Perceived Similarity of the Self to Animals, Creativity, and Anxiety—: A Terror Management Analysis

According to terror management theory, humans avoid death anxiety by embedding themselves within cultural worldviews that allow them to perceive themselves as more than mortal animals. However, individuals also differ in their trait-like tendency to dissociate from other animals. In six studies, we tested whether individuals who perceive themselves as more similar to animals (high-perceived similarity of the self to animals [PSSA]) invest more in creativity for terror management than low-PSSA individuals, but are also more vulnerable to experiencing anxiety and existential concerns. Supporting our hypotheses, PSSA was associated with investment in creativity and arts, especially after death primes (Studies 3 and 4). High-PSSA individuals had heightened trait anxiety and death-thought accessibility (Studies 5 and 6), and showed increased state anxiety following a negative feedback about their creativity (Study 6). Findings highlight the role of PSSA as a personality variable predicting human motivation and emotion.

Genealogy, Ideology, and Critical Theory

This chapter examines the Genealogical-Ideological Method for interrogating the category of religion and unmasking its complicity with capitalist market interests, racial and gender inequities, colonializing practices, and power. With these ideas in hand, the chapter examines representative works by Russell McCutcheon, Timothy Fitzgerald, and Saba Mahmood. In their works, it is argued, the problem of failing to provide justificatory arguments looms large. McCutcheon and Fitzgerald fail to see how the problems they espy in the study of religion apply to their way of thinking. Mahmood conceives of human agency as an outcome of repetitive bodily practices rather than as relying on reasons for action, thus denying her ways to understand human motivation in Islamic pietism and concealing the justificatory dimensions of the practices she describes in Politics of Piety. The chapter shows how problems in these approaches are symptomatic of difficulties surrounding the justificatory status of the study of religion.

Comparison of Artificial Intelligence and Human Motivation

According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, humans act according to their needs. Humans also act with an interest in the internal process itself, rather than solely based on external rewards. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, is trained through a large amount of data and neural network learning. Unlike humans who are greatly affected by emotions and various circumstances, AI is neutral and objective. With no clear limitations and vast potential for development. AI has been receiving a lot of attention. Many futurists say AI will replace humans in areas that we, in the past, couldn’t imagine machines doing the work. However, there are still areas where AI cannot replace humans. Metacognition to judge one's thoughts and creativity, the power to come up with new ideas, still remains in human domains that artificial intelligence has not been able to enter. This paper explores the reinforcement of humans and AI and explores the original human realm. Furthermore, understanding the original human domain can suggest developing human competitiveness.

Developmental changes in reward processing are reward specific

Rewards have a profound impact on human motivation, cognition, affect and behavior. The study of reward processing and the effects of incentives thus occupies a central place in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. A core assumption when comparing groups or individuals is that reward types are valued equally. Here we test the validity of this assumption in a sample of 26 adults 23children (7-11 years) using both primary (i.e. pleasant taste) and secondary rewards (i.e. money). We show that adults value money more than pleasant tastes, while children value them equally, a developmental pattern replicated across three distinct tasks including subjective valuation, willingness to exert cognitive effort, and the invigorating effects on cognitive control. Our findings suggest that money increases in value with age, presumably with experience, and warrant caution when interpreting group differences in reward processing, at least in a developmental framework. Future work should expand to using incentives that are appropriate to the groups under investigation.

A cross-cultural study of purposive “traits of action”: Measurement invariance of scales based on the action–trait theory of human motivation using exploratory structural equation modeling

The Action–Trait theory of human motivation posits that individual differences in predispositional traits of action may account for variance in contemporary purposeful human behavior. Prior research has supported the theory, psychometric properties of scales designed to assess the motive dimensions of the theory, and the utility of these scales to predict an array of behaviors, but this is the first study to evaluate the cross-linguistical invariance of the 15-factor theoretical model. This study evaluated translations of the English language 60-item Quick AIM in 5 samples – Croatian (N = 614), French (N = 246), German (N = 154), Polish (M = 314), and U.S. English (N = 490) – recruited from 4 countries (Croatia, Poland, Switzerland, and the U.S.). Exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) supported the theoretical model on which the traits of action are based and scrutinized the measurement invariance (configural, metric, scalar invariance) of the scale across the languages.

