Synergistic Paths to Happiness: Findings from Seven Countries

Four individual profiles of ways toward happiness were found on a Slovene sample: Full, Empty, Pleasurable, and Meaningful life types. The present study aimed to validate these four types in samples from seven different countries (N = 3690) utilising four different languages. Participants completed the Orientation towards Happiness Scale and measures of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, and ill-being. A two-step cluster analysis was performed with each of the seven country samples. A highly congruent, highly internally replicable four-cluster solution was found in all seven samples. Full and Empty life individuals have high and low scores on all three orientations to happiness, respectively. Pleasurable and Meaningful types reflect two traditional philosophic orientations: Pleasurable life individuals scored high on pleasure, average on engagement and low on meaning orientation, while Meaningful life individuals had high scores on meaning, average on engagement, and low scores on pleasure orientation. The four types differed in subjective happiness and psychological well-being with full life type characterized by the highest scores on subjective happiness and psychological well-being, and Empty life by the lowest scores. On the other hand, depressive symptoms were likely to be the lowest in the Full life type and the highest in the Empty life type. Meaningful and Pleasurable life types were characterized by moderate well- and ill-being, but the two types tended not to differ from each other on the measures used.     

A Generalization of Inquisitive Semantics

This paper introduces a generalized version of inquisitive semantics, denoted as GIS, and concentrates especially on the role of disjunction in this general framework. Two alternative semantic conditions for disjunction are compared: the first one corresponds to the so-called tensor operator of dependence logic, and the second one is the standard condition for inquisitive disjunction. It is shown that GIS is intimately related to intuitionistic logic and its Kripke semantics. Using this framework, it is shown that the main results concerning inquisitive semantics, especially the axiomatization of inquisitive logic, can be viewed as particular cases of more general phenomena. In this connection, a class of non-standard superintuitionistic logics is introduced and studied. These logics share many interesting features with inquisitive logic, which is the strongest logic of this class.     

The Contribution of Metacognitions and Attentional Control to Decisional Procrastination

Earlier research has implicated metacognitions and attentional control in procrastination and self-regulatory failure. This study tested several hypotheses: (1) that metacognitions would be positively correlated with decisional procrastination; (2) that attentional control would be negatively correlated with decisional procrastination; (3) that metacognitions would be negatively correlated with attentional control; and (4) that metacognitions and attentional control would predict decisional procrastination when controlling for negative affect. One hundred and twenty-nine participants completed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 21, the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire 30, the Attentional Control Scale, and the Decisional Procrastination Scale. Significant relationships were found between all three attentional control factors (focusing, shifting, and flexible control of thought) and two metacognitions factors (negative beliefs concerning thoughts about uncontrollability and danger, and cognitive confidence). Results also revealed that decisional procrastination was significantly associated with negative affect, all measured metacognitions factors, and all attentional control factors. In the final step of a hierarchical regression analysis only stress, cognitive confidence, and attention shifting were independent predictors of decisional procrastination. Overall these findings support the hypotheses and are consistent with the Self-Regulatory Executive Function model of psychological dysfunction. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

The ideal free distribution in humans: an experimental test

How the distribution of resources affects the spatial distribution of animals is a central concern of behavioral ecology. One influential model relating population dynamics to individual foraging behavior is that of ideal free distribution (Fretwell & Lucas, 1970). This model assumes foragers of equal competitive abilities, moving freely from one habitat to another; the choices made by each individual subject are supposed to equalize gains across habitats. The resulting distribution at the group level, or ideal free distribution, has been tested with various animal species. Here we report an experimental test with human subjects competing for money. The results approximate those predicted by the ideal free model, the degree of approximation being consistent with that obtained in other species. This similarity of results supports the application of behavioral ecology models to human performance.     

The Marxian conception of the working class and the development of physics

Marx extrapolated the relations of production of the factories of his time into his predictions about the development of the working class. These predictions are among the most important theses of Marxism-Leninism relative to the socialist world-revolution which the working class was to carry out. The physics of Marx' era was not very developed. Marx could have no inkling of the future development of physics and of its application to technology. This is why his predictions had to be in simple and direct proportion to the development of the relations of production of the time. Industry developed — thanks in part to the development of physics — in ways other than Marx had suspected. The use of modern physics, leading to cybernetics and automation, gradually changed the workers from forces of production to supervisory engineers. Were one to undertake today an extrapolation like that which Marx carried out, one would have to see as highly probable the disappearance of the very working class that Marx saw as carrying out the world-revolution.     

Models for normal intuitionistic modal logics

Kripke-style models with two accessibility relations, one intuitionistic and the other modal, are given for analogues of the modal systemK based on Heyting's prepositional logic. It is shown that these two relations can combine with each other in various ways. Soundness and completeness are proved for systems with only the necessity operator, or only the possibility operator, or both. Embeddings in modal systems with several modal operators, based on classical propositional logic, are also considered. This paper lays the ground for an investigation of intuitionistic analogues of systems stronger thanK. A brief survey is given of the existing literature on intuitionistic modal logic.     

An ethnomethodological clarification of Husserl's concepts of “regressive inquiry” and “Galilean physics” by means of discovering praxioms

This paper offers an ethnomethodological clarification of Husserl's concepts of Galilean physics and regressive inquiry. It employs the reader's textual-practical operationalization of these concepts. With the use of a simple optical prism as a perspicuous case of a scientific instrument, the reader will be asked and instructed to make a self-reflexive inquiry into the practical contingencies of the prismatic field of reflection. The reader will discover that the geometric structures of the reflective field of the prism is an achievement and formalization of the reader's own operatlonalizations. I named these discoverable discovering operationspraxioms or practical axioms — the pre-scientific contingencies of the geometric structures of prismatic reflection.I would like to thank Mike Lynch, Eric Livingston, George Psathas and Shelley Schweizer-Bjelic for their comments.     

How does familiarity with a voice affect trait judgements?

From only a single spoken word, listeners can form a wealth of first impressions of a person’s character traits and personality based on their voice. However, due to the substantial within-person variability in voices, these trait judgements are likely to be highly stimulus-dependent for unfamiliar voices: The same person may sound very trustworthy in one recording but less trustworthy in another. How trait judgements differ when listeners are familiar with a voice is unclear: Are listeners who are familiar with the voices as susceptible to the effects of within-person variability? Does the semantic knowledge listeners have about a familiar person influence their judgements? In the current study, we tested the effect of familiarity on listeners’ trait judgements from variable voices across 3 experiments. Using a between-subjects design, we contrasted trait judgements by listeners who were familiar with a set of voices – either through laboratory-based training or through watching a TV show – with listeners who were unfamiliar with the voices. We predicted that familiarity with the voices would reduce variability in trait judgements for variable voice recordings from the same identity (cf. Mileva, Kramer & Burton, Perception, 48, 471 and 2019, for faces). However, across the 3 studies and two types of measures to assess variability, we found no compelling evidence to suggest that trait impressions were systematically affected by familiarity.