Although alexithymia has been widely studied in clinical contexts, its relevance to motivational dynamics such as passion has yet to be fully understood. Building on the Dualistic Model of Passion that distinguishes between harmonious and obsessive passion, the present studies examined how alexithymia, attachment orientations, and mindfulness are associated with different forms of passion. Two cross-sectional studies were conducted on a total of 648 participants. Study 1 (N = 375 adults) tested whether alexithymia would mediate the associations between attachment anxiety/avoidance and passion orientations. Study 2 (N = 263 undergraduates) examined whether mindfulness would mediate the association between alexithymia and passion. Validated self-report scales were used, and mediation analyses were conducted. In Study 1, alexithymia mediated the associations between both attachment anxiety and avoidance and obsessive passion, and between avoidant attachment and harmonious passion. In Study 2, mindfulness mediated the association between alexithymia and obsessive passion, but not harmonious passion. Taken together, the findings from these two separate studies provide complementary evidence for distinct but theoretically related pathways linking attachment, alexithymia, mindfulness, and passion. The results highlight the importance of considering alexithymia as an explanatory variable linking attachment-related vulnerabilities to motivational orientations. They also provide indications that mindfulness may be associated with maladaptive forms of passion. Alexithymia may play a key role in the associations between attachment orientations and obsessive passion, with mindfulness potentially mediating these links. These findings provide insights into the emotional dynamics associated with passion.
Neandertal infants are rarely found, with only a few individuals documented in the literature. Therefore, their growth and development remain poorly understood. Amud 7 is the articulated skeleton of an infant Neandertal discovered in Amud Cave, northern Israel.1,2 The cave was excavated in the 1960s1 and the 1990s2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 and has yielded several human remains with distinct Neandertal affinities,1,9,10,11,12,13,14 as well as Middle Paleolithic stone tool assemblages,15,16,17,18,19,20,21 dated to approximately 51-56 thousand years old.22,23 Nearly 111 skeletal pieces of Amud 7 were found in situ, of which only the cranial bones were thoroughly described.24,25,26,27 It is the most complete Neandertal infant assigned to the 6- to 14-month age range. As such, it plays a significant role in our understanding of Neandertal paleobiology. The skeleton exhibits distinct Neandertal affinities in both cranial and postcranial remains, and its morphological features shed light on Neandertal phylogeny, growth, and development. Most notably, the infant exhibits signs of unusually rapid somatic growth, suggesting that Neandertals had a distinct developmental strategy in early life. Other rare Neandertal infants show the same pattern of accelerated early somatic and endocranial growth, suggesting a consistent difference in how our evolutionary relatives developed. Simultaneously supporting faster somatic growth and brain development would have resulted in high energetic demands. These findings emphasize the diversity of developmental strategies among hominin species and demonstrate that Neandertals might have followed a different developmental path, distinguishing them from H. sapiens.
The last decades have seen the emergence of a new academic conversation on entrepreneurial well-being amongst business ethicists and organisational scholars. In most cases, studies engaging in this line of discourse have linked entrepreneurship to global psychological measures of well-being in order to draw out the difference with other categories of work, typically with an emphasis on the non-financial values that can be gained from the pursuit of entrepreneurial activities. However, the intimate links that exist between entrepreneurship and the good life have only been narrowly drawn. In fact, most previous studies have used and borrowed the theoretical and empirical language of mainstream and quantitatively oriented scholarship to explain the relations between the two—rather than developing the “thicker” language and conceptualisation that can be achieved through hermeneutics and reflexive analysis. In an attempt to address this, we explore and reflect on accounts from 66 transnational entrepreneurs, who share their experiences of entrepreneurial life and well-being whilst living and starting up their companies abroad, in China. Adopting a reflective narrative approach, inspired by the work of Charles Taylor, the paper draws on rich qualitative data from in-depth interviews (totalling 117 h of recordings) to illustrate the moral depth and the historical complexity of transnational entrepreneurs’ motivations and experiences of well-being and to further conceptualise entrepreneurial well-being as a hermeneutic process of self-expression. Our findings and interpretations open an ontological-moral window to new understandings and crucial new directions for advancing scholarship on entrepreneurship, business ethics, and well-being.
Background Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms have advanced and recently shown high accuracy in diagnosing skin cancer from dermoscopic images. This study compared the diagnostic performance of the large language model ChatGPT-4 with that of specialized convolutional neural network (CNN)-based models in analyzing melanocytic lesions.Patients and Methods A cross-sectional comparative study was conducted using 117 dermoscopic images. The performance of ChatGPT-4 was assessed under two conditions: diagnosing lesions directly without annotations and diagnosing after annotating dermoscopic features. Results were compared with CNN-based models (YPSONO and ResNet) and human expert evaluations. The confusion matrices of all the models were calculated in addition to the diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and interobserver agreement (Cohen's Kappa).Results ChatGPT-4 achieved 92 % sensitivity, 89 % specificity, and an accuracy of 89.7 % in direct diagnosis. When annotations were required, sensitivity and specificity dropped to 68 % and 64 %, respectively. Agreement with experts on dermoscopic patterns was minimal (Cohen's Kappa = 0.13). ChatGPT-4 outperformed CNN models in direct diagnosis but exhibited notable limitations in describing dermoscopic features.Conclusions ChatGPT-4 demonstrated promising potential for accurate melanoma versus nevus classification without annotations, surpassing CNN-based models. However, its limited ability to describe dermoscopic features accurately highlights the need for further research and training.
This research examined alexithymia through the lens of personality as a dynamic regulatory system and focused on the ways in which two distinct self-regulatory modes, assessment and locomotion, are linked to alexithymia. Assessment involves the inclination to evaluate the value of something by weighing its strengths and weaknesses against other options leading to self-doubt and over-comparison. In contrast, locomotion reflects tendency to transition between states while investing psychological resources to actively pursue goals. Locomotion is associated with greater emotional intelligence, self-esteem and reduced counterfactual thinking. Two online subclinical studies (N = 224) tested multistep mediation models examining whether mindfulness and cognitive reappraisal would mediate the relationship between these self-regulatory modes and alexithymia. Assessment was positively associated with alexithymia, whereas locomotion showed a negative association. Mindfulness mediated both relationships, but reappraisal only mediated the assessment-alexithymia link. Locomotion may tap both mindfulness and the cognitive reappraisal associated with alexithymia whereas assessment may only implement cognitive reappraisal after mindfulness. Effects were found for both the global alexithymia score and the specific to DIF and DDF but not EOT, supporting the view of alexithymia as a failure in emotion representation. These findings underscore the benefit of motivation-based tailoring in alexithymia treatment.
