Developing the empathic attitude is one of the tasks of medical education as it aff ects the quality of therapeutic contact in the relationship between the doctor and the patient, conditioning the treatment process. According to Davis’s concept, empathy is defi ned as an aff ective-cognitive reaction in the context of the other person’s experience. Aim: Analysis of profi les of empathic sensitivity in students of medicine. Group: Male and female students of the fi ft h year of medicine who agreed to participate in an anonymous study (n = 153; M = 57, F = 96; mean age: 23 years). Tools: Th e Empathetic Sensitivity Scale (EES), which is the Polish tool for Davis’s Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) was used. Th e ESS includes three sub-scales: Empathic Care (EC), Personal Distress (PD) and Adopting Perspective (AP). Results: The raw results were converted into sten scores and for sten scores for all three dimensions of empathetic sensitivity no diff erences were found between male and female students. Th ree clusters (1: n = 33%, 2: n = 39%, 3: n = 28%), which diff er in terms of each distinguished indicator, were identifi ed. Conclusions: Th e first cluster characterizes empathetic people, both in the aff ective and cognitive spheres, and those dealing well with unpleasant emotions in situations diffi cult to others. Th e second cluster characterizes participants with the ability to recognize the needs of others and to take into account their perspectives; the third cluster includes participants with a tendency to focus on their own experiences emerging in response to other people’s suff ering but with the ability to understand a situation and show empathic concern for the other person. The most favourable profi le — for a future doctor as well as for his patients — is the fi rst cluster because the doctor, with his empathic sensitivity directed towards the other man, can deal with his own unpleasant emotions.

The subject of the research of this article is the vision of the identity of the person in the light of postmodernism in confrontation with the Christian personalist vision of the person. The person in the perspective of postmodernism is deprived of nature and transcendent sense of existence. The identity of the person is understood as relative, fluid. It is not conceived as something permanent, stable, immanent and universal. The identity of a person in the personalist perspective is the resultant of unquestionable certainty regarding his subjectivity. It is an objective, permanent, universal characteristic, constitutive of the person, existing regardless of circumstances. The personalistic, Christian perspective allows one to see the fullness of a person’s existence, the richness of his spiritual dimensions, which is not guaranteed by identity understood postmodernistically. Only in the ontological perspective can the foundation of the uniqueness, distinctiveness and ultimate constitution of the person be found.

According to Professor Czesław S. Bartnik, the scopes of both faith and culture are analogous to the human phenomenon. At the beginning, there is an individual person – hence both the faith and individual culture (microculture); then the specific community appears, and with it also the common culture (macroculture) as well as the community faith. Usually, culture is understood as an action that makes a person become more human (active aspect of culture). According to Bartnik’s personalism, the aspect of experience, any reception of the world (passive aspect of culture) should be added. The same dimensions can be seen in the experience of faith (active and passive). There is a correlation between faith (religion) and culture: religion defines culture, and culture defines religion (whereas culture is “earlier” in man than religion). The article shows that they both constitute a kind of dyad which leads to personalization of the human being (who nowadays is constantly threatened with unbelief and anti-culture – depersonalization). The culture–faith dyad is subject to the laws of history, and may assume various forms during its course. Former cultures used to be almost entirely built on natural faith in God although they had their atheist element, too. Currently, we already have an epoch of culture that strives to take an entirely atheist shape, however, even this culture does not exist without a religious (or pseudo-religious) form. However, the culture-faith dyad does not become disintegrated.

The aim of this article is a critical analysis of Peter F. Strawson’s theory of primitiveness of the concept of person contained in the third chapter of the Individuals. The problems associated with the distinction between M-predicates and P-predicates are pointed out. The article shows different ways of understanding primitiveness of the concept of person, and points to gaps in Strawson’s argumentation and to the dubious potential of the theory if it is used to solve some basic problems in philosophy of mind. It also deals with some of the difficulties outlined, but does not propose to solve them all.

Humans vary in many aspects of their psychology with differences routinely found in patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, setting individuals apart across time and place. Though many psychologists have attempted to account for these individual differences, one area that has continued to generate interest and disagreement is the concept of motivation. Today, understanding behavioural motivation remains one of the most important questions facing personality theorists. In an attempt to better account for human motivation, the present exploration reviews seminal theoretical positions put forward by Sigmund Freud from a Psychoanalytical perspective and contrastingly, that of Carl Rogers from the Humanistic approach. Critical consideration is specifically applied to how verifiable each perspective may be and the degree of empirical support either account has attained to date. Whilst understanding human motivation is not a new endeavour, the present exploration provides a contemporary critical assessment of traditional psychological explanations.

