This essay reviews theory and research regarding the “Michelangelo phenomenon,” which describes the manner in which close partners shape one another’s dispositions, values, and behavioral tendencies. Individuals are more likely to exhibit movement toward their ideal selves to the degree that their partners exhibit affirming perception and behavior; exhibiting confidence in the self’s capacity and enacting behaviors that elicit key features of the self’s ideal. In turn, movement towards the ideal self yields enhanced personal well-being and couple (...) well-being. We review empirical evidence regarding this phenomenon and discuss self and partner variables that contribute to the process. (shrink)

Background The fourth section of the 1967 Abortion Act states that individuals (including health care practitioners) do not have to participate in an abortion if they have a conscientious objection. A conscientious objection is a refusal to participate in abortion on the grounds of conscience. This may be informed by religious, moral, philosophical, ethical, or personal beliefs. Currently, there is very little investigation into the impact of conscientious objection on service users in Britain. The perspectives of service users are imperative (...) in understanding the real-world consequences and potential impact of conscientious objection and should be considered when creating and reviewing policies and guidelines. This research provided a platform for women and those who can become pregnant to share their experiences and opinions at a time when these voices are largely excluded in the great tradition of Western political philosophy and law-making processes. Method Five service users were interviewed using a narrative interview approach to uncover their abortion journeys and experiences of conscientious objection. Findings The findings were presented as found poems and uncovered that doctors are not always: informing service users that they have a conscientious objection to abortion, giving service users enough information to access abortion (indirect referral), treating them non-judgmentally, and providing medically correct information. Service users did not experience burdens such as long waiting times and were still able to access legal abortion. However, service users did experience negative emotional effects, as they were often left feeling scared, angry, and hopeless when they were not referred and/or were mistreated. Conclusions Findings indicate that conscientious objection could work in practice. However, it is currently failing some individuals on an emotional level, as not all doctors are adhering to guidelines. Conscientious objection in Britain needs to be addressed, to ensure service users receive fair, impartial, non-judgmental care. (shrink)

: In direct opposition to the dominant nativist perspective tracing back to Descartes, William James suggested that the sense of self is constructed through a never-ending process of reflexivity. In more recent years, empirical data from various psychological domains have further strengthened this constructivist perspective. Notably, Gergely and Watson’s social biofeedback model has been proposed as a central mechanism in the development of emotional introspection, which itself constitutes a crucial step in the process leading to a mature sense of (...) self. In accordance with the social biofeedback model, it has been suggested that reiterated failures in biofeedback mechanisms predispose an individual to mental suffering. While borderline personality disorder and antisocial behavior have received the most attention, here I make a preliminary attempt to examine the impact of dysfunctional biofeedback on the pathogenesis of narcissism, suggesting that some central features of pathological narcissism may result from serious and reiterated disruptions in social biofeedback. This preliminary exploration aims to deepen our understanding of the origins of psychological suffering. In this sense, my effort could contribute to the construction of a causal model going beyond the purely categorical, atheoretical analysis of mental diseases typical of the diagnostic and statistical manuals. Keywords: Self; Self-ing Process; Social Biofeedback Model; Narcissism Il farsi e il disfarsi del sé. Biofeedback sociale, meccanismi causali e narcisismo patologico Riassunto: La prospettiva costruttivista sullo sviluppo del sé, efficacemente difesa da William James in opposizione all’innatismo di stampo cartesiano, è oggi ulteriormente avvalorata da numerosi dati empirici provenienti da diversi ambiti della psicologia. Il modello del biofeedback sociale di Gergely e Watson è stato proposto quale meccanismo centrale nello sviluppo dell’introspezione emotiva. In accordo a tale modello, ripetuti gravi fallimenti del biofeedback predispongono al disturbo mentale, segnatamente al disturbo borderline di personalità e al comportamento antisociale. In questo saggio mi occuperò di disturbo narcisistico di personalità, suggerendo che anche alcuni dei sintomi principali di questa patologia potrebbero derivare da disfunzioni gravi e reiterate del biofeedback. Nonostante la sua natura preliminare, la mia indagine si inscrive nell’alveo di quelle ricerche che mirano costruzione di un modello causale che vada oltre l’analisi puramente categoriale e ateoretica tipica dei manuali statistico-diagnostici. Parole chiave: Self; Identità personale; Social Biofeedback Model; Disturbo narcisistico di personalità. (shrink)

Based on the theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concepts, we hypothesized that the spatio-temporal pattern of functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) should persist unchanged across a variety of different cognitive tasks or acts, thus being task-unrelated. This supposition is in contrast with current understanding that DMN activated when the subjects are resting and deactivated during any attention-demanding cognitive tasks. To test our proposal, we used, in retrospect, the results from our two early studies ([Fingelkurts, 1998] and [Fingelkurts et (...) al., 2003]). In both studies for the majority of experimental trails we indeed found a constellation of operationally synchronized cortical areas (indexed as DMN) that was persistent across all studied experimental conditions in all subjects. Furthermore, we found three major elements comprising this DMN: two symmetrical occipito-parieto-temporal and one frontal spatio-temporal patterns. This new data directly supports the notion that DMN has a specific functional connotation – it provides neurophysiologic basis for self-processing operations, namely first-person perspective taking and an experience of agency. (shrink)

