Europe’s Journal of Psychology (PsychOpen)
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Using a Computer Simulation to Improve Psychological Readiness for Job Interviewing in Unemployed Individuals of Pre-Retirement Age
No full textUnemployed individuals of pre-retirement age face significant challenges in finding a new job. This may be partly due to their lack of psychological readiness to go through a job interview. We view psychological readiness as one of the psychological attitude components. It is an active conscious readiness to interact with a certain aspect of reality, based on previously acquired experience. It includes a persons’ special competence to manage their activities and cope with anxiety. We created Job Interview Simulation Training (JIST) – a computer-based simulator, which allowed unemployed job seekers to practice interviewing repeatedly in a stress-free environment. We hypothesized that completion of JIST would be related to increase in pre-retirement job seekers’ psychological readiness for job interviewing in real life. Participants were randomized into control (n = 18) and experimental (n = 21) conditions. Both groups completed pre- and post-intervention job interview role-plays and self-reporting forms of psychological readiness for job interviewing. JIST consisted of 5 sessions of a simulated job interview, and the experimental group found it easy to use and navigate as well as helpful to prepare for interviewing. After finishing JIST-sessions the experimental group had significant decrease in heart rate during the post-intervention role-play and demonstrated significant increase in their self-rated psychological readiness, whereas the control group did not have changes in these variables. Future research may help clarify whether JIST is related to an increase in re-employment of pre-retirement job seekers
Transmitting Sport Values: The Importance of Parental Involvement in Children’s Sport Activity
No full textThe transmission of positive values between parents and children is generally considered to be the hallmark of successful socialization. As this issue has been widely discussed but surprisingly little researched - especially with reference to core sport values - in this study we aimed to: 1) analyze adolescent athletes’ acceptance of the sport values their parents want to transmit to them (i.e., parental socialization values) and 2) examine the relationship between parental involvement in children’s sportive activity and adolescents’ acceptance of their parents’ socialization values. One hundred and seventy-two Italian adolescents (48.3% male, 51.7% female) who regularly practice team sports were asked to fill out a questionnaire which included the Youth Sport Values Questionnaire – 2 and the Parental Involvement in Sport Questionnaire. The dyadic correlations revealed that young athletes are in general willing to accept their parents’ socialization values in regards to sport. Moreover, from the relative weight analysis (a relatively new data analysis strategy), it emerged that parental involvement characterized by praise and understanding is the most important predictor of adolescents’ willingness to accept their parents’ sport values. Implications of these results and further expansion of the study are discussed
The Effect of Schooling on Basic Cognition in Selected Nordic Countries
No full textThe present study investigated schooling effects on cognition. Cognitive data were collected as part of a research project (ProMeal) that investigated school meals and measured the intake of school lunch in relation to children’s health, cognitive function, and classroom learning in four Nordic countries, among children between 10–11 years of age. It was found that Finnish pupils attending 4th grade were not, on any measure, outperformed by Norwegian and Icelandic pupils attending 5th and Swedish pupils attending 4th grade on a task measuring working memory capacity, processing speed, inhibition, and in a subsample on response- and attention control. Moreover, boys were found to perform superior to girls on tasks measuring processing speed. However, girls were found to perform better on tasks related to attention and self-control. The results are discussed in relation to the reciprocal association between cognition and schooling and whether these results reflect quality differences between schools in the four Nordic countries; most notably in comparison to Finland
Conceptual Referents, Personality Traits and Income-Happiness Relationship: An Empirical Investigation
No full textOne of the ongoing debates in social indicator and subjective well-being research is concerned with the weak relationship between objective (such as income) and subjective indicators of well-being (such as life satisfaction). Empirical studies show that the relationship between subjective and the traditional objective well-being indicators is weak. This relationship is found to be very complex and far from clear. The present study tries to shed lights behind the complexity of the relationship between income and subjective well-being (SWB) by bringing into the analysis some alternative factors such as heterogeneity in the human perception and purpose of life (conceptual referent theory) and personality traits. Conceptual referent theory of happiness proposes that people differ in their conceptual referent for a happy life and this referent plays a significant role in their judgment about happiness and life satisfaction. Results of this cross-sectional survey based on 500 individuals residing in rural and urban areas indicate that the relationship between income and life satisfaction is not very strong. Furthermore, the relationship between income and life satisfaction is contingent on a person’s conceptual referent for happiness. This study suggests that income seems to have a significant influence on life satisfaction for some people (especially with outer oriented referents) and insignificant influence for other people (especially holding inner oriented referents). Additionally, neuroticism personality trait was able to further explain the relationship between income and life satisfaction. It was observed that the individuals with higher level of neuroticism tend to get a lower level of satisfaction from income rise as compared to individuals with lower level of neuroticism
Psychological Well-Being in Italian Families: An Exploratory Approach to the Study of Mental Health Across the Adult Life Span in the Blue Zone
