In the literature related to the study of sport, the idea of phenomenology appears with various meanings. The aim of this paper is to sketch the nature, methods and central concepts of phenomenology, and thereby to distinguish philosophical phenomenology from its empirical applications. We shall begin by providing an overview of what we think phenomenology is and is not, by introducing the following points: we distinguish phenomenology from phenomenalism; the ontological from the ontic; transcendental subjectivity from subjectivity; phenomenology from phenomenography; (...) and phenomenology from other kinds of empirical qualitative methodology. Next, we examine the two most important British studies to include overviews of phenomenological work in relation to sociology of sport. We then take a critical view of the work of one research paper that gives a particularly clear description of the method of ?empirical phenomenology?. Throughout, we insist on the simple basics: that phenomenology is not simply the study of empirical phenomena, is not a form of subjectivism, is not about someone's personal experience or personal perspective, and that it is not to be confused with ?qualitative research methods?. We further insist that, if a researcher wishes to use the name ?phenomenology? for his or her research, he or she should explain just what it is (about the method or the concepts, or the outcomes) that informs or results from the research programme, in order to justify the name. (shrink)

This paper explores the topic of movement in relation to the human being (anthropos). This topic will be presented from the point of view of phenomenology and related to the area of sport. Firstly, I shall briefly present a description of the human being as static, within which mechanistic, physical movement is ascribed to the body. Secondly, I shall present a different conception of the human being ? the human being as movement ? using a phenomenological approach to the human (...) being based on the early work of Martin Heidegger, and on the philosophy of Jan Pato?ka, highlighting some of their ideas most closely related to the existence of the human being and the exploration of the topic of human movement. I shall refer to this concept of the human being with a word that I have coined for the purpose, uniting the human being (anthropos) and movement (kinesis) ? kinanthropos. Finally, from this phenomenological account of movement, I shall suggest some indicators for the enrichment of our thinking about sport. (shrink)

This paper is based on the work of Pierre de Coubertin and his view of Olympism. It deals with Coubertin's distinction between two kinds of sport: Olympic sport and world championship sport. I shall examine these two possibilities with respect both to education through sport and to how one lives one's life, and I shall show the necessity of choosing between them, with reference to Coubertin's closing remarks in his speech at the 1925 Olympic Congress in Prague: ?Fair or temple (...) ? sportsmen must make their choice; they cannot expect to frequent both one and the other ? let them choose!? (Coubertin 2000f, 559). I shall address the topic of the choice between these two kinds of sport through the two metaphors in the above quotation: ?fair?, in the sense of a market, or in ancient Greek agora; and ?temple?. Since this is also a choice of the way one lives one's life, the ideas will be worked out from within the philosophy of existence, particularly from the work of Jan Pato?ka, who develops the idea of different ?movements of human existence? in connection with different overall life directions that one might follow. The notion of ?fair? (or agora) is characterised by a human being's following of the prevailing patterns, norms and aims prescribed by society, without much reflection upon his or her individual aims and attitudes. It is described in Heideggerian terms as inauthenticity and in Pato?ka's idea of the second life movement, which is characterised by work, struggle, competition, comparisons, endless striving and self-assertion. Within sport, this is represented by wanting to win at all costs, lack of respect, self-promotion and striving for rewards. The notion of ?temple? is contrasted with the above mentioned character of the fair and is related to a certain clarity about one's existence and striving, one's doing and thinking, as described in Pato?ka's third movement of existence. Within the context of sport this is instantiated as a kind of self-development based on self-understanding and critical reflection, and it is illustrated by Olympism and Olympic sport. (shrink)

What psychological mechanisms enable people to reappraise a situation to change its emotional impact? We propose that reappraisal works by shifting appraisal outcomes—abstract representations of ho...

Reappraisal is a frequently used and often successful emotion regulation strategy. However, its underlying cognitive mechanisms are not well understood. In this paper, we seek to clarify these mechanisms by expanding upon our recently proposed reAppraisal framework. According to this framework, reappraisal consists of appraisal shifts that arise from changes to the mental construal of a situation (reconstrual) or from changes to the goals that are used to evaluate the construal (repurposing). Here we propose that reappraisal can target both object-level (...) construals and goals representing states in the environment as well as meta-level construals and goals about different states in the mind. We also propose that reappraisal can operate by facilitating decommitment from a dominant construal or goal as well as by facilitating commitment to alternative construals or goals. We demonstrate that the 2 × 2 × 2 matrix formed by crossing the three distinctions between reconstrual and repurposing, between object-level and meta-level representations, and between decommitment and commitment operations forms a useful map of different reappraisal tactics. We draw examples of each of the 8 reappraisal tactics from basic and clinical research. We conclude by considering future research inspired by the expanded reAppraisal framework. (shrink)