The Myelin Regulator Factor (MYRF) is a master regulator governing myelin formation and maintenance in the central nervous system. The conservation of MYRF across metazoans and its broad tissue expression suggest it has functions extending beyond the well‐established role in myelination. Loss of MYRF results in developmental lethality in both invertebrates and vertebrates, and MYRF haploinsufficiency in humans causes MYRF‐related Cardiac Urogenital Syndrome, underscoring its importance in animal development; however, these mechanisms are largely unexplored. MYRF, an unconventional transcription factor, begins (...) embedded in the membrane and undergoes intramolecular chaperone mediated trimerization, which triggers self‐cleavage, allowing its N‐terminal segment with an Ig‐fold DNA‐binding domain to enter the nucleus for transcriptional regulation. Recent research suggests developmental regulation of cleavage, yet the mechanisms remain enigmatic. While some parts of MYRF's structure have been elucidated, others remain obscure, leaving questions about how these motifs are linked to its intricate processing and function. (shrink)

The olfactory system was traditionally thought to lack a thalamic relay to mediate top-down influences from memory and attention in other perceptual modalities. Olfactory perception was therefore often described as an outlier among perceptual modalities. It was argued as a result that olfaction was a canonical example of a direct perception. In this paper we review functional and anatomical evidence which demonstrates that olfaction depends on both direct pathway connecting anterior piriform cortex to orbitofrontal cortex and an indirect thalamic circuit (...) connecting posterior piriform cortex and orbitofrontal cortices to the olfactory system. We argue that the indirect corticothalamic circuit has the structure to potentially mediate mediates top-down influences of memory and attention in olfactory perception. This suggests that olfaction is not an outlier after all. (shrink)

Increasing use is made of techniques which are supposed to make policy decisions more ‘rational’. Rather little attention, however, has been paid to the relation between these techniques and the logic of choice, the political process, value judgements and assumptions. This short paper will investigate these questions in relation to a particularly fashionable technique, that of cost-benefit analysis.

The enormous growth in medical humanities programs during the past decade has resulted in an extensive literature concerning the content of the discipline and the issues that have been addressed. Comparatively little attention, however, has been devoted to the structure of the discipline of medical humanities concerning the process or the theoretical aspects of the pedagogy of teaching the discipline. This report explicitly addresses the pedagogical aspects of the discipline by comparing and contrasting two different basic approaches to the discipline (...) referred to as the classical humanities approach and the humanistic psychology approach which roughly approximate the cognitive and affective approaches respectively. These two approaches are compared and contrasted in terms of their goals, objectives, methods of implementation, philosophical assumptions and evaluational techniques. (shrink)

In this article, we develop a concept of stakeholder dialogue in responsible innovation (RI) processes. The problem with most concepts of communication is that they rely on ideals of openness, alignment and harmony, even while these ideals are rarely realized in practice. Based on the work of Burke, Habermas, Deetz and Levinas, we develop a concept of stakeholder dialogue that is able to deal with fundamentally different interests and value frames of actors involved in RI processes. We distinguish (...) four main characteristics of stakeholder dialogue. Dialogical responsiveness (1) enhances self-criticism, (2) is characterized by the constitution and the destruction of the self or identity of the actors involved, (3) consists only in the actual enactment of the dialogue and (4) is primarily responsive to the grand challenges of our time. Based on our findings, we provide a novel conceptualization of the central notion of responsiveness in the RI literature. (shrink)

As part of a larger study, predictors of self-blame were investigated in a sample of 149 undergraduate sexual assault survivors. Each participant completed questionnaires regarding their preassault, peritraumatic, and post assault experiences and participated in an individual interview. Results confirmed the central hypothesis that, although several established correlates independently relate to self-blame, only cognitive content and process variables—negative self-cognitions and counterfactual-preventability cognitions—uniquely predict self-blame in a multivariate model.

To make behavioral choices that are in line with our goals and our moral beliefs, we need to gather and consider information about our current situation. Most information present in our environment is not relevant to the choices we need or would want to make and thus could interfere with our ability to behave in ways that reflect our underlying values. Certain sources of information could even lead us to make choices we later regret, and thus it would be beneficial (...) to be able to ignore that information. Our ability to exert successful self-governance depends on our ability to attend to sources of information that we deem important to our decision-making processes. We generally assume that, at any moment, we have the ability to choose what we pay attention to. However, recent research indicates that what we pay attention to is influenced by our prior experiences, including reward history and past successes and failures, even when we are not aware of this history. Even momentary distractions can cause us to miss or discount information that should have a greater influence on our decisions given our values. Such biases in attention thus raise questions about the degree to which the choices that we make may be poorly informed and not truly reflect our ability to otherwise exert self-governance. (shrink)

