We were interested in exploring the associations and effects of experimental language (i.e., native – L1, or foreign – L2), dilemma type (i.e., personal – D1 or impersonal – D2), the digital device participants used (i.e., PC/laptop or smartphone), along with gender and age in sacrificial COVID-19 and non-COVID moral dilemmas. We performed two studies involving 522 participants aged 18 to 69 in April 2020. In Study 1, we found no significant associations between the dilemma type and the digital device. (...) However, most participants chose to sacrifice an older COVID-19 patient in a critical medical condition to prioritize rescuing similar, younger patients (i.e., 45-year-old males). Results also suggested that male and younger participants were more likely to choose the utilitarian option when the sacrificial dilemma was presented in French. In study 2 (i.e., non-COVID-19), participants made significantly more utilitarian choices in the personal dilemmas presented in French. Results are discussed concerning the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic context and its emotional impact on moral judgment. (shrink)

Dans le champ de la linguistique francaise, Olga Galatanu est de ceux qui ont muni l'analyse du discours et des interactions verbales d'un modele semantique de description. La Semantique des Possibles Argumentatifs qu'elle developpe depuis une vingtaine d'annees adhere aux visions argumentative, stereotypique, referentielle, cognitiviste de la langue, et s'attache a rendre compte de la construction des representations en langue et en discours.<BR> Les articles que ses collaborateurs et amis lui offrent dans ce volume se rapportent de pres ou (...) de loin a la SPA. Certains en partagent les postulats: sens referentiel et denomination, interfaces semantique-syntaxe et semantique-pragmatique, construction discursive du sens, valeurs; d'autres reprennent et developpent des elements specifiques de la SPA: possibles argumentatifs, deploiements argumentatifs, modalites; d'autres encore montrent les convergences et complementarites entre la SPA et des theories voisines.<BR> Les analyses portent notamment sur l'attitude metalinguistique des locuteurs, la malleabilite semantique des mots, la negociation des sens et des valeurs, les principes et strategies discursives qui regulent la communication, l'heterogeneite discursive, la presentation de soi, la construction d'objets discursifs, les actes de langage indirects, etc.". (shrink)

This book analyzes unobvious relations between historical definitions of the face and its contemporary usage in popular culture and social media, like Facebook or Instagram. Bringing together a wide range of methodologies, it includes essays from manifold disciplines of the humanities such as philosophy, literary and art criticism, media and television studies, game studies, sociology and anthropology. The authors focus on both metaphorical and material meanings of the face. They grapple with crucial questions about modernity, modern and postmodern subjectivity, as (...) well as with origins of certain linguistic terms and popular, colloquial phrases based on the concept of the face. (shrink)

At the bedside, nurses are expected to be precise when they read indications on screens and on the bodies of patients and decide on the meaning of words framed by the context of acute care. In academia, although there is no incident report to fill when we misread or misrepresent complex philosophical ideas, the consequences of inaccurate reading include misplaced epistemological claims and poor scholarship. A long and broad convention of nursing phenomenological research, in its various forms, claims a philosophical (...) grounding in the ideas of Husserl, Heidegger, and other thinkers. But for nearly two decades, nurse phenomenologists' knowledge claims have been challenged by well‐informed criticisms, most notably by John Paley. At the heart of criticism lies an observation that Continental phenomenological thought is misrepresented in many nursing sources and that nursing phenomenology, both descriptive and interpretive, cannot appeal to the authority of either Husserl or Heidegger. Taking these criticisms seriously, I am asking, Is phenomenology after Paley possible? If misreading seems to be an issue, how can – or should – we read rigorously? My thinking through these questions is influenced by the ideas of Jacques Derrida. Under a condition of a play of language, of Derridian différance, when meaning is never self‐identical and never fully arrives, I suggest that one has to negotiate meanings through reading for differences. I develop this idea in relation to the methodological conventions of phenomenological nursing research and argue for a careful rereading of the whole field of phenomenological nursing research. Such rereading presupposes and necessitates interdisciplinary engagement between nursing and the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Greater familiarity with research practices of those disciplines that stress theoretical and writing rigour might make visible the limits of nursing research approaches and their quality criteria. An understanding of philosophical and theoretical works – a condition of quality scholarship – depends on our reading of both originary texts and contemporary literature from the humanities and the social sciences. This understanding, far from obliging researchers to always trace (often erroneously) their work to its philosophical roots, opens other, often more sound, methodological possibilities. (shrink)

