Perceived Collective Efficacy and Parenting Competence: The Roles of Quality of Life and Hope

Parents' perceptions of their parenting competence predict successful implementation of parenting tasks and contribute to their interest and involvement in parenting and to their children's development. Thus, identifying factors that contribute to parents' perceptions of parenting competence can help inform efforts to promote children's safety and well-being. The present study employs social disorganization theory to examine the relationship between collective efficacy and parents' sense of competence, measured along two dimensions: parental efficacy and parental satisfaction. It examines the direct association between the two constructs and whether the association is mediated by parent perceptions of their quality of life (QOL) and sense of hope. Data were collected from 198 parents residing in a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, Israel. The analyses indicated that high collective efficacy was directly associated with high parental efficacy, but not with high parental satisfaction. Using structural equation modeling, a mediation model was found whereby higher collective efficacy was associated with (a) higher QOL, which in turn was related to a greater sense of hope, which was linked with higher parental efficacy; and (b) higher QOL, which was directly associated with higher parental satisfaction. The findings provide further support to the idea that neighborhood characteristics play an important role in parents' ability to care for their children.     

Need for approval and counseling outcomes

The intent of this study was to determine the effects of a clients' need for approval on the outcomes of counseling. The expectation was that clients who have a high need for approval by others would cooperate more with the counseling process and would more often be successful in the sense of being rehabilitated. The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale was administered to 167 applicants at a state rehabilitation agency immediately after the initial interview. It was hypothesized that successfully rehabilitated clients would obtain significantly higher social desirability scores than those clients who were not successful. The results confirmed the hypothesis at the .01 level of significance.     

The effects of social reinforcement and task difficulty level on the pleasure derived by normal and retarded children from cognitive challenge and mastery

In order to examine several factors influencing the pleasure derived from mastery, 32 normal first-grade children (mean MA = 7.7) and 32 MA-matched familial mentally retarded children were given puzzles representing four difficulty levels. Half of the children were socially reinforced for their successes and half performed in an experimenter-absent condition. There was more smiling among normal than retarded children, in the social reinforcement than in the experimenter-absent condition, and among girls than boys. The condition effect was greater for girls than boys. In the experimenter-absent condition, normal children displayed more pleasure on the difficult than on the easy puzzles, whereas the trend was just the reverse for the retarded children. Large within-sex differences were found for normal girls only, revealing that one subgroup derived more pleasure from the more difficult puzzles whereas another subgroup enjoyed the easier puzzles more. The findings were discussed in terms of the author's refinement of White's model of effectance motivation.     

Cultural group perception enhances sense of agency in a multicultural society

Group, which involves collective actions for achieving shared goals, can be conceptually understood as an important source of agency and control. The current research investigated whether group identity salience can enhance sense of agency within the individual. Specifically, we examined whether an activated cultural group identity, through presenting different types of cultural photographs in a predictable way, would facilitate people's sense of agency by using an implicit method, namely, intentional binding effect paradigm. Experiment 1a found that an activated cultural group identity enhanced the sense of agency. Next, Experiment 1b replicated the findings by recruiting a different ethnic group in the same society. Experiment 2 explored what may affect the intensity of induced sense of agency and found that perceived representativeness of the presented cultural stimuli was positively correlated with the intensity of induced sense of agency. Finally, Experiment 3 explored whether ethnic minority and majority groups would demonstrate different intensity of agency when their cultural identity was activated. The results showed that the sense of agency induced by the mainstream cultural stimuli was greater than that induced by the foreign cultural photographs. These patterns were not different between the two ethnic groups. Taken together, these findings reflected the dynamic nature of cultural identity construction in a multicultural society.     

Skillful Inquiry as a Means to Success in Mixed‐Motive Negotiation1

People typically regard mixed‐motive negotiations as competitive situations requiring assertive strategies, which often preclude achieving integrative gains. However, much of Argyris' (1976, 1982, 1993 ) work suggests that questions, rather than just statements, are necessary to create clear understanding of other people's interests and goals, which has been shown ( Allred, Mallozzi, Matsui, & Raia, 1997 ) to be linked to integrative gains. Experimental evidence indicated that the more positive regard negotiators felt for each other, the more they would inquire into the other's needs and interests. The evidence also suggested that more inquiry produced more accurate understanding of the other side's interests, which led to greater integrative gains. These findings are congruent with theory of successful dialogue derived in less contentious settings.     

