Happiness and health: environmental and genetic contributions to the relationship between subjective well-being, perceived health, and somatic illness

The aim was to identify genetic and environmental influences on the covariances between subjective well-being (SWB), perceived health, and somatic illness. Analyses were based on 6576 Norwegian twins aged 18-31. Heritabilities ranged from .24 to.66. SWB correlated .50 with perceived health, -.25 with musculoskeletal pain, and -.07 with allergy. Common genetic factors accounted for 45%-60% of associations. SWB and perceived health was to a high extent influenced by the same genes (r(g)=.72 and.82 for males and females, respectively). For SWB and musculoskeletal pain, r-sub(g) =-.29 and -.42 for males and females, respectively. Effects were partly sex specific. Environmental factors shared by twins did not affect the covariances. Results support a differentiated view of SWB-health relations, and imply that both genes and environment play important roles in the associations between well-being and health.     

Networking Psychology in Finland: New Collaboration Between Research and Profession

A firmly structured collaborative scheme was created in Finland during the 1990s, involving all psychology departments and national scientific as well as professional societies. The experiences have been very rewarding. This article reports the main events, crucial strategies and decisions, and evaluates the reasons for success and the dangers to be avoided in such a project.     

Zwischen der „Physik des Organischen” und der „Organisierung der Physik”: Überlegungen zu Gegenstand und Methode der Biologie

Between Physics of Organism and Organismic Physics: Object and Method of Biology. In the history of biological theory one can observe an oscillation between two tendencies of thinking, namely the biologistic and the physicalistic point of view. Both aim at a general or unified theory of nature that is relevant for scientific research as well as for philosophical reflection. In terms of a pluralistic approach these two ways of theory-formation must be rejected. Biology e.g. as a specific natural science, characterized by its mid-position between ‘nomothetic’ and ‘idiographic’ thinking (Windelband), is much more than a subordinate branch of physical knowledge. This very autonomy of biology does not only result from a special methodology or from a specific theoretical framework. On the contrary, the methodological and functional autonomy of biology is due to the very features of the phenomena investigated. These features include multitude, individuality and wholeness. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Morphological isolates in idioms: cranberries or real words?

The present study focuses on a subtype of Finnish nouns that appear only as complements in idiomatic verb phrases. In addition to the idioms as their sole environment, these idiomatic isolates, as we call them, are typically frozen to a single case form. In two experiments, in a subjective rating task and a lexical decision task, the isolates are pitted against ordinary nouns and nouns that appear as frozen forms in idioms in addition to being ordinary, free words. The experiments show that the isolates, in spite of their defective syntactic and morphological properties, are processed like ordinary lexical items.     

Framing a phenomenological interview: what,why and how

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - Research in phenomenology has benefitted from using exceptional cases from pathology and expertise. But exactly how are we to generate and apply knowledge...     

Perceptual complexity,rather than valence or arousal accounts for distracter-induced overproductions of temporal durations

For humans and other species, the ability to estimate the physical passage of time is of fundamental importance for perceptual, cognitive or motor functions. Despite this importance, any subjective estimation of temporal durations not only depends on the temporal dynamics of the to-be-timed stimulus or event, but also can be distorted by non-temporal perceptual, cognitive, and emotional effects. This study aimed to further explore critical stimulus characteristics modulating distracter-induced distortions in human time-reproduction. To this end, we investigated whether subjectively rated distracter dimensions of arousal and valence (related to levels of emotionality), or rather stimulus complexity, as a confounder, produce distortions in participants' reproduction of a previously trained target interval. Accuracy and precision of time-reproduction have been measured in distracter-trials, and compared to timing performance in baseline-trials without any distraction. Results showed temporal overproductions in a magnitude of less than distracter duration only for complex distracters. Most importantly, arousal level and valence of distracters were not accountable for temporal distortions. Within an internal clock framework, our pattern of results can best be interpreted in the context of attention-, rather than arousal-based mechanisms of timing.     

A Visual Illustration of Induction in Multilevel Methods: The Problem of Leaders Awarding Countervailing Merit Components

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the use of a multilevel technique, Within and Between Analysis (WABA), for inductively investigating the impact of how supervisory groups influence the process of awarding merit raises (permanent) and performance bonuses (temporary). From a levels of analysis perspective, is this relationship best modeled at the individual subordinate, the whole supervisory-group, or the within-group level?

Design

Archival merit pay data for 2 years were obtained for 71 managers and professionals nested within 21 supervisory groups who encompassed the entire management hierarchy of a 500+ person-manufacturing plant.

Findings

What appeared to be a countervailing relationship at the individual level (r _total = ?.64***), in which raises and bonuses were negatively correlated, was found to be a countervailing relationship at the whole supervisory-group level (r _between = ?.79*** vs. r _within = ?.36*). Given the statistically significant differences between supervisory groups, an induction toward a whole-group effect was made. These countervailing findings were replicated at the group level in the subsequent year’s data.

Implications

The whole-group effect indicates that managers were attempting to create some type of within-group equity by (1) minimizing variability within their groups, and (2), at the same time, trading off raises for bonuses at the whole-group level.

Originality

The application of WABA focuses on testing entities as well as variables, and it can provide a generalizable method for investigating levels of analysis issues in merit pay programs without necessarily advocating that only one level of analysis is universally potent. WABA also allows for the inductive investigation of additional levels of analysis as well as a variety of boundary conditions.     

City under the Ice: The Closed World of Camp Century in Cold War Culture

Located on the beeline between the two nuclear superpowers, Greenland took on vital strategic importance during the early phases of the Cold War. As part of its polar strategy, the USA constructed several bases in Greenland. Camp Century, known as ‘City under the Ice’, was an experimental-military American city built entirely inside the ice sheet in 1959–1960. A 225-person, nuclear-powered army base, Century was the precursor for a much larger installation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (which never materialized), but was also used to project popular images of techno-scientific control, nuclear containment, and American values into Cold War American culture. Applying Paul Edward's closed-world metaphor to photos, film, books, and articles about Camp Century enables us to see both the strengths and the fragility of public discourses about the camp. Century was depicted as an outstanding example of man's never-ceasing quest for knowledge, as the epic conquest of the harsh Arctic environment by US Army engineers, as an Arctic sword and shield against the Soviet aggressor, and as a friendly collaboration between the USA and Denmark (in 1953, the former colony of Greenland became part of the Danish Realm). In the end, Camp Century had to be abandoned due to the glaciological forces of the moving ice sheet which crushed the tunnels, but also due to changes in Cold War politics and the political difficulties underscoring nuclear installations on Danish territory.