Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to provide a constructivist account of the "self as subject" that avoids the need for any metaphysical assumptions. Findings: The thesis developed in this paper is that the human "psychological individual," "self" or "subject" is an emergent within the nexus of human social interaction. With respect to psychological and social wholes (composites) there is no distinction between the form of the elements and the form of the composites they constitute i.e., all (...) elements have the form of composites. Further, recursively, composites may serve as elements within higher order composites. Implications for a rational theory of ethics are discussed. Original Value: The thesis contributes in a fundamental way to the research programme of radical constructivism by demonstrating that metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the "subject" are not an a priori necessity. Although the thesis in itself is not original, the paper offers a useful synthesis of ideas from a number of key thinkers in the disciplines of cybernetics, biology, psychology and philosophy. (shrink)

Hertwig and Ortmann (H&O) rightly criticize the usage of deception. However, stationary replication may often have no ecological validity. Many economic experiments are not interactive; when they are, there is not much specifically validating H&O's psychological views on script enactment. Incentives in specific market structures may scaffold even zero rational decision-making, but this says very little about individual psychology.

Resilience factors have been suggested as key mechanisms in the relation between symptoms and disability among individuals with chronic pain. However, there is a need to better operationalize resilience and to empirically evaluate its role and function. The present study examined psychological flexibility as a resilience factor in relation to symptoms and functioning among 252 adults with chronic pain applying for participation in a digital ACT-based self-help treatment. Participants completed measures of symptoms (pain intensity, anxiety), functioning (pain interference, depression), (...) as well as the hypothesized resilience factor psychological flexibility (measured as avoidance, value obstruction, and value progress). As expected, symptoms, functioning and resilience factors were significantly associated. Hierarchical linear regression analyses showed that psychological flexibility significantly contributed to the prediction of pain interference and depression when adjusting for age, pain and anxiety. Also, participants with low levels of psychological flexibility were more likely to be on sick leave. Furthermore, a series of multiple mediation analyses showed that psychological flexibility (avoidance, value obstruction, value progress) had a significant indirect effect on the relationship between symptoms and functioning. Avoidance was consistently shown to contribute to the indirect effect. Results support previous findings and suggest the importance of psychological flexibility as a resilience factor among individuals with chronic pain and anxiety. (shrink)

& Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether individual differences in amygdala activation in response to negative relative to neutral information are related to differences in the speed with which such information is evaluated, the extent to which such differences are associated with medial prefrontal cortex function, and their relationship with measures of trait anxiety and psychological well-being (PWB). Results indicated that faster judgments of negative relative to neutral information were associated with increased left and right amygdala activation. (...) In the prefrontal cortex, faster judgment time was associated with relative decreased activation in a cluster in the ventral anterior cingulate cor-. (shrink)

Probably the main purpose of reproductive technologies is to enable people who choose to do so to avoid the birth of a baby with a disabling condition. However the conditions women want information about and the ‘price’ they are willing to pay for obtaining that information vary enormously. Individual women have to arrive at their own prenatal testing choices by ‘trading off’ means and ends in order to resolve the dilemmas facing them. We know very little about how individuals make (...) these trade-offs, so it is difficult to predict how new technologies will affect their choices and preferences. Uptake decisions can be expected to change, especially in the group of women who now are put off by some aspect of the current screening approach, where the avoidance of miscarriage risk may have provided a kind of ‘psychological shelter’, protecting a lot of people from having to make other decisions. Technologies such as Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis may remove a second ‘psychological shelter’ because they offer the means of avoiding the birth of an affected child without terminating a pregnancy. Even if new technologies will make some decisions easier in terms of their cognitive demands, they will also create new dilemmas and decision making will not necessarily become less stressful in emotional terms. Key challenges concern information and decision-making. (shrink)

