Europe’s Journal of Psychology (PsychOpen)
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Intellectual Performance and Educational Attainment of Mexican Adolescents in Poverty
No full textThe objective of this study was to determine factors that can predict the intellectual performance and educational attainment of adolescents living in poverty. Data of Mexican adolescents from rural and urban areas (N = 1,093, 55.8% male, 61% urban) and their mothers were analyzed. The data came from a probabilistic sample with national representativeness of beneficiary households of the governmental program to fight poverty Oportunidades. Mothers and children were surveyed separately at home using questionnaires. Results from structural equations modeling revealed that higher intellectual performance was determined by older age, higher maternal intellectual performance and education, more adequate parenting practices, fewer siblings, and less insecure neighborhoods. Higher educational attainment was predicted by older age, higher intellectual performance, and more psychological resources. Data explained 25% of the variance of intellectual performance, and 39% of the variance of educational attainment. Results are discussed regarding the possibility of enhancing intellectual performance and education
The Dark Side of Study: When Study Negatively Affects Relationships and School Climate. The Study-Relationships Conflict Scale
No full textThis study proposes a new instrument for evaluating the Study-Relationships Conflict, or the conflict that may exist between study and personal relationships with family, friends, schoolmates, and teachers. We recruited a sample of 598 Italian University students (age: M = 22.58 ± 3.85) of different majors. By means of Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses, we reduced the 16-item pilot version to nine items and three factors: 1) Quarrels at School—QS; 2) Relationship Impairment—RI; 3) Family and Friends’ Complaints—FFC. Moreover, we analyzed the correlation between these scales and some academic indicators: Grade Point Average (GPA) and time spent studying. The results showed that the Study-Relationships Conflict Scale (SRCS) has good psychometric properties. In addition, GPA positively correlates with the FFC scale; while time spent studying correlates positively with both the RI and the FFC scales. Finally, QS has a statistically and low significant positive correlation with the hours a day of study before exams. The SRCS will be useful in future research aiming to analyze how studying behaviors could affect social and school relationships. Moreover, it could also be used as a quick screening for detecting student at-risk of high social impairment due to their overstudying, and for developing preventive interventions
Frogs’ Legs Versus Roast Beef: How Culture Can Influence Mind-Wandering Episodes Across the Lifespan
No full textNumerous studies have captured the nature of mind-wandering and how it changes across the lifespan; however, the influence of culture has been neglected. This study investigated the joint effects of culture and age in a large scale online questionnaire-based survey of 308 adults over 18 years of age, both in France and the United Kingdom. To capture a profile of thinking style, self-report measures of mind-wandering frequency, mindfulness, mood, rumination, self-reflection, future thinking, depressive symptoms, and cognitive failures were gathered. Findings revealed an earlier decrease in mind-wandering frequency for French speaking participants. Cultural effects were demonstrated on rumination and reflection rates across the life span, with in general more rumination and less reflection for English speakers. Overall, negatively toned thoughts were dominant for English compared to more expressive thoughts in general for French speakers. Confirmatory factor analyses featured different theoretical models to explain mind-wandering frequency in the French and British populations. This study provides the basis for further investigations of sociocultural influences on the eclectic phenomenon of mind-wandering
Parents’ Sport Socialization Values, Perceived Motivational Climate and Adolescents’ Antisocial Behaviors
No full textParents play a key role in young athletes’ sport experience. In particular, parents’ sport goals for children may influence young athletes’ morally relevant sport behaviors. The present study involves 172 Italian adolescents (female = 51.7%; age M = 15.41, SD = 1.73) practicing team sports and analyzed whether and the extent to which parents’ sport socialization values, those values adolescents perceived their parents wanted them to endorse (i.e., moral, competence, status values), were associated with young athletes’ antisocial behaviors towards teammates and opponents. Adolescents’ perceptions of the prominent motivational climate (i.e., mastery and performance) within their team were also considered. Participants were asked to fill out questionnaires, including the Youth Sport Values Questionnaire-2, adapted to measure adolescents’ perceptions of parental socialization values, the Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire and the Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior in Sport Scale. The results of multiple linear regression analysis and relative weight analysis showed that mastery motivational climate, as protective factor, and mothers’ status values, as risk factor, were the most important variables in predicting adolescents’ antisocial behavior towards teammates. As far as adolescents’ antisocial behavior towards opponents was concerned, performance motivational climate and mothers’ status values were the most relevant predictors: the more adolescents perceived their coaches and mothers as giving importance to performance and status, the higher was the frequency of their antisocial behavior in sport. Implications and further developments of the study are discussed
Workplace Bullying and Occupational Stress Among University Teachers: Mediating and Moderating Factors
No full textIn the study, it is explored whether exposure to workplace bullying predicts symptoms of occupational stress, and whether this association is mediated by interpersonal relationships, and moderated by sex and nationality. A sample of 610 university teachers from Pakistan (196 males, 133 females) and Finland (152 males, 129 females) completed an online questionnaire. A conditional process model was applied using the PROCESS programme. Workplace bullying served as predictor, stress symptoms as predicted variable, relationships with (a) colleagues and (b) family as mediators, and sex and country as moderators. As expected, workplace bullying had a significant effect on stress symptoms, which was mediated by family relationships but not by relationships with colleagues. Neither sex nor country had a moderating effect. Positive family relationships thus mediate the stressful impact of workplace bullying, and this was the case for both sexes and both nationalities
Memory-Related Encoding-Specificity Paradigm: Experimental Application to the Exercise Domain
No full textThe Encoding-Specificity Paradigm indicates that memory recall will be superior when contextual factors are congruent between memory encoding and memory retrieval. However, unlike other contextual conditions (e.g., verbal context, mental operations, global feature context, mood dependency, and physical operations), this paradigm has nearly been ignored in the exercise domain. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the Encoding-Specificity Paradigm in the context of exercise and rest conditions. 24 young adults (age: M = 21 years) completed a within-subject, counterbalanced experiment involving four laboratory visits, including 1) R-R (rest-rest) condition, 2) R-E (restexercise) condition, 3) E-R (exercise-rest) condition, or 4) E-E (exercise-exercise) condition. The exercise bout included a 15-minute moderate-intensity walk on a treadmill. Memory recall was assessed via a 15 word-list task. Memory recall was greater for R-R (8.71 ± 3.1) versus R-E (7.46 ± 2.8), and similarly, for E-E (8.63 ± 2.7) versus E-R (8.21 ± 2.7). The mean word recall for the congruent and incongruentconditions, respectively, was 8.67 (2.4) and 7.83 (2.4). There was a statistically significant condition effect (F = 5.02; P = .03; partial η² = .18). This experiment provides direct support for the Encoding-Specificity Paradigm in the exercise domain
Is Shame Managed Through Mind-Wandering?
