Ability Emotional Intelligence Predicts Quality of Life beyond Personality,Affectivity, and Cognitive Intelligence

The current study explored the incremental validity of the ability emotional intelligence test to predict suicidal ideation (a subjective indicator of Quality of Life) beyond the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions, affectivity, and general cognitive ability in a sample of 184 university students (mean age 29.50 years). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for demographic variables, the Big Five personality traits, affectivity, and the cognitive intelligence, the block of ability emotional intelligence scores explained a statistically significant increment of variance in suicidal ideation. It is noteworthy that the predictive power of the ability emotional intelligence appeared to be mostly due to the contribution of its two branch scores–regulation of emotion and understanding of emotion. Findings are discussed with reference to emotional intelligence theory and suicidal behaviors.     

错失恐惧与社交网站成瘾：有调节的中介模型

为探讨错失恐惧、自我损耗及关系型自我构念对社交网站成瘾的影响及作用机制,本研究基于有限自制力模型,采用问卷法调查了526名微信朋友圈或QQ空间的大学生用户。结果发现：（1）在控制性别的条件下,错失恐惧能显著正向预测社交网站成瘾;（2）错失恐惧还通过自我损耗的中介作用间接预测社交网站成瘾;（3）关系型自我构念调节错失恐惧通过自我损耗预测社交网站成瘾的前半路径。具体来说,相比于低关系型自我构念个体,高关系型自我构念个体的错失恐惧更多地通过自我损耗影响其社交网站成瘾。     

Internalizing Symptoms in Female Adolescents: Associations with Emotional Awareness and Emotion Regulation

The transition into adolescence involves a number of changes that for many adolescents result in increased negative affect and internalizing symptoms, especially for females. In the current study we examined the direct and indirect effects of emotional awareness on internalizing symptoms by exploring the extent to which certain emotion regulation strategies influence this relationship. Participants were 123 female adolescents aged 13–16 years (M = 14.51 years) who completed measures of emotional awareness, emotion regulation (emotional reappraisal and expressive suppression), and symptoms of depression and social anxiety. Two multiple indirect effect models were conducted including both reappraisal and suppression (one for each of the dependent variables, depression and social anxiety) via the bootstrapping method. Results found that reappraisal accounted for the effect of emotional awareness on depressive symptoms but suppression accounted for the effect of emotional awareness on social anxiety symptoms. Results suggest that emotion regulation strategies play an important role in determining depressive and social anxiety symptoms and are associated with an adolescent’s level of emotional awareness.     

Purpose in life and cognitive functioning in adulthood

With an increasingly aging population, more work is needed to identify factors which may promote the maintenance of normal cognitive functioning. The current study tested the concurrent association between sense of purpose in life and the cognitive variables of episodic memory, executive functioning, and composite cognitive functioning in adults (N = 3489, M_age = 56.3 years, SD = 12.27, Range = 32–84 years) from the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS). Correlational analyses suggested that purpose in life was associated with higher scores for memory, executive functioning, and overall cognition. Bootstrapping tests of moderation found no evidence for a moderating effect of age on purpose and the cognitive variables. Future studies should attempt to explain the mechanisms behind this relationship and explore the potential for interventions to promote healthy cognitive and purposeful aging.     

大学生自我同一性与亲子依恋、因果取向之间的关系

通过对536名大学生的问卷调查,考察了大学生的自我同一性状态与亲子依恋、因果取向之间的关系。结果表明:良好的亲子依恋有利于大学生的自我同一性形成,使大学生更可能处于同一性获得状态,避免同一性扩散。除直接影响外,亲子依恋以因果取向中的自主取向和非个人取向为中介对同一性状态产生重要的间接影响,从而揭示了亲子依恋对大学生自我同一性发挥影响的作用方式。     

Let There Be Variance: Individual Differences in Consecutive Self‐control in a Laboratory Setting and Daily Life

The large body of research used to support ego‐depletion effects is currently faced with conceptual and replication issues, leading to doubt over the extent or even existence of the ego‐depletion effect. By using within‐person designs in a laboratory (Study 1; 187 participants) and an ambulatory assessment study (Study 2; 125 participants), we sought to clarify this ambiguity by investigating whether prominent situational variables (such as motivation and affect) or personality traits can help elucidate when ego depletion can be observed and when not. Although only marginal ego‐depletion effects were found in both studies, these effects varied considerably between individuals, indicating that some individuals experience self‐control decrements after initial self‐control exertion and others not. However, neither motivation nor affect nor personality traits such as trait self‐control could consistently explain this variability when models were applied that controlled for variance due to targets and the depletion manipulation (Study 1) or days (Study 2) as well as for multiple testing. We discuss how the operationalization and reliability of our key measures may explain these null effects and demonstrate that alternative metrics may be required to study the consequences of the consecutive exertion of self‐control. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Emotional intelligence: impact on post-secondary academic achievement

