Individual Self Research Articles

Catalysing cooperation: the power of collective beliefs in structured populations

Collective beliefs can catalyse cooperation in a population of selfish individuals. We study this transformative power of collective beliefs, an effect that intriguingly persists even when beliefs lack moralising components. Besides the process itself, we consider the structure of human populations explicitly. We incorporate the intricate structure of human populations into our model, acknowledging the bias brought by social and cultural identities in interaction networks. Hence, we develop our model by assuming a heterogeneous group size and structured population. We recognise that beliefs, typically complex story systems, might not spontaneously emerge in society, resulting in different spreading rates for actions and beliefs within populations. As the degree of connectedness can vary among individuals perpetuating a belief, we examine the speed of trust build-up in networks with different connection densities. We then scrutinise the timing, speed and dynamics of trust and belief spread across specific network structures, including random Erdös-Rényi networks, scale-free Barabási-Albert networks, and small-world Newman-Watts-Strogatz networks. By comparing these characteristics across various network topologies, we disentangle the effects of structure, group size diversity, and evolutionary dynamics on the evolution of trust and belief.

Coalitional game-based gain generation and distribution for collective self-consumption in an energy community

Climate change is requiring changes in energy use. The integration of renewable energy sources into the energy mix is a viable solution for electricity generation, but their intermittence forces us to imagine new ways to consume and distribute electricity. Thus, new economic models and new organizations have to be established. Energy communities are a recent legal solution to share renewable energy among local actors. These structures facilitate the set-up of collective self-consumption operations. Collective self-consumption is an interesting tool to increase local renewable energy consumption and limit energy losses on the distribution grid. Consequently, energy communities are pursuing a dual objective: reducing energy bills and the environmental footprint of the participants. However, the distribution of gains generated through collective self-consumption is one of the main obstacles to the implementation of energy communities. An interesting possibility comes from game theory, especially from cooperative games, as solutions concepts already exist to solve this kind of problem.In this paper, a payoff distribution is proposed through a collaborative game. The aim of the study is to explore ways to distribute gains generated by collective self consumptions on individual self consumptions. These gains are 8% on the total energy bill and 25% on the self-consumption rate, assuming a collective objective based on the self-consumption rate and individual objectives based on the price of energy. In order to distribute the financial gains, two major concepts in cooperative game theory are studied in this paper: the Shapley Value and the Nucleolus. The advantages and drawbacks of these concepts in an energy community context are identified, as these concepts are based on two different philosophies: The properties of individual fairness of the Shapley Value and collective fairness of the Nucleolus for energy management are therefore discussed. Furthermore, a methodology is proposed to enable a fairer distribution of payoffs according to specific energy management parameters, such as efficiency and flexibility.

“People need to be valued because of who they are”: Self-conception and strategies of resistance in women who challenge weight-loss diet culture

This paper explores how the self-beliefs of women who have rejected weight-loss diet culture inform their strategies of resistance. We conducted a qualitative survey inviting participants to share methods they have used to challenge diet culture. One hundred and twelve women ( Mage = 37.01, SD = 10.54) provided complete responses. Most were heterosexual (72%) and resided in Australia (59%). Our thematic analysis generated two themes: “diet culture is internalised, dismantling it is personal,” which was characterised by participants’ self-beliefs or self-identification, and the personal strategies they used to counter diet culture; and “diet culture is social, relationships are sites of resistance,” which reflected participants’ beliefs about the source of personal worth, as well as relational strategies they enacted in their personal and professional lives, and in their interactions with authority figures. Efforts to assist women in challenging diet culture could be strengthened by recognising the implications of immersion in such a culture for an individual's relational self and their perceptions of self-worth, and by harnessing the power of women's relationships with each other. This paper contributes to the feminist psychological literature on women's inequalities and their relationships with food and their bodies, illuminating connections between activism, healthcare, and everyday experience.

