Four studies measured or manipulated beliefs in free will to illuminate how such beliefs are linked to other aspects of personality. Study 1 showed that stronger belief in free will was correlated with more gratitude, greater life satisfaction, lower levels of perceived life stress, a greater sense of self-efficacy, greater perceived meaning in life, higher commitment in relationships, and more willingness to forgive relationship partners. Study 2 showed that the belief in free will was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction, (...) meaning in life, gratitude, and self-efficacy than either locus of control or implicit person theory. Study 3 showed that experimentally manipulating disbelief in free will caused a reduction in the perceived meaningfulness of life. Study 4 found that inducing a stronger belief in free will caused people to set more meaningful goals for themselves. The possible concern that believers in free will simply claim all manner of positive traits was contradicted by predicted null finding.. (shrink)

Do philosophic views affect job performance? The authors found that possessing a belief in free will predicted better career attitudes and actual job performance. The effect of free will beliefs on job performance indicators were over and above well-established predictors such as conscientiousness, locus of control, and Protestant work ethic. In Study 1, stronger belief in free will corresponded to more positive attitudes about expected career success. In Study 2, job performance was evaluated objectively and independently by a supervisor. Results (...) indicated that employees who espoused free will beliefs were given better work performance evaluations than those who disbelieve in free will, presumably because belief in free will facilitates exerting control over one’s actions. (shrink)

Procrastination is a chronic and widespread problem; however, emerging work raises questions regarding the strength of the relationship between self-reported procrastination and behavioral measures of task engagement. This study assessed the internal reliability, concurrent validity, predictive validity, and psychometric properties of 10 self-report procrastination assessments using responses collected from 242 students. Participants’ scores on each self-report instrument were compared to each other using correlations and cluster analysis. Lasso estimation was used to test the self-report scores’ ability to predict two behavioral (...) measures of delay. The self-report instruments exhibited strong internal reliability and moderate levels of concurrent validity. Some self-report measures were predictive of days to study completion. No self-report measures were predictive of deadline action pacing, the pacing style most commonly associated with procrastination. Many of the self-report measures of procrastination exhibited poor fit. These results suggest that researchers should exercise caution in selecting self-report measures and that further study is necessary to determine the factors that drive misalignment between self-reports and behavioral measures of delay. (shrink)

The Second Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time was held at Hotel Mt. Fuji, near Lake Yamanaka, Japan, on July I to 7,1973. The present volume is the proceedings at that Con ference and constitutes the second volume in The Study of Time series. * At the closing session of our First Conference in Oberwolfach, Germany, in 1969, I was honored by being elected to the Presidency of the Society, following Dr. J. G. Whitrow, our fIrst (...) President. My mandate was to organize a Second Conference, consistent with the aim of the Society, which is the holding of interdisciplinary conferences for the presentation and discussion of papers on various as pects of time. Several participants expressed to me their wish to have a second conference held in Japan so as to emphasize the international and intercultural dedication of this Society. Dr. Fraser carefully evaluated this and many other suggestions, weighed the possible conference sites and our chances of raising the necessary funds to convene a meeting at such sites, and concurred with my conclusions that we should go ahead with the plans for a Japanese meeting. For the difficult and complicated task of raising funds and organizing a conference in Japan, I had to select and rely heavily on somebody both capable and reliable and also living in Japan. Thus, I asked the Reverend Michael Mutsuo Yanase, S. J. (shrink)

Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at (...) subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between (...) studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Foundation models such as GPT-4 are fine-tuned to avoid unsafe or otherwise problematic behavior, so that, for example, they refuse to comply with requests for help with committing crimes or with producing racist text. One approach to fine-tuning, called reinforcement learning from human feedback, learns from humans' expressed preferences over multiple outputs. Another approach is constitutional AI, in which the input from humans is a list of high-level principles. But how do we deal with potentially diverging input from humans? How (...) can we aggregate the input into consistent data about "collective" preferences or otherwise use it to make collective choices about model behavior? In this paper, we argue that the field of social choice is well positioned to address these questions, and we discuss ways forward for this agenda, drawing on discussions in a recent workshop on Social Choice for AI Ethics and Safety held in Berkeley, CA, USA in December 2023. (shrink)