In the 21st century, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) remains one of the key figures in the field of analytical psychology - and Psychological Types, or The Psychology of Individuation, published in 1921, is one of his most influential works. It was written during the decade after the publication of Psychology of the Unconscious (1912), which effectively ended his friendship and collaboration with Sigmund Freud. Whereas the earlier work had clearly marked Jung's psychoanalytical divergence from Freud it is the (...) Psychology of Types that fully clarifies and presents the nature, quality and characteristics of his analytical psychology. The work, which was in part a consequence of his need to reconcile the competing theories of Freud, whom he regarded as extraverted, and Alfred Adler, whom he saw as introverted, develops his concept of descriptive categories for understanding the human mind in terms of the two essential attitude types: introversion and extraversion. These basic attitudes operate in tandem with four principal interacting functions of consciousness which Jung identifies as sensation and intuition, which are functions of perception, and thinking and feeling, which are functions of judgment. The eight resulting psychological types are then explored, described, identified, characterised and explained in considerable detail, with a soaring range of examples drawn from the whole of human history, culture and experience. In his efforts to explore and illuminate the nature of the unconscious mind and indeed the collective unconscious, he investigates the problems posed by the differing psychological types and how these have manifested from classical and medieval times to the 20th century. His observations range from Aristotle, Socrates and Plato to Tertullian and Origen, and from Abélard and Master Eckhart to Martin Luther and the problem of transubstantiation. Jung takes the listener on an odyssey of human thinking. He considers the problem of types in the works of Schiller and Goethe, and Spitteler and his treatment of the Prometheus myth. He contrasts idealism and realism, the Apollonian and the Dionysian in Nietzsche, and explores a host of philosophical and religious sources from the Bible to Taoism to Brahminism. He considers the nature of the reconciling symbol in Spitteler before analysing the nature of types in modern philosophy, aesthetics and biography, giving detailed consideration to William James' characteristic pairs of opposites and Furneaux Jordan's 'character sketch of the emotional types'. Jung goes on to fully identify and describe the characteristic differences between the extraverted and introverted types and provides an extensive chapter on definitions to fully clarify the meaning of the language he employs and make his meaning more accessible. Authoritatively read by Martyn Swain for Ukemi Audiobooks, Psychological Types is an inexhaustible treasure chest of ideas and creative inspiration worth listening to time and time again. (shrink)

Research on individual differences in facing the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be crucial in order to design diverse and highly effective intervention strategies. This study uses a sample of 302 North American participants who were recruited through the crowdsourcing platform ProA; different profiles were established, profiling variables of interest in facing the COVID-19 outbreak. Socio-demographic and psychological (personality traits, gratitude, life purpose, and religiosity) variables were explored. These results are of interest if we want to deepen the study of (...) individual differences at both a theoretical and applied level. (shrink)

The coronavirus outbreak around the world has caused public health concerns and changes in peoples’ behaviors and psychological distress. The pandemic impacts on human behavior, emotions, and cognition, leading to diverse reactions in relation to awareness of the disease. However, there is little understanding around the psychological impacts of the pandemic and strategies to overcome this impact. This study aimed to examine individuals’ reactions toward the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to their psychological hardiness, their degree of awareness (...) toward the pandemic, and precautionary measures taken. Individuals living in Saudi Arabia were invited to complete an online questionnaire which included demographic items, psychological responses to the pandemic, awareness of COVID-19, and measures of psychological hardiness. A total of 1272 individuals were recruited into the study, with the majority being female. Results indicated that the average psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the study sample were 75.85%. This indicates that the sample generally has a high level of positive psychological responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The awareness of COVID-19 among Saudi was 91.50%. This indicates a high level of awareness among the study sample. (shrink)

Background: We previously showed, by means of an online-based survey, that the belief of being infected by coronavirus disease 2019 acted as a nocebo and predicted higher perception of symptoms similar to COVID-19 symptoms. However, there is little known about the psychological mechanisms that give rise to beliefs such as certainty of being infected by COVID-19, and this was investigated in the present study.Objective: Using the same data from the previous online survey with the same research team, we further (...) investigated whether certainty of being infected by COVID-19 is associated with age, sex, health anxiety, and/or personality traits.Methods: Respondents filled out an online survey with 57 questions about symptoms similar to COVID-19, certainty of being infected by COVID-19, anxiety, stress, health anxiety, and personality dimensions.Results: Higher levels of conscientiousness and health anxiety were independently associated with certainty of being infected by COVID-19. The model predicted 29% of the variance in certainty of being infected by COVID-19.Conclusion: Being conscientious and worried about health issues were associated with the belief of being infected by COVID-19. Such finding may have implications for health care personnel who provide COVID-19 testing or consulting services to general population, as individuals high in these traits may over-report COVID-like symptoms. Theoretically, these findings point to psychological factors that may increase nocebo and possibly placebo effects. Clinically, the findings suggest that individuals high in conscientiousness and health anxiety may be more likely to over-report their bodily experiences. (shrink)

