Facial perception plays a key role in various social interactions, including formidability assessments. People make relatively accurate inferences about men’s physical strength, aggressiveness, and success in physical confrontations based on facial cues. The physical factors related to the perception of fighting ability and their relative contribution have not been investigated yet, since most existing studies employed only a limited number of threat potential measures or proxies. In the present study, we collected data from Czech Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters regarding (...) their fighting success and physical performance in order to test physical predictors of perceived fighting ability made on the basis of high-fidelity facial photographs. We have also explored the relationship between perceived and actual fighting ability. We created standardized 360° photographs of 44 MMA fighters which were assessed on their perceived fighting ability by 94 raters (46 males). Further, we obtained data regarding their physical characteristics (e.g. age, height, body composition) and performance (MMA score, isometric strength, anaerobic performance, lung capacity). In contrast to previous studies, we did not find any significant links between the actual and perceived fighting ability. The results of a multiple regression analysis have, however, shown that heavier fighters and those with higher anaerobic performance were judged as more successful. Our results suggest that certain physical performance-related characteristics are mirrored in individuals’ faces but assessments of fighting success based on facial cues are not congruent with actual fighting performance. (shrink)

Observing dance improvisation provides a unique opportunity to understand how people collaborate together while creating. It is an opportunity to consider how new ideas appear, not simply from the internal processes of a single creator but rather from the interactions between the minds, bodies and the environment acting on and between a group of improvising dancers. Improvisational scores served in this study as a laboratory into group creativity. Using a video-stimulated recall method, which asks dancers to reflect upon their own (...) processes just after completing the score, I explored the interdependency between meta-cognitive strategies such as imagery and sense awareness, group processes, the role of others in one’s own creative processes, and interactions between bodies and with the environment. As a result I describe how dancers build together a common improvisational space, which allows them to co-create and share their ideas mostly in non-verbal, non-propositional ways. I discuss the co-agency of such a process, showing that intentionality is distributed between dancers at each moment of improvisation and that they are mainly focused on supporting the ideas of others. I also discuss the medium of the body and the embodied response as central to dance improvisation practice. (shrink)

Based on an analysis of 137 texts written by pupils, this paper examines pupils? humour directed at teachers, its types and social functions. The collected data are divided into three categories that describe different modes of teachers as targets of pupils? humour. The first mode describes teachers as unintentionally comical, the second as duped by their pupils and the third as intentional users of humour. The analysis focuses on different functions that pupils? humour directed at teachers fulfils in the social (...) life of the classroom. The paper concludes by showing how key functions of social humour (such as creation of solidarity, negotiation of power and realisation of personal needs) are connected to the three modes of pupils? humour directed at teachers. (shrink)

To deal with the upcoming challenges and complexity of the nursing profession, it is deemed important to reflect on our current organization of care. However, before starting to rethink the organization of nursing care, an overview of important elements concerning nursing care organization, more specifically nursing models, is necessary. The aim of this study was to conduct a mapping review, accompanied by an evidence map to map the existing literature, to map the field of knowledge on a meta‐level and to (...) identify current research gaps concerning nursing models in a hospital setting. Next to nursing models, two other organizational correlates seem to be of importance when looking at the organization of nursing care: nurse staffing and skill mix. Although it seems that in recent research, the theoretical focus on the organization of nursing care has been left behind, the increasingly complex healthcare environment might gain from the use of nursing theory, or in this case, care delivery models. As almost no fundamental studies have been done toward the combination of care delivery models, nurse staffing, and skill mix, those elements should be taken into account to fully capture the organization of nursing care in future research. (shrink)

This book describes the state of astrobiology in Europe today and its relation to the European society at large. With contributions from authors in more than 20 countries and over 30 scientific institutions worldwide, the document illustrates the societal implications of astrobiology and the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to European society. The book has two main objectives: 1. It recommends the establishment of a European Astrobiology Institute (EAI) as an answer to a series of challenges relating to astrobiology (...) but also European research, education, and society at large. 2. It also acknowledges the societal implications of astrobiology, and thus the role of the social sciences and humanities in optimizing the positive contribution that astrobiology can make to the lives of the people of Europe and the challenges they face. (shrink)

Justice is a contested concept. There are many different and competing conceptions, i.e. interpretations of the concept. Different domains of justice deal with different fields of application of justice claims, such as structural justice, distributive justice, participatory justice or recognition. We present a formal conceptual structure of justice applicable to all these domains. We show that conceptions of justice can be described by specifying the following conceptual elements: the judicandum, the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their (...) claims, the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice, to assess their internal consistency, to explore new definitions of justice in an analytical way, and to explicate an idea of justice in a manner that provides concrete links to the relevant context. (shrink)