Although epidemiology as a scientific study of disease in populations claimed an independent disciplinary status already in the mid–nineteenth century, its history in the twentieth century can be seen as a continuous and often contentious attempt to define the field’s social and intellectual boundaries vis-à-vis a variety of neighboring scientific fields and public health practices. In a period dominated by laboratory biomedical sciences, epidemiologists repeatedly tried to spell out how their discipline met the requirements of scientificity despite its focus on (...) disease as a collective phenomenon and its reliance on nonlaboratory methods. This article asks about the relationship between the changing institutional and intellectual contexts of British epidemiological practice and the epidemiologists’attempts to define both science in general and epidemiology in particular. An examination of the epidemiologists’boundary-making endeavors is also used to reflect on the circumstances in which scientists engage in the discourse of disciplinary demarcations. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the decolonization of Ukrainian culture as an important factor of nation-building in the European perspective. At the same time, decolonization is a current trend in Western academic thought, which is embodied in social activism, in particular, in the wok movement and the culture of abolition. Postcolonial studies has become an intellectual battleground. These studies draw a new front line in the culture wars. Rethinking Western culture in light of its imperial expansionist past defines the goal (...) of decolonization. However, the tendency towards the politicization of vouk and the culture of cancellation. carries the risks of undermining the basic values of Western culture - freedom of thought and the rule of law, while the decolonization of Ukrainian culture has a different purpose. Unlike cultural decolonization in Western countries, cultural decolonization in Ukraine is aimed at legitimizing modern European values (Lisbon Agreement, 2007) by overcoming the «Russian-oriented» (Eurasian) tradition of thinking.Identifying the authentic contents of Ukrainian culture and refuting its imperial-Soviet interpretations is one of the main tasks of the decolonization of Ukrainian culture. The article offers a comparative analysis of Ukrainian and Western versions of cultural decolonization in order to avoid uncritical borrowings and ignoring the peculiarities of the Ukrainian context. The successful decolonization of Ukrainian culture requires the development of its 1) concept, 2) methods of theoretical substantiation, and 3) methods of practical implementation. The article states that the decolonization of Ukrainian culture becomes possible if its research strategies are deprived of colonial influences, which reveal indications of the imperial and Soviet scientific paradigm of social and humanitarian knowledge. The key concepts of the research are referring to the works of Nigel Giggar (2023), Douglas Murray (2022), Linda Martín Alcoff (2023), Jonh Darwin (2009), Kwasi Kwarteng (2013), Yaroslav Hrytsak (2022), Serhii Plokhii (2021, 2023), Timothy D. Snyder (2017, 2918) and others. (shrink)

Freedom to Believe is a powerful collection of philosophical and religious essays by a modern poet of distinction. It introduces a highly original and controversial thinker to the Western reader. Olga Sedakova's central philosophical thought lies in the notion of existential freedom in its association with the liberating power of the arts, especially poetry. These convictions place her firmly in the Russian and European classical cultural traditions, which, in turn, have deep roots in Christianity. Devoutly Orthodox yet fiercely independent (...) in her thinking, Sedakova's ecumenical humanism places her in opposition to both the "new left" and modern fundamentalism. Indeed, Sedakova's "conservatism" is more genuinely new than the so-called radicalism of the postmodernists, as she castigates "old totalitarianism" and new commercialism alike, in the name of a new cultural poetics and politics. (shrink)

This article offers an anthropological perspective on autism, a condition at once neurological and social, which complements existing psychological accounts of the disorder, expanding the scope of inquiry from the interpersonal domain, in which autism has been predominantly examined, to the socio-cultural one. Persons with autism need to be viewed not only as individuals in relation to other individuals, but as members of social groups and communities who act, displaying both social competencies and difficulties, in relation to socially and culturally (...) ordered expectations of behavior. The article articulates a socio-cultural approach to perspective-taking in autism in three social domains: participating in conversational turn-taking and sequences; formulating situational scenarios; and interpreting socio-cultural meanings of indexical forms and behavior. Providing ethnographic data on the everyday lives of high-functioning children with autism and Asperger syndrome, the article outlines a cline of competence across the three domains, from most success in conversational turn-taking to least in inferring indexical meanings. Implications of these abilities and limitations are considered for theoretical approaches to society and culture, illuminating how members of social groups are at once shaped by, and are agents of, social life and cultural understanding. (shrink)