Spears and Spikes: Illness, Emotion and Bodily Invasion in Old Norse Abscess Narratives

Abstract The Old Norse medical corpus, both manuscript and epigraphic, illuminates understandings of the body and of the relationship between sickness, somatic emotion and the perceived integrity of the individual self in Viking and medieval Scandinavia. This essay argues that Old Norse medical texts and charms understand illness not only as an imbalance of humours but also as an invasive, anthropomorphised agent that seeks to breach the boundaries of the human body. Falling victim to illness is understood as a zero-sum power exchange, visualised through images of martial defeat and sexualised submission. Strong emotion can be rendered as physical illness in Old Norse literature because both forces threaten the integrity of the contained and individualised self. As a thematic case study, this essay examines runic healing charms, late medieval medical manuscripts and saga episodes dealing with boils and abscesses, which are attributed both to the surging of vital spirits and to the action of supernatural disease agents, to examine the way these texts understand the embodied self.

IDENTITY AND INFINITY: ALTERNATE MODES OF SCRIBING THE SELF: A COMPARISON OF MARIO VARGAS LLOSA’S AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER AND YANN MARTEL’S LIFE OF PI

An active engagement with the notion of the ‘self’ in modes of confrontation, contestation and conjuration has been an important tropological concern of fictional narratives, especially of an autobiographical intent and tone. Any coherent and significant concept of the ‘self’ entails a conglomeration of conscious and subconscious indices of subjectivities, intellectual sensibility, emotional drives and epistemological orientations, all of which are ideally conducive to artistic or material creativity. And, in life as well as in literature, it inevitably determines the ways and the extent to which the individual is capable of transcending the ‘personal’ to connect with the ‘other’ in varying degrees of empathetic identification. Literature is a terrain where one can encounter, on the one hand, protagonists who cross the confines of their self and feel one with the whole cosmos, and on the other, those who fail miserably in transcending the anxieties and fears of the personal, and recede into self-imposed reticence and insularity. The former is usually seen undertaking a self-chosen or imposed journey in which their inner psychic resources are unearthed and are ultimately traced to the vast eternity of cosmic energies. The latter is representative of the tragic consequences of the ruthless encroachment of normative social forces upon the personal space and the resultant subjugation of the individual self. There is also an in-between category of individuals who can strike a fine balance between their self and the social mores, through an ironic process of competitive negotiation. They consolidate their selves through the calibrated transgressions they perform upon the rules and rigours of social institutions and ethics, only to be re-inducted after a brief interregnum of ostracized animation.

Aristotle’s concept of zoon politikon: on political benefits of being not too perfect

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The article discusses the concept of zoon politikon in order to provide arguments justifying the attractiveness of Aristotle’s practical philosophy.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: There are three quasi-definitions of man in Aristotle’s works, each of which emphasises a different aspect of humanity. According to the philosopher, we are speaking animals, political animals (zoa politika) and the only animals endowed with reason. I argue that it is the condition of zoon politikon that comes to the fore as the most human of human properties. The article uses a historical-philosophical method supported by textual analysis.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: In the first part of the text, Aristotle’s term zoon politikon is analysed as a concept intended to show the superiority of humanity over animality. In the second part, it is presented as a limitation that distinguishes humans from gods. By analysing how these two perspectives overlap, it is then possible to discuss some political consequences of the tension between them.
 RESEARCH RESULTS: The analysis leads to the conclusion that, according to Aristotle, a good human is not someone who “exercises rationality to a high degree”, but above all someone who is political to a high degree. It also suggests that Aristotle’s concept can be used to distinguish between two kinds of politics, which should not be reduced to each other: “artificial” politics (which can be equated with power), and natural human politics (which is based on free individual action in the area of praxis).
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The notion of zoon politikon reflects the relational character of the individual human self, and thus offers a perspective that allows both methodological and political individualism to be challenged. It can also be a source of inspiration for those scholars, who argue that politics cannot be reduced to power.

