The real me: Authenticity,interpersonal goals,and conflict tactics

Dispositional authenticity is associated with positive intra- and interpersonal outcomes, yet how authenticity relates to conflict solving strategies has not been examined. The present study aims to explore the relationship between authenticity and conflict solving strategies in close friendships and proposes that interpersonal goals (i.e., compassionate goals and self-image goals) might mediate the relationship. Three hundred sixty-three Taiwanese college students completed a survey package. Results showed that authenticity was positively associated with strategies that promote the needs of both oneself and one's friend (i.e., integrating and compromising) while negatively, or not, associated with those that don't concern one's own needs (i.e., obliging) or one's friend's needs (i.e., dominating and avoiding). Further, compassionate goals mediated the relationship between authenticity and integrating, compromising, and dominating strategies, while suppressing the relationship between authenticity and avoiding and obliging strategies. Self-image goals mediated only dominating and avoiding strategies.     

Do Community Characteristics Relate to Young Adult College Students’ Credit Card Debt? The Hypothesized Role of Collective Institutional Efficacy

This study examines the extent of emergent, outstanding credit card debt among young adult college students and investigates whether any associations existed between this credit card debt and the characteristics of the communities in which these students grew up or lived. Using data (N = 748) from a longitudinal survey and merging community characteristics measured at the zip code level, we confirmed that a community's unemployment rate, average total debt, average credit score, and number of bank branch offices were associated with a young adult college student's acquisition and accumulation of credit card debt. For example, a community's higher unemployment rate and lower number of bank branches were associated with a young adult college student's greater accumulated debt. Community characteristics had the strongest associations with credit card debt, especially after controlling for individual characteristics (i.e., a young adult college student's race and financial independence) and familial characteristics (i.e., their parents’ income and parents’ discussions of financial matters while growing up at home). The findings may help to understand the unique roles that communities play in shaping children and young adults’ financial capability, and how communities can be better capacitated to support the financial goals of their residents.     

Power and Gender Influences on Responsibility Attributions: The Case of Disagreements in Relationships

Abstract

In a sample of 156 college students (74 men and 82 women), the authors examined the influences of power status and gender on responsibility attributions and resolution choices during disagreements in personal relationships. The participants read vignettes in which relationship partners disagreed; then the participants placed themselves in the situations depicted and reported their perceived responsibility and resolution choices. The participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 power-status conditions (you have/your partner has greater power in the situation). Power status was based on resource power (i.e., a monetary inheritance) or on perceived power (i.e., financial knowledge). The authors tested 2 alternative power-status hypotheses (justified benefits/rights and ability/accountability) and 1 gender hypothesis. The results supported both power-status hypotheses. In addition, the men's and the women's responsibility attributions and resolution choices (i.e., adhering to their own wishes or deferring to their partner's wishes) revealed differential dependence on the type of power held by the person with greater situational power. The authors suggest issues further research concerning how situational differences in socially based expectations (e.g., power status and gender) may affect conflicts within relationships.     

Big Picture,Bad Outcomes: When Visual Perspectives Harm Health Goal Pursuit

People often fail to achieve health goals, which compromises their well‐being. Prior research suggests that seeing events through an observer's eyes (i.e., adopting a third‐person perspective) should facilitate goal pursuit. However, we find that third‐person perspectives discourage goal‐consistent intentions and behavior for health goals when goal centrality is low (i.e., the goal is peripheral to one's self‐concept). In Experiment 1, people who adopted a third‐person perspective chose more sugary foods if they considered a healthy eating goal to be more peripheral to the self. Experiment 2 examines why a third‐person perspective can hinder goal pursuit; it encourages a breakdown in implemental thinking which, in turn, increases negative self‐conscious emotions. While high goal centrality buffers people from negative effects on goal intentions, low centrality does not. Experiment 3 demonstrates that this effect is robust when goal centrality is manipulated. We recommend that consumers pursuing health goals (and individuals who support them) exercise caution when employing perspective‐based strategies, as they may backfire for people at greatest risk of goal abandonment.     