Psychological safety is important for the well-being and productivity of people in the workplace. Psychological safety becomes even more important and even more difficult to maintain in times of uncertainty. Previous research mainly focused on the influence of and on interpersonal relationships. This study applies an individual perspective by investigating what is needed on an individual level in order to build psychological safety. The expectation was that self-compassion induces an individual to experience higher positive affect, and this (...) advances the development of positive relations and social acceptance. Moreover, we assumed that the mediation of the relationship between self-compassion and positive relations and social acceptance by positive affect is moderated by the level of basic need satisfaction. Participants from the Netherlands and Belgium completed an online questionnaire about their level of self-compassion, basic need satisfaction, positive affect and positive relations and social acceptance. Using hierarchical regression analyses for moderated mediation analysis, results showed that self-compassion and positive affect had a significant positive effect on positive relations and social acceptance. Positive affect significantly mediated the relationship between self-compassion and positive relations and social acceptance, when basic need satisfaction was low, but not when basic need satisfaction was high. Our research showed that individuals need either their basic needs satisfied or self-compassion so they can build the high-quality relations needed to stimulate psychological safety. This finding shifts attention from the dyadic relationship to the individual and highlights important factors at the individual level which advance the development of high-quality relationships with others. (shrink)

We begin by discussing some logical constraints on the psychological approach to personal identity. We consider a problem for the psychological approach that arises in fission cases. The problem engenders the need for a non-branching clause in a psychological account of the co-personality relation. We look at some difficulties in formulating such a clause. We end by rejecting a recently proposed formulation of non-branching. Our criticism of the formulation raises some interesting questions about the individuation of (...) person stages. (shrink)

"Individual and social determinants of human development. The positive psychology perspective".

Individual organisms are obvious enough kinds of things to have been taken for granted as the entities that have many commonly attributed biological and psychological properties, both in common sense and in science. The sorts of morphological properties used by the folk to categorize individual animals and plants into common sense kinds (that's a dog; that's a rose), as well as the properties that feature as parts of phenotypes, are properties of individual organisms. And psychological properties, such as (...) believing that taxes are too low, and remembering the last seven digits you read in the phone book, are likewise properties of individual organisms. (shrink)

Psychologists and philosophers are often tempted to make general claims about the importance of certain experimental results for our commonsense notions of intentional agency, moral responsibility, and free will. It is a strong intuition that if the agent does not intentionally control her own behavior, her behavior will not be an expression of agency, she will not be morally responsible for its consequences, and she will not be acting as a free agent. It therefore seems natural that the interest centers (...) on the notion of intentional control. If it can be experimentally shown that agents do as a matter of fact not control their own actions, even though they think they do, it will have far reaching consequences for our moral psychology. In this paper I look at recent eliminative arguments allegedly demonstrating that our commonsense notion of intentional control is incompatible with experimental data in support of the dual visual stream theory. (shrink)

Pets are truly great companions. Some individuals feel that owning a pet can help them prepare for a growing family by giving them a taste of what it would be like to have children. This study also looks into the psychological well-being and life experiences of LGBT fur parents. Employing the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, the findings of this study were: (1) With the presence of fur babies, participants had the ease to overcome stressful events, especially the ones that affect (...) their mental health. With these, they have the desire to take care of their fur babies under all circumstances because they see their fur babies as family members. Fur babies are excellent sources of motivation, confidence, and happiness for fur parents. They are treated as family members because they contribute to the mental and emotional aspects of fur parents. Moreover, the majority of respondents valued their pets far more than their actual family members, however, some didn't spend as much time with their relatives and friends. This study comes to the conclusion that a stronger bond with one's dog was also linked to higher anxiety about being unloved and rejected by family members and people surrounding us, which was linked to a heavier impact on one's psychological well-being. In reality, fur parents, especially LGBT parents, offer their fur babies a lot of love and attention compared to other things. (shrink)