The Development of Children's Knowledge of Attention and Resource Allocation in Single and Dual Tasks

Developmental changes in kindergarten, 1st-, and 4th-grade children's knowledge about the variables that affect attention sharing and resource allocation were examined. Findings from the 2 experiments showed that kindergartners understood that person and strategy variables affect performance in attention-sharing tasks. However, knowledge of how task variables affect performance was not evident to them and was inconsistent for 1st and 4th graders. Children's knowledge about resource allocation revealed a different pattern and varied according to the dissimilarity of task demands in the attention-sharing task. In Experiment 1, in which the dual attention tasks were similar (i.e., visual detection), kindergarten and 1st-grade children did not differentiate performance in single and dual tasks. Fourth graders demonstrated knowledge that performance on a single task would be better than performance on the dual tasks for only 2 of the variables examined. In Experiment 2, in which the dual attention tasks were dissimilar (i.e., visual and auditory detection), kindergarten and 1st-grade children demonstrated knowledge that performance in the single task would be better than in the dual tasks for 1 of the task variables examined. However, 4th-grade children consistently gave higher ratings for performance on the single than on the dual attention tasks for all variables examined. These findings (a) underscore that children's meta-attention is not unitary and (b) demonstrate that children's knowledge about variables affecting attention sharing and resource allocation have different developmental pathways. Results show that knowledge about attention sharing and about the factors that influence the control of attention develops slowly and undergoes reorganization in middle childhood.     

The affective costs of overconfidence

Positive illusions, though often beneficial (Taylor & Brown, 1988 ), can diminish the pleasure of outcomes. This prediction follows from decision affect theory. We investigated this prediction by measuring the confidence that recreational basketball players felt while making shots and the pleasure they felt with subsequent outcomes. Results showed that most players were overconfident. Those who were more overconfident tended to experience less enjoyment with their outcomes. Using individual parameter estimates from decision affect theory, we estimated how each player would have felt if their self assessments had been accurate. For the vast majority, better calibration would have led to greater pleasure. In a second study, we randomly assigned players to a debiasing treatment condition or a control condition. Relative to the control players, debiased players were better calibrated and derived greater average pleasure from the task. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Importance of Pleasure in the Moral for Kant's Ethics

I argue for a new reading of Kant's claim that respect is the moral incentive; this reading accommodates the central insights of the affectivist and intellectualist readings of respect, while avoiding shortcomings of each. I show that within Kant's ethical system, the feeling of respect should be understood as paradigmatic of a kind of pleasure, pleasure in the moral. The motivational power of respect arises from its nature as pleasurable feeling, but the feeling does not directly motivate individual dutiful actions. Rather, the feeling is motivational in the sense that, after an agent has acted in a morally good way, the pleasure that results from that action contributes to the cultivation of virtue in the agent and, consequently, morally good actions in the future. Understanding the feeling of respect to be moral pleasure not only gives us insight into how finite rational beings develop virtue, but also a new way of understanding respect as an incentive.     

Does affluence impoverish the experience of parenting?

Acquiring greater financial resources before having children seems like an intuitive strategy for people to enhance their well-being during parenthood. However, research suggests that affluence may activate an agentic orientation, propelling people to pursue personal goals and independence from others, creating a conflict with the communal nature of parenting. Coherence between one's goals and actions has been theorized to be essential for the experience of meaning in life. Thus, we hypothesized that affluence would be associated with a diminished sense of meaning during childcare. In Study 1, using the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM), we found that socioeconomic status (SES) was negatively related to the average sense of meaning parents reported across episodes of the day when they were taking care of their children. In Study 2, a reminder of wealth produced a parallel effect; when parents were exposed to a photograph of money, they reported a lower sense of meaning in life while spending time with their kids at a children's festival. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between wealth and well-being by showing that affluence can compromise a central subjective benefit of parenting—a sense of meaning in life.     

Attachment and preschool children's understanding of maternal versus non‐maternal psychological states

There is growing evidence that insecurely attached children are less advanced in their social understanding than their secure counterparts. However, attachment may also predict how individual children use their social understanding across different relationships. For instance, the insecure child's social‐cognitive difficulties may be more pronounced when the psychological states of an attachment figure are being considered. In the current study, forty‐eight 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children were asked about their mothers' emotions and false beliefs, as well as those of non‐attachment figures. The Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) was administered to assess children's attachment representations. Children's SAT scores predicted their overall performance on the false belief and causes of emotion tasks, even after controlling for age and verbal ability. More interestingly, however, children with high scores on the Avoidance dimension of the SAT experienced greater difficulty understanding maternal false beliefs relative to those of an unfamiliar adult female. Thus, although attachment insecurity may hinder social‐cognitive development in general, the findings suggest that there are more specific effects as well. Attachment representations that are characterized by high levels of avoidance appear to interfere with children's ability to fully engage their social‐cognitive skills when reasoning about maternal mental states.     

