Voting by Eliminating Quantifiers

Mathematical theory of voting and social choice has attracted much attention. In the general setting one can view social choice as a method of aggregating individual, often conflicting preferences and making a choice that is the best compromise. How preferences are expressed and what is the “best compromise” varies and heavily depends on a particular situation. The method we propose in this paper depends on expressing individual preferences of voters and specifying properties of the resulting ranking by means of first-order formulas. Then, as a technical tool, we use methods of second-order quantifier elimination to analyze and compute results of voting. We show how to specify voting, how to compute resulting rankings and how to verify voting protocols.     

Internalisation of Relations

Philosophia - The discussion about internal and external relations usually concerns what kind of relations exist. In this paper, I take up another question, namely whether external relations can...     

A Forward Bias in Human Profile-Oriented Portraits

The spatial composition of human portraits obeys historically changing cultural norms. We show that it is also affected by cognitive factors that cause greater spontaneous attention to what is in front rather in the back of an agent. Scenes with more space in front of a directed object are both more often produced and judged as more aesthetically pleasant. This leads to the prediction that, in profile-oriented human portraits, compositions with more space in front of depicted agents (a “forward bias”) should be over-represented. By analyzing a large dataset (total N of 1,831 paintings by 582 unique identified European painters from the 15th to the 20th century), we found evidence of this forward bias: Painters tended to put more free space in front of, rather than behind, the sitters. Additionally, we found evidence that this forward bias became stronger when cultural norms of spatial composition favoring centering became less stringent.     

Trolley Dilemma in Papua. Yali horticulturalists refuse to pull the lever

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Although many studies show cultural or ecological variability in moral judgments, cross-cultural responses to the trolley problem (kill one person to save five...     

The environmental malleability of base-rate neglect

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - Across two experiments (N=799) we demonstrate that people’s use of quantitative information (e.g., base-rates) when making a judgment varies as the causal...     

A Proof System for Contact Relation Algebras

Contact relations have been studied in the context of qualitative geometry and physics since the early 1920s, and have recently received attention in qualitative spatial reasoning. In this paper, we present a sound and complete proof system in the style of Rasiowa and Sikorski (1963) for relation algebras generated by a contact relation.     

Positive experiences in the parent–child relationship during the COVID-19 lockdown in Poland: The role of emotion regulation,empathy, parenting self-efficacy,and social support

Despite the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak being largely negative on parents and children, for some families, lockdown could also bring about some positive effects, for example, increased emotional closeness, and more time for joint activity. The aim of the current study was to investigate cross-sectionally the most important correlates of the positive experiences in the parent–child relationship among Polish mothers and fathers during the lockdown in the initial phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. In May 2020, 228 mothers and 231 fathers completed the Brief version of the Empathic Sensitivity Questionnaire, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale Short Form, Social Support Scale, Parenting Self-Agency Measure, and Scale of Positive Experiences in Parent–Child Relationship during the COVID-19 lockdown. Our results showed that parenting self-efficacy and social support were the strongest correlates of positive experiences in the parent–child relationship in both mothers and fathers during the lockdown. Perspective-taking was positively related to the positive experiences in mothers, whereas personal distress was positively associated with the positive experiences in the parent–child relationship in fathers. Our results point to factors of potential importance in designing preventive and therapeutic interventions for mothers and fathers to enhance positive experiences in the parent–child relationship during the pandemic.