Sense of coherence as a protective factor for psychological distress among gay men: a prospective cohort study

Gay men face a greater risk of psychological distress than heterosexual men, yet research on protective factors among gay men has been limited. This prospective cohort study investigated whether a sense of coherence (SOC), as a form of coping, helps to protect against psychological distress among middle-aged and older gay men. A nationwide online survey was conducted among a baseline sample of 1135 Australian gay-identified men aged 40 years and older, with a follow-up survey 12 months later. SOC was measured using the 13-item SOC Scale. Psychological distress was measured using the K10 Psychological Distress Scale. Hierarchical regressions were conducted, with analyses controlling for several potential risk factors for distress. Over half of participants had moderate or high psychological distress. However, baseline distress was significantly lower among those with stronger baseline SOC. In addition, baseline SOC significantly predicted distress 12 months later. This predictive effect of SOC was independent of baseline distress levels and occurred despite a strong correlation between baseline and follow-up distress. With SOC appearing to be a protective factor, strategies among middle-aged and older gay men that strengthen SOC may assist in the prevention and treatment of anxiety and other psychological distress in this vulnerable population.     

Social-Psychological Factors Associated with Bullying Behaviour among Secondary School Students

This study investigated the association between social-psychological factors (misconduct, impulsivity, school sense of belonging, intention to use non-violent strategies, beliefs supportive of violence) and bullying behaviour. A total of two-hundred and fifteen (n=215) secondary school students randomly selected from five secondary schools in Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State participated in the study (boys =106, or 49.30%) and girls n=109 or 50.70%; age ranges = 16 to 22 years, mean = 19 years, SD= 3.19 years). The participants completed measures of misconduct, impulsivity, school sense of belonging, intention to use non-violent strategies, beliefs supportive of violence and bullying behaviour. Demographics data of the participants were also obtained. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that misconduct is the most important correlate of bullying behaviour. Pro-aggression behaviours explained bullying behaviour, intention to use non-violent strategies, beliefs supportive of violence, impulsivity and school sense of belonging also significantly explained lower bullying behaviour.     

“I am doing okay”: Intrapersonal Coping Strategies of Children Living in an Institution

In this case study, we utilized a Resilience framework and Sense of Coherence theory to understand how a group of children coped while living in an institution as a consequence of HIV/AIDS. We followed a qualitative and interpretivist approach. The experiences of nine children (5 girls and 4 boys) aged between 11 and 15 years is highlighted. The primary data generation strategy was informal interviews. However, we based these interviews upon participatory task-based and multimodal activities incorporating visual (drawings, pictures), auditory (stories, conversation), tactile (clay modeling) and kinaesthetic (role play) activities to stimulate conversation and discussion. All interviews were voice recorded and the contents thereof, thematically analysed. Children living in this institution use the following intrapersonal coping strategies: a sense of spiritual connectedness, disengagement (fantasy, denial and detachment), and positive intrapersonal characteristics. Intrapersonal sources of resilience help children to establish meaningfulness and comprehensibility in their lives on a continuum of engagement or disengagement. They use spiritual connectedness and socially responsible behaviour to engage and fantasy, denial and detachment to disengage.     

Quine's Argument from Despair

Quine's argument for a naturalized epistemology is routinely perceived as an argument from despair: traditional epistemology must be abandoned because all attempts to deduce our scientific theories from sense experience have failed. In this paper, I will show that this picture is historically inaccurate and that Quine's argument against first philosophy is considerably stronger and subtler than the standard conception suggests. For Quine, the first philosopher's quest for foundations is inherently incoherent; the very idea of a self-sufficient sense datum language is a mistake, there is no science-independent perspective from which to validate science. I will argue that a great deal of the confusion surrounding Quine's argument is prompted by certain phrases in his seminal ‘Epistemology Naturalized’. Scrutinizing Quine's work both before and after the latter paper provides a better key to understanding his remarkable views about the epistemological relation between theory and evidence.     

