Explaining the link between conscientiousness and forgivingness

The current studies tested possible explanations for the link between conscientiousness and forgivingness. Using two Swiss adult samples, we examined three reasons why conscientious people tend to be more dispositionally forgiving. Findings suggest that self-regulation ability served as the best explanation for this relationship. Conscientious individuals tend to be better at self-regulation, which in turn enables them to be more forgiving of others. Moreover, this explanation only holds when discussing the link between forgivingness and conscientiousness, and not with respect to why agreeable and emotionally stable participants are more forgiving. Findings are discussed with respect to the role of regulatory processes in explaining the linkages between broad personality dimensions and forgivingness.     

Foresight, function representation, and social intelligence in the great apes

We find problems with Vaesen's treatment of the primatological research, in particular his analysis of foresight, function representation, and social intelligence. We argue that his criticism of research on foresight in great apes is misguided. His claim that primates do not attach functions to particular objects is also problematic. Finally, his analysis of theory of mind neglects many distinctions.     

Quality of life in patients before and after kidney transplantation

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to differentially determine quality of life (QOL) in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) after successful kidney transplantation (RT, Group A) compared with ESRD patients on a waiting list for RT (Group B). and with healthy controls (Group C) because opinions vary as to which treatment modality can best assure ESRD patients a high QOL.

Groups A, B and C each consisted of 149 persons, matched for age and gender. The Munich Quality of Life Dimensions List (MLDL) was used to measure global aspects of QOL. Distinct aspects of QOL were investigated by the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and the Questionnaire for Social Support (K-22).

Groups A and C reported similar QOL. Which was significantly higher than in group B (p < .0001). This was particularly true for the physical and psychological status and daily activities, but not for the social situation. Groups A and B reported similar social support, which was significantly, lower than in group C (p < 006). Both ESRD groups reported higher satisfaction with social support than healthy controls (p < .0001).

Successful RT nor only improved distinct aspects of QOL in patients with ESRD, but even put them on par with healthy controls regarding physical and psychological QOL.

Lower social support and higher satisfaction with social support in both groups of ESRD patients should be evaluated further. From a clinical viewpoint. the improvement of physical and psychological aspects of QOL in RT patients is impressive; but more attention should be paid to constantly low social support in this group of patients. International multi center longitudinal studies to investigate QOL in ESRD patients under different treatments am necessary.     

Outcome-Desirability Bias in Resource Management Problems

Sequences of numbers representing prior resource size were presented to participants in a common-pool resource dilemma. The numbers were sampled from uniform probability distributions with either a low variance (low resource uncertainty) or a high variance (high resource uncertainty). Presentations were both sequential and simultaneous. Three groups of 16 undergraduates either estimated the size of the resource when it did not represent value to them; requested an amount from the resource, identified with a sum of money, when the outcome of the requests only depended on resource size; or requested from the resource (sum of money) when the outcome of the requests depended on both resource size and how much others in a group requested. In support of an individual outcome-desirability bias due to selective recall of the number sequences, after sequential presentation larger requests were observed when resource uncertainty was high than when it was low. No effects of resource uncertainty or presentation were found on the estimates of resource size. Whether or not the outcome of the requests depended on others' requests made little difference.     

Revisiting Mednick's Model on Creativity‐Related Differences in Associative Hierarchies. Evidence for a Common Path to Uncommon Thought

Fifty years ago, Mednick [Psychological Review, 69 (1962) 220] proposed an elaborate model that aimed to explain how creative ideas are generated and why creative people are more likely to have creative ideas. The model assumes that creative people have flatter associative hierarchies and as a consequence can more fluently retrieve remote associative elements, which can be combined to form creative ideas. This study aimed at revisiting Mednick's model and providing an extensive test of its hypotheses. A continuous free association task was employed and association performance was compared between groups high and low in creativity, as defined by divergent thinking ability and self‐report measures. We found that associative hierarchies do not differ between low and high creative people, but creative people showed higher associative fluency and more uncommon responses. This suggests that creativity may not be related to a special organization of associative memory, but rather to a more effective way of accessing its contents. The findings add to the evidence associating creativity with highly adaptive executive functioning.     

