Big five domain and gender as determinants of rater agreement: a comparison based on self- and peer-rating on the Polish Adjective List

The study tested the hypothesis that with respect to the big five domains associated with temperament, agreement between self- and others' ratings is higher than with respect to other domains. The same was expected with respect to peer–peer agreement. There were two groups of subjects: self-raters (n=639) and peer-raters (n=1278). All subjects completed the Polish Adjective List (PAL), which consists of five scales: Dynamism, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Excitability and Intellect, which are Polish representations of the big five personality factors extracted in American lexical studies. Each target person completed one self-rating inventory and was assessed by two peer-raters. Domains associated with temperament (Dynamism and Excitability) elicited higher agreement between self-and peer-ratings than Agreeableness and Intellect, although in case of Conscientiousness judges appeared to be as accurate as in the case of Excitability. The pattern was even less clear with respect to the peer–peer comparison. The other finding shows that in case of female raters there was more agreement between self- and peer-rating, than in case of male raters.     

Slow echo: facial EMG evidence for the delay of spontaneous,but not voluntary,emotional mimicry in children with autism spectrum disorders

Spontaneous mimicry, including that of emotional facial expressions, is important for socio‐emotional skills such as empathy and communication. Those skills are often impacted in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Successful mimicry requires not only the activation of the response, but also its appropriate speed. Yet, previous studies examined ASD differences in only response magnitude. The current study investigated timing and magnitude of spontaneous and voluntary mimicry in ASD children and matched controls using facial electromyography (EMG). First, participants viewed and recognized happy, sad, fear, anger, disgust and neutral expressions presented at different durations. Later, participants voluntarily mimicked the expressions. There were no group differences on emotion recognition and amplitude of expression‐appropriate EMG activity. However, ASD participants’ spontaneous, but not voluntary, mimicry activity was delayed by about 160 ms. This delay occurred across different expressions and presentation durations. We relate these findings to the literature on mirroring and temporal dynamics of social interaction.     

Matrix representations for structural strengthenings of a propositional logic

The aim of this paper is to show that the operations of forming direct products and submatrices suffice to construct exhaustive semantics for all structural strengthenings of the consequence determined by a given class of logical matrices.     

An Axiomatisation of a Pure Calculus of Names

A calculus of names is a logical theory describing relations between names. By a pure calculus of names we mean a quantifier-free formulation of such a theory, based on classical propositional calculus. An axiomatisation of a pure calculus of names is presented and its completeness is discussed. It is shown that the axiomatisation is complete in three different ways: with respect to a set theoretical model, with respect to Le?niewski??s Ontology and in a sense defined with the use of axiomatic rejection. The independence of axioms is proved. A decision procedure based on syntactic transformations and models defined in the domain of only two members is defined.     

Sex differences in color preferences transcend extreme differences in culture and ecology

At first glance, color preferences might seem to be the most subjective and context-dependent aspects of color cognition. Yet they are not. The present study compares color preferences of women and men from an industrialized and a remote, nonindustrialized culture. In particular, we investigated preferences in observers from Poland and from the Yali in Papua, respectively. Not surprisingly, we found that color preferences clearly differed between the two communities and also between sexes. However, despite the pronounced cultural differences, the way in which men and women differed from each other was almost the same in both cultures. At the same time, this sexual contrast was not specific to biological components of color vision. Our results reveal a pattern of sexual dimorphism that transcends extreme differences in culture and ecology. They point toward strong cross-cultural constraints beyond the biological predispositions of nature and the cultural particularities of nurture.     

Epinephrine,Arousal, and Emotion: A New Look at Two-factor Theory

Ever since William James, psychologists of emotion have tended to view affective states as intrinsically conscious. We argue that nonconscious affect also exists, and focus specifically on the possibility of unconscious "liking". We present evidence that positive and negative affective reactions can be elicited subliminally, while a person is completely unaware of any affective reaction at all (in addition to being unaware of the causal stimulus). Despite the absence of any detectable subjective experience of emotion, subliminally induced unconscious "liking" can influence later consumption behaviour. We suggest that unconscious "liking" is mediated by specific subcortical brain systems, such as the nucleus accumbens and its connections. Ordinarily, conscious liking (feelings of pleasure) results from the interaction of separate brain systems of conscious awareness with those core processes of unconscious affect. But under some conditions, activity in brain systems mediating unconscious core "liking" may become decoupled from conscious awareness. The result is a genuinely unconscious emotion.     

Effects of Online Christian Self‐Disclosure on Impression Formation

This experiment examined the effects of online Christian disclosure. Respondents (N = 233) viewed a fictional social networking profile containing one of three levels of Christian disclosure frequency: none, nominal, and extensive. Respondents made few distinctions between nondisclosure and nominal disclosure. Most notably, respondent religiosity moderated impressions. Regardless of disclosure level, religious respondents rated profile owners as more likeable and less stereotypically negative than less religious respondents. The least religious respondents tended to rate the extensively disclosing Christian as least romantically desirable and with more negative stereotyping. The most religious respondents rated the extensively disclosing Christian as most likeable and as most romantically desirable. Christian identity tended to be assumed when not disclosed. Nominal disclosure may constitute a socially acceptable level of online Christian disclosure.