The present study focused on relationships between personality traits, self-efficacy, self-esteem and basic trust, and well-being in context of entrepreneurial activity. Participants were 301 unemployed people, 157 of whom had received a grant from an employment agency to start their own business. Participants completed measures of personality traits, self-efficacy, self-esteem, basic trust, satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect. To verify if beliefs about the self and about the world mediated relationships between personality traits and well-being we conducted a multiple-sample SEM. The study results confirm that the beliefs mediate relationships between personality traits and well-being. They also show that different types of beliefs serve a different function, depending on an individual’s circumstances. Among grant acceptors, self-efficacy did not impact well-being, while self-esteem and basic trust had similar functions in both groups.

Subjective Well-Being is related to the Big-Five and to Individualistic and Collectivistic beliefs of Polish adolescents. In the present study, we examined whether Individualism and Collectivism beliefs mediate between the Big-Five and Subjective Well-being among adolescents, young and middle-aged adults. Adolescents (N = 174, 36% men, aged 14–18), young (N = 254, 45% men, aged 19–24) and middle-aged adults (N = 252, 54% men, aged 40–55) completed the NEO-FFI, the Ind-Col20, and measures of Subjective Well-being. The three groups differed on all dimensions. Adolescents reported the highest Neuroticism, the lowest Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, the highest Individualism and Collectivism beliefs and lowest SWB. Among adolescents, SEM analyses indicated that Subjective Well-being was negatively related to Neuroticism and Agreeableness, positively to Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Horizontal Individualism, Horizontal and Vertical Collectivism. Among young and middle-aged adults Subjective Well-being was negatively related to Neuroticism and Horizontal Collectivism, positively to Openness, Conscientiousness, Horizontal and Vertical Individualism. Beliefs partially mediated the effects of traits. Relationships were different for cognitive and affective Subjective Well-being indices.

This research provides a tool to select and prioritize new comers to work based on their preentry organizational commitment propensity through examining links between the big five personality factors: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness; and three component model of organizational commitment: affective commitment, continues commitment, normative commitment. Findings show that extroversion and openness respectively have positive and negative effects on all three components of organizational commitment. Results gained by Structured Equation Modelling (SEM) indicate neuroticism is negatively related to affective and continues commitment and positively to conscientiousness effects on continues commitment. In the second part of the study, the received results are applied to extract the general equations that enables to estimate new comer’s pre-entry organizational commitment and to rank them using TOPSIS and AHP. The AHP is used to determine the relative weights of commitment criteria and TOPSIS is employed for the final ranking of new comers based on these criteria’s.

For every highest spiritual matter, there is a corresponding key on the keyboard of the body.

Zofia Nałkowska,

“Count Emil”

Psychodrama is a method of therapy and personal development which strongly engages – apart from the intellect – the body and emotions. It frequently makes use of symbols and metaphors based on a natural inclination to play, at the same time triggering spontaneity and creativity. Psychodrama was invented by Jacob Moreno in the early 20th century. For a long time, it has been subjected to various changes. Its development has brought about the adjustment of its tools to different needs and group situations. Today, psychodrama is widely applied in psychotherapy, personal development, business, as well as education. The presented study is aimed at showing the usefulness of psychodrama as a tool which enhances the understanding of disability by both people without disability (as it is understood by the non-disabled) and the disabled (as regards the understanding of their own limitations). An additional goal is presenting the general assumptions of psychodrama the benefits from using its techniques for the development of e.g. teachers, therapists, tutors and other people working with the intellectually disabled, post-graduate students of special pedagogy in the field of oligophrenopedagogy.

While personality is strongly related to experienced emotions, few studies examined the role of personality traits on affective forecasting. In the present study, we investigated the relationships between extraversion and neuroticism personality traits and affective predictions about academic performance. Participants were asked to predict their emotional reactions two months before they will get their results for one important exam. At the same time, personality was assessed with the Big Five Inventory. All the participants were contacted by a text message eight hours after that the results were available, and they were requested to rate their experienced affective state. Results show moderate negative correlations between neuroticism and both predicted and experienced feelings, and that extraversion exhibits a weak positive correlation with predicted feelings, but not with experienced feelings. Taken together, these findings confirm that extraversion and neuroticism shape emotional forecasts, and suggest that affective forecasting interventions based on personality could probably enhance their efficiencies.