Chinese Ink Brush Writing, Body Mimesis, and Responsiveness

This essay aims at an elucidation of the performative relation connecting artistic mimesis with the living body. Encompassing art theory and phenomenology of the body, the scope is to evince a crucial link between aesthetic interpretation, body motion, and mimetic creativity, with general implications for reflection on the body, as well as a deeper understanding of a major element of ancient Chinese culture. By mainly analyzing Chinese texts on ink brush writing, as well as some testimony taken from 20th century European philosophy, this essay, from a transcultural stance, tries to show how ink brush writing may be interpreted as a type of regulated body movement and body exercise. What appears as responsiveness within this phenomenal field is a specific form of mimesis, namely body mimesis. As a sort of imitative action, body mimesis runs through the bodily self, beyond consciousness, transforming it and shaping its behavior.     

Self-esteem accuracy and externalizing problems in preschool-aged boys

Although the existing literature addressing the relation between self-esteem and externalizing problems is inconsistent, it appears that accuracy of self-esteem ratings may be an important factor to consider. However, no studies to date have explored this with preschool-aged children. In this study, the authors investigated differences in externalizing problems between underraters, realistic raters, and overraters of self-esteem of 5-year-old boys in three domains: cognitive competence, physical competence, and peer acceptance. Compared to teacher ratings of competence, boys who overrated their cognitive competence and peer acceptance were more likely to be rated by teachers as exhibiting more externalizing problems the following year. Findings suggest that overconfidence may have important implications for the development of externalizing problems in young children.     

From encyclopedia to ontology: toward dynamic representation of the discipline of philosophy

The application of digital humanities techniques to philosophy is changing the way scholars approach the discipline. This paper seeks to open a discussion about the difficulties, methods, opportunities, and dangers of creating and utilizing a formal representation of the discipline of philosophy. We review our current project, the Indiana Philosophy Ontology (InPhO) project, which uses a combination of automated methods and expert feedback to create a dynamic computational ontology for the discipline of philosophy. We argue that our distributed, expert-based approach to modeling the discipline carries substantial practical and philosophical benefits over alternatives. We also discuss challenges facing our project (and any other similar project) as well as the future directions for digital philosophy afforded by formal modeling.     

Neural correlates of metonymy resolution

Metonymies are exemplary models for complex semantic association processes at the sentence level. We investigated processing of metonymies using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).During an 1.5 Tesla fMRI scan, 14 healthy subjects (12 female) read 124 short German sentences with either literal (like “Africa is arid”), metonymic (“Africa is hungry”), or nonsense (“Africa is woollen”) content. Sentences were constructed so that they obey certain grammatical, semantic, and plausibility conditions and were matched for word frequency, semantic association, length and syntactic structure. We concentrated on metonymies that were not yet fossilised; we also examined a wide variety of metonymic readings.Reading metonymies relative to literal sentences revealed signal changes in a predominantly left-lateralised fronto-temporal network with maxima in the left and right inferior frontal as well as left middle temporal gyri. Left inferior frontal activation may reflect both inference processes and access to world knowledge during metonymy resolution.     

Implicit and explicit adjustments to extrinsic visuo-motor transformations and their age-related changes

Humans have unique abilities in using tools. The skilled and goal-directed use of a tool implies that processes of motor control can be adjusted to the transformation of the movement of a part of the body into the movement of the effective part of the tool. A common example is the transformation of a hand movement in the motion of a cursor on a computer monitor. In part the adjustments to such transformations are implicit, that is, without conscious awareness of the novel transformation and the appropriate change of one’s own movements. However, the adjustments can also be explicit and intentional. We review a series of experiments which show that implicit and explicit adjustments to a novel visuo-motor gain are additive. This finding suggests that the processes which generate different types of adjustment are functionally independent. In a second series of experiments it turned out that at older adult age explicit adjustments to novel visuo-motor transformations are impaired, whereas implicit adjustments remain unaffected across working age.