Bidimensional Emotional Health in College Students: a Comparison of Categorical and Continuous Analytic Approaches

This study reports on an investigation of the concurrent validity of the bidimensional model of emotional health, using two analytic approaches—one categorical and the other continuous—with two subsamples of college students. Results from the categorical approach, using analyses of variance with the first subsample (n = 461), indicated that, compared to isolated emotional wellbeing and distress models, the bidimensional model of emotional health had incremental validity in relation to social connectedness, life satisfaction, physical health, and academic achievement outcomes. Findings from the continuous approach, using latent-variables path analyses with the second subsample (n = 490), indicated that the isolated emotional wellbeing model was a better predictor of the aforementioned quality-of-life outcomes than were the bidimensional and isolated distress models. Taken together, findings from both sets of analyses suggest that emotional wellbeing is a distinguishing predictor of college student outcomes. Implications for the theory and practice of mental health work at the college level are discussed.     

The Ethical Implications of Using Genetic Information in Personnel Selection

Biology, during the last decade in particular, is making substantial headway into our social theories of business and behavior. While the social sciences rush to keep up with the advancement of knowledge, we highlight the need for an ethics discussion to also keep pace. Although the implications to theory are important, our focus is on how new knowledge has the capacity to alter the formulation and practice of business policy, which we believe is potentially profound. Furthermore, the ethicality of a set of issues can depend heavily on one’s perspective, and differing views may not always be compatible. With this in mind, we discuss the ways in which one area of emerging biological knowledge—behavioral genetics—invites a rethinking of the nuances of four long-standing topic areas of business ethics surrounding personnel selection; and we do so from two perspectives—that of the employer and of the job seeker. The four ethical topics are (a) the static (mostly) nature of genetic information that is out of an individual’s control, (b) faking and lying during selection processes, (c) privacy, and (d) stigmatization of minority groups.     

Does stimulus complexity determine whether working memory storage relies on prefrontal or sensory cortex?

Traditionally, working and short-term memory (WM/STM) have been believed to rely on storage systems located in prefrontal cortex (PFC). However, recent experimental and theoretical efforts have suggested that, in many cases, sensory or other task-relevant cortex is the actual storage substrate for WM/STM. What factors determine whether a given WM/STM task relies on PFC or sensory cortex? In the present article, we outline recent experimental findings and suggest that the dimensionality or complexity of the to-be-remembered property or properties of a stimulus can be a determining factor.     

On the Unity of the Trinity's External Works: Archaeology and Grammar

The rule that opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt, servato ordine et discrimine personarum is best understood when its two clauses are read together as mutually informative. Read thus, and grasped according to its principles and grammar, the rule articulates two things: the pure benefit of God's activity terminating in time, and the intimate yet unconfused relation between theology and economy.     

Mind the gap: evolutionary psychological perspectives on human thriving

The amount of psychological literature focusing on human thriving and flourishing has grown in recent years, but this topic is currently subject to much conceptual ambiguity. Evolutionary psychology, though often not included in discussions on optimal human development, provides a framework that benefits considerations of human thriving. Humans exhibit a high degree of niche construction by which they alter their environment, in turn affecting their offspring. Such niche construction is enabled by unique human capacities, but these same capacities are then required to ‘mind the gap’ between human nature and the altered environmental niche. As such, thriving may in part be understood as the ability of the individual to navigate difficulties resulting from a mismatch between their nature and niche. Three unique features of the human species that are used to both create and navigate this gap are considered as they relate to the existing literature on human thriving.     

Truth,Lies, and Self‐Presentation: How Gender and Anticipated Future Interaction Relate to Deceptive Behavior1

The present study hypothesized that gender and expectation of future interaction affects the frequency and nature of lying. Male and female participants (208 undergraduates) were randomly assigned to same‐ or opposite‐gender partners and given the expectation they either would not meet again or would meet 3 additional times. Participants engaged in a 10‐min conversation that was videotaped covertly. Later, target participants evaluated the videotape identifying lies they told. During the conversation, 78% of participants lied, with females lying significantly more than males. Females, but not males, lied more when expecting future interaction than when expecting no future interaction. The nature of lies also varied between women and men. Findings suggest women and men differentially use deception as a self‐presentational tactic.     

Guilty,free, and wise: Determinism and psychopathy diminish learning from negative emotions

Emotional experiences can bring about personal growth. For instance, feeling guilty may prompt one to learn from a mistake, and this learning can bring about different and better future behavior. Three studies found that belief in free will facilitated learning from emotional experiences, as inducing participants to disbelieve in free will was associated with reduced learning. Emotional responsiveness, as defined by low psychopathy scores, also facilitated learning from emotional experiences (Studies 2 and 3). The degree of learning associated with emotional experiences was measured by self-rating (Study 1), independent evaluations of lessons learned (Study 2), and whether participants joined a campus recycling program (after being made to feel guilty about an environmental transgression; Study 3).     

Nature and Freedom: Repetition as Supplement in the Late Schelling

F.W.J. von Schelling’s positive philosophy of mythology and revelation questions how one can move from the natural (the negative or mythology) to freedom (the positive or revelation), i.e. from the natural to the supernatural. The move from nature to freedom surpasses the traditional metaphysics of presence. Being is not simply the presencing of nature but the result of a decisive deed surpassing and supplementing nature. Nature can do nothing other than presence. Freedom, however, could also not be. It could remain in concealment and must not necessarily presence as nature does. The origin is a supplement because an unnecessary excess extraneous to nature. In other words, origins always supplement the natural, i.e. they are supernatural and revelatory. Origins bring something novel, i.e. something original, into being but origins themselves remain in non-being and consequently remain un-revealed. The origin cannot exist, i.e. cannot become present, because it is always qualitatively Past. The origin never was but always already has been. Primal repetition was freedom’s subjection of nature to the Past and a deferral of this deed’s consequences to the indefinite Future.     

Testing the limits of statistical learning for word segmentation

Past research has demonstrated that infants can rapidly extract syllable distribution information from an artificial language and use this knowledge to infer likely word boundaries in speech. However, artificial languages are extremely simplified with respect to natural language. In this study, we ask whether infants’ ability to track transitional probabilities between syllables in an artificial language can scale up to the challenge of natural language. We do so by testing both 5.5‐ and 8‐month‐olds’ ability to segment an artificial language containing four words of uniform length (all CVCV) or four words of varying length (two CVCV, two CVCVCV). The transitional probability cues to word boundaries were held equal across the two languages. Both age groups segmented the language containing words of uniform length, demonstrating that even 5.5‐month‐olds are extremely sensitive to the conditional probabilities in their environment. However, neither age group succeeded in segmenting the language containing words of varying length, despite the fact that the transitional probability cues defining word boundaries were equally strong in the two languages. We conclude that infants’ statistical learning abilities may not be as robust as earlier studies have suggested.