This article explores the indissoluble connection between the order of being and knowing in the allagmatic epistemology proposed by Gilbert Simondon based on the following thesis: the knowledge of psychic individuation is the condition for the possibility of knowing different modes of individuation. This statement requires the passage through logic, according to the author’s conception of ontogenesis, for describing the analogy and the subject that knows analogically and individuates itself as he knows. Thus, the psychology of individuation (...) is established as a scientific field of work opened up by Simondon and its epistemological implications in the way of conceiving the subject-object relation. (shrink)

We expand Chater & Loewenstein's discussion of barriers to s-frames by highlighting moral psychological mechanisms. Systemic aspects of moralized social issues can be neglected because of (a) the individualistic frame through which we perceive moral transgressions; (b) the desire to punish elicited by moral emotions; and (c) the motivation to attribute agency and moral responsibility to transgressors.

The dreaming body -- The philosophical Jung -- Locating identities : individual and collective matters -- Projection : the mirror image -- Divine reversal -- Mimesis revisited : Demeter and Persephone -- Jung, Irigaray, and essentialism : a new look at an old problem -- Speaking of the collective unconscious.

Psychological research on social influence illuminates many mechanisms through which role differentiation and collaborative interdependence may affect cultural evolution. We focus here on psychological processes that produce specific patterns of asymmetric influence, which in turn can have predictable consequences for the emergence and transmission of group-level traits.

We begin by discussing some logical constraints on the psychological approach to personal identity. We consider a problem for the psychological approach that arises in fission cases. The problem engenders the need for a non-branching clause in a psychological account of the co-personality relation. We look at some difficulties in formulating such a clause. We end by rejecting a recently proposed formulation of non-branching. Our criticism of the formulation raises some interesting questions about the individuation of (...) person stages. (shrink)

This is a philosophical-moral study on the concept of altruistic happiness, through a hermeneutic analysis of a fundamental episode of the Divine Comedy. The symbol of the White Rose, contemplated by Dante in Paradise XXXI, represents the communion of saints, that is, of those who can experience in their psyche the extinction of desire in full joy. The kingdom of heaven is seen by the pilgrim poet as a beautiful flower with many petals. Its value is in the whole, the (...) flower, but also in its individual parts, the petals. The salvation of the soul is therefore linked to altruism, to denying ourselves for our neighbors, in the name of a collective good. However, the poet shows us that every human individuality is precious, and the paradisiacal abolition of egoism is not the destruction of the uniqueness of the soul but the fulfillment of the self. Inside hell, which is described by Dante like an emblem of selfishness, Beatrice appears as a divine creature, ready to save her beloved poet. This means that Christianity starts the process of human salvation from the lowest material depth of the universe. Consequently, the low is not the opposite of the high: since there is also a high within that low. The individual, if purified from selfishness, becomes in the kingdom of heaven the independent and complementary mirror of a universal joy, a collective joy. Dante, deeply linked to Franciscanism, defends the Mariological concept of ‘Immaculate Conception’ and, in the Divine Comedy, offers us a philosophical-moral message that translates the profound meaning of this same theological idea into secular terms. The solitude of the individual matter that forms the body of every man is only apparent. We are not alone. There is another invisible, silent, very pure reality that has sunk into this matter of ours and into consciousness. This reality can save mankind and bring every person back into joyful wholeness. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that physicalism faces its most serious challenge when it comes to making room for the phenomenal character of psychological experience, its so-called what-it-is-like aspect. The challenge has surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades in a variety of forms. In a particularly striking one, Frank Jackson considers a situation in which Mary, a brilliant scientist who knows all the physical facts there are to know about psychological experience, has spent the whole of her life (...) in a black and white room. He asks, What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. (Jackson 1986: 130). (shrink)

Psychology and Buddhism. From Individual to Global Community. Edited by Kathleen H. Dockett, Rita Dudley-Grant and C. Peter Bankart. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York 2003. xv, 308 pp. £47.00. ISBN 0-306-47412-3.