The issue of benefits in international clinical research is highly controversial. Against the background of wide recognition of the need to share benefits of research, the nature of benefits remains strongly contested. Little is known about the perspectives of research populations on this issue and the extent to which research ethics discourses and guidelines are salient to the expectations and aspirations existing on the ground. This exploratory study contributes to filling this void by examining perspectives of people in low-income South (...) African communities on benefits in international clinical research. Twenty-four individuals with and without experience of being involved in clinical research participated in in-depth interviews. Respondents felt that ancillary care should be provided to clinical research participants, while a clinical study conducted in particular community should bring better health to its members through post-trial benefits. Respondents' perspectives were grounded in the perception that the ultimate goal of international clinical research is to improve local health. We argue that perspectives and understandings of the respondents are shaped by local moral traditions rather than clinical research specificities and require attention as valid moral claims. It is necessary to acknowledge such claims and cultural worlds from which they emerge, thus building the foundation for equal and embracing dialogue to bridge different perspectives and handle contradicting expectations. (shrink)

In this paper I describe basic features of traditional (British) emergentism and Popper’s emergentist theory of consciousness and compare them to the contemporary versions of emergentism present in connectionist approach in cognitive sciences. I argue that despite their similarities, the traditional form, as well as Popper’s theory belong to strong causal emergentism and yield radically different ontological consequences compared to the weaker, contemporary version present in cognitive science. Strong causal emergentism denies the causal closure of the physical domain and introduces (...) genuine new mental causal powers and genuine downward causation, while weak emergentism provides new insights in understanding the mechanisms and explanation that is compatible with physicalism. (shrink)

In his book Elements of Mind, Tim Crane gives us a very clear and interesting introduction to the main problems in the philosophy of mind. The central theme of his book is intentionality, but he also gives an account of the mind-body problem, consciousness, and perception, and then he suggests his own solutions to these problems. In this paper I will concentrate on a part in which he discusses the mind-body problem. My main aim will be to look at different (...) physicalistic positions in relation to the mental causation problem, particularly at emergentism as Crane’s favourite position. (shrink)

In common law jurisdictions, legal professionals cite facts and legal principles from precedent cases to support their arguments before the court for their intended outcome in a current case. This practice stems from the doctrine of stare decisis, where cases that have similar facts should receive similar decisions with respect to the principles. It is essential for legal professionals to identify such facts and principles in precedent cases, though this is a highly time intensive task. In this paper, we present (...) studies that demonstrate that human annotators can achieve reasonable agreement on which sentences in legal judgements contain cited facts and principles. We further demonstrate that it is feasible to automatically annotate sentences containing such legal facts and principles in a supervised machine learning framework based on linguistic features, reporting per category precision and recall figures of between 0.79 and 0.89 for classifying sentences in legal judgements as cited facts, principles or neither using a Bayesian classifier, with an overall κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\kappa$$\end{document} of 0.72 with the human-annotated gold standard. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that critical posthumanism is a crucial tool in nursing philosophy and scholarship. Posthumanism entails a reconsideration of what ‘human’ is and a rejection of the whole tradition founding Western life in the 2500 years of our civilization as narrated in founding texts and embodied in governments, economic formations and everyday life. Through an overview of historical periods, texts and philosophy movements, I problematize humanism, showing how it centres white, heterosexual, able‐bodied Man at the top of (...) a hierarchy of beings, and runs counter to many current aspirations in nursing and other disciplines: decolonization, antiracism, anti‐sexism and Indigenous resurgence. In nursing, the term humanism is often used colloquially to mean kind and humane; yet philosophically, humanism denotes a Western philosophical tradition whose tenets underpin much of nursing scholarship. These underpinnings of Western humanism have increasingly become problematic, especially since the 1960s motivating nurse scholars to engage with antihumanist and, recently, posthumanist theory. However, even current antihumanist nursing arguments manifest deep embeddedness in humanistic methodologies. I show both the problematic underside of humanism and critical posthumanism's usefulness as a tool to fight injustice and examine the materiality of nursing practice. In doing so, I hope to persuade readers not to be afraid of understanding and employing this critical tool in nursing research and scholarship. (shrink)