Philosophie et sciences: voila un theme difficile, central, de notre temps, ou il est necessairement question de son sens. C'est ce sens qu'interrogent, d'une facon a la fois historique et problematique, les essais du present volume. J. Merleau-Ponty questionne les rapports entre sciences et vulgarisation scientifique. J. Ladriere pose le probleme de La normativite de la pensee scientifique. J. Lambert met en evidence le probleme du Livre de la Nature chez Galilee et Kepler. P. Kerszberg confronte les structures internes (...) de la philosophie critique kantienne et de la theorie de la relativite sur la question cosmologique. M. Richir analyse L'illusion transcendantale dans la theorie cantorienne des ensembles. B. d'Espagnat et G. Hottois evoquent le problemes des rapports difficiles, aujourd'hui, entre science et philosophie. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Of Greek Gods, the Judaeo‐Christian God, and the Sea A Ship Bound for India Beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

Plants are considered as archetypes of the ramification phenomenon but numerous elementary processes occur in the elaboration of the shaping of each species. This paper aims to identify the part ascribed to different mechanisms in the morphogenesis of a Thallophyte, the red alga Antihamnion plumula.Agonistic-antagonistic models (Bernard-Weil, 1988) can be applied to this alga whose thallus includes two different kinds of whorls, pleuridian and cladomian. In each whorl the agonistic and antagonistic effects are expressed by the full development (S) of (...) the two branches and by their symmetry rate (R) respectively. Variations in S and R show the existence of particular pleuridian whorls having an intermediary dissymmetry and a rhythmic arrangement similarly to that of the cladomian whorls. A unilateral change of the system (removal of a lateral cladome) induces a transitory destabilisation mainly manifested by the stimulating ascendant flow throughout the thallus. (shrink)

Changing land-use patterns and amenity-driven migration have brought agriculture back into people’s lives, but there is a disconnection between the realities of production agriculture and romantic images attached to farming. To the extent that “rurality” is attached to farming, people may desire to live in rural places, but they may be unprepared for the realities of living near a working farm. Greater numbers of communities are facing “either/or” outcomes regarding the conversion of “open space” land to residential or commercial uses (...) versus landscape preservation. This study explored the perceptions and preferences of a community regarding the conversion of a hypothetical parcel of open space to a working dairy or to a residential subdivision. Results suggest that the opportunity costs of foregoing open space for residential development are high, with implications for valuing the conservation of traditions that are tied to the land versus conversion of land solely for development purposes. (shrink)

Darwin's “mystery of mysteries,” the origin of species, is caused by the evolution of speciation phenotypes, i.e. phenotypic differences that depress gene flow between daughter species during speciation. Postmating, prezygotic (PMPZ) differentiation characterizes many closely related species causing conspecific sperm precedence (CSP), wherein a female preferentially utilizes conspecific over heterospecific sperm in fertilization. Until recently, the components of CSP have been difficult to observe and study in internally fertilizing organisms. Research into the mechanisms of CSP is now progressing rapidly with (...) the help of new innovative research tools. With the recent development of a sperm labeling system enabling distinct labels for different males, direct observations of competing male sperm within the female reproductive tract are possible, revealing multiple PMPZ phenotypes that combine to cause CSP. The discovery of mechanisms underlying CSP predicts an exciting future for studies of PMPZ speciation phenotypes and possible general principles underlying the origin of species. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

