Attributional Style and Depressive Mood Reactions

According to the reformulated learned helplessness model of depression, individuals who characteristically attribute negative events to internal-stable-global causes become depressed when confronted with negative life events. This proposition was tested in a field and a laboratory study in settings with an interpersonal, socially relevant character. In the field study, the attributional style of 86 female college students was investigated before Christmas, and their mood was recorded both before and after Christmas. The laboratory study recorded the mood of 46 female students before and after either success or failure. In both studies changes in depressive mood were predicted by the Attribution X Outcome interaction. The direction and form of the interaction were in line with the diathesis-stress model. In the field study, but not the laboratory study, outcome was a significant predictor of changes in depressive mood.     

Statements

The churches today are called to confess anew their faith, and to repent for the times when Christians have remained silent in the face of injustice or threats to peace. The biblical vision of peace with justice for all, of wholeness, of unity for all God's people is not one of several options for the followers of Christ. It is an imperative in our time. (Peace and Justice Statement, WCC Sixth Assembly, Vancouver 1983)     

Intuitive inventory management: An experimental system

The way people intuitively manage inventories is both an important issue in its own right and a context for research on various basic theoretical questions. The subject has not yet been systematically studied, owing partially to the lack of appropriate research tools. This paper presents some of the key concepts in formal inventory theory and describes an experimental system for the study of intuitive inventory management. This system is a computer program that allows subjects to interact with a simulated inventory system. Numerous system parameters can be manipulated, including demand functions, prices, costs, and the display of data. The usefulness of the system is demonstrated via the study of the effects of three parameters on intuitive inventory management in an illustrative experiment. Possible future uses of the system in basic and applied research and in training are indicated.     

A new inventory for assessing worry in managers: correlates with job involvement and self-reliance

This work introduces the ‘Worry Inventory for Managers’ (WIM), a 24-item measure of jobrelated worries in managers. A sample of 138 managers responded to the WIM and to measures of pathological worry, job involvement, and self-reliance. Factor analysis of the WIM revealed two facets of job-related worry, namely worry about

1. (1) organizational processes and about

2. (2) work overload.

Results indicate that job-related worry shows differential correlations from pathological worry with the three factors of self-reliance (counterdependence, overdependence, and interdependence).     

Towards a Philosophy of Chemistry. A short extract of this paper was first read at the 10th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Florence, August 19–25, 1995.

The paper shows epistemological, methodological and ontological peculiarities of chemistry taken as a classificatory science of materials using experimental methods. Without succumbing to standard interpretations of physical science, chemical methods of experimental investigation, classification, reference, theorizing, prediction and production of new entities are developed one by one as first steps towards a philosophy of chemistry. Chemistry challenges traditional concepts of empirical object, empirical predicate, reference frame and theory, but also the distinction commonly drawn between natural science and technology. Due to its many peculiarities, I propose to treat chemistry philosophically as a special type of science, apart from other sciences.     

Career perspectives of male prison inmates in college courses

The article presents a profile of college-attending prison inmates' personality and vocational interests based on Holland's theory of careers and an assessment of their attitudes that are critical in realistic career decision-making.     

Amount of stimulus exploration and preference as differential functions of stimulus complexity

Two sets of photographic slides, one made up of scenes from the geographic environment, the other of works of non-representational modern art, were scaled for complexity by obtaining judges’ ratings of amount of variation present on several specified stimulus attributes. Fourteen slides defining a sevenpoint scale of complexity were selected from each set and given to college students to obtain measures of (a) amount of exploratory behavior (number of times S chose to expose each slide briefly), and (b) preference (evaluative ratings on a seven-point scale). In accordance with prediction, the former measure emerged as a linearly increasing function of complexity, while the relationship between complexity and preference was curvilinear, reaching a maximum at an intermediate level of complexity. The results are related to Berlyne’s distinction between specific and diversive stimulus exploration, and implications for the study of aesthetics are discussed.     

A Framework for Compensating Climate Change Damages

Philosophia - Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims...     

Are criminals better lie detectors? Investigating offenders' abilities in the context of deception detection

The present research examined lie detection abilities of a rarely investigated group, namely offenders. Results of the studies conducted thus far indicated a better performance of offenders compared to non‐offenders when discriminating between true and false messages. With two new studies, we aimed at replicating offenders' superior abilities in the context of deception detection. Results of Study 1 (N = 76 males), in contrast, revealed that offenders were significantly worse at accurately classifying true and false messages compared to non‐offenders (students). Results of Study 2 (N = 175 males) revealed that offenders' discrimination performance was not significantly different compared to non‐offenders (clinic staff). An internal meta‐analysis yielded no significant difference between offenders and non‐offenders, questioning the generalizability of previous findings.     

Das verkörperte Selbst und der Andere

Bodily experience and mentalization cannot be attributed to separate experiential fields, they are interrelated. Many twentieth and twenty-first century concepts of the embodied self in philosophy and psychosomatics have gone beyond dualistic models of mind and body. In accordance with these modern theories, a dialectical concept is presented that seems to be more adequate, highlighting two dialectical relationships. The first is between mentalization and bodily experience. On the one hand bodily experience always reaches beyond mentalization and on the other hand mentalization is constantly working on bodily experience and trying to represent it mentally. The second is between mentalization and intercorporeality. The embodied self is by no means a solipsistic self; rather, the mutual relatedness in a bodily encounter comes prior to all mentalization, which in turn remodels it into self-representations, e.g. the body image. These two dialectical relationships are important to take into account when trying to understand clinical phenomena, such as hypochondriasis, ideas of reference in schizophrenia or the psychological sequelae of Parkinson’s disease.