It has been argued that organizational structures (the way tasks are defined, allocated, and coordinated) can influence moral agency in organizations. In particular, low values on different structural parameters (functional concentration, specialization, separation, and formalization) are said to foster an organizational context (allowing for relating to the goals and output of the organization, moral deliberation, and social connectedness) that is conducive to moral agency. In this paper, we investigate the relation between the organizational structure and moral agency in the case (...) of a.s.r. (a large Dutch insurance company). While our empirical results fit the thesis that low values on structural parameters positively relate to moral agency, they also refine our understanding of the influence of structural parameters. In particular, our data suggest that the influence of functional concentration not only depends on whether it is low, but also on the type of criterion used for identifying business units; they suggest that the specific organizational context may put a limit to lowering design parameters and points at several non-structural factors that have an influence on the relation between structure and moral agency. In all, the paper contributes to a more detailed understanding of the conditions conducive to moral agency in organizations. (shrink)

Conflict can profoundly affect individuals and their groups. Oftentimes, conflict involves a clash between one side seeking change and increased gains through victory and the other side defending the status quo and protecting against loss and defeat. However, theory and empirical research largely neglected these conflicts between attackers and defenders, and the strategic, social, and psychological consequences of attack and defense remain poorly understood. To fill this void, we model (1) the clashing of attack and defense as games of strategy (...) and reveal that (2) attack benefits from mismatching its target's level of defense, whereas defense benefits from matching the attacker's competitiveness. This suggests that (3) attack recruits neuroendocrine pathways underlying behavioral activation and overconfidence, whereas defense invokes neural networks for behavioral inhibition, vigilant scanning, and hostile attributions; and that (4) people invest less in attack than defense, and attack often fails. Finally, we propose that (5) in intergroup conflict, out-group attack needs institutional arrangements that motivate and coordinate collective action, whereas in-group defense benefits from endogenously emerging in-group identification. We discuss how games of attack and defense may have shaped human capacities for prosociality and aggression, and how third parties can regulate such conflicts and reduce their waste. (shrink)

Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

We applaud Gasper (2018) for reviewing five approaches to operationalizing neutral states. To supplement Gasper’s important contribution, we express the five neutral conditions at the appraisal level with the hope of clarifying their defining features and helping researchers to generate suitable neutral conditions.

Coastal ecosystems are increasingly dominated by humans. Consequently, the human dimensions of sustainability science have become an integral part of emerging coastal governance and management practices. But if we are to avoid the harsh lessons of land management, coastal decision makers must recognize that humans are one of the more coastally dependent species in the biosphere. Management responses must therefore confront both the temporal urgency and the very real compromises and sacrifices that will be necessary to achieve a sustainable coastal (...) ecosystem, one that is economically feasible, socially just, and ecologically sound. (shrink)

Mounting evidence shows that nature contact is associated with affective benefits. However, the psychological mechanisms responsible for these effects are not well understood. In this study, we examined whether more time spent in nature was associated with higher levels of positive affect in general, and lower levels of negative affect and rumination in general. We also conducted a cross-sectional mediation analysis to examine whether rumination mediated the association of nature contact with affect. Participants reported their average time spent in nature (...) each week, as well as their general levels of positive and negative affect, and the degree to which they typically engaged in rumination in daily life. We then used structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses. Our results support the hypothesis that nature contact is associated with general levels of affect, and that rumination mediates this association for negative affect, and marginally mediates this association for positive affect. (shrink)

Nature contact has associations with emotional ill-being and well-being. However, the mechanisms underlying these associations are not fully understood. We hypothesised that increased adaptive and decreased maladaptive emotion regulation strategies would be a pathway linking nature contact to ill-being and well-being. Using data from a survey of 600 U.S.-based adults administered online in 2022, we conducted structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses. We found that (1) frequency of nature contact was significantly associated with lesser emotional ill-being and greater emotional (...) well-being, (2) effective emotion regulation was significantly associated with lesser emotional ill-being and greater emotional well-being, and (3) the associations of higher frequency of nature contact with these benefits were partly explained via emotion regulation. Moreover, we found a nonlinear relationship for the associations of duration of nature contact with some outcomes, with a rise in benefits up to certain amounts of time, and a levelling off after these points. These findings support and extend previous work that demonstrates that the associations of nature contact with emotional ill-being and well-being may be partly explained by changes in emotion regulation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhich emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for re-interpretation of a stimulus that (...) are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time, and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli. Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from r... (shrink)

