Ancient Greek and Latin medical authors considered a flight into solitude a compelling sign of mental disturbance, frequently described as misanthropia, a word fraught with meaning beyond the medical discourse. The fictionalised character Timon of Athens, the quintessential misanthrope, can shed light on ancient cultural concepts of self-imposed isolation from human contact. To cope with the sense of unease this deviant behaviour induced, misanthropia was explained as \'madness\', ridiculed in various genres of humour, morally condemned in philosophy, and ultimately demonized in Christian cosmology. These various attempts at containment echo in the medical works of the age, making it impossible to comprehend the concept of misanthropia in ancient medicine without taking full account of the cultural context.

It has recently been found that individuals high in autistic traits tend to believe that they are usually not treated fairly. In the present study, it is assumed that such a lowered personal belief in a just world is based on cumulative humiliation experiences that stem from autistic pragmatic language problems (e.g., communicating in a monotonous voice, not being \"in tune\" with others during conversations). Furthermore, the less individuals believe that they receive fair treatment, the more they may develop a negative attitude toward human nature (i.e., believing that humans are generally untrustworthy, unfair, and unhelpful). The serial multiple mediation model reflecting these assumptions received initial empirical support in a nonclinical sample (N = 344). Implications for professional health care are addressed.

Does income inequality reduce social trust? Although both popular and scholarly accounts have argued that income inequality reduces trust, some recent research has been more skeptical, noting these claims are more robust cross-sectionally than longitudinally. Furthermore, although multiple mechanisms have been proposed for why inequality could affect trust, these have rarely been tested explicitly. I examine the effect of state-level income inequality on trust using the 1973-2012 General Social Surveys. I find little evidence that states that have been more unequal over time have less trusting people. There is some evidence that the growth in income inequality is linked with a decrease in trust, but these effects are sensitive to how time is accounted for. While much previous inequality and trust research has focused on status anxiety, this mechanism receives the little support, but mechanisms based on social fractionalization and on exploitation and resentment receive some support. This analysis improves on previous estimates of the effect of state-level inequality on trust by using far more available observations, accounting for more potential individual and state level confounders, and using higher-quality income inequality data based on annual IRS tax returns. It also contributes to our understanding of the mechanism(s) through which inequality may affect trust.

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy-the tendency to view humans negatively-predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country (USA) and a diverse set of interdependent countries (Russia, Singapore, and Colombia). Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good.

Paul Klee was a major contributor to the development of modern European art. An ethnic German (although born in Switzerland) and a German citizen, he was persecuted by the Nazi government on political rather than racial grounds because of his allegedly \"degenerate\" artistic style. Dismissed from his teaching position, he emigrated to Switzerland in 1933; shortly afterward he became ill with systemic sclerosis and struggled with this condition for the remaining years of his life. Many publications have examined the effect of social rejection and illness on his art, but the present study considers the effect of these adversities on Klee\'s attitude toward his fellow humans. After being an extreme misanthrope in his early adult years, he developed an attitude of cosmic indifference toward humanity during the First World War, which he then maintained until the end of 1939. Although his rejection by Germany had been a significant emotional blow, it was the physical suffering caused by his illness that led him, at the end of his life, to show compassion toward the suffering of other individuals. In this he was like tragic figures such as King Lear who learned from their great misfortunes to value humanity.