An ecological model of experienced stigma during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative study in Malaysia

In this paper, we adopted an ecological model and relational cognition framework to decolonize pandemic stigma in a non-WEIRD society. We reconstructed the concept of pandemic stigma in an ex-colonized and multicultural society of Southeast Asia region, by conducting a qualitative study in Malaysia to explore their lived experiences of differential treatment during the COVID-19 Pandemic from 2020 to 2022. We interviewed 30 Malaysians aged 18–64 of diverse ethnicities (Malays, Chinese, Indians, and other minorities) through online semi-structured sessions and coded the transcripts through consensus thematic analysis. Results showed that the interviewees’ lived experiences of stigma could be conceptualized as negative interactions with multiple systems: (1) Kinship, (2) Companionship, (3) Organizations, (4) Societal (5) Political, as well as (6) Internal systems. We found that interviewees attributed their experiences of stigma to (1) Individual (self) reasons, (2) Impact of close relationships, (3) Impact of casual social interactions, and (4) Impact of cultural-political context. Our findings could be translated into culturally responsive and context-specific interventions, which addressed systemic injustice that exacerbated the global polarization during the pandemic.

You still want to have kids, right? Representation of childfree women in Indonesian leading online news outlets

This research aims to explore the childfree discourse constructed by the two leading online news outlets in Indonesia, namely Detik.com and Kompas.com. I argue that online news outlets construct a discourse that aims to discriminate childfree women and the representation of women in the issue of childfree is a media instrument to reproduce the ideology of pronatalism. By using the corpus assisted critical discourse studies method to analyze 137 news articles, this research found that online news outlets produce childfree discourse as a deviation, a source of problems, and a feminist agenda. In these discourses, childfree women are represented as selfish, cold, and incomplete individuals. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that online news outlets in Indonesia do not report the issue of childfree in a neutral and balanced manner. Furthermore, this research discussion seeks to uncover the role of ibuism, as a pronatalist ideology in the Indonesian context, behind the construction of these gendered discourses.

Cluster analysis of school emotional engagement among Portuguese children in elementary school

The association between school emotional engagement and child mental health and school success highlights the importance of understanding how child–school relations are developed and what factors are related to this affective process during the initial years of schooling so that early intervention is possible. This study examined emotional engagement in Portuguese children attending elementary school and aimed to identify and characterize subgroups based on the child’s school liking and avoidance, using a model–based cluster analysis. In addition, differences between clusters in what concerns individual (self–efficacy, behavioral engagement, externalizing, and internalizing problems), family (parental emotional support), school (teacher-student closeness), and family-school relation (parental school involvement) variables were analyzed. The sample consisted of 394 elementary school children, 353 parents, and 35 teachers using a multimethod assessment (i.e. children, parents, and teachers’ reports). Cluster analysis identified three patterns of emotional school involvement: emotionally involved, emotionally involved with some avoidance, and emotionally ambivalent. Results showed that many children experience ambivalent feelings toward school in the first years of schooling. The emotionally ambivalent group stood out negatively from the other groups concerning self–efficacy, behavioral engagement, externalizing, and internalizing problems. Suggestions for future research and practical implications for schools are discussed.

What makes cooperation precarious?

Although most people are not outright selfish, cooperation frequently fails. Fischbacher and Gächter (2010) explain the well-established decline of contributions in repeated public good games with a genuine imperfection in conditional cooperation. Reanalyzing their data, we offer a more nuanced explanation. Conditional cooperators are nearly perfect, when others cooperate as well. Yet conditional cooperators strongly react to negative experiences, chiefly caused by selfish individuals. These bad experiences are the main driver for the imperfection in conditional cooperation and thus of the downward trend in contributions in repeated public good games.

Personal legacy and treatment choices for serious illness: a scoping review

BackgroundLegacy—how one hopes to be remembered after death—is an unexplored and important dimension of decision-making for people facing serious illness.ObjectivesWe conducted a scoping review to answer the following research questions:...

Subject and Reality: Self, Plenitude, and Ultimate Truth in Advaita Vedānta, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism

This article presents two interconnected arguments. Firstly, it compares three distinct religious traditions—Advaita Vedānta, Zen Buddhism, and Sufism—in order to argue that each posits the same nondual Reality (here called Subject) as the ultimate ontological Truth and the true Self of individuals. It is erroneous to identify with the body-mind and apprehend multiplicity. Secondly, it argues that the practices of these different religions lead to the same end: realization of the true Self or Subject. The purpose of this study is to highlight the essential unity of global religions and the Oneness of Being.

