Adaptive Intelligence: Intelligence Is Not a Personal Trait but Rather a Person × Task × Situation Interaction

This article explores the advantages of viewing intelligence not as a fixed trait residing within an individual, but rather as a person × task × situation interaction. The emphasis in the article is on the role of persons solving tasks embedded in situations involving learning, intellectual abilities, and competencies. The article opens with a consideration of the role of situations in intelligent behavior. The article then discusses how intelligence is more similar to creativity and wisdom, in terms of the role of situations, than many psychologists have realized. Then the article reviews the role of situations in identity-based and irrational thinking and in conspiratorial thinking and cults. Next the article discusses the demonstrated importance of situations in assessment, but also notes the difficulties in sampling situations. Finally, the article draws conclusions, in particular, that, given our lack of situation-based tests, we need to be more modest in our interpretations results from conventional tests of intelligence.

The Hare and the Hedgehog: Empirical evidence on the relationship between the individual Pace of Life and the speed-accuracy continuum

Against the background of the speed-accuracy trade-off, we explored whether the Pace of Life can be used to identify heterogeneity in the strategy to place more weight on either fast or accurate accomplishments. The Pace of Life approaches an individual’s exposure to time and is an intensively studied concept in the evolutionary biology research. Albeit overall rarely, it is increasingly used to understand human behavior and may fulfill many criteria of a personal trait. In a controlled laboratory environment, we measured the participants’ Pace of Life, as well as their performance on a real-effort task. In the real-effort task, the participants had to encode words, whereby each word encoded correctly was associated with a monetary reward. We found that individuals with a faster Pace of Life accomplished more tasks in total. At the same time, they were less accurate and made more mistakes (in absolute terms) than those with a slower Pace of Life. Thus, the Pace of Life seems to be useful to identify an individual’s stance on the speed-accuracy continuum. In our specific task, placing more weight on speed instead of accuracy paid off: Individuals with a faster Pace of Life were ultimately more successful (with regard to their monetary revenue).

Manipulation

This chapter examines a potential distortion that personalized rules might breed: manipulation. Anticipating ways in which their personal traits might affect their legal treatment, people could make socially undesirable choices in order to qualify for more favorable commands. If, for example, one’s investment in improved technical skills leads to an increase in the personalized standards of care under tort law, the incentives to invest might be chilled. The chapter examines various forms of manipulation. It first discusses the distorted incentive to develop human capital. It then explores the possibility of “pretending”—people’s attempts to change not their underlying traits but their appearance. It also demonstrates a third problem, “arbitrage,” where people circumvent the personalized treatment by operating through agents or purchasing superior legal treatments from others. Recognizing this array of manipulative strategies, the chapter than offers two responses. It argues that the scope of the manipulation problem is minor, first because each personal trait has typically only a small incremental effect on any legal command. Second, in cases where manipulation is potentially significant, non-manipulable inputs could be used.

A qualitative study on resilience in adult refugees in Germany

Background Because refugees face significant adversities before, during, and after resettlement, resilience is of central importance to this population. However, strengths-based research on post-migration refugee experiences is sparse. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 54 adult refugee participants who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2018 in their preferred language. We analyzed different aspects of resilience in these interviews using thematic analysis. Results Nine themes were identified. Four themes manifest resilience in different ways and encompass cognitive as well as behavioral strategies for facing adversity, self-ascriptions of resilience as a personal trait or lasting characteristic, and the role of volunteering, work, and activism for refugee causes. Five themes capture factors that facilitate resilience: social support, experiencing migration as an opportunity generally and for women in particular, being a parent, and being young. Conclusions This study adds to a growing body of knowledge about resilience among adult refugees. It may support clinicians working with refugees by making them aware of specific manifestations of resilience and factors promoting positive adaptation specific to this client group. It also contributes to a more strengths-based view on refugee mental health and processes of integration.

Curiosity–tourism interaction promotes subjective wellbeing among older adults in Japan

Aging societies are one of the major problems faced in the modern world. Promoting subjective wellbeing is a key component in helping individuals positively accept and adapt to psychological and physical changes during their aging process. Tourism is one of the activities that have been demonstrated to promote subjective wellbeing. However, motivation for tourism and its benefits to subjective wellbeing among the older adults have rarely been discussed. The current study aimed to investigate whether tourism contributes to the subjective wellbeing of older adults. We examined the relationships between travel frequency, subjective wellbeing, and the personal trait of curiosity, mediated by the factor of family budget situation. The results demonstrated that diverse curiosity motivates individuals to travel; thus, diverse curiosity positively correlates to subjective wellbeing, both directly as well as indirectly through travel frequency. However, this relationship is limited by the factor of family budget, with tourism contributing to the subjective wellbeing of only well-off older adults. This study concludes that tourism has potential to contribute to subjective wellbeing during later stages of life.

EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF ADULT PARTICIPATION IN PLAYFUL ACTIVITIES

Playfulness in adulthood has been shown to be un-researched scientific issue. We believe that it is because of earlier non-recognition of this issue as a special field of study, but also the existence of a popular belief that the playful activities are reserved only for children. Just because of the lack of initiative and coherent researches that take into account playful activities in adulthood and characteristic of playfulness as a personal trait this research can be considered as the first research of that kind in the Republic of Serbia. The aim of this research is to determine adult perceptions of their playfulness and dominant cognitive qualities of playfulness. Adult Playfulness Trait Scale was used (APTS, Shen, Chick & Zin, 2014) to explore adult playfulness and inherent cognitive characteristic of this personal trait. Research sample consists of 1234 adult individuals aged from 18 to above 60 years from a cities and villages of Serbian area. The results of this research show that respondents recognize and highly value all tree sub-dimensions of playfulness trait: fun-seeking motivation, uninhibitedness and spontaneity. An important finding of this research is one that indicates on the characteristics of fun-seeking motivation sub-dimension as dominant one.