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).

W artykule konfrontuję koncepcję osoby Petera Strawsona z koncepcją osoby Paula Ricoeura, traktując je jako reprezentatywne ilustracje podejścia semantyczno-ontologicznego i pragmatyczno-egzystencjalnego (lub hermeneutycznego) zarazem do problemu języka i do problemu bytu zwanego osobą. Zaznaczam różnice między tymi podejściami, ale wskazuję także na ich punkty wspólne. Zgodnie z przedstawioną interpretacją, Ricoeur w swojej próbie przezwyciężenia ograniczeń semantycznej teorii osoby rozwija i uwypukla wątki, które w sposób marginalny były obecne już w teorii Strawsona, a skądinąd docenia znaczenie tych, które w tej teorii były pierwszoplanowe, chociaż je relatywizuje. Stosunek Ricoeura do Strawsona pokazuje złożoną relację między tzw. filozofią kontynentalną i tzw. filozofią analityczną.

Roger Scruton repudiates the idea that civil liberty is a natural and unconditionally desirable state of citizenry, while subjection is something degrading and unnatural. He characterizes the conservative political system as a ‘rule by institutions’ supported by a theory of nature and a theory describing the functioning of institutions. National politics results from operations of social and political institutions which have grown out of traditional arrangements, respect raison d’État, and are governed by offices. The author argues that this is a sound interpretation of essential political arrangements, if it can solve the problem of political reconstruction after a period of decline or disintegration. As a matter of fact Scruton offers such a solution in his analysis of various forms of liberalism, one of which he seems to identify with conservatism.

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic functional gastrointestinal disorder diagnosed on the basis of Rome IV criteria. Stress is an important contributor to the development of IBS symptoms, while personality, perceived self-efficacy, resilience, and coping strategies may be indirectly involved in the modulation of the body’s response to various stressors. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of selected personality traits and stress with IBS symptoms. We enrolled 129 participants (59 men and 70 women) aged from 18 to 61 years. The study group included 94 patients with IBS, while the control group comprised 35 participants without a diagnosed psychoso-matic disorder and chronic comorbidities. Participants were assessed using a self-designed questionnaire as well as the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations, NEO-Five Factor Inventory, 25-item Resilience Coping Scale (Skala Pomiaru Prężności — SPP-25), and General Self-Efficacy Scale. We observed a significant effect of personality, perceived self-efficacy, resilience, and coping strategies in patients with IBS. Moreover, stress was shown to be associated with disease severity, while the type of a coping strategy was related to the frequency of symptoms. The groups differed in terms of personality traits such as resilience, self-efficacy, extraversion, and neuroticism. Our study confirms the significant effect of personality traits and coping strategies in patients with IBS.

The article’s subject discusses Stefan Wyszyński’s personalist concept of Christians’ involvement in culture. In this context, the author’s attention was drawn to how the extent to which a personalist’s main assumptions may constitute to the basis for shaping culture, especially when regarding contemporary cultural reality. The analysis of culture carried out in the above article presents the discussed issues regarding a calling addressed to every human being. Placing it with the “realities of earthly life” emphasizes that in creative cultural activity, one should see the proper way of realizing the fullness of the human personality in the temporal and supernatural dimensions. Moreover, highlighting such elements as the human person, family, Nation, state, the international community, culture, economy, and politics understood in an integral way, as well as the Church proclaiming the universal message of salvation, the personalist concept of culture displays a praxeological character, rooted in a particular human existence and oriented towards the creative-redeeming dimension of human life.

The author, as a former pupil of the title figure of this paper, and as a leading his cooperator in numerous creative works, recalls memoires and presents an analysis of the personality of late professor of architectute, J. Tadeusz Gawłowski. The paper represents both – objective and official features of chronicle, hence also introduces readers into more personal secrets of the outstanding architect: creator, scholar and academic teacher – being simultaneously a picturesque and friendly person. He was connected mainly with Kraków University of Technology, but sharing also his activity in order to fulfill needs of three other, important academic schools.

