Laplace’s demon tries on Aristotle’s cloak: on two approaches to determinism

Synthese - The paper describes two approaches to determinism: one focuses on the features of global objects, such as possible worlds or models of a theory, whereas the other’s concern is the...     

Does Personality Smell? Accuracy of Personality Assessments Based on Body Odour

People are able to assess some personality traits of others based on videotaped behaviour, short interaction or a photograph. In our study, we investigated the relationship between body odour and the Big Five personality dimensions and dominance. Sixty odour samples were assessed by 20 raters each. The main finding of the presented study is that for a few personality traits, the correlation between self‐assessed personality of odour donors and judgments based on their body odour was above chance level. The correlations were strongest for extraversion (.36), neuroticism (.34) and dominance (.29). Further analyses showed that self–other agreement in assessments of neuroticism slightly differed between sexes and that the ratings of dominance were particularly accurate for assessments of the opposite sex. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A cognitive perspective on mindfulness

Mindfulness, the core teaching of the Buddhist tradition, has been receiving serious attention from the West in recent decades as evidence of the efficacy of mindfulness‐based interventions for emotional distress have become available. Although traditional Buddhist texts have described the mechanisms of mindfulness and the way to cultivate it in great detail, much is still not known from the perspective of Western science. In particular, there is no general agreement on the conceptualization and operationalization of mindfulness. Several conceptual models of mindfulness (referred to as “state” or “trait”) have been put forward to elucidate different aspects of this phenomenon, but none has gained sufficient empirical validation. This article proposes a new cognitive model of mindfulness. It has been our goal to describe and interrelate a relatively comprehensive group of determinants of a state of mindfulness, the consequences of its regular practicing, the mechanisms responsible for its beneficial effects, and the feedback mechanisms operating between the various constituents of the model. Within this model, the primary emphasis has been placed on understanding the cognitive processes shaping a state of mindfulness (i.e., the links between consciousness, meta‐awareness and the unconscious), and on their determinants (i.e., the executive functions of attention and the components of working memory). A metacognitive system promoting mindfulness, as well as the general capability of the central executive system, is suggested as a factor explaining individual differences in mindfulness, whereas decentering, self‐compassion, and reduction of self‐focused attention are proposed as mechanisms mediating beneficial changes. We hope that the model presented will encourage further discussion and orient future studies in the area of mindfulness.     

Influence of Religiosity on the Quality of Life and on Pain Intensity in Chronic Pancreatitis Patients After Neurolytic Celiac Plexus Block: Case-Controlled Study

The quality of life in patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP) is reduced due to their suffering of high levels of pain. It has been presented that quality of life can also be linked to religiosity and/or spirituality. The aim of this study is to assess the influence of religious practices on the quality of life and on the subjective level of pain in CP patients. Ninety-two patients (37 women and 55 men) with chronic pancreatitis were treated invasively for pain with neurolytic celiac plexus block (NCPB). The religiosity of the patients was recorded and served as a dichotomizer. Group 1 was for patients who claimed to have no contact with the church or to have very sporadic contact (N = 35 patients). Group 2 was for patients who claimed to have deep faith and were regular participants at church activities (N = 57 patients). Visual analogue scale was used to assess pain, while the quality of life was measured by using QLQ C-30 questionnaire adapted for chronic pancreatitis patients in Polish population. The patients were assessed prior to the pain-relieving intervention and subsequently 2 and 8 weeks after it. The intensity of pain was reduced in both groups significantly after performing the NCPB. Patients who declared a deep faith reported higher level of pain on the VAS scale prior to intervention than non-religious patients. Quality of life in both groups of patients significantly improved after NCPB. Following NCPB, global quality of life in patients who declared higher religiosity/church attendance was significantly higher (79.88) than for those patients who have no contact or sporadic contact with the church (44.21, P < 0.05). NCPB resulted in significant reduction of pain and increase in quality of life in both groups of patients with CP. Nevertheless, in the group declaring higher religiosity/church attendance, reported pain was higher, but, despite that, quality of life better. It may be concluded that religious practices might serve as an additional factor improving quality of life and coping in patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis.     

Mixed matters: fluency impacts trust ratings when faces range on valence but not on motivational implications

Facial features that resemble emotional expressions influence key social evaluations, including trust. Here, we present four experiments testing how the impact of such expressive features is qualified by their processing difficulty. We show that faces with mixed expressive features are relatively devalued, and faces with pure expressive features are relatively valued. This is especially true when participants first engage in a categorisation task that makes processing of mixed expressions difficult and pure expressions easy. Critically, we also demonstrate that the impact of categorisation fluency depends on the specific nature of the expressive features. When faces vary on valence (i.e. sad to happy), trust judgments increase with their positivity, but also depend on fluency. When faces vary on social motivation (i.e. angry to sad), trust judgments increase with their approachability, but remain impervious to disfluency. This suggests that people intelligently use fluency to make judgments on valence-relevant judgment dimensions – but not when faces can be judged using other relevant criteria, such as motivation. Overall, the findings highlight that key social impressions (like trust) are flexibly constructed from inputs related to stimulus features and processing experience.     

Cooperative behavior of laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) in an instrumental task

Cooperation is a cognitively demanding, complex social behavior, found primarily in primates. Here we investigated mutualism in rats (Rattus Norvegicus), a simple form of cooperation in which two subjects work on operant task, receiving immediate and simultaneous sucrose reward for a joint action. To receive the sucrose reward, familiar pairs of rats were required to nose poke simultaneously. Following 44 training days, we examined the relation of social contact and ultrasonic vocalizations to the rat's cooperative behavior by testing the effects of inserting opaque, wire-mesh, or no partition--between subjects. Cooperative behavior (simultaneous nose-poking): (a) increased gradually during initial training; (b) decreased with the opaque partition (restricting visual, acoustic, and physical communication); (c) increased with a wire mesh partition restricting only physical contact); and (d) increased with the number of 50 kHz USV "happy" calls and the intensity of social interaction. The possibility of studying the development of cooperative behavior in laboratory rats using a simple procedure based on commercially available equipment may prove useful in modeling determinants of social behavior.     

Did Venus have long legs? Beauty standards from various historical periods reflected in works of art

Research on perception of attractiveness of leg-to-body ratio (LBR) described here has shown that people prefer relatively long-legged silhouettes (particularly while assessing women). The LBR of attractive women over historical periods (analyses of attractive silhouettes from paintings, sculptures, etc) has been more changeable than that of men. The findings reported here might represent evidence against the cross-cultural universality of the attractiveness of long legs.     

Semisimple Varieties of Modal Algebras

In this paper we show that a variety of modal algebras of finite type is semisimple iff it is discriminator iff it is both weakly transitive and cyclic. This fact has been claimed already in [4] (based on joint work by the two authors) but the proof was fatally flawed. Dedicated to the memory of Willem Johannes Blok