Why has personality psychology played an outsized role in the credibility revolution?

Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing “credibility revolution” in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field’s practices and norms have now become models for other fields to emulate (or, for those who share Baumeister’s (2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.02.003) skeptical view of the consequences of increasing rigor, a model for what to avoid). In this article we discuss some unique features of our field that may have placed us in an ideal position to be leaders in this movement. We do so from a subjective perspective, describing our impressions and opinions about possible explanations for personality psychology’s disproportionate role in the credibility revolution. We also discuss some ways in which personality psychology remains less-than-optimal, and how we can address these flaws.

Differentiating Insult from Other Criminal Offences under the Bulgarian Criminal Code, as well as from the Administrative Offence pursuant to the Petty Delinquency Counteraction Decree

This paper presents a brief overview of the act of insult, pursuant to Article 146, Paragraph 1, and Article 148, Paragraph 1, Sections 1‒4 of the Bulgarian Criminal Code /CC/) in comparison with other criminal offences under the CC, as well as with the administrative offence pursuant to the Petty Delinquency Counteraction Decree, where honour and dignity constitute the primary or additional subject matter of the defence. The paper takes into account the exisiting common characteristics of the criminal offences in question from both an objective and a subjective perspective, where different communicative situations resort only to derogatory attitude on the part of the deed’s subject towards the object of the infringement, or such attitude represents an aspect of the broader range of the illegal deed. The analysis includes a comparison between insult, as defined in Article 146, Paragraph 1 of the CC, and “grave insult”, as defined in the texts of Article 118, Article 124, Paragraph 2, and Article 132, Paragraph 1 of the CC. In addition, it contrasts the concept of insult in terms of definition and content with the insult pursuant to Article 146, Paragraph 1, and Article 148, Paragraph 1, Sections 1‒4 of the CC, with the criminal offences of military insult under Article 378 of the CC, delinquency under Article 325 of the CC, and petty delinquency under Article 1, Paragraph 2 of the Petty Delinquency Counteraction Decree, as well as with the offence of minor bodily injury under Article 130, Paragraph 2 of the CC. An emphasis is placed on the difference between them.

Why Has Personality Psychology Played an Outsized Role in the Credibility Revolution?

Personality is not the most popular subfield of psychology. But, in one way or another, personality psychologists have played an outsized role in the ongoing “credibility revolution” in psychology. Not only have individual personality psychologists taken on visible roles in the movement, but our field’s practices and norms have now become models for other fields to emulate (or, for those who share Baumeister’s (2016) skeptical view of the consequences of increasing rigor, a model for what to avoid). In this article we discuss some unique features of our field that may have placed us in an ideal position to be leaders in this movement. We do so from a subjective perspective, describing our impressions and opinions about possible explanations for personality psychology’s disproportionate role in the credibility revolution. We also discuss some ways in which personality psychology remains less-than-optimal, and how we can address these flaws.

Purple Ruins

Symbolic reconstruction of “purple ruins”—the abandoned ruins of traditional Tibetan buildings, monasteries, temples, and old manors of the aristocracy—has become one of the main topics of Tibetan Sinophone dissident writer Tsering Woeser. Her effort to preserve them not so much as testimonies of the glorious Tibetan past, but rather of the dark chapters of modern Tibetan history and as an indictment of Chinese rule in Tibet, has intensified during the last decade with the surge of commercialization and increase in mass tourism—trends that are rapidly changing the face of Tibet and the urban landscape of Lhasa. In her book Purple Ruins (Jianghong se de feixu), published in January 2017 in Taiwan, Tsering Woeser has combined a subjective perspective (poems, personal memories, interviews, etc.) with “folk tales” (minjian gushi) including legends, oral histories, and gossip, and with historical material. While reconstructing the image of both the “old” and the “new” Tibet in her book, she contests the official Chinese representations and narratives of Tibet, Tibetan history, and Tibetan culture, appropriating postcolonial theories to reinterpret Chinese imperial/colonial endeavors in Tibet from past to present. The aim of this paper is to examine how Tsering Woeser engages with the complexities of official Chinese representations of Tibet in an attempt to (re) construct the missing parts of modern Tibetan history that have been concealed or even intentionally erased by the Chinese official discourse and to (re)construct modern Tibetan identity against the background of the dominant Chinese culture and ideology.

A different perspective on the partial loss of meaning of life

I write about my subjective perspective on my partial loss of meaning of life.

