Personality, demographics and art experience proved to play an important role in reactions to visual art. Nevertheless, research attempts that take into account all those factors when determining predictors of aesthetic responses to different artistic styles are quite rare. The study presented here investigates predictors of aesthetic experience across figurative, abstract and contemporary paintings in individuals with varying expertise.

Students enrolled in Sport, Humanities and the Arts programmes (N = 181) declared their art exposure and filled out personality measures (Big Five, alexithymia, need for closure). Next participants evaluated three paintings using a tool constructed by the authors to track various dimensions of aesthetic reactions (i.e. negative/positive affective responses, self-references, explicit knowledge and perceived mastery of the artwork).

Reactions to figurative painting depended mostly on formal knowledge about arts, not personality traits. Aesthetic perception of abstract art rely not only on art exposure, but also on some individual characteristics (openness to experience, tolerance of ambiguity and ability to identify one’s own emotions and track their source). Reception of contemporary art was predicted mostly by art exposure variables and in the case of negative emotionality by ability to identify one’s own emotions and track their source.

Both formal art education and art experience were stronger predictors of aesthetic responses than personality traits, for all art styles and dimensions of aesthetic experience. Personality predictors were significant mostly for abstract art. Personal interest in the arts seems to be as good predictor of aesthetic reactions as formal expertise.

Schwartz created a circle of values reflecting people’s individual systems of goals and motivations. These values can be grouped into different dimensions: self-protection versus self-growth and concentration on others versus concentration on self. In the present study, we analysed how these dimensions are related to hedonic and eudaimonic well-being; N=747 participants, representative of the general Polish population, completed the Portraits Value Questionnaire, Satisfaction with Life Scale and Questionnaire for Eudaimonic Well-being (online study). A series of models were tested using structural equation modelling. We found that concern for self and self-protection values were related to higher hedonic well-being, whereas concern for others and growth values were related to its lower levels. However, growth and concern for others were positively linked to eudaimonic well-being, but they may also positively and indirectly impact hedonic well-being (suppression effect). These results suggest that some values are associated with a feeling of self-realisation at the cost of current hedonic well-being.

The article discusses two questions of Peter F. Strawson’s understanding of the human being as person. The first question scrutinizes Strawson’s philosophical choice between the tradition of Aristotle’s metaphysics and Kant’s ontology. The second question is the Cartesian challenge as presented in Strawson’s postulate of the primacy of the concept of human person. My understanding of the metaphysics proposed in the Individuals and Strawson’s other works underscores a particular affinity between his anthropological postulate and philosophia perennis. However, the Oxford philosopher is related not only to Aristotelian logic and hermeneutic but also to Kant’s conceptual scheme. In the case of the definition that identifies human being as a person we see the unambiguous reliance by Strawson on the thought of Aristotle. The explicit evidence of this reliance is his reference to the corporeality and space-time character of the human beings, manifested by the recognition of ontological priority of particulars before the reality of mental states of affairs. The effect of this analysis is my observation that Strawson has undertaken to close the gap between mental and material reality that was established in Descartes’ ontological difference between res cogitans and res extensa. The aporia of the lack of communication between human consciousness and human corporeality finds its solution in Strawson’s Individuals in concept of relationship between mind and body intended as a transgression over the Cartesian concept. Strawson proposes a recognition of their simultaneous validity, but he does not propose a new ontological position comparable to H.E. Hengstenberg’s, founded on the idea of the constitution of the human person not in two preclusive elements, as the Cartesian mind and body, but in three elements, namely spirit (Geist), corporeality (Leib) and existential principle (Existenzprinzip).

The article presents results of an input-output data inventory and life cycle assessment (LCA) for individual wastewater treatment plants (IWWTPs), considering their whole life cycle, including the stage of construction, use and end-of-life. IWWTPs located in the area of a medium-sized town in Poland, were assessed from a systemic perspective. The research was conducted basing on actual data concerning performance of 304 individual wastewater treatment plants in Żory. Environmental assessment was conducted with ReCiPe and TRACI methods. Greenhouse gases (GHG) emission, eutrophication, fossil fuel and metal depletion were calculated. The LCA was conducted basing on ISO 14040 standard with SimaPro 8 software and Ecoinvent 3 database. The system boundary ranged from cradle to grave. It was shown that, at the construction stage, GHG emission depends on the amount of used cement, polyethylene, concrete, PVC and polypropylene. At the use stage, the GHG emission is determined by the sewage treatment technology and application of a bio-reactor in IWWTPs. At the construction stage, the fossil fuel depletion is determined by the amount of used polyethylene, PVC, cement, polypropylene and concrete; while the metal depletion is determined by the amount of used stainless steel, copper and cast iron. Data inventory and LCA of IWWTPs are presented for the first time. Conclusions of the work may support decisions taken by local governments concerning wastewater management in their area and promote and support solutions of high ecological standards.