During the last two decades virtue ethics has become the focal point of renewed ethical and theological interest. To lead a good life, it proves useful to watch those who have mastered the art of living. The conviction that living is an art is at the heart of virtue ethics. Living a good life requires exercise, and is a question of acquiring a virtuous character rather than of complying with external ethical and legal rules. This renaissance partly builds on Thomas (...) Aquinas. He in turn recovered Aristotelian, Ciceronian and Augustinian thought on virtue ethics. The interpretation and development of virtues and vices form the core of his authorship, as the 'secunda pars' of his 'Summa Theologiae' readily displays. And yet, the most important virtues for him are not the moral ones, such as Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude, but those virtues that are both infused by and aimed at God: Faith, Hope and Love. These are virtues that the philosophers of antiquity were not aware of. To account for them, Aquinas had to adapt the classical understanding of virtues. For Aquinas, the moral virtues come to full fruition only when they are embedded in a life before God, a life lived exercising the God given theological virtues. By ignoring Faith, Hope and Love, the present discussion of virtue ethics not only ignores those virtues that were for Aquinas of utmost importance, but also fails to arrive at a complete understanding of his view of the moral virtues. (shrink)

Tool use research has suffered from a lack of consistent theoretical frameworks. There is a plethora of tool use definitions and the most widespread ones are so inclusive that the behaviors that fall under them arguably do not have much in common. The situation is aggravated by the prevalence of anecdotes, which have played an undue role in the literature. In order to provide a more rigorous foundation for research and to advance our understanding of the interrelation between tool use (...) and cognition, we suggest the adoption of Fragaszy and Mangalam's (2018) tooling framework, which is characterized by the creation of a body-plus-object system that manages a mechanical interface between tool and surface. Tooling is limited to a narrower suite of behaviors than tool use, which might facilitate its neurocognitive investigation. Indeed, evidence in the literature indicates that tooling has distinct neurocognitive underpinnings not shared by other activities typically classified as tool use, at least in primates. In order to understand the extent of tooling incidences in previous research, we systematically surveyed the comprehensive tool use catalog by Shumaker et al. (2011). We identified 201 tool use submodes, of which only 81 could be classified as tooling, and the majority of the tool use examples across species were poorly supported by evidence. Furthermore, tooling appears to be phylogenetically less widespread than tool use, with the greatest variability found in the primate order. However, in order to confirm these findings and to understand the evolution and neurocognitive mechanisms of tooling, more systematic research will be required in the future, particularly with currently underrepresented taxa. (shrink)

Recently two developments have had a major impact on the field of ancient DNA (aDNA). First, new advances in DNA sequencing, in combination with improved capture/enrichment methods, have resulted in the recovery of orders of magnitude more DNA sequence data from ancient animals. Second, there has been an increase in the range of tissue types employed in aDNA. Hair in particular has proven to be very successful as a source of DNA because of its low levels of contamination and high (...) level of ancient endogenous DNA. These developments have resulted in significant advances in our understanding of recently extinct animals: namely their evolutionary relationships, physiology, and even behaviour. Hair has been used to recover the first complete ancient nuclear genome, that of the extinct woolly mammoth, which then facilitated the expression and functional analysis of haemoglobins. Finally, we speculate on the consequences of these developments for the possibility of recreating extinct animals. (shrink)

People enroll in medical research for many reasons ranging from decisions regarding their own or family members' health situation to broader considerations including access to health and financial resources. In socially vulnerable communities the choice to participate is often based on a risk-benefit assessment that goes beyond the medical aspects of the research, and considers the benefits received. In this qualitative study, we examined the motivations of Rwandan women to participate in a non-commercial collaborative research study examining the safety, acceptability, (...) and adherence of a contraceptive vaginal ring in Rwanda juxtaposed with the perceptions of the research within the community. 351 women attended the screening visit, four were excluded because they were not able to complete the assessment of understanding. The remaining participants' ages ranged from 17 to 38 and 80% had primary level of education or below. 120 were enrolled. Findings highlighted motivations for joining the study that were relayed both formally by the clinic and informally by the community including the positive aspects of the ring. There were also some negative rumors circulating regarding the research site, likely from excluded participants who faced potential stigma based on that exclusion. It was understood by most participants that they were enrolled in a research study and participants actively sought out enrollment in the research for a variety of reasons. The experiences demonstrate that although inequalities in access to health care may create conflicting situations around the study, it is possible to form partnerships between a research center and participants/their partners, for research about reproductive health. (shrink)