An analytical scheme that differentiates among the various types of cognitive and social functions of citations is used as the basis for an analysis of the results of a questionnaire designed to probe the citing behavior of a group of scientists who had cited one of four papers originating from a single biochemical laboratory. Even when papers fall within a relatively well-defined research area and are based on research conducted within a single lab, groups of scientists to which a given (...) paper is of relevance can have quite distinct internal structures. We argue that the scientists'subjective reasons for citing a given work do not correspond with the actual argumentative uses of cited articles in citing texts. Scientists appear to regard the papers they cite as having a rather generalized significance even if in their citations they refer to very specific claims made in the original texts. The consequences of these findings for a theory of citation and for the use of citations in science studies are discussed. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the Fukushima power plant disaster, autoradiography became an increasingly widespread artistic technique for producing cameraless photography. By exposing photographic film directly using contaminated objects and materials, contemporary artists autoradiograph the geopolitics and local histories of atomic contamination due to bombing, testing, nuclear reactor explosions, mining or uranium disposal cells. In my article, I discuss the implications these autoradiographic works have for the concept of photography by drawing on Timothy Morton’s notion of hyperobjects. Being hyperobjective, radioactivity confronts (...) human beings with a vast non-human temporality, which, in turn, necessitates a shift in our understanding of photography. While photo theory has often been modelled on snapshot photography, privileging instantaneity and pastness, autoradiography is a durational and pluri-temporal procedure that points emphatically towards the future and invites us to reconceptualize the basis of photographic ontology. (shrink)

Confronted with an unprecedented scale of human-induced environmental crisis, there is a need for new modes of theorizing that would abandon human exceptionalism and anthropocentrism and instead focus on developing environmentally ethical projects suitable for our times. In this paper, we offer an anti-anthropocentric project of an ethos for living in the Anthropocene. We develop it through revisiting the notion of sustainability in order to problematize the linear vision of human-centric futurity and the uniform ‘we’ of humanity upon which it (...) relies. We ground our analyses in posthumanism and material feminism, using works by posthumanist and material feminist thinkers such as Stacy Alaimo, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway and Jane Bennett, among others. In dialogue with them, we offer the concept of posthuman sustainability that decenters the human, re-positions it in its ecosystem and, while remaining attentive to difference, fosters the thriving of all instances of life. (shrink)

In this commentary, I reflect on the differences between two independent citizen approaches to monitoring radiological contamination, one in Belarus after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident and the other in Japan following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. I examine these approaches from the perspective of their contribution to making radiological contamination more publicly visible. The analysis is grounded in my earlier work, where I examined how we have come to know what we know about post–Chernobyl contamination and its effects in (...) Belarus, a former Soviet republic most heavily affected by the fallout. As I described in this study, much of what we know about the consequences of Chernobyl is based on the work of the Belarusian nonprofit Institute of Radiation Safety, “Belrad.” I compare Belrad’s approach to radiological monitoring with the work of the volunteer network Safecast, arguably one of the best-known citizen science projects in the world, which is working to monitor the scope of the post–Fukushima contamination. Through this comparison of approaches, I raise broader questions about a form of sensing practices—data-related practices of citizen science that make environmental hazards publicly in/visible. (shrink)

In dem Artikel werden die Auffassungen von John Dewey über die Demokratie in Bezug auf frühere und spätere linksradikale Theorien untersucht. Es werden viele Ähnlichkeiten in erkenntnistheoretischen, anthropologischen und philosophisch-politischen Fragen entdeckt. Als besonders wichtig erscheint die Ablehnung oder die Unterschätzung der politischen Demokratie und die Hervorhebung des demokratischen Lebens, um einer ganz neuen Gesellschaft Platz zu machen. Der Artikel besteht aus drei Teilen. Im ersten Teil wird die Auffassung des frühen Marx über die Demokratie als ein unpolitisches Phänomen und (...) als Synonym eines neuen menschlichen Daseins verfolgt und die spätere Umwandlung dieser Auffassung bei Marx selbst und bei Lenin, wo die politische Demokratie als eine „Heuchelei“ verstanden wird. Im zweiten Teil wird die Auffassung von Dewey über die Demokratie als „Modus des assoziierten Lebens“ analysiert, und es wird auf Ähnlichkeiten und auch auf Unterschiede zum früheren Demokratiekonzept von Marx hingewiesen. Der dritte Teil beschäftigt sich mit der Interpretation der demokratischen Gesellschaft als der identischen mit der globalen Gesellschaft, in der die menschliche Kommunikation uneingeschränkt von politischen Grenzen verläuft. In diesem Punkt werden auch ähnliche Positionen von Marx, Dewey und zeitgenössischen Autoren wie Giddens und Beck festgestellt. Zum Schluss wird die Vereinbarkeit zwischen politischer Demokratie und demokratischer Gesellschaft behauptet, gleichwohl wird die Idee von einer neuen unpolitischen demokratischen Gesellschaft und zwar einer globalen Gesellschaft als unrealistisch eingeschätzt. (shrink)

