On an Observer’s Reaction to Hearing of Someone Harming Him or Herself

Anthropological studies in India inspired the idea of a distinct domain of moral purity, but a precise characterization of that domain has been elusive. One proposal based on current theorizing in psychology is that prototypical purity violations are self-harming actions, which are perceived as disgusting and immoral whether done accidentally or intentionally. In three studies (Ns?=?400, 80, 132), we examined judgments of self-harming actions in two cultural groups—American and Indian. There was little support for the proposed characterization of the purity domain: Self-harms were slightly to modestly immoral for Indians and Americans. Both Indians and Americans found self-harms to be sad, not disgusting. And intentionality influenced how immoral and how sad the action was judged. Instead, the findings supported a view that all immorality, including those concerning self-harm, depends on perceived harm.     

Impact of Perceived Authentic Leadership and Psychological Capital on Burnout: Mediating Role of Psychological Ownership

The present study is an empirical endeavor of exploring the role of promotive and preventative psychological ownership in the relationship of authentic leadership and psychological capital with burnout. A cross-sectional survey study was conducted among 500 faculty members of various public sector universities of Pakistan (209 male and 291 female teachers). PsyCap Questionnaire, Authentic Leadership Questionnaire, Psychological Ownership Questionnaire, and Maslach Burnout Inventory-Educator Survey were used to measure the focal constructs of the present study. Structured equation modeling reveals that promotive psychological ownership had a negative, whereas preventative psychological ownership had a positive relationship with burnout. Psychological capital and perceived authentic leadership had a negative influence on burnout. Promotive psychological ownership mediated the relationship of psychological capital and authentic leadership with burnout, whereas preventative psychological ownership mediated between perceived authentic leadership and burnout. Implications of the research along with its limitation and suggestions for further research were reflected upon.     

The Satisfaction with Job Life Scale Among Immigrants

This article reports the development of a short multi-item measurement scale of satisfaction with job life (SWJLS). This scale evaluates a person’s global assessment of job satisfaction. Two studies are presented for the purpose of establishing the reliability and validity of the SWJLS. The data were gathered among immigrants. The findings of both studies demonstrated that the SWJLS presents adequate psychometric properties. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the SWJLS evidenced a single underlying dimension. The reliability was highly satisfactory. Corroboration of validity was also yielded between correlations among indicators of well-being and acculturation, and scale scores. The results indicate that the SWJLS is a short and viable instrument to measure job life satisfaction.     

Understanding the Effects of Unemployment in Indian Graduates: Psychological,Financial and Social Perspectives

The present research attempts to examine the psychological impact of unemployment and understand the individual experiences of unemployed Indian graduates. It seeks to address three possible effects of unemployment, which are psychological, financial and social, along with a necessary scrutiny on how these individuals cope with their present unemployed situation. A qualitative analysis method has been employed to investigate the research objectives through employment of a semi-structured interview schedule among graduates in the age group of 21–23 years. The research findings suggest that unemployed graduates are psychologically impacted and sometimes experience feeling of worthlessness, social embarrassment and high level of stress. Some individuals also reported a lack of motivation and meaning in their life. Although, a majority of the participants agreed to have a decline in their psychological well-being, not all share the similar experiences of unhappiness and worthlessness owing to their unemployment. Therefore, this research also hopes to underline differences in the individual experiences due to unemployment.     

Development of the Diabetes Self-Care Efficacy Scale

The present study elaborates the conceptualization and process of development of a scale for assessing diabetes self-care efficacy (DSCE) in patients of diabetes, type 1 and type 2. Health maintenance in chronic illness as diabetes is dependent on performing several key self-care behaviours. The present study discusses two parts—Part I elaborates the qualitative exploration of the research construct through semi-structured interview of diabetic patients. It included 25 diabetic patients, Type-I (n?=?5) and Type-II (n?=?20). Part II discusses the quantitative research methods. The sample consisted of 233 diabetic patients, Type-1 (n?=?39) and Type-2 (n?=?194), who were randomly selected from diabetes and endocrine outpatient department (OPD) of a hospital in, Kolkata, India. Following an exploratory approach employing Principal Component Analysis (PCA), three components were yielded that accounted for approximately 60% of explained variance. Cronbach’s alpha was established at 0.89 indicating satisfactory internal reliability. The components were identified as component 1, “Beliefs about physical exercise regimen” (BPE), component 2, “Beliefs about food and insulin administration and medication recommendations” (FMR) and component 3, “Beliefs about learning and following from others” (LFO). To test the obtained factor structure of the proposed DSCE scale, a confirmatory analysis was performed to help validate the 3-factor, 15-item DSCE scale. The scale is first one of its kind to be proposed and developed in an Indian diabetes context and can prove useful in other settings. Study findings have implications for use in hospital setup and for development of intervention programs in dealing with diabetes patient population.     

The Tyranny of Taxonomy Sexuality and Anomaly

Human sexuality is not binary: this, although counter-intuitive initially, is a medical fact. Homo-sexuality was an anomaly under a M/F taxonomy, and so ‘unnatural’ and ‘an abomination’. It is a mere statistical anomaly: it is a fact of Nature, nevertheless. Doctrines of Natural Law must recognize that even if Nature is stable, the notion/word ‘Nature’ is a shifter. As medical and other sciences amend our understanding of Nature, the idea of ‘Nature’ shifts. Natural Law theory is – and must continue to be – based on Nature: the contents of the idea of ‘Nature’ change progressively. So must cultural attitudes.     

Reconstructing the Topology of the Elementary Self-embedding Monoids of Countable Saturated Structures

Every transformation monoid comes equipped with a canonical topology, the topology of pointwise convergence. For some structures, the topology of the endomorphism monoid can be reconstructed from its underlying abstract monoid. This phenomenon is called automatic homeomorphicity. In this paper we show that whenever the automorphism group of a countable saturated structure has automatic homeomorphicity and a trivial center, then the monoid of elementary self-embeddings has automatic homeomorphicity, too. As a second result we strengthen a result by Lascar by showing that whenever \({\mathbf {A}}\) is a countable \(\aleph _0\)-categorical G-finite structure whose automorphism group has a trivial center and if \({\mathbf {B}}\) is any other countable structure, then every isomorphism between the monoids of elementary self-embeddings is a homeomorphism.     

A Logical Analysis of Monty Hall and Sleeping Beauty

Hintikka and Sandu’s independence-friendly (IF) logic is a conservative extension of first-order logic that allows one to consider semantic games with imperfect information. In the present article, we first show how several variants of the Monty Hall problem can be modeled as semantic games for IF sentences. In the process, we extend IF logic to include semantic games with chance moves and dub this extension stochastic IF logic. Finally, we use stochastic IF logic to analyze the Sleeping Beauty problem, leading to the conclusion that the thirders are correct while identifying the main error in the halfers’ argument.