Since the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005, interest has increased in cultural ecosystem services (CESs) research to understand the complexity of the non-material benefits that people obtain from ecosystems. The intangible and interactive characteristics of CESs present many challenges regarding how to approach, quantify and even define CESs. In this paper, we suggest looking at CESs through the lens of embodied and situated cognition theories. We advocate that such an approach should be applied to the development stage of CES research (...) projects, as the embodied and situated experience of the site aids the development of research questions and future interventions. We described a case study—namely, the Environmental Empathy Research Challenge, which took place during the ColLaboratoire 2020 Research Residency in the Philippines. This case shows how interactive, embodied and situated workshops, such as Embodied Empathy and Walking Maps, contributed to developing a research proposal and a novel research framework, ecological embodied cognition (EEC). EEC focuses on the concept of environmental empathy to redefine the human-environment relationship. Further, based on an example of a participatory research activity, Sensing-Playing-Moving, we examined how interventions founded upon EEC principles enhance environmental empathy. (shrink)

Sometimes it seems that our traditional Christian churches - both different and identical denominations - do not share any insignificant differences in rituals, but the abyss. For, agree, believing in one God, the God of mercy and forgiveness, in one Holy Scripture that includes the New Testament, it is not possible to be at war with one another as some Christian Churches in Ukraine are at odds today.

Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress contributes significantly to the literary debate on the definition of whiteness. The socio-historical construction of whiteness emerging from the novel is amplified by white imagery dovetailing with the claims made about white people directly. For the African American first person narrator, Easy Rawlins, living in post-World War II Los Angeles, whiteness mostly spells terror. The oppressive faces of whiteness consist in the following trajectories: property relations, economic exploitation, labour relations, the legal system, different (...) miens of oppressive white masculinity denigrating blackness, spatial dynamics of post-World War II Los Angeles and the white apparatus of power that the narrator needs to confront throughout the novel. White imagery carried to the extreme magnifies the terrorizing aspect of whiteness in the narrative. Like many authors of colour, Mosley associates whiteness with death. Whiteness inundates Easy Rawlins from all sides, entailing insincerity, dishonesty, interestedness and hypocrisy. (shrink)

The David Lewis’s article concerns the issue of penal substitution in the dual context of the contemporary system of criminal law, in which punishment does not perform a compensatory function, and in the context of the Christian interpretation of Christ’s death as Atonement. It may seem that we do not believe in penal substitution, but in fact we do believe in it selectively. There are Christians who believe that Christ’s death is a payment of the debt of punishment owed by (...) the sinners, but do not believe that a murderer’s friend can serve on his behalf a death sentence. Most of us believe in penal substitution with reference to fines but not other kinds of punishment. In both cases the beliefs concerning penal substitution are clearly inconsistent. However, if selective acceptance of penal substitution is so common, perhaps it makes sense after all. (shrink)

Previous studies have emphasized a person’s biological sex as a factor which influences online search behavior. This study aims to investigate how people search online for political information and if gendered online search exists. We examined online search behavior via eye tracking while the participants searched for information about political party positions on the Internet. A content analysis of the eye tracking data followed and was evaluated with a special focus on the role of biological sex and social gender, and (...) the relationship of both factors with other variables, such as self-reported prior political knowledge, political interest, and Internet skills. The results accord with previous studies in that the sex influences the online search process. However, this relationship was partially mediated by self-reported political interest and prior knowledge. This outcome calls for a more critical use of the sex variable in reference to political online search behavior, and the inclusion of sex and gender related variables. (shrink)

In the present study, we explored the role of liking in the social induction of affect. Dispositional likeability was manipulated by written reports describing a sender as a likeable or dislikeable character. Afterwards participants watched short videos presenting the sender displaying happy or sad emotional expressions. We expected that exposure to the likeable sender would lead to reactions concordant with his emotional expression, whereas exposure to the dislikeable sender would result in discordant reactions. The results indicated that dispositional likeability influenced (...) the social induction of affect when the sender expressed positive emotions. Moreover, liking mediated the effects of the happy sender’s dispositional likeability on participants’ affective state. Exposure to the sad sender, however, led to assimilation regardless of the sender’s dispositional likeability. (shrink)