Researching Non-Conscious Dimensions of Architectural Experience

Editorial Summary Entitled »Researching Non-Conscious Dimensions of Architectural Experience«, Marcus Weisen’s contribution explores the investigation of pre-reflexive ways of knowing, sensory thought, and the embodied mind. He introduces the micro-phenomenological interview as a successful methodology to exploit immanent, non-conscious aspects of architectural experience. He emphasizes the relevance of investigating the individual, subjective perspective in architectural research, proposing the first-person description of experience as a starting point from which to derive insights into overarching, essential principles of lived experiences of, and encounters with, architectural spaces. Tracing the elusive, embodied dimensions of architectural experience, he aims for an »embodied rationalism« in architectural research. [Uta Graff]

Creativity and Resilience as Predictors of Career Success

Achieving success in today’s society is becoming an increasingly complex endeavor. People must have high levels of creativity and resilience in order to constantly adapt to changing situations and, at the same time, maintain the necessary tenacity and enthusiasm to continue despite failures. This research aims to identify the different characteristics of people with high levels of objective career success, subjective career success, resilience, and creativity, and analyze their relationship with the achievement of career success. The sample consisted of 200 people from six professional categories (unemployed, managers, influencers, entrepreneurs, employees, and professors) in Spain. The questionnaire (EX. P/RE/CRE—professional success, resilience, and creativity) that was designed for this study was used to collect the data. The results suggest that a person with high levels of creativity and/or resilience is more prepared to achieve professional success from both an objective and subjective perspective. The study’s conclusions support the correlations between the terms and describe the characteristics and conditions of the successful, resilient, and/or creative person.

Barriers and Facilitators of Safe Communication in Obstetrics: Results from Qualitative Interviews with Physicians, Midwives and Nurses

Patient safety is an important objective in health care. Preventable adverse events (pAEs) as the counterpart to patient safety are harmful incidents that fell behind health care standards and have led to temporary or permanent harm or death. As safe communication and mutual understanding are of crucial importance for providing a high quality of care under everyday conditions, we aimed to identify barriers and facilitators that impact safe communication in obstetrics from the subjective perspective of health care workers. A qualitative study with 20 semi-structured interviews at two university hospitals in Germany was conducted to explore everyday perceptions from a subjective perspective (subjective theories). Physicians, midwives, and nurses in a wide span of professional experience and positions were enrolled. We identified a structural area of conflict at the professional interface between midwives and physicians. Mandatory interprofessional meetings, acceptance of subjective mistakes, mutual understanding, and debriefings of conflict situations are reported to improve collaboration. Additionally, emergency trainings, trainings in precise communication, and handovers are proposed to reduce risks for pAEs. Furthermore, the participants reported time-constraints and understaffing as a huge burden that hinders safe communication. Concluding, safety culture and organizational management are closely entwined and strategies should address various levels of which communication trainings are promising.

From subjective perspective to subjective text navigation

This article considers description as a functional and semantic type of speech from the point of view of the receptive-pragmatic paradigm of research. The authors turn to pragmatic syntax in order to reconstruct the receptive space of the speech subject, their cognitive sphere based on pragmatically (connotatively) «charged» signs and to actualize the implicitly expressed meaning of the statement with their help. The methodological basis of the study is the referential analysis, which helps to reconstruct a set of initial situations (referential space), and contextual analysis, through which the pragmatic information and personal meanings belonging to the cognitive sphere of the speech subject (receptive space) are explicated. Special attention is paid to the triadic opposition «figure – micro-context – referential space» – «background – macro-context – receptive space». The conceptual triad «figure – micro-context – referential space» is related to the material world and its representations in the text, and in this respect belongs to the conceptual field of semantic syntax. On the contrary, the conceptual triad «background – macro-context – receptive space» enables to reconstruct the cognitive sphere of the speech subject and its representation in speech, in particular, the attitude of the speech subject to what they see, feel and think, how their ideas about the original (referent) situation develop, and refer to the material sphere and conceptual field of pragmatic syntax. This triadic opposition helps to consider the subjective navigation of the text as a modification of its subjective perspective. Subjective text navigation represents implicit (not clearly expressed) ways of orientation in the cognitive sphere of the speech subject and is designed to direct the reader's attention, their perception of different levels of explicitly and implicitly expressed meanings through pragmatic localizers of the speech subject's discourse intention.