Human nature is enigmatic. Are we cruel, selfish creatures or good merciful Samaritans? This book takes you on a journey into the complexities of human mind and kind, from altruism, sharing, and large-scale cooperation, to cheating, distrust, and warfare. What are the building blocks of morality and sociality? Featuring contributions from leading researchers, such as Christophe Boesch, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, Azar Gat, Dennis Krebs, Ara Norenzayan, and Frans B. M. de Waal, this fascinating interdisciplinary reader draws on evolutionary (...) and comparative perspectives, and is essential reading for any students interested in the unique characteristics that define humanity and society. (shrink)

Humans are neophile, curious, and explorative animals with impressive capabilities for creative problem-solving. I discuss some of the ultimate roots behind human creativity while reviewing two books on creativity and problem-solving. To E. O. Wilson, the driv­ing force behind creativity is our instinctive love of novelty, and creativity’s ultimate goal is “self-understanding.” I elaborate on and question this assumption. The theories of inclu­sive fitness and group selection are discussed, with Wilson in favor of the latter. Finally, the theory of gene-culture (...) coevolution is introduced as fundamental to the unity of science and the humanities and to closing the gap between these two cultures. Eagleman and Brandt’s volume is more of an entertaining history of design and human inventiveness than a study in creativity as such. We hear about the three main operations of creative process: bending, blending, and breaking, and these operations are the primary means by which all ideas evolve, according to the authors. (shrink)

Humans are neophile, curious, and explorative animals with impressive capabilities for creative problem-solving. I discuss some of the ultimate roots behind human creativity while reviewing two books on creativity and problem-solving. To E. O. Wilson, the driv­ing force behind creativity is our instinctive love of novelty, and creativity’s ultimate goal is “self-understanding.” I elaborate on and question this assumption. The theories of inclu­sive fitness and group selection are discussed, with Wilson in favor of the latter. Finally, the theory of gene-culture (...) coevolution is introduced as fundamental to the unity of science and the humanities and to closing the gap between these two cultures. Eagleman and Brandt’s volume is more of an entertaining history of design and human inventiveness than a study in creativity as such. We hear about the three main operations of creative process: bending, blending, and breaking, and these operations are the primary means by which all ideas evolve, according to the authors. (shrink)

A fetish is a specific emotionally loaded object, body part, or situation that draws our attention and desire, and sexual fetishism is the sexual arousal that a person experiences when in contact with such a loaded object. Until now, psychology has had trouble understanding the distinctive lust objects and the orchestration of urges in the world of fetishism, so fetishism has therefore fallen into the category of perversions and abnormal behavior. In this study, fetishism is moved to the field of (...) aesthetics, and a new theory is presented: Fetishism is the attraction to certain species-specific key stimuli that are perceived as especially beautiful and exciting. A topic or an object that contains important key stimuli automatically becomes apower object or a fetish.Therefore, we have to look into the innate sensibilities on which our aesthetics are based and into the micro-processes of the aesthetic impulse to understand why something captivates and fascinates us in a fetishist way. (shrink)

A fetish is a specific emotionally loaded object, body part, or situation that draws our attention and desire, and sexual fetishism is the sexual arousal that a person experiences when in contact with such a loaded object. Until now, psychology has had trouble understanding the distinctive lust objects and the orchestration of urges in the world of fetishism, so fetishism has therefore fallen into the category of perversions and abnormal behavior. In this study, fetishism is moved to the field of (...) aesthetics, and a new theory is presented: Fetishism is the attraction to certain species-specific key stimuli that are perceived as especially beautiful and exciting. A topic or an object that contains important key stimuli automatically becomes a power object or a fetish. Therefore, we have to look into the innate sensibilities on which our aesthetics are based and into the micro-processes of the aesthetic impulse to understand why something captivates and fascinates us in a fetishist way. (shrink)

There is scarce research on the interaction between psychosocial working conditions and being a target of workplace bullying with individual characteristics as a moderator. We therefore examined 3,363 employees from 60 Danish workplaces to test whether sense of coherence moderates the relationship between the job demand-control model and bullying. This work is exploratory in nature, as no previous study to assess this moderation was found. Hierarchical linear regressions showed that demand-control model was significantly associated with bullying. Sense of coherence displayed (...) a significant though practically negligible moderating effect. This suggests that negative psychosocial working conditions are associated with bullying independently of personal characteristics, at least in terms of sense of coherence. (shrink)

WORK AS IMPROVEMENT - HUSBANDRY, HOUSEKEEPING AND CAPITALISM IN 16TH ANN 17TH CENTURY ENGLANDThis article traces the development of a new attitude to work as improvement in early modern England. By focusing on agricultural manuals from the period, the author shows how the attitude to work as improvement developed as a response by yeomen and gentleman farmers to their increasing subjection to market imperatives. In contrast to the ethics of housekeeping, which stressed the good maintenance and ordering of the ‘house’ (...) in the broadest sense as the primary aim of social and economic activities, the new idea of improvement focused on activities directed at the market. This idea established new distinctions between good and bad work, and it created new criteria for valorizing different types of agricultural activities. The constant drive to measure the value of agricultural work in terms of market price, and to continually raise productivity and efficiency and make use of the latest techniques and inventions became pivotal for these agricultural writers. The idea of work as improvement had a wide range of new moral, cultural and political dimensions, all of which consolidated into a more coherent ideology of improvement by the late 16th century. (shrink)

Interactive media need their own idioms that exploit the characteristics of the computer based sign. The fact that the reader can physically influence the course of events in the system changes the author's role, since he no longer creates a linear text but anarrative space that the reader can use to generate stories. Although stories are not simulations of the real world, they must still contain recognizable parts where everyday constraints of time and space hold. AI-techniques can be used to (...) implement these constraints. In fact, we suggest that AI is probably best seen as an aesthetic phenomenon. (shrink)

In this study there are presented a series of aspects concerning the religious behavior of the Romanian population. By using quantitative analysis we have identified a series of religious key factors which can be used by parties and politicians to obtain votes during election campaigns. The obtained results highlight the fact that people with a lower level of education are more receptive to the political messages transmitted by religious means. Also, the influence of political actions and messages having a religious (...) character is more powerful at the level of the population with a lower standard of living. By means of quantitative analysis we have also evaluated the impact of religious and ethnical fractionalization on the political representation in the national parliament. (shrink)