The future of work has become a pressing matter of concern: Researchers, business consultancies, and industrial companies are intensively studying how new work models could be best implemented to increase workplace flexibility and creativity. In particular, the agile model has become one of the “must-have” elements for re-organizing work practices, especially for technology development work. However, the implementation of agile work often comes together with strong presumptions: it is regarded as an inevitable tool that can be universally integrated into different (...) workplaces while having the same outcome of flexibility, transparency, and flattened hierarchies everywhere. This paper challenges such essentializing assumptions by turning agile work into a “matter of care.” We argue that care work occurs in contexts other than feminized reproductive work, namely, technology development. Drawing on concepts from feminist Science and Technology Studies and ethnographic research at agile technology development workplaces in Germany and Kenya, we examine what work it takes to actually keep up with the imperative of agile work. The analysis brings the often invisibilized care practices of human and nonhuman actors to the fore that are necessary to enact and stabilize the agile promises of flexibilization, co-working, and rapid prototyping. Revealing the caring sociotechnical relationships that are vital for working agile, we discuss the emergence of power asymmetries characterized by hierarchies of skills that are differently acknowledged in the daily work of technology development. The paper ends by speculating on the emancipatory potential of a care perspective, by which we seek to inspire careful Emancipatory Technology Studies. (shrink)

The author presents a model of moral responsibility based on the actual sequence and the notion of reason-responsiveness, and draws an analogy between this model and Robert Nozick’s model of knowledge based on the actual sequence. In addition, the concept of semicompatibilism is introduced and explained.

The author argues that the moral of the Frankfurt stories is this: if causal determinism rules out moral responsibility, it is not in virtue of eliminating alternative possibilities, and replies the most important challenge to this claim, namely an argument called “The Dilemma Defense.”.

The concept of love has emerged as a central topic for philosophical and theoretical discussion over the past few years. Whereas the dominant ideology of love in contemporary culture insists that love be understood as a discovery of my long lost second half with whom I merge and finally recreate a whole, contemporary philosophers and theorists have stressed the need to reconsider the concept of love within an ethical framework that can sustain the idea of the other as forever different (...) and separate. Taking as a starting point two different taxi scenes offered by Foucault and Woolf respectively, the article outlines and discusses those two contemporary love grammars, focusing on the concepts of lack and fantasy. Whereas Woolf’s taxi scene is reminiscent of a notion of love as a fantasy of unification, Foucault’s notion of love not only observes the need to maintain the other’s specificity and separateness, but also considers lack and fantasy to be primary and fundamental parts of love as lived experience. While Foucault insists on pleasure and action he also observes the central and unavoidable power of imagination that is attributed the name and function of recollection. The article finally addresses the question of if and how we might be responsible for our daydreams and fantasies. (shrink)

Research objective: identify ways to improve the training process of athletes-veterans of the group "Health" in handball; determine the place of psychological training and its component - mental training in the training process of athletes-veterans of the group "Health" in handball; experimental testing of the dynamics of technical and tactical readiness of athletes, indicating the effectiveness of determining ways to improve the process under study.

Swedish beef and dairy farmers are currently facing a challenging financial situation. Simultaneously, beef farming contributes significant environmental impacts. To support farmers, actors from the whole value chain are now promoting Swedish beef as particularly ‘sustainable’. The paper draws on critical discourse analysis of interviews with and documents from the largest Swedish supermarket chain ICA, Swedish farmer organisations and farmers to study how ICA and farmers articulate sustainability and their responsibility for the same. Articulations are subsequently discussed in the light (...) of actual environmental impacts of beef production and the distribution of power in the beef value chain. The findings suggest that negative environmental impacts and farmers’ struggles are largely hidden in the dominant articulation of sustainability. Furthermore, ICA does not use the power it has to steer consumers toward reduced beef consumption. We conclude with suggesting more open deliberation about current levels of beef sales and consumption and about what compromises to make when striving for ‘sustainable’ beef consumption. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the possibility of applying the procedure of falsification, which consists in testing a theory by confronting hypotheses derived from the theory with empirical data, in the studies of culture, in particular when evaluating interpretive hypotheses. Falsification, to which, according to Popper and his followers, the natural sciences owe their success, is viewed with strong suspicion when the object of investigation is meanings and values rather than material phenomena. If by interpretation one understands reconstruction of the artefact’s meaning, (...) obvious challenges when falsifying interpretive hypotheses include: the multiplicity, instability and ambiguity (indefiniteness or self-contradictory character) of meanings inherent in artefacts. All of this does not seem to exclude the possibility of identifying as misreadings interpretive hypotheses which clearly contradict relevant (non-contradictory) artefactual evidence. Falsification thus understood seems indispensable in educational contexts. At the same time, it must be admitted that in practice (as contrasted with the logical formula which underlies the procedure) falsification is inconclusive, and the application of the procedure is further complicated when meanings and values are the object of research. This is one of the reasons why falsification in the humanities (as elsewhere) needs to be complemented by other epistemic procedures while the status of literary studies or history of philosophy might best be perceived as partly cognitive (and in so far as the research conducted in these disciplines is empirically testable, also scientific) and partly creative (artistic). (shrink)

