Fresh from my email inbox to you!

Dear In-Mind Fans,

We are happy to present to you the 6th issue of our magazine. For the current issue, we again have four excellent articles from recognized scholars from around the world. It seems that as we passed Valentine’s Day since our last issue, our authors were very much motivated by empathic feelings and love.

Do you ever donate money to famine victims in another country? People whom you have never heard about, but you felt so sorry for the hungry child on TV? Why do people do that? In our first article, Dr. Dan Batson and Dr. Nadia Ahmad dive into a question that philosophers have occupied themselves with for centuries: does altruism, or the ultimate goal to increase someone else’s welfare, really exist (http://www.in-mind.org/issue-6/altruism-myth-or-reality.html)?

Another lasting experience that we all encounter is that guy or girl on the street which leaves this lasting impression on us: it was love at first sight (http://www.in-mind.org/issue-6/love-at-first-sight.html). Find out what psychologists say about this phenomenon in Dr. Stephen Bertman’s article, who picks up where Katarzyna Kubacka  left of with her article on positive illusions in relationships (http://www.in-mind.org/issue-2/positive-illusions-brad-pitt-or-danny-devito-2.html). Then again, while we find out what love at first sight is, it is also important to actually understand what this phenomenon of love entails. Dr. Alex Gunz writes in his second article for In-Mind on the anatomy of love (http://www.in-mind.org/issue-6/the-anatomy-of-love.html).

Finally, Dr. Martijn van Zomeren authored an article entirely unrelated to the former topics. Everyone knows that what is your opinion, your moral conviction, comes from who you are – it is your own, individual “thing”, right? Think again. Your moral conviction might actually stem from which group you belong to. Being a Muslim, a right-wing extremist, a football supporter or just merely a teacher in a school might actually influence your opinion highly, not just who YOU are. Find out about the intricate workings of group dynamics in “Completementing Individualism with the Social Identity Approach” (http://www.in-mind.org/issue-6/complementing-individualism-with-the-social-identity-approach.html).

We hope you enjoy our new issue as much as we did in editing it. Please do not hesitate to give feedback to the authors via the comment form below the articles, or to ‘Stumble’ or ‘Digg’ it if you like the article.