Only recently have ethicists been invited into the clinical setting to offer recommendations about patient care decisions. This paper discusses this new role for ethicists from the perspective of content and process issues. Among content issues are the usual ethical dilemmas such as the aggressiveness of treatment, questions about consent, and alternative treatment options. Among process issues are those that relate to communication with the patient. The formal ethics consult is discussed, the steps taken in such a consult, and whether (...) there should be a fee charged. We conclude with an examination of the risks and benefits of formal ethics consults. (shrink)

In this paper I propose an account of self-knowledge based on a framework of predictive processing. Predictive processing understands the brain as a prediction-action machine that tries to minimize error in its predictions about the world. For this view to evolve into a complete account of human cognition we ought to provide an idea how it can account for self-knowledge – knowledge of one’s own mental states. I provide an attempt for such an account starting from remarks on (...) introspection made by Hohwy. I develop Hohwy’s picture into a general model for knowledge of one’s mental states, discussing how predictions about oneself can be used to capture self-knowledge. I further explore empirical predictions, and thereby argue that the model provides a good explanation for failure of self-knowledge in cases involving motor aftereffects, such as the broken escalator phenomenon. I conclude that the proposed account is incomplete, but provides a valuable first step to connect research on predictive processing with the epistemology of self-knowledge. (shrink)

In recent years we have seen the rise of a new framework within the study of the mind, namely Predictive Processing. This framework essentially holds that the brain is a prediction machine constantly postulating perceptual models which are tested against incoming information. At the same time, the notion of the minimal or core self has become very influential as a way of explaining, or explaining away, pre-reflective self-awareness. The four most widely discussed alternatives for thinking through the metaphysical (...) implications the pre-reflective sense of self are the standard phenomenological view, the substance view, the no-self view and by now the relational view. In this paper, it is our objective to rethink the notion of the sense of self in the context of PP. Now, PP is often held to be a unifying framework that offers a new integrated account of perception, cognition, imagination, and indeed the pre-reflective sense of self. We will show, however, that PP has been taken to endorse rather too many different metaphysical accounts of self: that is, views about how we should regard the ultimate nature of self. What we need to do, if possible, is to use PP to constrain the theories on offer. Here we focus upon two central constraints that we think PP implies. These are, the mutability constraint and the multi-layereredness constraint. We argue that self-views laid out in terms of the PP framework are usually – to some degree – located within the four standard metaphysical accounts of self. However, we think that realist versions of self-accounts seem to have more trouble in respecting the PP constraints or requirements. The reason, or so we believe, is PP’s mutability constraint. This does not have to be the case and we, therefore, propose an alternative realist view – namely the pre-reflective situational self view – which is more adequate to fit the PP framework. (shrink)

Earlier work has demonstrated that attention is indirectly cognitively malleable by processes of self-association – processes by which agents explicitly associate an item with the self. We extend this work by considering the manipulation of attention to both salient and non-salient objects. We demonstrate that self-association impacts attentional processing not only of non-salient objects, but also regarding salient items known to command attention. This result indicates the flexibility and susceptibility of attentional processing to cognitive manipulation.

The idea that we have special access to our own mental states has a distinguished philosophical history. Philosophers as different as Descartes and Locke agreed that we know our own minds in a way that is quite different from the way in which we know other minds. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, this idea carne under serious attack, first from philosophy (Sellars 1956) and more recently from developmental psychology. The attack from developmental psychology arises from the (...) growing body of work on “mindreading,” the process of attributing mental states to people (and other organisms). During the last fifteen years, the processes underlying rnindreading have been a major focus of attention in cognitive and developmental psychology. Most of this work has been concerned with the processes underlying the attribution of mental states toother people.However, a number of psychologists and philosophers have also proposed accounts of the mechanisms underlying the attribution of mental states tooneself.This process ofreading one's own mindorbecoming self-awarewill be our primary concern in this paper. (shrink)

Mismatch negativity of event-related potentials is a biomarker reflecting the preattentional change detection under non-attentional conditions. This study was performed to explore whether high self-related information could elicit MMN in the visual channel, indicating the automatic processing of self-related information at the preattentional stage. Thirty-five participants were recruited and asked to list 25 city names including the birthplace. According to the difference of relevance reported from the participants, we divided names of the different cities into high, medium, and (...) low self-related information. Visual MMN was elicited by high self-related information but not by medium self-related information, with an occipital–temporal scalp distribution, indicating that, under non-attentional condition, high self-related information can be effectively processed automatically in the preattentional stage compared with low self-related information. These data provided new electrophysiological evidence for self-related information processing. (shrink)

The explanatory gap—the apparently ineliminable chasm between physical, bodily processes and states on the one hand, and subjective, lived experience on the other—belongs among the greatest problems of contemporary philosophy of mind and empirical research concerning consciousness. According to some scholars—such as eliminativist philosophers like Paul and Patricia Churchland—it is a pseudo-question. However, in our interpretation, an accurate phenomenological reflection on one’s own consciousness convinces the attentive and careful philosopher that it is very much a real question—and in fact (...) a crucial one. The present paper endeavours to show how Husserl’s theory of the bodily self-constitution of the ego could help us, not to close the explanatory gap in a reductionist manner, but rather to bridge this gap by rendering apparent the necessary connection between the subjective, phenomenal side of experience and its bodily basis. In this interpretation, Husserl’s conception of embodiment could even provide a more rigorous and firmer theoretical foundation than any which currently undergirds empirically related research regarding the origins of consciousness in the natural world. In the first half of the study, I outline Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt’s attempt to bridge and, in a further step, to eliminate the explanatory gap, in which they proceed from the external world to the interiority of mind. The second part of the paper presents a phenomenological analysis that aims to demonstrate that a Husserlian attempt would follow the opposite direction: from the inside proceeding outwards towards the external, physical reality. (shrink)