We derive the first analytical formula for the density of "Dark Matter" (DM) at all length scales, thus also for the rotation curves of stars in galaxies, for the baryonic Tully–Fisher relation and for planetary systems, from Einstein's equations (EE) and classical approximations, in agreement with observations. DM is defined in Part I as the energy of the coherent gravitational field of the universe, represented by the additional equivalent ordinary matter (OM), needed at all length scales, to explain classically, with (...) inclusion of the OM, the _observed coherent_ gravitational field. Our derivation uses both EE and the Newtonian approximation of EE in Part I, to describe semi-classically in Part II the advection of DM, created at the level of the universe, into galaxies and clusters thereof. This advection happens proportional with their own classically generated gravitational field g, due to self-interaction of the gravitational field. It is based on the universal formula ρ D = λgg′ 2 for the density ρ D of DM advected into medium and lower scale structures of the observable universe, where λ is a universal constant fixed by the Tully–Fisher relations. Here g′ is the gravitational field of the universe; g′ is in main part its own source, as implied in Part I from EE. We start from a simple electromagnetic analogy that helps to make the paper generally accessible. This paper allows for the first time the exact calculation of DM in galactic halos and at all levels in the universe, based on EE and Newtonian approximations, in agreement with observations. (shrink)

Childhood trauma is associated with many interpersonal and psychosocial problems in adulthood. The aim of this study was to explore the associations with a spiritual area of personality, namely religious and spiritual struggles (R/S struggles). A nationally representative sample of 1,000 Czech respondents aged 15 years and older participated in the survey. All types of CT were associated with an increased level of all six types of R/S struggles, with the highest values for demonic struggles. Thus, the findings of this (...) study might be important for clinical practice and pastoral care as well as a further research. (shrink)

The present paper considers the possible sense of “nonsensical” caring—caring (1) which for various reasons apparently cannot help the cared-for, and (2) in which the carer, though convinced that it will not be effective, whole-heartedly engages. The project is inspired by the fiction of Ali Smith, which offers varied, vivid and memorable examples of such caring: worried that her dead sister misses life experience, Clare in Hotel World makes sure her sensations are doubly intense and rich though she knows her (...) sister, being dead, will not benefit from them; in Summer Hannah and Daniel write to each other tender letters which they immediately burn for safety’s sake so that the addressee has not even the slightest chance of ever reading them; in “Virtual” a bed-ridden girl diligently takes care of her virtual pet, well aware that it is not alive, let alone sentient. Smith’s examples of “nonsensical” caring are strangely compelling, yet in real life such caring—predictably ineffective (as regards helping the other) and costly—is rare. Why? Under what metaphysical assumptions, if any, could “nonsensical” caring make sense? The paper considers these questions, taking Søren Kierkegaard’s extensive discussion of agape love in Works of Love (1847) as its primary point of reference. (shrink)

Hans Christian Andersen is a cultural icon, and his fairy tales are famous around the world. But despite the positive ring to this description, his status as a canonized author poses a challenge when he is passed on to new generations of readers. In this article, we show examples of how this challenge reveals itself in Danish primary school teaching where Andersen is an obligatory figure in the subject Danish where he is frequently framed as a national romantic author of (...) morally unambiguous texts. Taking the current use of “The Ugly Duckling” (1844) in primary school teaching materials as a point of departure, we aim to show Andersen’s potential to be presented as an element in primary school teaching that draws on dialogic inquiries rooted in Philosophy with Children. Philosophical inquiries are characterized by an open mindset that incite teachers as well as school children to engage with the rich ethical themes and literary qualities of Andersen’s fairy tales. We conclude the article with our own inquiry manual to “The Ugly Duckling” to illustrate a way to overcome the current hegemonic framing of Andersen and reopen his fairy tale for future discussions and interpretations. (shrink)