People’s beliefs about their ability to control their emotions predict a range of important psychological outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether these beliefs are playing a causal role, and if so, why this might be. In the current research, we tested whether avoidance-based emotion regulation explains the link between beliefs and psychological outcomes. In Study 1, a perceived lack of control over emotions predicted poorer psychological health outcomes, and avoidance strategies indirectly explained these links between emotion beliefs and psychological (...) health. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated participants’ emotion beliefs by leading participants to believe that they struggled or did not struggle with controlling their emotions. Participants in the low regulatory self-efficacy condition reported increased intentions to engage in avoidance strategies over the next month and were more likely to avoid seeking psychological help. When asked if they would participate in follow-up studies, these participants were also more likely to display avoidance-based emotion regulation. These findings provide initial evidence for the causal role of emotion beliefs in avoidance-based emotion regulation, and document their impact on psychological health-related outcomes. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate (...) results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

Clinician-scientists play a valuable role in bridging the gap between patient care and clinical research. However, there are no clear guidelines that describe how to handle the day-to-day ethical and methodological questions that arise when navigating the competing responsibilities of practitioner and researcher—a situation that can easily leave the clinician-scientist confused and frustrated. This article outlines common ethical and methodological concerns for the clinician-scientist when developing, implementing, and analyzing research in practice, and offers practical suggestions to address these issues. This (...) paper will outline the role that reflexivity can play throughout the research process to assist the clinician-scientist in maintaining ethical and methodological rigor, as well as upholding the moral obligations of both practitioner and researcher. (shrink)

The federal government is funding a sea change in health care by investing in interventions targeting social determinants of health, which are significant contributors to illness and health inequity. This funding power has encouraged states, professional and accreditation organizations, health care entities, and providers to focus heavily on social determinants. We examine how this shift in focus affects clinical practice in the fields of oncology and emergency medicine, and highlight potential areas of reform.

A long history of research has revealed many neurophysiological changes and concomitant behavioral impacts of sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and circadian rhythms. Little research, however, has been conducted in the area of computational cognitive modeling to understand the information processing mechanisms through which neurobehavioral factors operate to produce degradations in human performance. Our approach to understanding this relationship is to link predictions of overall cognitive functioning, or alertness, from existing biomathematical models to information processing parameters in a cognitive architecture, leveraging (...) the strengths from each to develop a more comprehensive explanation. The integration of these methodologies is used to account for changes in human performance on a sustained attention task across 88 h of total sleep deprivation. The integrated model captures changes due to time awake and circadian rhythms, and it also provides an account for underlying changes in the cognitive processes that give rise to those effects. The results show the potential for developing mechanistic accounts of how fatigue impacts cognition, and they illustrate the increased explanatory power that is possible by combining theoretical insights from multiple methodologies. (shrink)

Women most fully experience the consequences of human reproductive technologies. Men who convene to evaluate such technologies discuss "them": the women who must accept, avoid, or even resist these technologies; the women who consume technologies they did not devise; the women who are the objects of policies made by men. So often the input of women is neither sought nor listened to. The privileged insights and perspectives that women bring to the consideration of technologies in human reproduction are the subject (...) of these volumes, which constitute the revised and edited record of a Workshop on "Ethical Issues in Human Reproduction Technology: Analysis by Women" (EIRTAW), held in June, 1979, at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Some 80 members of the workshop, 90 percent of them women (from 24 states), represented diverse occupations and personal histories, different races and classes, varied political commitments. They included doctors, nurses, and scientists, lay midwives, consumer advocates, historians, and sociologists, lawyers, policy analysts, and ethicists. Each session, however, made plain that ethics is an everyday concern for women in general, as well as an academic profession for some. (shrink)

The undoing hypothesis proposes that positive emotions serve to undo sympathetic arousal related to negative emotions and stress. However, a recent qualitative review challenged the undoing effect by presenting conflicting results. To address this issue quantitatively, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 16 studies ( N = 1,220; 72 effect sizes) measuring sympathetic recovery during elicited positive emotions and neutral conditions. Findings indicated that in most cases, positive emotions did not speed sympathetic recovery compared to neutral conditions. However, when a (...) composite index of cardiovascular reactivity was used, undoing effects were evident. Our findings suggest the need for further work on the functions of positive emotions. (shrink)

We applaud Gasper for reviewing five approaches to operationalizing neutral states. To supplement Gasper’s important contribution, we express the five neutral conditions at the appraisal lev...