Professor architect Juliusz Żórawski was for the author of this paper, a leading personality, during his period of studiea and assistantship. Author on the wider background of events of his life, draws a portrait of his mentor according to: creative Modern projecting, thinking, talking and writing about architecture – especially on the field of form. The teacher and his pupil had similar passions, e.g. expressing oneself by free hand sketching, sensibility towards a landscape, e.g. Tatra Mountains. This is why in spite that Żórawski was rather radical Modernist, the fan of abstraction, the author of this paper owes him his own views closer to the contextualism, and a creative, more “hot”expression, and at the first – his passion towards architecture and its creation.

In integrated approaches to personality (McAdams & Pals, 2006; McCrae & Costa, 1999), it is possible to examine relationships between personality traits, beliefs as characteristic adaptations, and subjective well-being. This research aimed to verify if implicit self-theories (belief about stability of human nature) proposed by Dweck (2000) and life-engagement proposed by Scheier et al. (2006) play a mediating role in relationships between personality traits and satisfaction with life. The relationships were examined with respect to infertility problem. A sample of 120 adults (aged 26–48; M = 36.60; SD = 4.82; 50% women) participated in the research. The mediation hypotheses were examined, and furthermore, four groups of couples were compared in terms of measured variables. The groups were: couples with (1) cured and (2) uncured infertility and couples who were not infertile and (3) have and (4) do not have children. Life-engagement mediated the relationship between Conscientiousness and satisfaction with life in the whole sample. The belief about stability of human nature mediated relationships between subjective well-being and Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Extraversion only among couples with an infertility problem.

The content of the study focuses on the issue of the right to work of persons with disabilities from the point of view of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted by the General Assembly of United Nations in 2006. The article discusses the formal elements of the national system supporting the professional activity of this group of people. The author also presents opinions of various entities, independent of state authorities, on the compatibility of solutions adopted in our country with the philosophy of the Convention.

Avatars are virtual representations of virtual world users. Creating a virtual representation can be considered an important element of the self-esteem formation process in modern adolescents. As previous research suggests, the similarity level between an avatar and its creator is related to the latter’s self-esteem. However, previous studies were limited by small and unrepresentative samples, which creates difficulties in generalizing the results. Moreover the studies usually did not include adolescents. This study aims to investigate possible predictors of adolescent–avatar similarity (AAS), in particular global self-esteem, which develops in adolescence. In addition to self-esteem, the importance of personality and gender was also examined. 130 high school students played the Characterium computer game, which was designed for this project. The participants also completed measures of global self-esteem and personality and explained why they had created such avatars. In order to test the research hypotheses, hierarchical regression analyses were performed. No relationship was found between adolescents’ global self-esteem and AAS; however extraversion and gender were significant predictors of adolescent–avatar similarity. Due to the limited number of studies in adolescents, we discuss our results based on the results of adults. The lack of verification of the first hypothesis may be due to the fact that adolescents use avatars to experiment with their own identity, regardless of their self-esteem. This suggests that they use avatars for a different purpose than adults (who want to boost their self-esteem). We discuss gender and personality results in terms of gender and personalty differences in (adult) players. Additionally we propose a hypothesis of cognitive overload (for adolescent extroverts).

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.

In Old English dual personal pronouns constituted a small but significant pocket of its inflectional morphology. Their disappearance in Middle English is usually taken as evidence for their marginal and tenuous status already in the preceding centuries. They are seen as optional, poetic, and unpredictable. It is the argument of this paper on the basis of the evidence of the Old English Genesis that these claims warrant a careful revision as – at least in this one poem – there is nothing random or irregular about their use.

The aim of this paper is defined in the two title questions related to Roman Ingarden’s research: (1) What constitutes the specificity and uniqueness of human cognitive system? (2) Is Roman Ingarden’s answer defensible in the light of today’s naturalistic tendencies? In response to the first question, the multidimensional structure of human being is indicated, thanks to which man has access to the sphere of values. In the axiological and ontological aspect the power of man to create new realities is emphasized. In the epistemological and ontological aspect three dimensions of this structure are shown, which are correlated, complex and relatively isolated systems of body, soul and consciousness. Next, in response to the second question, Ingarden’s nonreductive approach is discussed against the background of information processes and the issue of self-knowledge. However, his strong ontological assumptions are shown as well. In conclusion, the author emphasizes that Ingarden’s main research strategy remains consistently grounded in ontology (and in this sense it is anti‑naturalistic), but in some aspects it is compatible with today’s naturalist approaches favored in neurocognitive studies.