The Civic

We bring forth a civic realm with the mutual recognition of our shared humanity that allows us to repair violations of human dignity and to restore social coherence. Given our social inequalities, this takes the form of those who have resources (citizens) responding to the rightful demands of those do not (civilians). The paradigmatic model for civic engagement is the Civilian Review Board, where citizens listen and respond to civilian claims for justice and limits of the use of force. The civilian call for limits can be applied to the other three parts of the four-part framework: the Earth, humanity, and the social. This gives us permission to recognize that we have only one Earth, that death is a natural limit to human life, and that social trends, such as American Prosperity, should not be treated as limitless. Acknowledging these limitations is a necessary condition for creating a climate of justice.

Religion in the public sphere: The Quebec charter of values, a critical reflection

Contemporary challenges on religious belief and practice occur often within democratic polities; they do appear as advocates for equality before law, state neutrality and for freedom of conscience. Such claims perceived as demands for equal justice mark the public sphere of the West thanks especially to an expanding consciousness of individual rights and increasing religious cultural diversity, a phenomenon due also to immigration. These are obvious signs of the Western society becoming more and more pluralistic, but in a way distinct from such traditional polities elsewhere. Whatever the advantages of a pluralist society, it is also seen as a potential threat to entrenched values. How would then a democratic regime deal with multiculturalism and religious freedom, guaranteeing social coherence and security, becomes a crucial contemporary issue. Employing the Quebec Charter of Values as a case in point, this essay highlights the importance of re-defining the public sphere. It has to be a discursive sphere which would only materialize when rationality and emotions play an equal role, in shaping the social body, especially through narratives. And religions do seem to have an important role to play here, not only in shaping a strong, open self-identity, but also in recognizing the common, human vulnerability.

THE PERCEIVED LEVELS OF INTOLERANCE FOR PRESS CRITICISM IN PAKISTANI SOCIETY

This study examines the existence, intensity and impacts of intolerance for Press criticism in Pakistani society. It’s generally believed that intolerance for Press criticism leads to professional and psychological complexes for the Press to play its role as a voice for unvoiced and to hold those in power accountable because the Press’s role as the Watchdog compulsively needs high capacities of tolerance in the society to understand the realities and habituate rationalism. As working journalists have to face the direct reaction from masses regarding Press criticism so this paper explores journalist’s perceptions about the presence of intolerance in the societal frame of Pakistan regarding Press’s criticism using survey technique under Likert Scale. The study also incorporates the impacts of intolerance on professionalism in media that induce threats to journalists and compel them to exercise self-censorship which ultimately results in content biases, depriving the citizens of fundamental right of expression. The conclusion provides guidelines for policy making on the subject of Press freedom and social coherence. Also, this study enhances understandings regarding the social sphere of the country and gauges the level of intolerance for media discourses.

Friend vs. Foe: Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Women With Different Hormonal States

Empathy is crucial for social functioning as well as social coherence. It can be influenced by modulatory factors such as familiarity and liking (i.e., emotional closeness). Furthermore, there are first hints that hormonal status may modulate affective but not cognitive empathy in women. The aim of this study was to investigate potential separate as well as combined modulatory effects of emotional closeness and hormonal status on female cognitive and affective empathy. Three hormonal status groups of women (n = 62) were studied: (1) naturally-cycling (NC) women in the early follicular phase (fNC), (2) NC women during periovulatory phase (oNC), and (3) oral contraceptive (OC) users. All women underwent a newly developed empathy task (i.e., Tübinger Empathy Test, TET) presenting textual descriptions of positive and negative emotional scenes relating to three different perspectives (i.e., self vs. friend vs. enemy/disliked person). Regardless of hormonal status, empathic responses were higher for the friend compared to the enemy perspective for both empathy components. However, cognitive empathy was less affected by varying emotional closeness toward the target person than affective empathy. Hormonal status modulated only affective empathy. OC users showed significantly less affective empathy toward the enemy compared to the fNC women. Overall, affective empathy seems more sensitive to modulatory effects of emotional closeness and hormonal status than cognitive empathy. Possible implications of this current investigation for future research on empathy and OC use, contraceptive education as well as for other clinical applications are discussed.

The Relationship Between Big Five Personality and Social Well-Being of Chinese Residents: The Mediating Effect of Social Support

Previous studies have noted that personality traits are important predictors of well-being, but how big five personality influences social well-being is still unknown. This study aims to examine the link between big five personality and five dimensions of social well-being in the Chinese cultural context and whether social support can play the mediating effect in the process. This study included 1,658 participants from different communities in China, and regression analyses were conducted. Results revealed that five personality traits were significantly related to overall social well-being; extraversion was significantly related to social integration; agreeableness was positively related to all five dimensions of social well-being; conscientiousness was positively related to social actualization, social coherence, and social contribution; neuroticism was negatively related to social integration, social acceptance, social actualization, and social coherence; openness was positively related to social integration, social acceptance, social coherence, and social contribution. Social support plays mediating roles in the relationships between extraversion/agreeableness/conscientiousness/neuroticism/openness and social well-being, respectively.

Psychological health and subjective perception of happiness in mental disorders

The aim of the study was to study psychological health (PH) and its relationship with subjective perception of happiness in patients with various types of mental disorders (MD). The set of research methods included the methodology “Individual model of psychological health”, “Semantic diff erential of happiness” (SDH) and methods of statistical processing of the data obtained. The study involved 210 patients with MD (70 with organic disorders, 70 with depressive disorders and 70 with neurotic disorders). It was found that with all variants of MD, a signifi cantly lower level of realizability of the “Prosocial” vector was determined, which refl ects the presence of internal and social coherence of the individual. In neurotic disorders, apart from Prosocial, the “Strategic” and “Family” vectors were also signifi cantly less realizable, which refl ected signifi cantly lower levels of family well-being, the ability for strategic planning, purposeful functioning, and persistence of these patients. In depressive disorders, the “Strategic”, “Intellectual” and “I” vectors were also signifi cantly less realizable, determining the low realizability of patients in this group, primarily in the spheres “I”-Realization, — emotional, intellectual, social and physical. In organic disorders among the components of the PH, the “Intellectual” vector was also less realized in comparison with the healthy group; The data obtained indicate that the subjective perception of happiness by patients with MD is associated primarily with the “Strategic”, “Prosocial”, “Family”, “Intellectual” and “I” vectors of the PH. The “creative”, “Spiritual” and “Humanistic” components of PH did not fi nd a relationship with the level of subjective perception of happiness in patients with MD.

Motion-Encoded Particle Swarm Optimization for Moving Target Search Using UAVs

This paper presents a novel algorithm named the motion-encoded particle swarm optimization (MPSO) for finding a moving target with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). From the Bayesian theory, the search problem can be converted to the optimization of a cost function that represents the probability of detecting the target. Here, the proposed MPSO is developed to solve that problem by encoding the search trajectory as a series of UAV motion paths evolving over the generation of particles in a PSO algorithm. This motion-encoded approach allows for preserving important properties of the swarm including the cognitive and social coherence, and thus resulting in better solutions. Results from extensive simulations with existing methods show that the proposed MPSO improves the detection performance by 24% and time performance by 4.71 times compared to the original PSO, and moreover, also outperforms other state-of-the-art metaheuristic optimization algorithms including the artificial bee colony (ABC), ant colony optimization (ACO), genetic algorithm (GA), differential evolution (DE), and tree-seed algorithm (TSA) in most search scenarios. Experiments have been conducted with real UAVs in searching for a dynamic target in different scenarios to demonstrate MPSO merits in a practical application.