Are we the robots? This question surfaces often in current psychological re- search, as various kinds of robot parts-automatic actions, mental mechanisms, even neural circuits-keep appearing in our explanations of human behavior. Automatic processes seem responsible for a wide range of the things we do, a fact that may leave us feeling, if not fully robotic, at least a bit nonhuman. The complement of the automatic process in contemporary psychology, of course, is the controlled process (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968; (...) Bargh, 1984; Posner & Snyder, 1975; Shiffrin & Schnieder, 1977), and it is in theories of controlled processes that vestiges of our humanity reappear. Controlled processes are viewed as conscious, effortful, and intentional. and as drawing on more sources of information than automatic processes. With this power of conscious will, controlled processes seem to bring the civilized quality back to psychological explanation that automatic processes leave out. Yet by reintroducing this touch of humanity, the notion of a controlled process also brings us within glimpsing range of a fatal theoretical error-the idea that there is a controller. (shrink)

This study examines whether Chinese complement coercion sentences with aspectual verbs will elicit processing difficulty during real-time comprehension. Complement coercion is a linguistic phenomenon in which certain verbs, requiring an event-denoting complement, are combined with an entity-denoting complement, as in The author started a book. Previous studies have reported that the entity-denoting complement elicited processing difficulty following verbs that require event argument compared with verbs that do not. While the processing of complement coercion has been extensively studied in Indo-European languages (...) such as English and German, it is relatively under-researched in Sino-Tibetan languages such as Mandarin Chinese. Given the fact that there are many linguistic elements behaving distinctly in the different language families, for instance, verbs with respect to their semantic properties and syntactic representations of the complement, it is meaningful to investigate whether or not the existing linguistic differences have any effect on the processing of complement coercion in Mandarin. With this research goal, we recorded self-paced reading time of 61 native Mandarin speakers to investigate the processing of the entity-denoting complement in sentences with three different verb types, as exemplified in 顾客开始/填写/查看这份问卷 gù-kè kāi-shǐ/tián-xiě/chá-kàn zhè-fèn wèn-juàn “The customer started/filled in/checked the questionnaire.” It was found that the entity noun complement elicited significantly longer reading times in coercion sentences than non-coercion counterparts. The results are compatible with the previous findings in English that complement coercion sentences impose processing cost during real-time comprehension. The study contributes empirical evidence to coercion studies cross-linguistically. (shrink)

The concept of a relational self has been prominent in feminism, communitarianism, narrative self theories, and social network theories, and has been important to theorizing about practical dimensions of selfhood. However, it has been largely ignored in traditional philosophical theories of personal identity, which have been dominated by psychological and animal theories of the self. This book offers a systematic treatment of the notion of the self as constituted by social, cultural, political, and biological relations. The (...) author's account incorporates practical concerns and addresses how a relational self has agency, autonomy, responsibility, and continuity through time in the face of change and impairments. This cumulative network model of the self incorporates concepts from work in the American pragmatist and naturalist tradition. The ultimate aim of the book is to bridge traditions that are often disconnected from one another--feminism, personal identity theory, and pragmatism--to develop a unified theory of the self. (shrink)

People have three cognitive representations of the self, namely, the individual, relational, and collective selves, which are indispensable components of selfhood but not necessarily given equal preference. Previous studies found that people displayed varied self-hierarchy in miscellaneous tasks involving different research materials that had pre-existing learned associations established over long periods of time. Therefore, this study tries to explore a purer self-hierarchy without the influence of research materials, using perceptual matching tasks. The behavioral and event-related potentials’ findings (...) showed that people recognized information association with their individual self faster compared with their relational and CS. Smaller N2, stronger P3 and late positive complex amplitudes were evoked during IS compared with RS and CS. However, the three selves evoked equal P2 amplitudes at the early processing stage. Moreover, CS showed a weaker advantage than RS, demonstrating a longer reaction time, lower d prime, and weaker P3 and LPC amplitudes in the parietal region. Overall, self-hierarchy during simple perceptual processing manifested as IS > RS > CS at the late processing stage but manifested as IS = RS = CS at the early processing stage. Self-hierarchy varies according to the processing stage, even without meaningful information and during the simple perception processing. This result provides direct evidence that all selves can be tagged with neutral actions, which would fit the idea of an organism attuned to self-survival at multiple processing levels. (shrink)

