Logische Untersuchungen an ally against the subjectivistic trends then still prevalent in Germany. The review is significant in intellectual history for its vanguard role in the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Husserl’s thought in Russia. (Frédéric Tremblay)     

Shame,guilt, and facial emotion processing: initial evidence for a positive relationship between guilt-proneness and facial emotion recognition ability

Shame and guilt are closely related self-conscious emotions of negative affect that give rise to divergent self-regulatory and motivational behaviours. While guilt-proneness has demonstrated positive relationships with self-report measures of empathy and adaptive interpersonal functioning, shame-proneness tends to be unrelated or inversely related to empathy and is associated with interpersonal difficulties. At present, no research has examined relationships between shame and guilt-proneness with facial emotion recognition ability. Participants (N?=?363) completed measures of shame and guilt-proneness along with a facial emotion recognition task which assessed the ability to identify displays of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, and shame. Guilt-proneness was consistently positively associated with facial emotion recognition ability. In contrast, shame-proneness was unrelated to capacity for facial emotion recognition. Findings provide support for theory arguing that guilt and empathy operate synergistically and may also help explain the inverse relationship between guilt-proneness and propensity for aggressive behaviour.     

Comparison of the Effects of Telephone Suicide Prevention Help by Volunteers and Professional Paid Staff: Results from Studies in the USA and Quebec,Canada

Research since the 1960s has consistently found that lay volunteers are better at helping suicidal callers than professionals. Yet, professional degrees are increasingly becoming requirements for helpline workers. In our first study, we conducted post hoc comparisons of U.S. helplines with all professional paid staff, all lay volunteers, and a mix of both, using silent monitoring and standardized assessments of 1,431 calls. The volunteer centers more often conducted risk assessments, had more empathy, were more respectful of callers, and had significantly better call outcome ratings. A second study of five Quebec suicide prevention centers used silent monitoring to compare telephone help in 1,206 calls answered by 90 volunteers and 39 paid staff. Results indicate no significant differences between the volunteers and paid employees on outcome variables. However, volunteers and paid staff with over 140 hours of call experience had significantly better outcomes. Unlike the United States, Quebec paid employees were not required to have advanced professional degrees. We conclude from these results and previous research that there is no justification for requiring that suicide prevention helpline workers be mental health professionals. In fact, the evidence to date indicates that professionals may be less effective in providing telephone help to suicidal individuals when compared to trained lay volunteers.     

Counterintuitive Religious Ideas and Metaphoric Thinking: An Event‐Related Brain Potential Study

It has been shown that counterintuitive ideas from mythological and religious texts are more acceptable than other (non‐religious) world knowledge violations. In the present experiment we explored whether this relates to the way they are interpreted (literal vs. metaphorical). Participants were presented with verification questions that referred to either the literal or a metaphorical meaning of the sentence previously read (counterintuitive religious, counterintuitive non‐religious and intuitive), in a block‐wise design. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results converged. At variance to the literal interpretation of the sentences, the induced metaphorical interpretation specifically facilitated the integration (N400 amplitude decrease) of religious counterintuitions, whereas the semantic processing of non‐religious counterintuitions was not affected by the interpretation mode. We suggest that religious ideas tend to operate like other instances of figurative language, such as metaphors, facilitating their acceptability despite their counterintuitive nature.     

Cross‐cultural Generalizability of the Alternative Five‐factor Model Using the Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personality Questionnaire

Several personality models are known for being replicable across cultures, such as the Five‐Factor Model (FFM) or Eysenck's Psychoticism–Extraversion–Neuroticism (PEN) model, and are for this reason considered universal. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the cross‐cultural replicability of the recently revised Alternative FFM (AFFM). A total of 15 048 participants from 23 cultures completed the Zuckerman–Kuhlman–Aluja Personality Questionnaire (ZKA‐PQ) aimed at assessing personality according to this revised AFFM. Internal consistencies, gender differences and correlations with age were similar across cultures for all five factors and facet scales. The AFFM structure was very similar across samples and can be considered as highly replicable with total congruence coefficients ranging from .94 to .99. Measurement invariance across cultures was assessed using multi‐group confirmatory factor analyses, and each higher‐order personality factor did reach configural and metric invariance. Scalar invariance was never reached, which implies that culture‐specific norms should be considered. The underlying structure of the ZKA‐PQ replicates well across cultures, suggesting that this questionnaire can be used in a large diversity of cultures and that the AFFM might be as universal as the FFM or the PEN model. This suggests that more research is needed to identify and define an integrative framework underlying these personality models. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Clarity of Personal Values and Committed Action: Development of a Shorter Engaged Living Scale