Boghossian’s (2003) proposal to conditionalize concepts as a way to secure their legitimacy in disputable cases applies well, not just to pejoratives – on whose account Boghossian first proposed it – but also to thick ethical concepts. It actually has important advantages when dealing with some worries raised by the application of thick ethical terms, and the truth and facticity of corresponding statements. In this paper, I will try to show, however, that thick ethical concepts present a specific case, whose (...) analysis requires a somewhat different reconstruction from that which Boghossian offers. A proper account of thick ethical concepts should be able to explain how ‘evaluated’ and ‘evaluation’ are connected. (shrink)

Since the beginning of signed language research, the linguistic units have been divided into conventional, standard and fixed signs, all of which were considered as the core of the language, and iconic and productive signs, put at the edge of language. In the present paper, we will review different models proposed by signed language researchers over the years to describe the signed lexicon, showing how to overcome the hierarchical division between standard and productive lexicon. Drawing from the semiotic insights of (...) Peirce we proposed to look at signs as a triadic construction built on symbolic, iconic, and indexical features. In our model, the different iconic, symbolic, and indexical features of signs are seen as the three sides of the same triangle, detectable in the single linguistic sign. The key aspect is that the dominance of the feature will determine the different use of the linguistic unit, as we will show with examples from different discourse types. (shrink)

The paper analyses and evaluates the linguistic policy of the Court of Justice of the European Union against the background of other multilingual courts and in the light of theories of legal interpretation. Multilingualism has a direct impact upon legal interpretation at the Court, displacing traditional approaches with a hermeneutic paradigm. It also creates challenges to the acceptance of the Court’s case-law in the Member States, which seem to have been adequately tackled by the Court’s idiosyncratic translation policy.

The role of bacterial variation in the waxing and waning of epidemics was a subject of lively debate in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century bacteriology and epidemiology. The notion that changes in bacterial virulence were responsible for the rise and fall of epidemic diseases was an often-voiced, but little investigated hypothesis made by late nineteenth-century epidemiologists. It was one of the first hypotheses to be tested by scientists who attempted to study epidemiological questions using laboratory methods. This paper examines how (...) two groups of experimental epidemiologists, the British group led by W. W. C. Topley and Major Greenwood, and an American group directed by Leslie T. Webster at the Rockefeller Institute, studied the role of variations in bacterial virulence in the course of laboratory epidemics of mouse typhoid. Relying on Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought styles and thought collectives, the paper analyzes the fundamental conceptual differences between these two groups of researchers and analyzes the kinds of innovations they introduced as they attempted to integrate bacteriological and epidemiological approaches. The paper shows that the stylistic differences between the two groups can be understood better in the context of the institutional histories and disciplinary relations of epidemiology and bacteriology in the two countries. (shrink)

_“Religious Freedom: Social-Scientific Approaches”_ offers original research on religious freedom from around the globe. The volume addresses the issues related to defining and understanding the concept of religious freedom with interdisciplinary methods and by incorporating sociological thinking as a constituent part of this analysis.