A hypothesis on the physiological conditions of consciousness is presented. It is assumed that the occurrence of states of consciousness causally depends on the formation of complex representational structures. Cortical neural networks that exhibit a high representational activity develop higher-order, self-referential representations as a result of self-organizing processes. The occurrence of such states is identical with the appearance of states of consciousness. The underlying physiological processes can be identified. It is assumed that neural assemblies instantiate mental (...) representations; hence consciousness depends on the rate at which large active assemblies are generated. The formation of assemblies involves the activation of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor channel complex which controls different forms of synaptic plasticity including rapid changes of the connection strengths. The various causes of unconsciousness (e.g., anaesthetics or brain stem lesions) have a common denominator: they directly or indirectly inhibit the formation of assemblies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Miranda Fricker has characterized epistemic injustice as “a kind of injustice in which someone is wronged specifically in her capacity as a knower” (2007, Epistemic injustice: Power & the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 20). Gaslighting, where one agent seeks to gain control over another by undermining the other’s conception of herself as an independent locus of judgment and deliberation, would thus seem to be a paradigm example. Yet, in the most thorough analysis of gaslighting to date (...) (Abramson, K. 2014. “Turning up the lights on gaslighting.” Philosophical Perspectives 28, Ethics: 1–30), the idea that gaslighting has crucial epistemic dimensions is rather roundly rejected on grounds that gaslighting works by means of a strategy of assertion and manipulation that is not properly understood in epistemic terms. I argue that Abramson’s focus on the gaslighter and on the moral wrongness of his actions leads her to downplay ways in which gaslighters nevertheless deploy genuinely epistemic strategies, and to devote less attention to the standpoint and reasoning processes of the victim, for whom the experience of gaslighting has substantial and essential epistemic features. Taking these features into account reveals that all gaslighting has epistemic dimensions and helps to clarify what resistance to gaslighting might look like. (shrink)

Empowerment, an already central concept in public health, has gained additional relevance through the expansion of mobile health (mHealth). Especially direct-to-consumer self-testing app companies mobilise the term to advertise their products, which allow users to self-test for various medical conditions independent of healthcare professionals. This article first demonstrates the absence of empowerment conceptualisations in the context of self-testing apps by engaging with empowerment literature. It then contrasts the service these apps provide with two widely cited empowerment definitions (...) by the WHO, which describe the term as a process that, broadly, leads to knowledge and control of health decisions. We conclude that self-testing apps can only partly empower their users, as they, we argue, do not provide the type of knowledge and control the WHO definitions describe. More importantly, we observe that this shortcoming stems from the fact that in the literature on mHealth and in self-testing marketing, empowerment is understood as a goal rather than a process. This characterises a shift in the meaning of empowerment in the context of self-testing and mHealth, one that reveals a lack of awareness for relational and contextual factors that contribute to empowerment. We argue that returning to a process-understanding of empowerment helps to identify these apps’ deficits, and we conclude the article by briefly suggesting several strategies to increase self-testing apps’ empowerment function. (shrink)

Continual pressure on managers, their efficiency, and the need to search for novel solutions to problems can lead to psychologically demanding situations. In efforts to understand the main obstacles to work and to effectively manage work-related processes, and in the need to achieve personal development, new approaches that are based on existential philosophies emerge. The aim of this article is to highlight the ways in which existential approaches have been used or discussed in management and to show that existential (...) themes and their applications in management can also be found in the Eastern tradition of thought. The paper presents six case vignettes from management practice that use Western and Eastern existential insights and offer recommendations for self-development of managers. The paper concludes that although it is difficult or impossible to create a unified framework of existential philosophy of management because of the diversity of existential approaches and because of the problematic nature of comparing Eastern and Western philosophies, it is possible to work towards gathering applicable insights and values. (shrink)

The understanding of conditioned co‐arising is central to Buddhist practice and development. This chapter presents the principle of conditionality, which can be applied to all processes, events, and things, physical or mental, in the universe. Besides explaining the origin of dukkha, the conditioned co‐arising formula also explains karma, rebirth, and the functioning of personality, all without the need to invoke a permanent self. Buddhism sees the basic root of the pain and stress of life as spiritual ignorance, rather (...) than sin. The between‐lives period has three phases: inclining to a further rebirth, seeking it here and there, and falling from one's previous identity into a new rebirth. In the Mahāyāna movement, various uses were made of the conditioned co‐arising. As a general point on conditioned co‐arising, it should be noted that it presents a “middle” way of understanding that echoes the Buddhist path as a “middle way” of practice. (shrink)

In this book, Mark Rowlands challenges the Cartesian view of the mind as a self-contained monadic entity, and offers in its place a radical externalist or environmentalist model of cognitive processes. Cognition is not something done exclusively in the head, but fundamentally something done in the world. Drawing on both evolutionary theory and a detailed examination of the processes involved in perception, memory, thought and language use, Rowlands argues that cognition is, in part, a process whereby creatures (...) manipulate and exploit relevant objects in their environment. It is not simply an internal process of information processing; equally significantly, it is an external process of information processing. This innovative book provides a foundation for an unorthodox but increasingly popular view of the nature of cognition. (shrink)