Parental Behavior and Vocational Choice: A Comparison of Counselors and Engineers

This study compared the perceived parental behavior characteristics of 41 counselors in training and 33 fifth-year engineering students in a test of a part of Roe's vocational choice theory, which suggests dichotomous pattern of vocational choice: “toward persons” (e.g., counseling) or “toward nonpersons” (e.g., engineering) categories that will have been determined by the nature of the early childhood socialization process. In essence, a person who has experienced a warm loving home situation is more likely to enter a “toward persons” occupation and an individual whose parent-child relationship was emotionally cold will most likely gravitate toward a “toward nonpersons” occupation. Both groups were administered the Parent-Child Relations Questionnaire developed by Roe and Siegelman. The findings lend considerable support to Roe's theory.     

Improving Mental Health on College Campuses: Perspectives of Indian College Students

The mental health of college students is increasingly viewed as an important public health priority. However, there has been little attention paid specifically to college students’ perspectives on factors that contribute to mental health challenges or on potential initiatives that could address them. Even less research has focused on students in low- and middle-income countries. In an effort to better understand how to improve mental health and wellness on college campuses, we administered an open-ended survey to 141 Indian college students (M_age = 19.47, 65% female). We asked the students to identify: (a) issues that contribute to mental health problems among college students, (b) potential initiatives or strategies that could be used to improve mental health and wellness, and (c) topics that students would like to learn about in a course about mental health and wellness. Applying thematic analysis, we identified academic stressors (e.g., pressure to succeed, competitiveness) and social stressors (e.g., lack of community, party culture and substance abuse) that students reported as contributors to mental health problems. Students also described mental health promotion strategies that could be implemented by faculty members (e.g., providing academic accommodations for students with mental health concerns), the student body (e.g., establishing peer counseling groups), and individual students (e.g., checking in with others). Finally, they identified topics that they would like to learn about in mental health and wellness courses (e.g., how to identify mental health concerns, how to support friends). By raising several potential targets for mental health and wellness interventions for Indian college students, our study illustrates how open-ended surveys can be a useful and feasible way to solicit input from stakeholders in low- and middle-income countries. Future research will be needed to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of mental health promotion strategies, including those proposed by students.     

Emotion and underlying concerns during couples' conflict: An investigation of within‐person change

This study investigated how emotion changes within persons across different episodes of romantic relationship conflict. Presumably, changes in different types of emotion are linked to changes in the types of underlying adaptive concerns people have during conflict, which in turn are linked to changes in the types of emotion that one's partner is perceived to express. Over the span of 8 weeks, 105 college students in romantic relationships completed between 2 and 5 online assessments of a recent relationship conflict. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to distinguish within‐person effects from between‐person effects. Results confirmed expected differences between types of emotion and types of underlying concern, indicated that most effects occur at the within‐person level, and identified mediating pathways.     

Interpersonal attraction in dyads and groups: Effects of the hearts of the beholder and the beheld

Dyadic interpersonal attraction (IA) was studied within groups of very highly acquainted family members, friends and coworkers. IA was determined by the perceiver (i.e., the heart of the beholder), the target (i.e., the heart of the beheld), and in specific dyads, by the unique combination of the two. The consistency of one's attraction to others and others' attraction to the person across groups was addressed using the key person design. Attraction to a person in one group was independent of attraction to that person in another, although people predicted that members of different groups were similarly attracted to them. A new model (ARRMA) was specified to simultaneously study assumed reciprocity, actual reciprocity, and metaperception accuracy of attraction (i.e., accurate predictions of others' attraction to oneself). Assumed reciprocity of IA was substantial at the individual and dyadic levels. Reciprocity of attraction at the individual level, a heretofore unconfirmed “plausible hypothesis”, was supported; dyadic reciprocity was weak. Meta‐accuracy of IA was observed among individuals but was weak in dyads. Perceived interpersonal similarity predicted IA among individuals and in specific dyads. Considering dyadic attraction within and between groups and the use of componential analysis permitted the specification of new IA phenomena and resolved a long‐standing theoretical problem regarding the reciprocity of attraction.     

The Mediating Processes Linking Applicant Personality Traits and Interviewer Evaluation

This study examines interview preparations (i.e., social preparation and background preparation) and impression management (IM) tactics (i.e., self‐focused IM and other‐focused IM) as the mechanisms between applicant personality characteristics and interviewer evaluation. Data were collected from both actual job applicants and interviewers. Results show that personality characteristics (i.e., extraversion and conscientiousness) have indirect effects on interviewer evaluation in terms of perceived person–job fit (P–J fit) and interpersonal liking through these two types of applicant behaviors. This study accomplishes two goals: (1) it extends the socioanalytic theory of personality ( Hogan, 1996 ) by testing the intervening roles played by applicants' behaviors that correspond to getting along with and getting ahead of others; and (2) it suggests that these applicant behaviors might be important cues for practical interviewers' effective assessment of applicants' performance‐related characteristics.     

