Anna Esposito

The current study aims at examining the relationship between the perfectionism two-factor model and burnout dimensions measured by using the BAT through a longitudinal study. A two-wave cross-lagged study was conducted using path analysis in SEM of 191 workers. Results confirmed the predictive role of perfectionistic concerns on the burnout dimensions, whereas perfectionistic strivings were not significantly related, suggesting that perfectionism should be monitored by employers and clinicians to prevent employee burnout. Limitations and future research directions are envisaged.

The goal of this chapter is to show that human behavior is not random but follows principles and laws that result into regular patterns that can be not only observed, but also automatically detected and analyzed. The word “behavior” accounts here for nonverbal behavioral cues (e.g., facial expressions, laughter, gestures, etc.) that people display, typically outside conscious awareness, during social interactions. In particular, the chapter shows that observable behavioral patterns typically account for social and psychological differences that cannot be observed directly. Therefore, the analysis of behavioral patterns is important from a human sciences point of view because it helps to understand how people work. Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly important from a technological point of view because observable behavior can be thought of as the physical, machine detectable trace of social and psychological phenomena. In particular, if it is possible to automatically detect and interpret behavioral patterns, it means that machines can make sense of social and psychological phenomena in the same way as people do.

Creativity is one of the central dimensions of human achievement and social development and has always fascinated scientists and non-scientists alike. But what is the essential nature of creativity? And what is the role of consciousness in the emergence of creativity? If it is true that it has been explored in many aspects in the cognitive and neurobiological field, it is also true that the lore chest—from which the conscious mind through unconscious mechanisms extracts the rough material that is then brought to the surface—has been less investigated. The purpose of this article is to give an account of how the multiplicity of levels of awareness is made possible by a spontaneous order that has nothing to do with a monolithic view of creativity.

This book constitutes refereed proceedings of the COST 2102 International Training School on Cognitive Behavioural Systems held in Dresden, Germany, in February 2011. The 39 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from various submissions. The volume presents new and original research results in the field of human-machine interaction inspired by cognitive behavioural human-human interaction features. The themes covered are on cognitive and computational social information processing, emotional and social believable Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) systems, behavioural and contextual analysis of interaction, embodiment, perception, linguistics, semantics and sentiment analysis in dialogues and interactions, algorithmic and computational issues for the automatic recognition and synthesis of emotional states.