As a part of job resources, work time control is essential for innovation. We examine how work time control impacts knowledge employees’ innovation in the workplace. A two-stage study was conducted to verify the mediating and moderating processes. In Study 1, adopting the job demands–resources model as a theoretical framework, we conducted a laboratory test to find the relation between work time control, job engagement, job burnout, and innovation, and verified the path between work time control and innovation. In (...) Study 2, drawing on the job demands–resources model verified by Study 1 and self-regulation theory, it is proposed that during the psychological process in the workplace, job engagement plays a mediating role, and the vocational delay of gratification plays a moderating role between work time control and innovation. A total of 254 knowledge employees from diverse organizations participated in the survey study. After taking demographic variables, job demands, and neuroticism as control variables, the results showed that job engagement would mediate the relationship between work time control and innovation. A higher level of delay of gratification buffered the effect of a higher level of work time control on innovation. All these findings verified and expanded knowledge on work time control and innovation literature, showing that work time control is important for innovation. Based on Chinese cultural background, managers should offer employees the opportunity to conduct self-control training and encourage them with great freedom to foster employee innovation. (shrink)

Every step forward, in life and in thought, is a return to a beginning in that it empties that much more the plan by which the journey is directed. The journey that began this work was with the recondite lore of aphasia. This early work led to a psychology of language, perception, action, and feeling based on the principle of microgenesis. This psychology and its corre sponding brain process are detailed in my book, Life of the Mind, a vade mecum (...) for the ideas that are developed further in this work. Now this psychology, a single thought exposed at progressively deeper levels, is extended to the problems of time awareness, consciousness and the nature of the self. It is astonishing, is it not, that an aphasic error, a slip of the tongue, can be a peephole on some of the ultimate mysteries of life? Over the last few years I have had the occasion to present portions of this work at various conferences and to different audiences, and have found, to my dismay, that the theory is often difficult for many to grasp. (shrink)

This essay presents the conditional probability of co-contribution account of the individuation of cognitive systems (CPC) and argues that CPC provides an attractive basis for a theory of the cognitive self. The argument proceeds in a largely indirect way, by emphasizing empirical challenges faced by an approach that relies entirely on predictive processing (PP) mechanisms to ground a theory of the cognitive self. Given the challenges faced by PP-based approaches, we should prefer a theory of the cognitive (...) class='Hi'>self of the sort CPC offers, one that accommodates variety in the kinds of mechanism that, when integrated, constitute a cognitive system (and thus the cognitive self), to a theory according to which the cognitive self is composed of essentially one kind of thing, for instance, prediction-error minimization mechanisms. The final section focuses on one of the central functions of the cognitive self: to engage in conscious reasoning. It is argued that the phenomenon of conscious, deliberate reasoning poses an apparently insoluble problem for a PP-based view, one that seems to rest on a structural limitation of predictive-processing models. In a nutshell, conscious reasoning is a single-stream phenomenon, but, in order for PP to apply, two streams of activity must be involved, a prediction stream and an input stream. Thus, with regard to the question of the nature of the self, PP-based views must yield to an alternative approach, regardless of whether proponents of the predictive processing, as a comprehensive theory of cognition, can handle the various empirical challenges canvassed in the preceding section. (shrink)

This study examined self-recognition processing in both the auditory and visual modalities by determining how comparable hearing a recording of one’s own voice was to seeing photograph of one’s own face. We also investigated whether the simultaneous presentation of auditory and visual self-stimuli would either facilitate or inhibit self-identification. Ninety-one participants completed reaction-time tasks of self-recognition when presented with their own faces, own voices, and combinations of the two. Reaction time and errors made when responding with (...) both the right and left hand were recorded to determine if there were lateralization effects on these tasks. Our findings showed that visual self-recognition for facial photographs appears to be superior to auditory self-recognition for voice recordings. Furthermore, a combined presentation of one’s own face and voice appeared to inhibit rather than facilitate self-recognition and there was a left-hand advantage for reaction time on the combined-presentation tasks. (shrink)

Abstract:Facial transplantation is emerging as a therapeutic option for self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The self-inflicted nature of this injury raises questions about the appropriate role of self-harm in determining patient eligibility. Potential candidates for facial transplantation undergo extensive psychosocial screening. The presence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound warrants special attention to ensure that a patient is prepared to undergo a demanding procedure that poses significant risk, as well as stringent lifelong management. Herein, we explore the ethics of (...) considering mechanism of injury in the patient selection process, referring to the precedent set forth in solid organ transplantation. We also consider the available evidence regarding outcomes of individuals transplanted for self-inflicted mechanisms of injury in both solid organ and facial transplantation. We conclude that while the presence of a self-inflicted gunshot wound is significant in the overall evaluation of the candidate, it does not on its own warrant exclusion from consideration for a facial transplantation. (shrink)

