Freedom of choice and diversity of options: Some difficulties

This paper explores the possibility for a (non-preference-based) freedom ranking of opportunity sets that is sensitive to the diversity of the options. It turns out that how distances between sets and alternatives are measured is crucial to the derivation of such a ranking. Several proposals are examined, each of which is shown to lead to impossibility results. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at conferences in Kortrijk, Osnabrück, Oisterwijk, Caen and Pavia. I thank the participants at these conferences for their comments. I would also like to thank Steven Hartkamp, Theo Kuipers, Clemens Puppe and especially Kotaro Suzumura for their helpful comments. Furthermore, I am very grateful to Somdeb Lahiri for pointing out a mistake in a previous version of this paper.     

Seeds of peace: toward a common narrative

In the woods of Maine, young people from conflict regions meet to learn about themselves, each other, and their potential to promote peace.     

Body Satisfaction and Sexual Health in Dutch Female University Students

Studies in the field of body image have primarily addressed its negative aspects, such as body dissatisfaction. The present study focused instead on women who are satisfied with their bodies and on how body satisfaction relates to sexual health. A sample of 319 Dutch female university students completed an online survey that included items about body image evaluation, body image investment, overweight preoccupation, body image affect during sexual activity, sexual frequency, sexual functioning, and sexual self-esteem. We found that the level of body dissatisfaction was minimal in our sample. The majority reported neutral or mildly positive body evaluations, and in 30% of the sample these evaluations were clearly positive. Comparisons between women who reported positive versus neutral body evaluations showed that the body-satisfied women had lower body mass indexes (BMIs) and reported less body image investment, less overweight preoccupation, and less body self-consciousness during sexual activity. With regard to sexual health, they reported higher sexual self-esteem and better sexual functioning. Furthermore, we found that body image self-consciousness was negatively associated with sexual functioning, sexual self-esteem, and frequency of sexual activity with a partner. Body satisfaction did not account for a portion of the relationship of body self-consciousness during sexual activity with sexual health.     

Testing whether reduced cognitive performance in burnout can be reversed by a motivational intervention

It has been suggested that the motivation to spend effort is decreased in burnout patients, resulting in reduced cognitive performance. A question that remains is whether this decreased motivation can be reversed by motivational interventions. We investigated this by examining the effect of a motivational intervention on cognitive performance. We presented 40 burnout patients in The Netherlands and 40 matched healthy controls with a complex attention task. As expected, in a first block of trials the performance of the burnout patients was poorer than that of healthy controls. Subsequently, we provided the participants with fake positive feedback about their performance and announced that we would financially reward those who performed best in a subsequent block of trials. Contrary to the healthy controls, the burnout patients did not improve their performance and experienced more aversion to spend effort. The study demonstrated that impaired cognitive performance in burnout patients could not be reversed by motivational interventions, which is in line with contemporary theories on burnout that state that physiological changes in burnout may underlie a relatively long-term decrease in motivation. The implication of these results is that in practice employers and therapists might need to accept that there could be a reduction in cognitive performance in employees with burnout.     

Going global: professional mobility and concerns for LGBT workers

The world of work has regularized the practice of people moving from one country to another to accept job assignments. Travel and relocation are stress-laden endeavours. For LGBT people, the risks can be more complicated than they are for heterosexuals. This article explores particular challenges that LGBT people face when they travel and relocate for business, both domestically and internationally. The article is contextualized with a literature review on sexual minorities and workplace issues, and uses auto-ethnographic stories of three of the authors’ lived experiences as sexual minorities relocating for professional reasons in order to examine issues related to LGBT relocation. These issues include legal, social, cultural and familial considerations. Implications and suggestions for human resource developers are presented, which include acquiring awareness around the psychological and physiological reactions to new and diverse ecologies, or ‘eco-shocks’.     

Domination and total domination in complementary prisms

Let G be a graph and be the complement of G. The complementary prism of G is the graph formed from the disjoint union of G and by adding the edges of a perfect matching between the corresponding vertices of G and . For example, if G is a 5-cycle, then is the Petersen graph. In this paper we consider domination and total domination numbers of complementary prisms. For any graph G, and , where γ(G) and γ _t (G) denote the domination and total domination numbers of G, respectively. Among other results, we characterize the graphs G attaining these lower bounds. Research supported in part by the South African National Research Foundation and the University of KwaZulu-Natal.     

New Spatial Concepts Between Innovation and Lock-in: The Case of the Dutch Deltametropolis

It is often proclaimed that planning concepts serve an innovative function in the political process. They are praised as powerful tools that carry new insights and understandings into policy arenas. By examining the emergence and development of a new planning concept in the Dutch national spatial policy-making process, the deltametropolis concept, this paper questions this position. It argues that new spatial concepts tend to lose much of their innovative capacities when they enter the political arena and become encased in the traditional urban–rural planning discourse, thus reaffirming established planning orientations. The Dutch case of the deltametropolis illustrates that new spatial concepts may entail potential for innovation as much as for lock-in.