Short-term memory assessment by visual tasks in yoga practitioners and non-yoga practitioners: A comparative study

Background: Memory is the storage of acquired knowledge for later recall. Learning and memory form the basis by which individuals adapt their behavior to their particular external circumstances. Without these mechanisms, it would be impossible for individuals to plan for successful interactions and to intentionally avoid predictably disagreeable circumstances. Yoga unites the individual self with the cosmic consciousness, which can be achieved by pranayama, asanas, and meditation. Aims and Objectives: To compare the short-term memory in yoga practitioners and Non yoga practitioners by visual tasks and to assess by visual tasks, the improvement in short-term memory after applying memory-improving methods in yoga practitioners and non-yoga practitioners. Materials and Methods: 50 female subjects performing yoga at least 5 days a week for the past 3 months with no any morbidities and 50 female subjects as controls with no any morbid illness were selected randomly from the general population for the study. The memory assessment and memory-improving methods were applied as per Washington’s Chudler memory assessments. Results: The present study was conducted in the Department of Physiology at Rajarajeswari Medical College Bengaluru on 50 yoga practitioners and 50 controls aged 20–65 years who volunteered for the study. Short-term memory status by the visual task before and after application of certain memory improvement methods by using four tests i.e. Alphabetical test (six trials), Numerical test (six trials), Words test, and Object test were done and analyzed both for the controls and yoga practitioners. The mean age of controls and yoga practitioners was 37.78 ± 9.83 years and 37.16 ± 9.53 years respectively. There is no significant age difference in between the groups. The P = 0.74 (Student’s unpaired t-test). Short-term memory status in yoga practitioners significantly increased in Alphabetical and Numerical tests in Trials 5 and 6 and also in word and object tests, The P = 0.0001 (analysis of variance test), meanwhile, their short-term memory status were compared before and after the practice of yoga for 3 months. In the present study we found there is increase in the short-term memory of the yoga practitioners when compared to their own memory before and after the practice of yoga. Conclusion: The present study was undertaken to compare the short-term memory status in yoga practitioners and non-yoga practitioners and also to evaluate the use of memory-improving methods to improve the short-term memory in them. On the basis of the study results we can conclude that the short-term memory can be improved by practicing yoga. The study showed an improved memory status when the non-yoga practitioners were compared with yoga practitioners after practicing yoga. The memory-improving methods showed improved memory status in the control group.

‘The Scottish Warrior’ Drew McIntyre: celebrity-commodity, symbolic ethnicity and authenticity

ABSTRACT While domestic articulations of Scottish identity represent a shifting and complex arena for political discourse, North American articulations of Scottishness often rely on stereotypes. Enter Drew McIntyre, The Scottish Warrior of WWE fame. The performance of McIntyre’s identity has (re)deployed symbolic ethnicity as a prominent marker of his Scottishness. Symbolic identities are commonly used in professional wrestling to define and articulate performed selves as special or unique. Yet, by voluntarily drawing upon, and amplifying, iconic elements of Scottish culture, such as Tartanry and Kailyard, McIntyre’s Scottishness has become simultaneously authentic and inauthentic in nature. This discursive effect mediates the wrestling celebrity over the recognition of the individuated self. In reducing McIntyre to a series of mediated ethnic symbols, WWE produces an objectified version of McIntyre, The Scottish Warrior, which functions as a celebrity-commodity that has converted McIntyre into a product for exchange. As such, and by means of a case study of the mediascape surrounding McIntyre’s recent WWE run, this article explores how WWE use symbolic ethnicity in the construction of The Scottish Warrior as an easily communicable celebrity-commodity, unpacking the intersection of ethnicity, symbolism and (in)authenticity in the commodification of Andrew Galloway.