Dixon et al. suggest that the psychological literature on intergroup relations should shift from theorizing to A focus on social change exposes the importance of psychological theories involving collective phenomena like social norms and institutions. Individuals' attitudes and emotions may follow, rather than cause, changes in social norms and institutional arrangements.

One of the main and currently dominating attempt in theories of philosophical psychology is the way of describing psychological facts as cognitive state of affairs or mental events which could be individuated by the same means as it were natural species. This idea resulted from incapability of the " folk" psychology to give complete and satisfactory scientific explanation by the intentionality approach. The author claims that many certain advantages of the cognitive theories could be disputable if we try to (...) consistently analyze the ways of describing and individuation of entities in such "deeper" theories. And, especially if we can recognize them as spatiotemporally restricted (i .e. historical) entities. This alternative case could be, as it seems, theoretically more appropriate to their subjects: particular thoughts, believes, desires, representations and other mental events would be individuated as genealogically reconstructed subjects which forms potentially stronger explanatory power than in the case of explanations given by covering laws and in accordance with the presupposition of nomological necessity. (shrink)

The French sociological tradition has long regarded the ‘individual’ as a reality situated outside its area of intellection and investigation. According to Durkheim, the individual is a psychological object par excellence. Sociology has thus long favored the study of collectives (groups, classes, categories, institutions, microcosms), suggesting that the individual was a reality which, in itself, fell short of the social. The article discusses a method from the mid-1990s of researching sociology at an individual scale. This approach is essentially embedded (...) in the French sociological tradition, from Durkheim to Bourdieu via Halbwachs, despite the inflections and criticisms it might have of this tradition, while also drawing on the main theoretical knowledge of Norbert Elias’ relational and process-focused sociology. From empirical realization in methodological and theoretical reflexivity, this research program has progressed in dialog with various types of scientific knowledge more classically oriented toward the individual and their mental realities, such as cultural psychology, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology or the neurosciences. (shrink)

With the release of the latest IPCC report, the urgency to steer the transport sector toward ecological sustainability has been recognized more and more broadly. To better understand, the prerequisites for a transition to sustainable mobility, we argue that interdisciplinary mobility research needs to revisit the interaction between social structures and individual agency by focusing on social norms. While critical sociological approaches stress the structural barriers to sustainable mobility, political discourse over sustainable mobility is still largely dominated by overly individualistic (...) approaches, which focus on individual behavior change neglecting its social embeddedness. With discursive struggles over sustainable mobility intensifying, it becomes more urgent to better understand how structural contexts condition individual travel behavior, while at the same time showing how individuals engage in processes of social change. Against this backdrop, the article seeks to deepen the cooperation between sociological and psychological research in mobility transitions research. Building on a broad body of literature, we revisit recent theoretical approaches, which conceptualize the role of individual agency in sustainability transitions. On this basis, we highlight the role of social norms in mobility transitions as a key concept bridging individual behavior and social structures. Using Strong Structuration Theory as an integrative framework, we focus on the role of individual agency in processes of re-negotiation of social norms. Our main hypothesis is that individuals can contribute to mobility transitions by influencing and re-negotiating social norms, especially in the context of windows of opportunity. We analyze how focusing on the dynamic and conflicted nature of social norms can help to illustrate leverage points for a mobility transition as well as inspire future empirical research in the field. This includes that individuals can influence social norms through changing their own travel behavior as well as through engaging in discourse on transport policies. (shrink)

Why do we remember? And, for that matter, what is remembering? Placed between body and mind, the phenomenon of memory simultaneously involves biological, psychological, semiotic, and metaphysical elements. Memory’s place at the heart of our understanding of ourselves is why many of the greatest philosophers of all the time have dealt with the problem – or, better, have had to deal with it. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Russell, and Wittgenstein, are just a few among many (...) who have proffered explanations. While all such proposals have been deficient in their own ways, each has advanced our understanding of the myriad phenomena associated with memory. With recent developments in phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and the empirical sciences interest in memory has intensified. In the 20th century, philosophers were particularly interested in identifying its causes, the ontology of mnemonic traces, the mechanisms of recall, and its epistemic characteristics. Moreover, as philosophy has directed its sight towards social objects and structures, questions involving memory have developed political and social dimensions as well – extending the debate to collective memory. What are the mechanisms of intersubjective memorization and recall of information, ideas, and representations? What are the ethical dimensions and consequences of public memory? (shrink)