You can do it if you really try: The effects of motivation on thinking for pleasure

People find it difficult to enjoy their own thoughts when asked to do so, but what happens when they are asked to think about whatever they want? Do they find thinking more or less enjoyable? In the present studies, we show that people are more successful in enjoying their thoughts when instructed to do so. We present evidence in support of four reasons why this is: without instructions people do not realize how enjoyable it will be to think for pleasure, they do not realize how personally meaningful it will be to do so, they believe that thinking for pleasure will be effortful, and they believe it would be more worthwhile to engage in planning than to try to enjoy their thoughts. We discuss the practical implications of thinking for pleasure for promoting alternatives to the use of technology.     

Children's understanding of their own and others' mental states. Part B. Understanding of others precedes self‐understanding for some false beliefs

We examined 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children's understanding of their own and another's false beliefs in two experiments using diverse deceptive box and unexpected transfer tasks. Tasks in the first experiment required the child to think about an absent person's responses to questions, whereas those in the second experiment used a confederate present during testing. Children performed better on deceptive box tasks when the other person was present rather than absent; they performed equally on accidental and intentional unexpected transfer tasks. Children understood the other's false beliefs by 4–5 years of age, and their own by 5–6 years of age. Children aged between 4 and 5 years appear to have greater difficulty discounting or ignoring misleading information when thinking about their own beliefs than when thinking about another's, at least for the particular false belief tasks employed. Inconsistencies between our findings and those of a recent meta‐analysis ( Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001 ) are easily reconciled.     

BEGINNING READERS' MOTIVATION FOR READING IN RELATION TO PARENTAL BELIEFS AND HOME READING EXPERIENCES

Sixty-five 6-year-olds (first graders) from different sociocultural backgrounds and their mothers participated in a study examining children's motivation for reading in relation to parental beliefs and home literacy experiences. Each child completed an individually administered Motivations for Reading Scale that assessed several theoretical dimensions of reading motivation, including enjoyment/interest in reading, perceived competence as a reader, and sense of the value of reading. Parents were interviewed regarding their beliefs about reasons for reading, their beliefs about their child's interest in learning to read, and their ratings of the frequency of their child's experiences with printed materials. Results revealed that the beginning readers had generally positive views about reading and that no differences in motivation were associated with income level, ethnicity, or gender. Empirical support was provided for the distinctness of the dimensions of value, enjoyment, and perceived competence. Parental identification of pleasure as a reason for reading predicted children's motivation for reading, as did parents' reports that their child took an active interest in learning to read. Children's motivation for reading was not associated with frequency of storybook reading or library visits, but frequent use of basic skills books (ABC books) was negatively associated with motivation. The study demonstrated the importance of looking beyond quantitative indices of home literacy experiences in accounting for the development of motivation for reading; parents who believe that reading is pleasurable convey a perspective that is appropriated by their children, either directly through their words or indirectly through the nature of the literacy experiences they provide.     

Childless adults with higher secure attachment state have stronger parenting motivation

This study aimed to systematically examine the coherence in the motivation of parenting with the security attachment state of adults. A total of 228 childless participants (126 men, 102 women) first completed a self-report questionnaire including the State Adult Attachment Measure scale and the Interest in Infants questionnaire. They were then administered three laboratory-based tasks: a) liking, which measured the specific hedonic experience to infants' neutral faces; b) representational responding (actively seeking infants' neutral faces); and c) evoked responding (actively retaining images of infants' neutral faces). The results revealed that after controlling for gender, anxiety, and avoidance, security attachment state was associated with higher levels of interest in infants, assessed via verbal measures, and associated with liking and wanting (divided into representational and evoked responding) for infants' neutral faces. Moreover, infant faces elicited pleasure but not the sense of dominance or wanting in individuals with high avoidance attachment state. These results suggest that improving security attachment state may enhance motivation for parenting and improve the quality of parental caregiving.     

Beliefs And Creative Performance: Relationships Across Three Tasks

Creative work occurs on novel, ill‐defined tasks. By virtue of their ambiguity and complexity, however, creative tasks allow the situation to be construed in a number of ways. Accordingly, one might argue that beliefs, as interpretive structures, would be related to performance on creative problem‐solving tasks. To test this proposition, a battery of measures was developed to assess people's beliefs. Subsequently, 195 undergraduates were asked to work on three creative problem‐solving tasks. When quality and originality ratings, reflecting performance on the creative problem‐solving tasks, were regressed on the beliefs, multiple correlations in the low .40s were obtained. It was found that beliefs consistent with the nature of the task were those most likely to be related to performance. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the role of beliefs in shaping people's creative problem‐solving activities.     