No full textSelf-reported measures of psychological well-being and depressive symptoms were examined across differently aged family members, while controlling for the impact of marital status and personal satisfaction about family and non-family relations. Twenty-one grandchildren (i.e., ages 21-36 years) were recruited with their parents (i.e., 48-66 years old) and grandparents (i.e., 75-101 years of age) in the ‘blue zone’ of Ogliastra, an Italian area known for the longevity of its inhabitants. Each participant was individually presented a battery of questionnaires assessing their lifestyle and several perceived mental health indices, including the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS, Tennant et al., 2007), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (i.e., CES-D, Radloff, 1977). After assessing the level of concordance among adults sharing the same context, the Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) approach was used to assess the nested dataset. It was found that family membership (i.e., grandchildren versus parents and grandparents) predicted the WEMWBS score but not the CES-D when the impact of marital status and personal satisfaction about social (i.e., family and non-family) ties was controlled for. Moreover, two separate repeated-measure Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) documented similar level of personal satisfaction about social relationships across the three family groups. In conclusions, satisfying social ties with friends and family members together with an active socially oriented life style seems to contribute to the promotion of mental health in adult span
Sentimentality and Nostalgia in Elderly People in Bulgaria and Greece – Cross-Validity of the Questionnaire SNEP and Cross-Cultural Comparison
No full textSentimentality and nostalgia are two similar psychological constructs, which play an important role in the emotional lives of elderly people who are usually focused on the past. There are two objectives of this study - making cross-cultural comparison of sentimentality and nostalgia among Bulgarian and Greek elderly people using a questionnaire, and establishing the psychometric properties of this questionnaire among Greek elderly people. Sentimentality and nostalgia in elderly people in Bulgaria and Greece were studied by means of Sentimentality and Nostalgia in Elderly People questionnaire (SNEP), created by Gergov and Stoyanova (2013). For the Greek version, one factor structure without sub-scales is proposed, while for the Bulgarian version of SNEP the factor structure had four sub-scales, besides the total score. Together with some similarities (medium level of nostalgia and sentimentality being widespread), the elderly people in Bulgaria and Greece differed cross-culturally in their sentimentality and nostalgia related to the past in direction of more increased sentimentality and nostalgia in the Bulgarian sample. Some gender and age differences revealed that the oldest male Bulgarians were the most sentimental. The psychometric properties of this questionnaire were examined for the first time in a Greek sample of elders and a trend was found for stability of sentimentality and nostalgia in elderly people that could be studied further in longitudinal studies
Representations of Death Among Italian Vegetarians: An Ethnographic Research on Environment, Disgust and Transcendence
No full textThis paper focuses on the motives for vegetarian choices in contemporary Italian food culture, with specific reference to the role of the representations of death. The study adopts a qualitative research design aimed at an in-depth exploration of the reasons for avoiding meat, following an ethnographic method. Twenty-two participants (55% women, 45% men) aged 19-74, all vegetarians or vegans, mainly from Northern and Central Italy, were involved. Data from the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis were examined according to the qualitative thematic analysis: the results show the role of death in the construction of disgust towards meat, running parallel with an emphasis on spirituality, ethical treatment of animals and the environment as reasons for avoiding meat, in particular, the concern-generating disgust and its relationship with the representation of death as a contaminating essence. The basis of disgust lies in this connection, from which the idea that oral consumption of contaminants characterized by corruptive properties, passing through the flesh of dead animals to humans, derives. The role of anti-speciesism is considered as a latent perspective, which may influence the vegetarian and vegan choices
The Effect of Telling Lies on Belief in the Truth
No full textThe current study looks at the effect of telling lies, in contrast to simply planning lies, on participants’ belief in the truth. Participants planned and told a lie, planned to tell a lie but didn’t tell it, told an unplanned lie, or neither planned nor told a lie (control) about events that did not actually happen to them. Participants attempted to convince researchers that all of the stories told were true. Results show that telling a lie plays a more important role in inflating belief scores than simply preparing the script of a lie. Cognitive dissonance may lead to motivated forgetting of information that does not align with the lie. This research suggests that telling lies may lead to confusion as to the veracity of the lie leading to inflated belief scores
Compassionate Love for a Romantic Partner Across the Adult Life Span
No full textCompassionate love has received research attention over the last decade, but it is as yet unclear how it is experienced over a lifetime. The purpose of this study was to investigate compassionate love for a romantic partner throughout the adult life span, exploring individual differences in the propensity to experience compassionate love in regard to age, gender, religion, love status, love styles, and subjective well-being. The results showed that religion and love status display significant effects on compassionate love. Believers experienced greater compassionate love than nonbelievers, and individuals in love presented greater compassionate love than those who were not in love. Love styles and subjective well-being were found to be related to compassionate love. These findings corroborate studies that indicate that individuals who experience higher compassionate love for a romantic partner are more likely to report Eros, Agape, and subjective well-being
A Cross-Continental Study on Children's Drawings of Football Players: Implications for Understanding Key Issues and Controversies in Human Figure Drawings
No full textProfessionals examine various aspects of girls’ and boys’ drawings as a way of understanding their intelligence, personality and emotional state. However, the extent to which such measures could be universally generalised or attributed to a specific cultural norm is still a debatable issue. In the present study five key features of children’s drawings namely: the size (height) of the drawings, profile or full face, figure in action or static, shaded or non-shaded and the nature of additional details were examined from a cross-cultural perspective, and by providing a topic (football) for which children’s drawing of a human figure could provide opportunities for the latter indices to manifest and flourish. Children from three countries; England, Iran and Brazil, representing three continents took part in this study. The participants were asked to draw a football player from their own country and from the other participating countries. The results showed that Brazilian children differ from Iranian and English children by drawing significantly smaller figures and putting more football action in the drawings. Shading of the figure drawn was more prevalent amongst English children. Such findings have implications for the interpretation of key aspects of children's drawings in educational, clinical and therapeutic settings and from a universal vs. culturally-specific viewpoint