The Engaged Living Scale (ELS) is a measure of the process of engaged living, defined by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as the evaluation and performance of valued life activities. This 16-item measure was recently created and has been validated in middle-aged and chronic pain samples. The aim of the present study was to validate the ELS-16 in a young-adult sample and additionally to develop a shorter ELS. This study was conducted using different samples of Portuguese young-adult college students. The dimensionality of the ELS-16 (which was translated to Portuguese from the original Dutch) was tested through a CFA. The adequacy of the shorter ELS (ELS-9) was also tested through a CFA. The scales’ internal reliability and other psychometric qualities were additionally analysed. Results from the CFA suggested that the model benefits from the establishment of correlations between pairs of error terms of items with similar contents. These results led to the decision to shorten the measure by excluding the item of each pair with the lowest communalities. The ELS-9 was then created and its CFA results revealed good to excellent adjustment values and goodness-of-fit indices. Results also showed that the ELS-16 and the ELS-9 present adequate to good psychometric properties. The present study thus shows that these instruments seem to be reliable measures of engaged living and to perform adequately in young-adult college students, with the ELS-9 being a new contribution to health research and allowing faster administrations.     

The Relative Contribution of a Typological versus a Dimensional Approach for Understanding Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms in Adolescents

In order to better understand the heterogeneous nature of Obsessive-Compulsive (OC) symptoms, a typological or a dimensional approach can be used to structure the variety of symptoms into a set of core components. However, there is still no consensus on which approach is the most robust to predict several OC-related criterion measures, especially in adolescents. From this perspective, the current study empirically identified OC classes (i.e., types), and explored whether types or dimensions are the strongest predictors of adolescent OC-related criterion variables. To identify OC classes, we conducted latent class analysis on the Youth Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Scale (YOCSS; De Caluwé and De Clercq 2014) that was completed by 682 community and referred adolescents (71.4 % girls, 12–18 years old, mean age = 15.67, SD = 1.53), and we also computed OC dimension scores as outlined in De Caluwé and De Clercq (2014). We subsequently used hierarchical regression analysis to examine the incremental validity of the OC classes beyond the OC domains, and vice versa, in predicting several OC-related criterion variables that were completed by the adolescents or their mothers (N = 325). The results indicated that the two identified OC classes only differed quantitatively but not qualitatively, hence reflecting severity classes, and also showed that OC domains have significant effects beyond the effects of the OC classes, whereas the reverse did not hold. The dimensional approach appears to have the strongest predictive value for OC symptomatology in adolescents, leading to clinical implications for conceptualization and assessment of obsessive and compulsive problems in younger age groups.     

Idiosyncratic Deals and Helping Behavior: The Moderating Role of I-deal Opportunity for Co-workers

Purpose

This study draws from social comparison theory to explore why and under which circumstances individuals receiving idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) are likely to help their co-workers.

Design

Data were collected with an alumni association of engineers. Participants completed two questionnaires (N = 182 at Time 2).

Findings

We find that the relationship between i-deals and helping behavior is not direct, but is mediated by organizational-based self-esteem. This relationship is stronger when i-deal recipients believe that their co-workers do not have the opportunity to get i-deals for themselves.

Implications

I-deal recipients are expected to help their colleagues because helping colleagues is consistent with the positive self developed thanks to i-deals. When co-workers have the opportunity to get i-deals for themselves, social comparison between the i-deal recipient and colleagues is likely to be more salient, which strengthen the indirect relationship between i-deal and helping behavior.

Originality

This study tests i-deals from the vantage point of social comparison theory rather than from the perspective of social exchange. We thereby provide a richer account of the complexities involved in helping behavior. By exploring contextual variables that are likely to trigger social comparisons, we also expect to better understand the circumstances under which i-deals are likely to be associated with helping behavior.

     

What is the best strategy for retaining gestures in working memory?

This study aimed to determine whether the recall of gestures in working memory could be enhanced by verbal or gestural strategies. We also attempted to examine whether these strategies could help resist verbal or gestural interference. Fifty-four participants were divided into three groups according to the content of the training session. This included a control group, a verbal strategy group (where gestures were associated with labels) and a gestural strategy group (where participants repeated gestures and were told to imagine reproducing the movements). During the experiment, the participants had to reproduce a series of gestures under three conditions: “no interference”, gestural interference (gestural suppression) and verbal interference (articulatory suppression). The results showed that task performance was enhanced in the verbal strategy group, but there was no significant difference between the gestural strategy and control groups. Moreover, compared to the “no interference” condition, performance decreased in the presence of gestural interference, except within the verbal strategy group. Finally, verbal interference hindered performance in all groups. The discussion focuses on the use of labels to recall gestures and differentiates the induced strategies from self-initiated strategies.