This paper presents an outline of the relationship between the categories of living individual, organism and life. I argue that although these categories are related with each other and often treated as the same, we should strive for their separation. The main argument for the distinction between the individual and life is of a methodological character: the definitions of life are mainly interested for astrobiologists and scientists working in the field of origin of life or artificial life, while the individual is important, among others, in standard evolutionary biology and ecology. Among the concepts of living individual various forms of evolutionary definition (individual as a unit of selection) currently dominate. The living individual understood in this way is not identical with a structurally limited and functionally integrated self-sustained entity, which is usually called “organism.” Moreover, the explanatory success of the evolutionary concept of individual, in my opinion, implies the adoption of some version of the evolutionary definition of life. In the last part of this paper I propose a process-evolutionary definition of life, which also indicates a relationship between the three aforementioned categories.

We define the need for sense-making as the desire to find reliable connections between the objects, situations, and relationships that people encounter. We have proposed and tested that there are possible individual differences in the need for sense-making and that these individual differences are insightful in characterizing individuals and their behaviors. A correlational study (N = 229) showed that need for sense-making was positively related to self-esteem, extroversion, conscientiousness, openness, and sense of control. Additionally, a higher need for sense-making was associated with greater perception of it as an important part of people’s identity. Thus, need for sense-making is relevant to understanding individual differences and can furthermore comprise a significant element of people’s identity. These results break new ground in the study of individual differences in the need for sense-making and can be of great importance in work and organizational psychology.

Roger Scruton refers to Thomas Stearns Eliot in almost every one of his books, but despite the undoubtedly fundamental influence, which Eliot had exerted on the development of Scruton’s outlook, apart from a short article entitled Eliot and Conservatism, Scruton did not devote a separate work to Eliot’s thought. As I try to show this is due to the fact that Scruton was not so much a scholar of Eliot, as a continuator of his thought – not merely an expert on his philosophy and poetry, but an inheritor of his spiritual legacy. Both Eliot and Scruton belong to a current, which may rightly be called conservative philosophy of culture. In this paper I outline the conception of culture advanced by Eliot, and show how Scruton draws on this conception in his own spiritual development.

The paper takes under scrutiny Michael Köhlmeier’s novel Abendland, which portrays the history of the twentieth century in the form of oral family stories based on the biography of the main protagonist of the work, Carl Jacob Candoris, written down by his godson Sebastian Lukasser. Authentic historical events and actual characters are intermingled with fictitious figures and events. The article poses questions on individual and collective memory as well as the significance of oral history in the life of an individual.

According to the psycho-lexical approach in the taxonomy of individual differences, those interpersonal differences, which are the most important for social functioning of individual, have been encoded into natural languages. Therefore by analyzing the lexicons of interpersonal differences, it is possible to identify structures of their descriptions. Application of the psycho-lexical approach in the field of psychology of individual differences lead to obtaining the relatively high consistency regarding scientific taxonomy of personality traits. Also models developed on this basis meet the most important criteria of goodness of the psychological structural models. As a result, the accumulation of knowledge about person’s psychological functioning have been intensified. The aim of the article is to present the specificity of lexical studies and their taxonomical potential for social sciences, as well as key threats and limitations, based on experience of previous psycho-lexical research.

The purpose of the work is to provide a comprehensive review of the available historical and current records of vagrant and visiting individuals sighted at the Haswell archipelago, near the Russian Antarctic station Mirny (Davis Sea, southern Indian Ocean), from 1956 to 2016. Three rare vagrant species (eight observations) were recorded: the Chinstrap Penguin (Pygoscelis antarctica), Macaroni Penguin (Eudyptes chrysolophus) and Kelp Gull (Larus dominicanus). The Southern Giant Petrel (Macronectes giganteus; ten observations) and Pomarine Jaeger (Stercorarius pomarinus; a single observation) were visitors of the archipelago. Southern Giant Petrels and all vagrant individuals are of southern origin, the Pomarine Jaeger is a Holarctic breeding species. A single vagrant (and one uncertain case) appeared in the austral spring, and another eight – in the summer. Three cases of visitors were recorded in the austral spring, and eight in the summer. Records of vagrancy and visitors cover the dynamic period of changes in ice conditions. While most vagrants and visitors were sighted only for one day, two Macaroni Penguins stayed for several days at the archipelago. The most detailed issues in this work are those related to the study of vagrancy. I evaluate the possibilities of limited existence of vagrants and visitors into groups of endemic species as well as interspecific interactions. I also discuss the physical condition of vagrant individuals and factors contributing to their survival, ponder on the origin of vagrant individuals and visitors, their association with specific populations and causes of vagrancy.