This research examined the simultaneous influences of emotional intelligence, adjustment to university, authoritative versus other parenting style, and high school average on first year university students’ grade point average (GPA) via structural equation modeling. The participants were 299 first year students from the social science faculty at Laurentian University, Canada. The sample was comprised of 86 males (28.7 %) and 213 females (71 %); most students (96.7 %) were between the ages of 17 and 23. The results showed that high school average had a direct influence on first year university GPA. Emotional Intelligence was not directly associated with first year university GPA, but it was significantly associated with adjustment to university which in turn was significantly associated with the first year GPA. This tends to suggest that the influence of emotional intelligence on academic achievement may be mediated by adjustment to university. Furthermore, parenting style (authoritative versus other) had a significant influence on adjustment to university but not on emotional intelligence and university GPA. Students who came from families with authoritative parenting styles tended to be better adjusted than students who came from families with other parenting styles (authoritarian and permissive). Problem behaviors such as alcohol use, academic dishonesty and academic procrastination were found to have a negative influence on university GPA and adjustment to university. In conclusion, emotional intelligence and an authoritative parenting style are influential in enhancing adjustment to university which in turns affects academic achievement in university.     

Reevaluating the Identity Status Paradigm: Still Useful after 35 Years

In this article we respond to van Hoof's (1999) critique of the identity status paradigm. Our review and evaluation of the existing data on identity statuses lead us to be more optimistic than van Hoof about the convergent and discriminant validity of identity status measures, especially objective measures that provide continuous status scores as well as nominal status classifications. Our review of longitudinal studies revealed that among university students tested annually 3 or more times, change in status classifications is significantly more likely to be observed than stability. Moreover, virtually all longitudinal studies with university students indicate that status changes are more likely to be progressive rather than regressive in terms of the hypothesized identity status developmental sequence. However, considerable status regression and fluctuation is observed and we agree with van Hoof that it may no longer be useful to postulate an invariant sequence of identity status stages. Nonetheless, the data do indicate reliable status differences in self-regulatory control processes including ego development, social-cognitive processing orientations, cognitive complexity, self-integration, moral development, and so on. Consequently, we conclude that a useful strategy, at least with university students, may be to focus on the social-cognitive processes that underpin identity statuses and to conceptualize these identity orientations as different styles of dealing with the demands, challenges, and opportunities afforded by institutionalized moratoria, such as a university context. Two lines of recent research inspired by this conceptualization are discussed.     

Fighting self-control failure: Overcoming ego depletion by increasing self-awareness

According to the limited strength model (Muraven, Tice & Baumeister, 1998), exerting self-control causes ego depletion: a depletion of cognitive resources resulting in poorer performance on later self-control tasks. Previous studies have demonstrated a positive effect of self-awareness on self-control performance. The present study examined whether the occurrence of ego depletion can be circumvented by increasing self-awareness. Initially depleted participants who received a neutral prime exhibited the classic ego depletion pattern: their performance on a subsequent physical self-control task decreased significantly. In contrast, no decrease in performance was observed for depleted participants who were exposed to a self-awareness prime. The latter group performed equally well compared to low depleted participants.     

Adaptive family functioning and emotion regulation capacities as predictors of college students' appraisals and emotion valence following conflict with their parents

This study examined whether the relationship between college students' adaptive family functioning and the valence of emotions following recent conflict with their parents is mediated by both distal constructs (psychological coping resources and mood regulation expectancies) and the more proximal construct of cognitive appraisals about the desirability or undesirability of the conflict experience. Participants were 609 undergraduate students enrolled in a large, US southwestern university. The results of applying proposed mediational models to these data, developed for both paternal and maternal conflict, suggested theoretically meaningful associations between the antecedent construct of adaptive family functioning, mediating variables of coping resources, mood regulation expectancies, and cognitive appraisals, and the outcome variable of emotional valence. The results of this study may be useful in identifying psychological resources and patterns of thinking about stressful events that affect emotional reactions.     