Healing attitudes in contagious times: the experience of practising psychotherapy in China during the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic is a challenge for any human being. Realising this simple psychological fact, the China Society for Analytical Psychology launched a "Garden of Heart & Soul 2020" volunteer campaign, providing psychological care to those in need whether or not they had had previous experience with counselling or psychotherapy. This article describes principles and practice of Jungian analysts, analysts in training, sandplay therapists, and other practitioners in China seeking to apply Jungian analytic techniques with regard to exposing and working through psychological complexes to the problems that have emerged for people facing the epidemic. Emphasis has been placed on developing a conscious, compassionate attitude towards the cultural complexity the epidemic has activated in China, which has therapeutic aspects based on the traditional wisdom of Chinese culture. Contemporary Ci-bei (compassion) therapy has added to these the contemporary Jungian emphasis upon playing, active imagination in the form of art making and authentic movement, and attention to the feelings of the inner child. With people facing a pandemic and its many problems, the use of Chinese myths and legends that involve facing collective challenges with resilient ingenuity is also helpful. They can be retold to contemporary people caught between fear of isolation and fear of contagion in such a way as to awaken the archetypal energy of the individual self that is needed to reconcile these opposites. In applying these Jungian techniques and concepts, we have been able to witness their power even in relatively shortterm crisis intervention, to foster transformation of attitudes and healing in populations facing cultural stress who would not have imagined that consulting a Jungian practitioner could be so helpful.

상담전문가의 소명에 대한 현상학적 연구

Objectives This study was conducted to identify the essential elements of experience by understanding the experience of professional counselors' perception of calling and clarifying the structure of the experience.
 Methods Interviews were conducted with professional counselors who recognized their job as a calling and analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological study. The participants were six people; all of them were expert counselors with 7 to 23 years of counselling credentials and the age group ranged from in their late 30’s to the early 50’s. The period for collecting the data was from January to March 2020, and interviews were conducted once to twice for each participant.
 Results As a result of the analysis, 32 themes, 16 themes clusters, and 4 categories were derived. The results of each study result can be presented as follows. First, the origin of calling was ‘guidance of transcendental being’ and ‘occurrence of an individual's inner self’. Second, the process of forming a calling appeared to be ‘positive prior experience’, ‘altruistic motivation as a wounded healer’, ‘strong interest, curiosity, and talent’, ‘the desire to master and passionate immersion’ and ‘arduous process to find the meaning of life in work’. Third, the results of the calling were ‘peak experience in the counseling scene’, ‘healing and growing for interaction with the client’, ‘exercising a good influence on the world’, ‘changing the client is the top goal’ and ‘finding the meaning of life in work’. Finally, the change of the calling were ‘change and expansion of the subject’, ‘repeating acceleration and degradation’, ‘promotion and reinforcement through the management of counselor tools’ and ‘exhaustion and deterioration due to the limitation of time and physical strength’.
 Conclusions Through the results of the study, the counselor's experience of calling was confirmed, and based on this, basic data for future related research and intervention were provided.

Absent Boundaries; Immaterial Bodies

The process ofnaturalising the country will be examined as a practice of domestication andregulation and ultimately a consolidation of both domestic and colonialauthority. With reference to Jane Austen’s MansfieldPark, the paper will focus on domestic order, as it was sustained throughnineteenth-century educational literature, foregrounding the premise on whichdomestic authority and the household became intangible strongholds ofputatively political power.Acting as agents of another body, women ofnineteenth-century domestic novels assume their role as the ambassadors ofabsolute power exercising a moderated supervision within the domestic sphere.Surrendering their individual selves and relinquishing their subjectivity andmaterial presence, they practice an internalised form of domestic authority,effectively regulating the household to the degree that they have disciplinedthe self. Shifting between the authority of the domestic woman and thepatriarch, the novel reveals how the overt force of patriarchal oppression, aswell as practices of undetectable self-regulation, are capable of eitherrelinquishing or sustaining power within the domestic realm. The paper willexplore how the processes of domestication and “ordaining” of the protagonistsbecome a way of augmenting patriarchal power as well as of maintaining theeffective regulation of the household.