The Effects of Spiritual/Religious Engagement on College Students' Affective Outcomes: Differences by Gender and Race

This study examines the general and differential effects of spiritual/religious engagement on affective college outcomes (i.e., leadership skills, interpersonal skills, social satisfaction, sense of belonging, and psychological well-being) across different gender and racial groups among undergraduate students at research universities. The study utilized data on 63,528 students who participated in the 2008 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES). The findings reveal differential effects of spiritual/religious engagement on college students' affective outcomes depending on their gender and race (i.e., gender- and race-based conditional effects). Implications for college students' spiritual development at public research universities and faith-based institutions are discussed.     

Leave Her out of It: Person‐Presentation of Strategies is Harmful for Transfer

A common practice in textbooks is to introduce concepts or strategies in association with specific people. This practice aligns with research suggesting that using “real‐world” contexts in textbooks increases students’ motivation and engagement. However, other research suggests this practice may interfere with transfer by distracting students or leading them to tie new knowledge too closely to the original learning context. The current study investigates the effects on learning and transfer of connecting mathematics strategies to specific people. A total of 180 college students were presented with an example of a problem‐solving strategy that was either linked with a specific person (e.g., “Juan's strategy”) or presented without a person. Students who saw the example without a person were more likely to correctly transfer the novel strategy to new problems than students who saw the example presented with a person. These findings are the first evidence that using people to present new strategies is harmful for learning and transfer.     

Emotional well-being: The role of social achievement goals and self-esteem

The current study examined how self-esteem and social achievement goals affect individuals’ emotions independently and jointly using the data collected from 367 college students. Social development goals were related to positive emotions (i.e., love and joy). Social demonstration-avoid goals were related to maladaptive patterns (low levels of joy but high levels of fear, shame and sadness). Social demonstration-approach goals were positively associated with joy but had null relations with all other emotions. The results indicated that social development goals buffered students with low self-esteem against negative emotions and amplified the positive emotional experiences. In contrast, social demonstration-avoid goals were especially harmful for students with low self-esteem.     

Disclosure Experiences of Sexual Minority College Student Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

Although research on disclosure following intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization is burgeoning, sexual minority young adults’ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, etc.; LGBQ+) experiences have not received equal attention. The current study employed the minority stress framework to examine disclosure experiences of LGBQ+ college students across the United States reporting physical IPV victimization within their current relationship (n = 77). Participants completed measures assessing minority stress and IPV disclosure, and answered open‐ended questions regarding the most and least helpful persons/responses to disclosure or reasons for non‐disclosure. Results indicated that approximately one‐third (35 %) of victims disclosed to at least one person, with friends being the most common recipients. Thematic analyses indicated that talking or listening to the victim was considered the most helpful response and not understanding the situation least helpful. Reasons for non‐disclosure centered on themes of the victims’ perception that the IPV was not a big deal. Quantitative findings regarding physical IPV disclosure indicated that non‐disclosers experienced greater minority stress than disclosers. The current study suggests the presence of differences between sexual minority (i.e., LGBQ +persons) and non‐sexual minority persons, as well as between LGBQ+ young adults/college students and older adults and presents a theoretical structure (i.e., minority stress framework) through which these differences may be understood.     

Changes in college students' socioeconomic status aspirations during the COVID-19 pandemic

Although university students tend to be optimistic about their future socioeconomic status (SES), little is known how their SES aspirations changed during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using latent growth curve modeling techniques, we examined changes in subjective SES aspirations for students who began college before the pandemic (cohort 1; Fall 2019) and students who began college during the pandemic (cohort 2; Fall 2020). Moreover, we assessed how SES indicators (i.e., subjective family SES; first-generation status; low-income status) and a contextual financial indicator (i.e., pandemic-related financial impacts) predicted changes in SES aspirations for both groups of students. Although SES aspirations were similar at the beginning of college for both groups of students, students who began college before the pandemic experienced a greater rate of downward change between the baseline assessment and the assessment shortly after the pandemic began. In both cohorts, students from higher-SES families had higher SES aspirations at the beginning of college and steeper rates of downward change. Furthermore, despite having similar SES aspirations at the beginning of college, first-generation students whose first year was interrupted by the pandemic experienced steeper downward changes in their SES aspirations. However, pandemic-related financial impacts did not predict this downward change for either cohort. Our findings suggest that uncertainty in the early stages of the pandemic may have led to cautiousness in students' aspirations for their future SES attainment, particularly for first-generation students.     

