Frontiers in psychology
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
Being Conscious of One's Own Heroism: An Empirical Approach to Analyzing the Leadership Potential of Future CEOs.
From the disciplinary field of the science of heroism, there is a need to deepen the processes that this science comprises, and at the same time, to test methods of inquiry to account for the variety of processes associated with this science. Linked to this sensitivity, the objective of this contribution is to jointly analyze, in a sample of future CEOs, what they imagine about heroism, their psychological types, and their values orientation. The sample consisted of 45 students (21 men and 24 women) between 22 and 47 years old (M = 26.69, SD = 4.47), who were part of a master's program oriented toward training future CEOs to be leaders. ⋯ With regard to the stories, the majority of the sample offered tales in which the hero/heroine was confronted with a mystery to solve (or mission to fulfill), faced difficulties, and, finally, achieved harmony between the personal and the collective. Regarding the values, significant associations are observed between the gender, the characteristics of the psychological types, and the content of the story about their own hero / heroine. In sum, the research carried out offers an empirical approach to the study of the subjective elements of heroism, combining quantitative and qualitative aspects in an educational setting, and broadening the perspectives on the science of heroism.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
Comparing Prescriptive and Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Children, Adults, and the Elderly.
Gender stereotypes have descriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females typically act, as well as prescriptive components, or beliefs about how males and females should act. For example, women are supposed to be nurturing and avoid dominance, and men are supposed to be agentic and avoid weakness. However, it is not clear whether people hold prescriptive gender stereotypes about children of different age groups. ⋯ Prescriptive stereotypes of elderly men and women were weaker. Overall, boys and men had more restrictive prescriptive stereotypes than girls and women in terms of strength and number. These findings demonstrate the applicability of prescriptive stereotypes to different age groups.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
ReviewGoing Beyond the Data as the Patching (Sheaving) of Local Knowledge.
Consistently predicting outcomes in novel situations is colloquially called "going beyond the data," or "generalization." Going beyond the data features in spatial and non-spatial cognition, raising the question of whether such features have a common basis-a kind of systematicity of generalization. Here, we conceptualize this ability as the patching of local knowledge to obtain non-local (global) information. Tracking the passage from local to global properties is the purview of sheaf theory, a branch of mathematics at the nexus of algebra and geometry/topology. ⋯ In both cases, going beyond the data is obtained from a (universal) sheaf theory construction called "sheaving," i.e., the "patching" of local data attached to a topological space to obtain a representation considered as a globally coherent cognitive map. These results are discussed in the context of a previous (category theory) explanation for systematicity, vis-a-vis, categorical universal constructions, along with other cognitive domains where going beyond the data is apparent. Analogous to higher-order function (i.e., a function that takes/returns a function), going beyond the data as a higher-order systematicity property is explained by sheaving, a higher-order (categorical) universal construction.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2018
ReviewIch kann nicht anders: Social Heroism as Nonselfsacrificial Practical Necessity.
Most self-reports of heroic action in both reactive and social (proactive) cases describe the experience as involving a kind of necessity. This seems intuitively sound, but it makes it unclear why heroism is accorded strong approbation. ⋯ This evinces a deep social bond, and it is this bond, rather than the action itself, that is the ground of approbation. (3) I then discuss how this construal of reactive heroism can be extended to cases of social heroism by way of a necessity that is internal to the agent's individual character. Similarly to reactive cases, a social hero literally embodies a certain ethical commitment such that her actions are likewise instances of nonselfsacrificial practical necessity. (4) I then discuss how the commitment perceived in cases of social heroism pertains to the actualization of "surplus validity," such that whereas the reactive hero is praised for embodying shared value, the social hero is praised for embodying a commitment to actualizing the concrete potential of such value more fully The approbation accorded to social heroism is therefore tied inextricably to a normative judgment concerning such immanent progressive transformation.
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In recent years, the scientific study of meditation and psychedelic drugs has seen remarkable developments. The increased focus on meditation in cognitive neuroscience has led to a cross-cultural classification of standard meditation styles validated by functional and structural neuroanatomical data. Meanwhile, the renaissance of psychedelic research has shed light on the neurophysiology of altered states of consciousness induced by classical psychedelics, such as psilocybin and LSD, whose effects are mainly mediated by agonism of serotonin receptors. ⋯ Indeed, various aspects of self-consciousness, including narrative aspects linked to autobiographical memory, self-related thoughts and mental time travel, and embodied aspects rooted in multisensory processes, may be differently affected by psychedelics and meditation practices. Finally, we consider long-term outcomes of experiences of self-loss induced by meditation and psychedelics on individual traits and prosocial behavior. We call for caution regarding the problematic conflation of temporary states of self-loss with "selflessness" as a behavioral or social trait, although there is preliminary evidence that correlations between short-term experiences of self-loss and long-term trait alterations may exist.