The Japanese empathy questionnaire (EmQue) for preschool children: Psychometric properties and measurement invariance across gender

Empathy is assumed to be a universal human motivation to act altruistically toward others. Developmental models of empathy explaining when and how children acquire the capacity to empathize have been proposed. However, the existing knowledge is largely built upon studies conducted in the Western context. To fill this gap, a cross-culturally validated measure of empathy for children is needed. The purpose of this study was to assess the Japanese version of the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue), a parent-reported measure of empathy in preschool children, including its construct validity, measurement invariance across genders, and reliability. A total of 550 children aged 1–6 years participated in this study ( M age = 4.17 years, SD = 1.21). Their mothers completed the Japanese EmQue. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the hypothesized three-factor structure (emotional contagion, attention to others’ feelings, and prosocial actions) in the 13-item Japanese EmQue. The internal consistencies of the three scales were high. Measurement invariance across gender groups was also supported. Overall, the results demonstrate that the Japanese EmQue is a reliable and valid measure of the empathy of Japanese preschool children. It can serve as a tool in future studies to elucidate the role of culture in shaping empathy in early childhood.

A Reconsideration on the Theory of Beauty: Previous Views and a New Approach Following Maslow's Theory (Part II)

This paper is the second part of a work that aims to rethink the concept of beauty as close as possible to its essence and in a way that integrates the science of aesthetics with the field of construction. Within other theoretical and practical works, this study may be further used to physically reflect the definition of beauty in areas such as architecture, civil engineering or urban planning and support professionals in designing and building beautiful objects and constructions. However, it has to be added that the assumption that there must be a particular original aspect related to beauty that leads a human-made object to success, needs to be further identified. The approach to the concept of beauty is through a general philosophical perspective and partially through the areas mentioned above.The second part of the study includes the synthesised guidance provided by Monroe Beardsley through the theories on beauty from the nineteenth century until today. In addition, it comprises the scheme of concepts that characterised the beautiful in this time, including the lines that guided its study, previous ideas that support our later views on presented theory, and a brief exposition of Maslow's theory of human motivation followed by our theory on beauty and the conclusions.

Engaging Students Through Escape Games and a Play Environment During Recess

The article describes projects that combined experiential learning and gamification with teachers and pupils in junior high school science classes. The pupils planned and designed projects and critiqued the quality of the final products. A field report study model was employed using principles from the world of play in order to better understand the production of a high-quality project. An “Octalysis” model was constructed to identify and analyze the factors that enhance human motivation, and principles for the creation of experiential learning and play. One of the significant characteristics that enabled the production of many varied products was the teachers' ability to find time and physical space in which to create the learning environments. Provision of experiential learning and play environments is demanding for the teacher, but rewarding since they involve pupils and deepen learning quality throughout the process. As a result of this experimentation and reflection, insights were gained concerning the creation of experiential learning and play environments.

Desire as Belief

What is it to want something? Or, as philosophers might ask, what is a desire? This book defends ‘desire-as-belief’, the view that desires are just a special subset of our beliefs: normative beliefs. This view entitles us to accept orthodox models of human motivation and rationality that explain those things with reference to desire, but nonetheless to also make room for our normative beliefs to play a role in those domains. And this view tells us to diverge from the orthodox view on which desires themselves can never be right or wrong. Rather, according to desire-as-belief, our desires can themselves be assessed for their accuracy, and they are wrong when they misrepresent normative features of the world. Hume says that it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of your finger, but he is wrong: it is foolish to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of your finger, and this is foolish because this preference misrepresents the relative worth of these things.