A leitura deste volume decerto trará novas luzes para o entendimento de temas diversos da pesquisa historiográfica, bem à feição da personalidade acadêmica da homenageada, cujo interesse plural percorre os caminhos da gramaticografia do português no Brasil, da linguística missionária, da política linguística, da edificação dos estudos linguísticos universitários, entre tantos outros que residem em sua obra. Uma última palavra de louvor a Cristina Altman, com os votos de que a aposentadoria não lhe iniba o ânimo para continuar contribuindo, com (...) o talento e a competência usuais, para a renovação permanente dos estudos linguístico-historiográficos brasileiros. Ricardo Cavaliere UFF. (shrink)

This essay explores the return of the subject in the computational context, which I address as a digital subject. This digital subject encompasses a digital identifier, correlations in data or a data profile, moving between biological characteristics and symbolic expression. I focus on the processes through which digital subjects are constructed by matching, correlating, modelling, as well as how they become enactive. The ways of pulling data together into a digital subject is often presented as a logic of fact, where (...) data is equated with documentary evidence. Instead, I propose the notion of the distance in which digital subjects are produced. Indexicality comes from outside of data, whereas the regard for the thick distance becomes a mark of the form of knowledge. I conclude by arguing for a posthumanities approach that establishes the distance while allowing for different subjects to be called upon. (shrink)

This paper attempts to be a contribution to the epistemological project of explaining complex conceptual structures departing from more basic ones. The central thesis of the paper is that there are what I call “functionally structured concepts”, these are non-harmonic concepts in Dummett’s sense that might be legitimized if there is a function that justifies the tie between the inferential connection the concept allows us to trace. Proving this requires enhancing the russellian existential analysis of definite descriptions to apply to (...) functions and using this in proving the legitimacy of such concepts. The utility of the proposal is shown for the case of thick ethical terms and an attempt is made to use it in explaining the development of natural numbers. This last move could allow us to go one step lower in explaining the genesis of natural numbers while maintaining the notion of abstract numbers as higher order entities. (shrink)

Ancient critics reproached Xenocrates for beginning his work on the dialectic with a discussion of voice, and until now the question why he did so has never been systematically explored. Neither do we know why Xenocrates counted syllables, as Plutarch reports, and how he arrived at such an implausibly high number. In the first part of this paper, I show that Xenocrates’ interest in voice was suggested by Plato’s discussion of letters in his later dialogues, such as the Theatetus, the (...) Sophist, the Statesman, and the Philebus. Second, a fragment from Sextus attributed to Xenocrates confirms that Xenocrates allowed for various ‘levels’ of elements, and that explains why Theuth’s method, recommended in the Philebus, is applied to syllables. Finally, I address the very possibility of knowing the actual number of syllables and words, and address some of the problems connected to the reconstruction of the mathematical argument. (shrink)

Volume 6, Issue 3, September 2015, Page 310-346.

BackgroundCurrent preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) technologies enable embryo genotyping across the whole genome. This has led to the development of polygenic risk scoring of human embryos (PGT-P). Recent implementation of PGT-P, including screening for intelligence, has been extensively covered by media reports, raising major controversy. Considering the increasing demand for assisted reproduction, we evaluated how information about PGT-P is communicated in press media and explored the diversity of ethical themes present in the public debate.MethodsLexisNexis Academic database and Google News were (...) searched to identify articles about polygenic embryo screening. This led to 535 news articles. 59 original articles met the inclusion criteria. Inductive content analysis was used to analyse these articles.Results8.8% of articles gave embryo polygenic scoring a positive portrayal, while 36.8% expressed a negative attitude. 54.4% were neutral, mostly highlighting limited practical value of the technology in in vitro fertilization settings. We identified five main ethical themes that are also present in academic literature and the broader debate on reproductive technologies: a slippery slope towards designer babies, well-being of the child and parents, impact on society, deliberate choice and societal readiness.ConclusionsImplementation of embryo polygenic profiling engenders a need for specific recommendations. Current media analysis discloses important ethical themes to consider when creating future guidelines for PGT-P. (shrink)

Two hypotheses concerning the relative importance of agentic versus communal traits as predictors of selfesteem were tested. The perspective hypothesis assumed that self-esteem is dominated by agency over communion because self-perceptions are formed from the agent perspective. The culture hypothesis assumed that self-esteem is dominated by communal concerns in collectivistic cultures and by agentic concerns in individualistic cultures. Study 1 involving three samples from collectivistic countries and three from individualistic ones found that self-esteem was better predicted from self-ratings of agentic (...) than communal traits, with the exception of collectivistic women for whom the two predictors were equal. Study 2 primed the interdependent or independent self and found self-ratings of agency to be better predictors of self-esteem than self-ratings of communion, with the exception of interdependence priming,where the two predictors were equal in strength. (shrink)