Depression experienced by older adults is proving an increasing global health burden, with rates generally 7% and as high as 27% in the USA. This is likely to significantly increase in coming years as the number and proportion of older adults in the population rises all around the world. Therefore, it is imperative that the effectiveness of approaches to the prevention and treatment of depression are understood. Creative arts interventions, including art, dance movement, drama and music modalities, are utilised internationally (...) to target depression and depressive symptoms in older adults. This includes interventions led by trained arts therapists as well as other health and arts professionals. However, to date there has not been a systematic review that reports effects and examines the processes (why) and mechanisms (how) of creative arts interventions are used to address depression in this older age group. This systematic review of studies on creative arts interventions for older adults experiencing depression examined: outcomes of four creative arts modalities (art, dance movement, drama, and music); with particular attention paid to processes documented as contributing to change in each modality; and mechanisms considered to result from these processes. Our analysis of 75 articles (17 art, 13 dance, 4 drama and 41 music) indicates mostly significant quantitative or positive qualitative findings, particularly for interventions led by creative arts therapists. Mechanisms of change gleaned from the studies that were common across modalities include physical (e.g. increased muscle strength; neurochemical effects, such as endorphin release), intra-personal (e.g. enhanced self-concept, strengthened agency and mastery; processing and communication of emotions), cultural (e.g. creative expression, aesthetic pleasure), cognitive (e.g. stimulation of memory) and social (e.g. increased social skills and connection), that were all considered to contribute to reduced depression and symptoms. Recommendations for future research include a stronger focus on testing of processes and mechanisms. (shrink)

Though Rousseau is recognized to have treated the problem of self-knowledge with great sensitivity, very little is known about a centrally important aspect of that treatment—his understanding of self-deception. I reconstruct this conception, emphasizing the importance of purposive but sub-intentional processes that work to enhance agents' self-esteem. I go on to argue that Rousseau's fundamental concern about the theater is its capacity to manipulate these processes in ways that make spectators both complicit in their own (...) falsification and vulnerable to elite domination. This argument, with its focus on the pervasive and often subconscious character of self-deception, not only problematizes an influential reading of Rousseau which emphasizes the epistemic availability of the “true” or “sincere” self, but also highlights the ongoing civic and moral threat posed by self-deceptive mental states. (shrink)

Galen Strawson accepts that the common experience of being a social self is of something that continues through time. However, he excludes this from what ‘the self’ means in a stricter ontological sense. Here I will argue that this experience of self as enduring can be taken to be ontologically real as well. I will suggest that selfhood arises from the assimilation of cultural signs by a semiotic process that is a fundamental aspect of nature. I will (...) also consider how the phenomenological encounter with ‘the self’ is conditioned by prior beliefs and their ethical entailments. (shrink)

Over the last century and a half, manners and formalities in the West have become less status-ridden, stiff and rigid. Debates around Norbert Elias' theory of civilising processes gave rise to questions of a change in direction of these patterns. The concept of informalisation, which describes these transformations, was first used to analyse the tumultuous changes of the 1960s and 1970s. This increasing informality, leniency and flexibility, comes hand-in-hand with a growing demand on individuals to self-regulate their emotions. (...) This book will stimulate debate around the changes in the standards of manners and emotion regulation, and will generate new avenues of enquiry that focus on issues involving informalisation. The chapters shed light on a variety of such moral and political issues over the last 150 years, offering a new and broader scope on the present social condition of humanity. Civilisation and Informalisation will be an important addition for students and scholars of figurational process sociology, and of broader interest to academics across sociology, social psychology and social history. (shrink)

Self-deception is an important construct in social, personality, and clinical literatures. Although historical and clinical views of self-deception have regarded it as defensive in nature and operation, modern views of this individual difference variable instead highlight its apparent benefits to subjective mental health. The present four studies reinforce the latter view by showing that self-deception predicts positive priming effects, but not negative priming effects, in reaction time tasks sensitive to individual differences in affective priming. In all studies, (...) individuals higher in self-deception displayed stronger positive priming effects, defined in terms of facilitation with two positive stimuli in a consecutive sequence, but self-deception did not predict negative priming effects in the same tasks. Importantly, these effects occurred both in tasks that called for the retrieval of self-knowledge (Study 1) and those that did not (Studies 2–4). This broad pattern supports substantive views of self-deception rather than views narrowly focused on self-presentation processes. Implications for understanding self-deception are discussed. (shrink)

Personal review record, as a form of personally identifiable information, refers to the past review information of a reviewer. The disclosure of reviewers’ personal information on electronic commerce websites has been found to substantially impact consumers’ perception regarding the credibility of online reviews. However, personal review record has received little attention in prior research. The current study investigated whether the disclosure of personal review record influenced consumers’ information processing and decision making by adopting event-related potentials measures, as ERPs allow for (...) a nuanced examination of the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive processes. At the behavioral level, we found that the purchase rate was higher and that the reaction time was shorter when the review record was disclosed, indicating that the disclosed condition was more favorable to the participants. Moreover, ERPs data showed that the disclosed condition induced an attenuated N400 component and an increased LPP component relative to the undisclosed condition, suggesting that the former condition gave rise to less cognitive and emotional conflict and to more positive evaluations. Thus, by elucidating potential cognitive and neural underpinnings, this study demonstrates the positive impact of reviewers’ disclosure of personal review record on consumers’ purchase decisions. (shrink)