No full textShame is a notoriously unpleasant emotion, and although claims about the mechanisms through which we might manage it are none too scarce, relatively little empirical evidence is available concerning how people tend to cope with it. As such, the present study sought to investigate the effects of shame on mind-wandering. To do this, 120 participants were recruited and systematically assigned to one of the three groups, namely shame, pride, or control condition, and traits shame and self-compassion were measured for each participant. In order to assess the frequency of the incidents of mind-wandering, the participants were asked to recall a personal experience of shame or pride and then a reading task of few pages of geography followed. The duration participants spent on the reading task, their scores on a reading comprehension test, their self-reported frequency of mind-wandering, and their reported number of unrelated thoughts during the recall were used as a measure of mind-wandering. The results demonstrated that participants in the shame condition did not differ from those in the pride and control conditions in terms of mind-wandering. In spite of that, participants who had initially scored higher on trait shame (i.e., suffered from chronic shame) reported a significantly higher frequency of mind-wandering. This being the result, the underlying reasons for, and implications of, the findings were discussed
The New Age of Adolescence and the Use of Social Networks in Youths
No full textProf. Massimo Ammaniti is considered one of the most eminent Italian psychoanalysts specialized in the area of human development. In addition to carrying out his activity as a university lecturer and carrying out his profession as a psychoanalyst, Massimo Ammaniti is also the author of more than 200 scientific publications. He is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and he is in the Board of the World Association of Infant Mental Health. His main interests focus on parents-children interactions, adolescence, neurobiology, and the changes in the family functioning in the modern society. In this interview, he shares his thoughts about the recent transformations in the developmental stage of adolescence and reflects on the use made by youths of today’s social networks
Assessing the Structure of the Five Factor Model of Personality (IPIP-NEO-120) in the Public Domain
No full textAssessment of individual differences in personality traits is arguably one of the hallmarks of psychological research. Testing the structural validity of trait measurements is paramount in this endeavor. In the current study, we investigated 30 facet traits in one of the accessible and comprehensive public-domain Five Factor Model (FFM) personality inventories, IPIP-NEO-120 (Johnson, 2014), using one of the largest US samples to date (N = 320,128). We present structural loadings for all trait facets organized into respective FFM-trait domain (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). Both hierarchical second-order and bi-factor models showed tolerable model fit indices, using confirmatory factor analysis in a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. Some facet traits were substantially more representative than others for their respective trait domain, which facilitate further discussions on FFM-construct content. We conclude that IPIP-NEO is sufficiently structurally robust for future use, for the benefit of research and practice in personality assessment
Heuristics in Judgment Tasks with Unrecognized Elements
No full textAccording to published studies in the field, random choice and random estimation are the only options for tackling judgment and decisionmaking tasks where the elements from which to infer a required criteria are not recognized. In Campitelli and Labollita (2010), participants were asked to estimate the nationality and Elo rating of chess players based on their surnames. In the present study I re-analyze those 123 participants from Campitelli and Labollita (2010) who declared not to have recognized any player. Even in this scenario of null recognition, they managed to correctly infer the Russian players' nationality and Elo ratings; it is likely that successful and ecologically rational heuristics were used. I found evidence of new structured probabilistic environments external to the lab, likely to have generated a number of undirected and involuntary associations in the memories of the participants, who may have used them in their heuristics to infer the criteria requested. The results support the models of limited rationality: despite the scarcity of available information, the fact that the heuristics did not guarantee success, and the risk of overestimating the heuristics’ effectiveness while underestimating their own biases, participants still favored them over random guesswork, thus suggesting an adaptive use. I invite a revision of what is considered “good reasoning” when applied to problems in environments of uncertainty that call for satisfactory, rather than optimal, solutions. This research provides the basis for new studies in the field of heuristics under previously unexplored conditions, and a new perspective for the analysis of prior works, towards a better understanding of the relationship between cognition and the environment.
Supplementary material to this article is available at: https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.260