Exposure to bullying at work is a serious social stressor, having important consequences for the victim, the co-workers, and the whole organization. Bullying can be understood as a multi-causal phenomenon: the result of individual differences between workers, deficiencies in the work environment or an interaction between individual and situational factors. The results of the previous studies confirmed that some characteristics within an individual may predispose to bullying others and/or being bullied. In the present study, we intend to clarify the relationships (...) between workplace bullying considered from the victim’s and the perpetrator’s points of view, the employee Machiavellianism as a personality factor and the perceptions of organizational culture as depicted by Cameron and Quinn. The sample consisted of 117 workers, employed in different organizations in Poland. The empirical data regarding both being exposed to bullying as well as being a perpetrator of bullying were obtained by the use of self-reports from participants. According to the expectations, Machiavellianism predicted involvement in bullying others. The groups of bullies and bully-victims had a higher Machiavellianism level compared to the groups of victims and persons non-involved in bullying. The results showed that being bullied was negatively related to the perceptions of clan and adhocracy cultures and positively related to the perceptions of hierarchy culture. The results of a moderated regression analysis demonstrated that Machiavellianism was a significant moderator of the relationships between the perceptions of adhocracy and hierarchy cultures and being bullied. Theoretical and practical implications of the results were discussed. (shrink)

For some American voters, the news of Mr. Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election caused recurrent emotions that were negative, persistent, and intense enough to elicit repeated attempts...

For nearly a decade we have taught the history and philosophy of science as part of courses aimed at the professional development of physics teachers. The focus of the history of science instruction is on the stages in the development of the concepts and theories of physics. For this instruction, we designed activities to help the teachers organize their understanding of this historical development. The activities include scientific modeling using archaic theories. We conducted surveys to gauge the impact on the (...) teachers of including the conceptual history of physics in the professional development courses. The teachers report greater confidence in their knowledge of the history of physics, that they reflect on this history for their teaching, and that they use of the history of physics for their classroom instruction. In this paper, we provide examples of our activities, the rationale for their design, and discuss the outcomes for the teachers of the instruction. (shrink)

Our target article modeled conflict within and between groups as an asymmetric game of strategy and developed a framework to explain the evolved neurobiological, psychological, and sociocultural mechanisms underlying attack and defense. Twenty-seven commentaries add insights from diverse disciplines, such as animal biology, evolutionary game theory, human neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and political science, that collectively extend and supplement this model in three ways. Here we draw attention to the superordinate structure of attack and defense, and its subordinate means to meet (...) the end of status quo maintenance versus change, and we discuss how variations in conflict structure and power disparities between antagonists can impact strategy selection and behavior during attack and defense; how the positions of attack and defense emerge endogenously and are subject to rhetoric and propaganda; and how psychological and economic interventions can transform attacker-defender conflicts into coordination games that allow mutual gains and dispute resolution. (shrink)

A worrying trend of autocratization that has been spreading globally in recent years, has thrust forward a new wave of appeals for deliberative and participatory democracy as a remedy for the crisis. With a few exceptions, the majority of participatory and deliberative institutions were implemented in stable democracies. The efforts to institutionalize participatory and deliberative models are almost completely absent in Serbia and other Western Balkan countries. Yet, there has been a trend of citizen mobilization in the form of social (...) movements and local civic initiatives, which are both a symptom of unresponsive and quite openly authoritarian institutions, as well as a potential pathway to democratization. The pace and scope of these developments in the undemocratic societies of the Western Balkan region, in terms of both bottom up and top-down democratic experimentation, call for a better understanding of their internal dynamics, and their social and political impact. Responding to this need, the articles in the special issue focus on social movement mobilizations and deliberative experimentation. To begin with, our introductory article focuses particularly on understanding the possible role deliberative institutions could have in hybrid regimes. It looks at the first two cases of deliberative mini publics (DMPs) ever organized in Serbia, analyzing their rationale, specific design, implementation, as well as considering the possible role deliberative institutions could play in the hybrid regime of Serbia. (shrink)

Emily Butler, a psychologist and Professor of Family Studies and Human Development (FSHD) at the University of Arizona, passed away on January 31, 2023. Dr. Butler was born on October 3, 1963 in Wi...