PLEASURE AS SELF‐DISCOVERY

This paper uses readings of two classic autobiographies, Edmund Gosse's Father & Son and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, to develop a distinctive answer to an old and central question in value theory: What role is played by pleasure in the most successful human life? A first section defends my method. The main body of the paper then defines and rejects voluntarist, stoic, and developmental hedonist lessons to be taken from central crises in my two subjects' autobiographies, and argues for a fourth, diagnostic lesson: Gosse and Mill perceive their individual good through the medium of pleasure. Finally, I offer some speculative moral psychology of human development, as involving the waking, perception, management, and flowering of generic and individual capacities, which I suggest underlies Gosse and Mill's experiences. The acceptance of one's own unchosen nature, discovered by self‐perceptive pleasure in the operation of one's nascent capacities, is the beginning of a flourishing adulthood in which that nature is fully developed and expressed.     

Relations Among Preschool Children's Understanding of Visual Perspective Taking,False Belief,and Lying

This study investigated the relations among preschool children's ability to understand that other people see things differently than they do, that other people can believe things differently than the children know to be true, and that they can manipulate others' beliefs through intentional lying. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 were given tasks that tested their knowledge of Level 2 visual perspective taking, understanding of false belief, and the discriminative use of deceptive ploys. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III) was administered as a measure of language proficiency. The children's scores on the three types of tasks were correlated with each other and with children's age, but not with scores on the PPVT-III. Most children either passed all the tasks or failed all the tasks. Regression analyses indicated that scores on visual perspective taking and false belief independently predicted each other, and scores on false belief and the discriminative use of deception independently predicted each other. The results provide evidence that advances in visual perspective taking, false belief understanding, and the discriminative use of deceptive ploys are developmentally related and occur in close synchrony.     

Aristotle on Choosing Virtuous Action for its Own Sake

While Aristotle claims that virtuous actions are choiceworthy for their own sakes, he also claims that many virtuous actions are to be chosen as instrumental means to securing further ends. It would seem that an action is choiceworthy for its own sake only if it would be choiceworthy whether or not it served further ends. How, then, can such virtuous actions be choiceworthy for their own sakes? This article criticizes John Ackrill's and Jennifer Whiting's answers to this question. I propose an alternative, linking the choiceworthiness of virtuous actions to the pleasure, nobility, and beauty to be found in them.     

Social anxiety and the accuracy of predicted affect

Social anxiety is theorised to arise from sustained over-activation of a mammalian evolved system for detecting and responding to social threat with corresponding diminished opportunities for attaining the pleasure of safe attachments. Emotional forecasting data from two holidays were used to test the hypothesis that greater social anxiety would be associated with decreased expectations of positive affect (PA) and greater anticipated negative affect (NA) on a holiday marked by group celebration (St. Patrick's Day) while being associated with greater predicted PA for daters on a romantic holiday (Valentine's Day). Participants completed symptom reports, made affective forecasts and provided multiple affect reports throughout each holiday. Higher levels of social anxiety were associated with greater anticipated PA for Valentine's Day daters, but lower experienced PA on the holiday; this was not found for trait anxiety and depression. Alternatively, trait anxiety, depression and social anxiety were associated with less predicted PA for St. Patrick's Day, greater anticipated NA and diminished experienced PA/greater NA during the holiday. Results are discussed in light of perceived hope for rewarding safe emotional contact for those daters in contrast to the greater possibility for social threat associated with group celebration typical of St. Patrick's Day.     

Parent Perception of Retarded Child's Intelligence

A dual evaluation technique exposed measurable and identifiable discrepancies between a retarded child's functioning as measured by standardized tests and the parental perception of that functioning. The sample consisted of 25 mothers and their children ranging in age from 3½ years to 15½ years. The Revised Stanford-Binet was employed for both parent and child. The examiner preceded the administration of the Binet to the mother with an explanation that she was to answer the questions and perform the required tasks in the exact manner she thought her child would respond. The test was administered and scored according to standardized procedures. Although the difference between the two sets of IQ scores was statistically significant, and the hypothesis that mothers would tend to over-estimate their children's intelligence scores was confirmed, the difference was not as great as might be expected from results of previous studies.