Moving-with stories of deportation: Witnessing as visceral response-ability

This article analyses my work for the digital storytelling archive Humanizing Deportation, which documents the human consequences of deportation, as well as the contact improvisation technique I co-developed for moving-with these stories. Moving-with offers a way of disseminating narratives of deportation by authors in Mexico but also reveals how their voices resonate in different body-minds in California. One story in particular, ‘Tireless Warrior’ by , clearly affirms the narrator’s connectedness to networks of care that are limited and fragile, enduring and adaptable and that entangle us all. Moving-with Esther’s story demonstrates how the experience of witnessing can reach beyond the individual self, moving us past passive spectatorship to feel-with an individual narrative as a collective experience that implicates witnesses as viscerally response-able. Moving-with digital stories of deportation can thus become a reciprocally humanizing experience that amplifies both speakers’ and listeners’ capacity to affect and be affected.

Reducing Risk of ADRDs: Innovative Framework to Inform Behavior Change

AbstractBackgroundIn the United States alone, more than six million individuals are living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRDs), with minority groups disproportionately impacted. An estimated one‐third of ADRD cases is associated with eight modifiable risk factors: physical inactivity, smoking, depression, low education, diabetes, midlife obesity, midlife hypertension, and hearing loss. With the ADRD pandemic fast approaching, there is greater urgency to identify and adopt risk reduction behavior changes. Lifestyle interventions have shown efficacy in reducing risk for ADRDs and delaying the onset of symptoms. These interventions are often grounded in traditional theories of health behavior change; however, few intervention frameworks exist that combine constructs from multiple discrete theories, or incorporate concept of stigma, a powerful influence in setting the foundation of risk reduction behavior change.MethodsA review of the literature identified health behavior models from which risk reduction interventions are developed. Insights from these studies informed the development of a new framework to inform ADRD risk reduction interventions. This new framework seeks to leverage constructs from the Social Ecological Model (SEM), Health Belief Model (HBM), Transtheoretical Model (TTM), and the Health Stigma and Discrimination Framework (HSDF) to better inform and understand the factors that influence ADRD risk reduction behaviors.ResultThis framework contains several concepts that predict why individuals will take action to reduce risk of ADRDs: individual factors, social‐environmental factors, self and public stigma, and perceptions. Our model also includes stages of change to integrate processes and principles of change, offering a temporal dimension for understanding behavior change. This novel framework can be utilized to inform both individual and community‐level interventions.ConclusionThis new framework provides an innovative and alternative foundation for new ADRD risk reduction interventions. Applicable across a range of risk reduction behaviors, the model highlights the domains and pathways common across ADRD research and intervention implementation. This crosscutting approach will support a more efficient and effective response to addressing preventable risk factors for ADRDs, with the goal of application and realization. Further research is needed to assess the strengths and limitations of this framework in real‐world settings.

Mukesh Shrestha's Paintings: Visual Narration of Buddhist Myths

In Mukesh Shrestha's compositions, Buddhist icons, images, symbols and figures have been reread and reformulated along with altered abstract background having sublime setting with magical and mystical atmosphere. Spontaneous visual rhythm is ever present in both foreground and background due to sinuous shapes and flowing colorful form. The archetypal characters and contents in coherent colors convey the message of coexistence, meditation and peace. The artist is in the quest of harmony and order in the state of chaos. Friendly and comfortable color combination sustains the viewers' interest. The artwork creates its own unique world with multiple significances to explore. The fineness of form adds intensity to visual experience. The primitive textures arouse the tactile sensation giving way to the imaginative flight to the far distance in time and space. The unique visual compositions present the aesthetic blend of tradition and modernity, myths and mysticism, the individual self and the cosmos. The condensed visual form presents the retrospection, recollection of native cultural treasure and anticipation of prosperity and peace. Fine craftsmanship and minutely detailed works with precision give a clue to the artist's patience and dedication. Monumental figures of divinity decked with traditional decorum along with symbols like lotus and vajra suggest invisible and intangible dimensions of the reality. Ritual postures and gestures convey a sense of mystical procession, a journey to the world beyond.