Plotinus on the Inner Sense

Recently, there has been a growing interest in ancient views on consciousness and particularly in their influence on medieval and early modern philosophers. Here I suggest a new interpretation of Plotinus’s account of consciousness which, if correct, may help us to reconsider his role in the history of the notion of the inner sense. I argue that, while explaining how our divided soul can be a unitary subject of the states and activities of its parts, Plotinus develops an original account of consciousness that appeals to an inner sense. In contrast to ‘the outer senses’, which perceive sensible things out there in the world, this sense, for him, perceives the activities of the parts of our soul, thus enabling us to be conscious of them as a single subject. I suggest that Plotinus devises his account of this psychic power in the light of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s interpretation of the Aristotelian ‘common sense’. Since in Alexander the ‘common sense’ enables us to be conscious as a single subject of sensations from different modalities, Plotinus uses it as a model to explain how we can be the conscious subject of all the states and activities of our soul.     

Adolescent Sense of Control: A Downward Extension of the Shapiro Control Inventory to Pre- and Early Adolescents

The most commonly used measures of perceived control for young adolescents are dated, psychometrically flawed, or focused on particular domains. To address the need for a general purpose measure of control for this age range, the overall sense of control (OSOC) and the domains of control (DOC) subscales of the Shapiro Control Inventory (D. H. Shapiro, 1994), designed for use with adults, were modified. Exploratory factor analyses suggested that the adapted OSOC and DOC scales consisted of internally consistent 1-factor structures, accounting for 32% and 29% of the variance, respectively. In Study 1, results from 310 preadolescents (9–13 years old) indicated that a higher sense of control was related to lower stress, OSOC, r(308) = ?.52, p < .001; DOC, r(308) = ?.23, p < .001; and depression, OSOC, r(308) = ?.63, p < .001; DOC, r(308) = ?.33, p < .001. In study 2, results from 195 adolescents (11–15 years old) showed that a higher sense of control was associated with lower stress, r(193) = ?.55, p < .001, and depression, r(193) = ?.60, p < .001, concurrently. The results suggest that these 2 revised measures of adolescent perceived control exhibited good content and predictive validities.     

Against Fallibilism

In this paper I argue for a doctrine I call ‘infallibilism’, which I stipulate to mean that If S knows that p, then the epistemic probability of p for S is 1. Some fallibilists will claim that this doctrine should be rejected because it leads to scepticism. Though it's not obvious that infallibilism does lead to scepticism, I argue that we should be willing to accept it even if it does. Infallibilism should be preferred because it has greater explanatory power than fallibilism. In particular, I argue that an infallibilist can easily explain why assertions of ‘p, but possibly not-p’ (where the ‘possibly’ is read as referring to epistemic possibility) is infelicitous in terms of the knowledge rule of assertion. But a fallibilist cannot. Furthermore, an infallibilist can explain the infelicity of utterances of ‘p, but I don't know that p’ and ‘p might be true, but I'm not willing to say that for all I know, p is true’, and why when a speaker thinks p is epistemically possible for her, she will agree (if asked) that for all she knows, p is true. The simplest explanation of these facts entails infallibilism. Fallibilists have tried and failed to explain the infelicity of ‘p, but I don't know that p’, but have not even attempted to explain the last two facts. I close by considering two facts that seem to pose a problem for infallibilism, and argue that they don't.     

Human Cognition in Context: On the Biologic,Cognitive and Social Reconsideration of Meaning as Making Sense of Action

The aim of this special issue of IPBS has been to explore concrete and explicit alternatives to cognitivism. Indeed, in our editorial introduction we set out to give a brief survey of the numerous criticisms that have been made of understanding the mind this way (Ibáñez and Cosmelli, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, 2008). Thus in what sense do the contributions here presented succeed in providing novel alternatives, moving into original and potentially generative domains of inquiry? While much remains to be done, we believe that they make significant headway in more than one sense. We do believe, however, that there is one locus that furnishes a convergence ground that is worth considering seriously: the problem of meaning. Meaning as making sense of contextualized action seems to cross the domains of intentionality, intersubjectivity and ecology of mind. The development of multilevel approaches, as the authors here exemplify, argues for a novel research agenda.     

The Meaning of “Existence” and the Contingency of Sense

In this paper I argue first for a revisionary ontology, that is, for an understanding of “existence” as the property of a field not to be empty. In this context, I distinguish between “metaphysics” (the theory of totality or of fundamental reality) and “ontology” (the systematic investigation into the meaning of “existence”). In the second part, I provide a sketch for a corresponding revisionary theory of the modalities in light of the new ontology proposed.