In this paper we examine the question of whether complexity-like explanations can be applied to the psychology of individuals, and its implications for the scope of complexity explanations of social phenomena. We start by outlining two representational-cum-computational models of the mind—a symbolic model and a networks or connectionist one—and their pros and cons. Based on this we then outline a radical, non-representational and non-computational alternative model that has been gaining ground recently, and which has significant affinities with complexity explanations in (...) social science. Deploying neo-Kantian considerations, we then argue that due to the discursivity, or conceptual dimension of our cognitive system, the radical alternative must be incorrect insofar as humans are concerned. Indeed, human psychology must involve, at least partly, a representational understanding of the sort provided by the symbolic model. Relatedly, we show how the discursiviry of human cognition complicates our psychology and makes it difficult to account for. Finally, we briefly address the question of how the complicated nature of individual psychology, implied by human discursivity, may affect complexity explanations of social behavior. (shrink)

Although fairness is a key moral trait, limited research focuses on participants' observed fairness behavior because moral traits are generally measured through self-report. This experiment focused on day-to-day interpersonal fairness rather than impersonal justice, and fairness was assessed as observed behavior. The experiment investigated whether a self-reported fairness trait would moderate a situational influence on observed fairness behavior, such that individuals with a stronger fairness trait would be less affected by a situational influence than those with a weaker fairness trait. (...) We used an iterated resource game in which participants could withdraw resources as they chose, and we manipulated the number of resources bogus players withdrew. The number of resources participants withdrew was the behavioral measure of fairness. Results confirmed the expected moderation of the unfairness manipulation by a fairness trait on observed behavior. Those reporting a stronger fairness trait were unaffected by the manipulation, whereas those reporting a weaker fairness trait were more strongly influenced. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one of the mainstays of Japanese psychiatrist and philosopher Kimura Bin’s (1931–2021) philosophical approach. Kimura’s work is characterized by the intersection of therapeutic, philosophical, and intercultural dimensions in ways that enable his clinical practice and philosophical investigations to mutually inform one another. I examine how this dialectic comes together with his conversion of ordinary Japanese words into philosophical concepts. Explicating the concepts Kimura deploys in developing a phenomenology of the self allows us to make new sense (...) of phenomena ranging from the process of individuation to the collective subjectivity of group life, from the breakdown of the self to its fuller realization. (shrink)

PurposeOlder adults aged 60 years and above are classified as being of high-risk for infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to investigate the associations of psychological factors of preventive behaviors with three preventive behaviors among Chinese older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsA cross-sectional questionnaire survey was administered via SOJUMP, a widely used online survey platform in China. A total of 928 older adults were recruited using a snowball sampling approach from Hubei Province and outside Hubei Province in (...) China during May 18, 2020 to June 7, 2020. Multiple hierarchical regressions were conducted with four models to examine the association between demographic, past behavior, psychological factors and each preventive behavior.Principal FindingsAll three preventive behaviors in older adults increased dramatically during the pandemic of COVID-19. Gender, living status, educational level, past behavior, health knowledge, intention and planning significantly predicted hand washing behavior, R2 = 0.395, F = 54.372, p < 0.001. Gender, education level, important others infection, past behavior, health knowledge, planning and action control significantly predicted mask wearing behavior, R2 = 0.202, F = 23.197, p < 0.001. Living place, past behavior and health knowledge significantly predicted social distancing behavior, R2 = 0.204, F = 26.201, p < 0.001.Major ConclusionsPast behavior and health knowledge predicted all three preventive behaviors. Planning was an important psychological factor for both hand washing and mask wearing behaviors. All those critical demographic and psychological factors are critical for future interventions to facilitate older adults to comply with three preventive behaviors in daily life and to stay healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)