Daring to Be Darling: Attractiveness of Risk Takers as Partners in Long- and Short-Term Sexual Relationships

In an attempt to explain gender differences in risk taking from an evolutionary perspective, this study examined the attractiveness of risk taking in potential mates. Questionnaire data from a sample of 352 primarily undergraduate students at Liverpool University, U.K., provided participants?? ratings of physical, social and financial risk-taking and risk-avoiding profiles in terms of attractiveness for long- and short-term relationships. As well as showing a considerable variation in the ratings of different types of risk, we found that the relationship type affected male and female preferences in a similar fashion. Both genders rated risk avoiders as more attractive than risk takers in the context of long-term relationships. In contrast, for short-term relationships men and women preferred risk takers over risk avoiders.     

Reconsidering research on self-humanizing: The importance of mean comparative judgments

Self-humanization is defined as the tendency to view oneself as more essentially human than others. Researchers have claimed that people attribute human nature traits more strongly to themselves than to others, but not uniquely human traits. In this article we suggest that such claims are based on the misinterpretation of results. Most studies have not presented mean comparative judgments, making it impossible to determine whether people thought they possessed characteristics less strongly or more strongly than the average person. We found that people (N = 256) in Poland, Italy, and Korea perceived themselves as possessing desirable human nature and uniquely human characteristics more than others, as possessing undesirable uniquely human traits less than others, and as similar to others in terms of undesirable human nature characteristics. It seems that being more human than others means possessing some traits more than others and possessing some traits less than others.     

Frontal EEG alpha band asymmetry as a predictor of reasoning deficiency in depressed people

Cognitive deficits in depression are mostly apparent in executive functions, especially when integration of information and reasoning is required. In parallel, there are also numerous studies pointing to the frontal alpha band asymmetry as a psychophysiological marker of depression. In this study, we explored the role of frontal alpha asymmetry as a potential factor explaining the cognitive problems accompanying depression. Twenty-six depressed and 26 control participants completed a reasoning task and underwent 5 minutes of electroencephalography recording. In line with the previous studies, depressed people showed difficulties with reasoning but we did not observe the relationship between frontal asymmetry in the alpha band and depression. However, we found that in the depressed group the frontal alpha asymmetry index was characterised by larger variance than in the control group, and it was also a strong predictor of cognitive functioning exclusively in the depressed group. Our results point to the disruption of a psychophysiological balance, reflected in changed frontal alpha asymmetry (into more left-sided frontal asymmetry in the alpha band, reflecting more right-sided cortical activity) as a possible brain correlate of cognitive disturbances present in depressive disorders.     

The individual and nothingness (Stavrogin: a Russian interpretation)

This study is an attempt to reconstruct and sum up philosophical interpretations of Stavrogin, the main hero of the classic Dostoevsky’s novel “The Devils”, given by the outstanding Russian religious thinkers in the twentieth century. The author emphasizes that, however different can be their philosophical premises, the discussed interpretations of Dostoevsky’s hero are compatible and complementary. Confronting and, above all, synthesizing different points of view, he tries to grasp the basic historiosophical, anthropological and religious ideas of Russian renaissance.     

Ordinary life and the tragedy of solidarity

In his texts, Józef Tischner (1930–2000) referred to significant problems characteristic of the end of the communist regime and the first years of the liberal-democratic system in Poland. He tried to understand, among other things, the sources of Polish society’s disappointment with their regained political and economic freedom. This article discusses the late period of Tischner’s life and work, when his philosophy was heavily influenced by the ideas of Charles Taylor. On the one hand, the author analyzes Tischner’s attitude toward the concept of ordinary life, while on the other, Tischner’s understanding of solidarity combined with the concept of the spirit of capitalism. The article shows numerous similarities and significant differences between the way of thinking of both philosophers. The former concern above all the consentaneous assessment of the disappearance of heroism in liberal-democratic societies, while the latter concern the discrepancies in the assessment of the possibility of fully implementing the idea of solidarity in these societies.

     

Attention to negative words predicts daily rumination among people with clinical depression: evidence from an eye tracking and daily diary study

The present study examined relationships between attention to negative words and daily rumination and daily adjustment in a sample of clinically depressed individuals. We recorded eye movements of 43 individuals diagnosed with major depression while they were freely viewing dysphoric, threat-related, neutral, and positive words. Then, each day for one week, participants provided measures of their daily rumination and psychological adjustment. Multilevel analyses found that attention to dysphoric and threat-related words was positively related to daily rumination and attention to threat-related words was negatively related to daily adjustment. These findings suggest that the impaired ability to disengage from negative words is positively related to rumination in daily life and is negatively related to well-being, as defined in terms of Beck’s Triad.     

Some paraconsistent sentential calculi

In [8] Jakowski defined by means of an appropriate interpretation a paraconsistent calculusD ₂ . In [9] J. Kotas showed thatD ₂ is equivalent to the calculusM(S5) whose theses are exactly all formulasa such thatMa is a thesis ofS5. The papers [11], [7], [3], and [4] showed that interesting paraconsistent calculi could be obtained using modal systems other thanS5 and modalities other thanM. This paper generalises the above work. LetA be an arbitrary modality (i.e. string ofM's,L's and negation signs). Then theA-extension of a set of formulasX is {¦A X}}. Various properties ofA-extensions of normal modal systems are examined, including a problem of their axiomatizability     

A formal ontology of situations

A generalized Wittgensteinian semantics for propositional languages is presented, based on a lattice of elementary situations. Of these, maximal ones are possible worlds, constituting a logical space; minimal ones are logical atoms, partitioned into its dimensions. A verifier of a proposition is an elementary situation such that if real it makes true. The reference (or objective) of a proposition is a situation, which is the set of all its minimal verifiers. (Maximal ones constitute its locus.) Situations are shown to form a Boolean algebra, and the Boolean set algebra of loci is its representation. Wittgenstein's is a special case, admitting binary dimensions only.     

The theory of boolean algebras with an additional binary operation

This paper deals with Boolean algebras supplied with an additional binary operation, calledB-algebras for short.The aim of the paper is to generalize some theorems concerning topological Boolean algebras to more comprehensive classes ofB-algebras, to formulate fundamental properties ofB-algebras, and to find more important relationships of these algebras to other known algebras.The paper consists of two parts. At the beginning of the first one, several subclasses ofB-algebras are distinguished, and then, their basic properties, connections between them as well as certain relationships with other algebras, are investigated. In particular, it is shown that the class of Boolean algebras together with an arbitrary unary operation is polynomially equivalent to the class ofB ₁-algebras.The second part of the paper is concerned with the theory of filters and congruences inB-algebras.