Structure factorielle et qualités psychométriques de la version française du questionnaire d’auto-description pour adultes (adult self-report) d’Achenbach et Rescorla

Because of the frequent comorbidities, clinicians need to get a comprehensive picture of the behavioral and emotional problems presented by their patients, but structured interviews allowing for such a survey are time consuming and sometimes tedious, and no French language self-report questionnaire is currently available. The aim of the present study was to verify the factorial structure and some psychometric properties of the French version of the Achenbach and Rescorla's (2003) adult self-report (ASR), which is designed to assess 120 behavioral and emotional problems. We collected ASR forms completed by 905 students enrolled in a university having schools of humanities, social sciences, sports, laws and economics (699 women, 669 students in psychology, 862 aged 18–35 years). The confirmatory factor analyses yielded the expected eight-factor structure (RMSEA = .037; CFI = .931). The internal consistency was similar to the original, and the test-retest reliability was satisfactory. French subjects, especially men, scored higher than their American counterparts on several scales, but the effect sizes were small to medium. French women and men's scores differed only on the Rule-Breaking Behavior scale, with men scoring higher; however, students in psychology, whichever was their gender, scored higher than other students on scales measuring internalizing problems and attention problems. Despite some limitations, the main of which is that all participants were students from the same university, these results speak in favor of the use of the French adult self-report in both research and clinical practice.     

Too exhausted to remember: Ego depletion undermines subsequent event‐based prospective memory

Past research has consistently found that people are likely to do worse on high‐level cognitive tasks after exerting self‐control on previous actions. However, little has been unraveled about to what extent ego depletion affects subsequent prospective memory. Drawing upon the self‐control strength model and the relationship between self‐control resources and executive control, this study proposes that the initial actions of self‐control may undermine subsequent event‐based prospective memory (EBPM). Ego depletion was manipulated through watching a video requiring visual attention (Experiment 1) or completing an incongruent Stroop task (Experiment 2). Participants were then tested on EBPM embedded in an ongoing task. As predicted, the results showed that after ruling out possible intervening variables (e.g. mood, focal and nonfocal cues, and characteristics of ongoing task and ego depletion task), participants in the high‐depletion condition performed significantly worse on EBPM than those in the low‐depletion condition. The results suggested that the effect of ego depletion on EBPM was mainly due to an impaired prospective component rather than to a retrospective component.     

大学生亲子依恋、分离-个体化与自我同一性状态之间的关系

通过对1131名大学生的问卷调查,运用结构方程模型技术考察了亲子依恋、分离-个体化与大学生自我同一性状态之间的关系。结果表明：（1）良好的亲子依恋可较强地正向预测大学生的积极分离-个体化,同时较强地负向预测消极分离-个体化;（2）亲子依恋除对同一性早闭状态有直接的正向预测作用外,对其他三种同一性状态的影响均以积极分离-个体化和消极分离-个体化为中介实现的。亲子依恋和分离-个体化两方面相结合形成了积极的亲子关系环境,有利于大学生自我同一性的形成。     

Spillover Effects of Emotional Labor in Customer Service Encounters Toward Coworker Harming: A Resource Depletion Perspective

This research examines how the implications of emotional labor can transfer from customer encounters to coworker interactions using temporally lagged data from a sample of frontline service employees. The results show that surface acting in customer service encounters is positively, and deep acting is negatively, related to ego depletion. Employees’ ego depletion, in turn, is positively associated with their interpersonally harmful behavior toward coworkers. Hence, ego depletion appears as a mediating variable that translates the implications of distinct emotional labor strategies into coworker harming. Moreover, emotion regulation self‐efficacy moderates the role of surface acting. The positive indirect relationship between surface acting and coworker harming, via ego depletion, is buffered among employees with higher emotion regulation self‐efficacy. These findings shed new light on the complex and far‐reaching consequences of emotional labor. We demonstrate the relevance of emotional labor to third parties not directly involved in customer service encounters and highlight important mediators and boundary conditions of these indirect relations.     

Identity Statuses and Event-Focused Narratives at University Starting Point in Italy

The purpose of this study was to explore in greater depth the identity formation processes in Italian university students starting from previous studies that have provided support for a “postponed Identity”. Given the particular socio-economic difficulties of the Italian context, especially occupational uncertainty, this study assumes that the years of university for Italian students are rather like a time of standby, a period when students are allowed to remain in moratorium (institutionalized) or diffusion statuses and disengage from tasks related to personal and professional identity consolidation. For this purpose, the study focuses initially on the person-centred approach by measuring identity statuses in students attending the first 2 years of university and in students attending the fourth and fifth years of university. Subsequently, it focuses on the first 2 years of university through an event-focused approach, exploring narrative accounts of memorable daily life events perceived as important for identity construction, and to deepen our understanding of the subjective dimension of personal changes. Based on five identity dimensions, the cluster analysis indicated that six identity statuses could be extracted for both students groups: achievement, foreclosure, moratorium, diffused diffusion, carefree diffusion and undifferentiated. Each of these clusters revealed a distinct profile in terms of narrative universes of meaning. The study explored associations between narratives, reflecting a particular focus on the identity content and identity statuses. Suggestions for future research and limitations are discussed.     