In the processing of subject-verb agreement, non-subject plural nouns following a singular subject sometimes “attract” the agreement with the verb, despite not being grammatically licensed to do so. This phenomenon generates agreement errors in production and an increased tendency to fail to notice such errors in comprehension, thereby providing a window into the representation of grammatical number in working memory during sentence processing. Research in this topic, however, is primarily done in related languages with similar agreement systems. In order to (...) increase the cross-linguistic coverage of the processing of agreement, we conducted a self-paced reading study in Modern Standard Arabic. We report robust agreement attraction errors in relative clauses, a configuration not particularly conducive to the generation of such errors for all possible lexicalizations. In particular, we examined the speed with which readers retrieve a subject controller for both grammatical and ungrammatical agreeing verbs in sentences where verbs are preceded by two NPs, one of which is a local non-subject NP that can act as a distractor for the successful resolution of subject-verb agreement. Our results suggest that the frequency of errors is modulated by the kind of plural formation strategy used on the attractor noun: nouns which form plurals by suffixation condition high rates of attraction, whereas nouns which form their plurals by internal vowel change (ablaut) generate lower rates of errors and reading-time attraction effects of smaller magnitudes. Furthermore, we show some evidence that these agreement attraction effects are mostly contained in the right tail of reaction time distributions. We also present modeling data in the ACT-R framework which supports a view of these ablauting patterns wherein they are differentially specified for number and evaluate the consequences of possible representations for theories of grammar and parsing. (shrink)

Symmetry in biological and physical systems is a product of self-organization driven by evolutionary processes, or mechanical systems under constraints. Symmetry-based feature extraction or representation by neural networks may unravel the most informative contents in large image databases. Despite significant achievements of artificial intelligence in recognition and classification of regular patterns, the problem of uncertainty remains a major challenge in ambiguous data. In this study, we present an artificial neural network that detects symmetry uncertainty states in human observers. (...) To this end, we exploit a neural network metric in the output of a biologically inspired Self- Organizing Map Quantization Error (SOM-QE). Shape pairs with perfect geometry mirror symmetry but a non-homogenous appearance, caused by local variations in hue, saturation, or lightness within and/or across the shapes in a given pair produce, as shown here, a longer choice response time (RT) for “yes” responses relative to symmetry. These data are consistently mirrored by the variations in the SOM-QE from unsupervised neural network analysis of the same stimulus images. The neural network metric is thus capable of detecting and scaling human symmetry uncertainty in response to patterns. Such capacity is tightly linked to the metric’s proven selectivity to local contrast and color variations in large and highly complex image data. (shrink)

To test the hypothesis of a participation of inner speech in self-referential activity we reviewed 59 studies measuring brain activity during processing of self-information in the following self-domains: agency, self-recognition, emotions, personality traits, autobiographical memory, preference judgments, and REST. The left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) has been shown to sustain inner speech use. We calculated the percentage of studies reporting LIFG activity for each self-dimension. 55.9% of all studies reviewed identified LIFG (and presumably inner speech) (...) activity during self-awareness tasks. Furthermore, the LIFG was more frequently recruited during conceptual tasks (e.g., emotions, traits) than during perceptual tasks (e.g., agency, self-recognition). This supports the view of a relative involvement of inner speech in self-reflective processes. Crown Copyright © 2007 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This chapter summarizes research on free will. Progress has been made by discarding outmoded philosophical notions in favor of exploring how ordinary people understand and use the notion of free will. The concept of responsible autonomy captures many aspects of layperson concepts of free will, including acting on one's own (i.e., not driven by external forces), choosing, using reasons and personal values, conscious reflection, and knowing and accepting consequences and moral implications. Free will can thus be understood as form of (...) volition (action control) that evolved to enable people to live in cultural societies. Much work has shown that belief in free will (as opposed to disbelief) is associated with actions that are conducive to functioning well in culture, including helpfulness, restraint of aggression, learning via counterfactual analysis, thinking for oneself, effective job performance, and appropriate gratitude. Belief in free will increases in response to misdeeds by others, thus emphasizing the link to personal responsibility. Research on volition indicates that self-regulation, intelligent reasoning, decision making, and initiative all deplete a (common) limited energy source, akin to the folk notion of willpower and linked to the body's glucose supplies. Free will is thus not an absolute or constant property of persons but a variable, fluctuating capability—one that is nonetheless highly adaptive for individuals and society. -/- The notion that people have free will has been invoked in multiple contexts. Legally and morally, it explains why people can be held responsible for their actions. Theologically, it was used to explain why a supposedly kind and omniscient god would send most of the people he created to hell (Walker, 1964). Yet, for such an important concept, there remains wide-ranging disagreement and confusion over its existence and its nature. For example, philosophers still debate whether humans truly have free will and, if so, under what conditions human volition deserves to be considered free (Kane, 2011). In psychology, most theorists believe that humans engage in self-control, rational choice, planning, initiative, and related acts of volition. The debate is not whether these things occur but merely whether these should be called free will. -/- This chapter will provide an overview of recent psychology experiments concerned with free will. There are three main and quite distinct sets of problems, each with associated lines of research. The first is concerned with how people understand the idea of free will. The second concerns the causes and consequences of believing in free will. The third focuses on the actual volitional processes that guide human action. (shrink)