Networks of self-defining memories as a contributing factor to emotional openness

Emotional openness is characterised by a capacity to tolerate threatening self-relevant material and an interest towards new emotional situations. We investigated how specific networks of memories could be an important contributing factor to emotional openness. At Phase 1, participants completed measures of personality traits and emotional intelligence, described a self-defining memory, provided other memories associated with it, and rated the valence of each of their memories. A score assessing the complexity of this memory network, comprising the number of memories reported and their valence diversity, was created. Two weeks later, in laboratory, participants watched an anxiety-inducing film and took part in an interview assessing their emotional openness to the film. They completed a cognitive task before and after the film to measure ego depletion. Controlling for traits and emotional intelligence, memory network complexity was positively associated with emotional openness and negatively with ego depletion. The mental organisation of self-defining memories thus appears to be a critical factor contributing to emotional openness.     

Measurement invariance of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale for Students: A study across secondary school pupils and university students

School engagement is a multidimensional construct characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption towards academic work that is related to school achievement. This study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of a school engagement measure – the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Students (UWES-S) – across secondary school pupils and university students. Two samples of secondary school pupils (n = 251) and university students (n = 229) were used. The results supported the original three-factor structure (vigour, dedication and absorption) of the UWES-S instead of a two- or a one-factor structure in both samples. Evidence for the metric and scalar invariance of the measure across secondary school pupils and university students was also found. The university sample had higher scores in vigour and absorption but not in dedication. These findings demonstrate that the UWES-S can be used for developmental studies where school engagement and its relation with other variables needs to be compared across distinct educational levels.     

Alexithymia,Defenses, and Ego Strength: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Relationships with Psychological Well-Being and Depression

Affect regulation is important to mental health. A deficit in one’s ability to identify and express emotions (alexithymia), cognitive styles of regulating emotional conflict (defenses), and the capacity for integrative and complex self-other understanding (ego strength or maturity) need to be studied to understand how they relate to each other as well as to mental health and well-being. A sample of 415 community-dwelling adults from a major metropolitan area in the Midwest U.S., stratified for gender, age, and ethnicity, completed three methodologically different measures of affect regulation along with measures of well-being and depression. Six years later, 49 % of the sample again reported their well-being and depression. At baseline, ego strength and the defenses of principalization and reversal correlated negatively with alexithymia and the other defenses (turning against self, turning against object and projection), even after controlling for negative affect. Cross-sectionally, relationships were largely as hypothesized, with low alexithymia, use of mature defenses, and greater ego strength correlating with less depression and greater well-being, although some of these relationships were attenuated after controlling for negative affect. Prospectively, each of the affect regulation measures predicted hypothesized changes in well-being after 6 years, after controlling for baseline well-being, but affect regulation did not predict changes in depression. These findings illuminate similarities and differences among these affect regulation constructs, suggest the importance of differentiating well-being from depression, and reveal that affect regulation uniquely predicts changes in long-term well-being.     

社会排斥对自我损耗的影响:自我觉知的克服作用

实验1采用打破习惯范式任务和单词搜索任务考察自我觉知对自我损耗的克服作用。实验2采用社会排斥情境任务考察自我觉知在社会排斥中对自我损耗的影响。结果发现:(1)在自我损耗条件下,自我觉知启动组被试Stroop任务成绩显著好于无启动组;(2)在社会排斥情境下,接受组和控制组被试Stroop任务成绩显著好于排斥组。在自我觉知启动条件下,排斥组、接受组和控制组被试的Stroop任务成绩无显著差异。结果证实了自我觉知在社会排斥中对自我损耗的克服作用。     

The function of wisdom dimensions in ego‐identity development among Chinese university students

This study investigates the relationship between wisdom and ego‐identity among university students in China. Using Marcia's ego‐identity statuses and Ardelt's wisdom dimensions as the theoretical and conceptual framework, the study investigates 356 university students in China. After exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, four factors from wisdom and five factors from ego‐identity were retrieved. A structural equation model was then conducted to analyse the relationships. The findings were: (1) among wisdom dimensions, cognitive, and reflective wisdom, especially perspective‐taking best predicted achievement, (2) all three dimensions of wisdom predicted moratorium, but reflective wisdom was the most pronounced predictor, (3) all three dimensions of wisdom predicted diffusion, but resentment items from reflective wisdom were the most pronounced predictors, and (4) gender was a significant predictor of ego‐identity achievement and diffusion. These findings suggest that efforts to build reflective wisdom might contribute to healthier ego‐identity formation.