普高生与中职生的个人未来目标和担忧

以1995名普高生和中职生为被试,采用未来取向问卷(中文版),考察了普高生和中职生的个人未来目标和担忧的内容与时间广度。研究发现:普高生与中职生较多地关注未来教育、职业、婚姻/家庭、家庭安康和自我,预期重要生活事件发生在二三十岁左右。普高生更多地提及教育目标和担忧以及与家庭安康有关的担忧,而中职生更多地提及职业目标和担忧,并预期职业目标和担忧发生的年龄较早;农村学生更多地提及与未来教育和家庭安康有关的目标,而相对较少提及职业目标,并预期教育和职业目标以及职业担忧发生的年龄早于城市学生;男生更多地提及职业和婚姻/家庭目标以及与自我有关的担忧,而女生更多地提及与家庭安康有关的目标和教育担忧,并预期教育和职业目标发生的年龄较早。     

A longitudinal and multi-method examination of interest–occupation congruence within and across time

Remarkably little research has addressed change and stability in person–environment fit across time. The objective of the current study was to address this gap in the literature by investigating Holland interest–occupation congruence across time for a sample of college alumni (N = 167) that were tracked during the first third of their professional career. Congruence was examined in all its complexity, including a repeated assessment of both occupations and interests, the use of objective (O*NET) and subjective (self-report) environment assessment methods, and adopting sophisticated congruence calculation methods (i.e., Euclidean distance and profile correlation). This resulted in a total of 12 interest–occupation comparisons within and across time that could be related to general and career specific well-being. The results first indicated moderate levels of stability in interests and occupations across the 15-year time interval, yet also with room for change. Congruence analyses indicated significant interest–occupation fit at the beginning of the career and 15 years later, with the magnitude of congruence slightly varying depending on which occupation assessment and which congruence method was used. Profile correlation congruence did not change over time in absolute terms and evidenced relative stability. Euclidean distance indices had little relative stability over time but did manifest some absolute changes in levels of congruence. Finally, job change moderated the association between interest–occupation congruence and life satisfaction in such a way that higher levels of satisfaction were reported only when little job change was present.     

Do future thoughts reflect personal goals? Current concerns and mental time travel into the past and future

Our overriding hypothesis was that future thinking would be linked with goals to a greater extent than memories; conceptualizing goals as current concerns (i.e., uncompleted personal goals). We also hypothesized that current-concern-related events would differ from non-current-concern-related events on a set of phenomenological characteristics. We report novel data from a study examining involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using an adapted laboratory paradigm. Specifically, after autobiographical memories or future thoughts were elicited (between participants) in an involuntary and voluntary retrieval mode (within participants), participants self-generated five current concerns and decided whether each event was relevant or not to their current concerns. Consistent with our hypothesis, compared with memories, a larger percentage of involuntary and voluntary future thoughts reflected current concerns. Furthermore, events related to current concerns differed from non-concern-related events on a range of cognitive, representational, and affective phenomenological measures. These effects were consistent across temporal direction. In general, our results agree with the proposition that involuntary and voluntary future thinking is important for goal-directed cognition and behaviour.     

Online and offline social networks: Use of social networking sites by emerging adults

Social networking sites (e.g., MySpace and Facebook) are popular online communication forms among adolescents and emerging adults. Yet little is known about young people's activities on these sites and how their networks of “friends” relate to their other online (e.g., instant messaging) and offline networks. In this study, college students responded, in person and online, to questions about their online activities and closest friends in three contexts: social networking sites, instant messaging, and face-to-face. Results showed that participants often used the Internet, especially social networking sites, to connect and reconnect with friends and family members. Hence, there was overlap between participants' online and offline networks. However, the overlap was imperfect; the pattern suggested that emerging adults may use different online contexts to strengthen different aspects of their offline connections. Information from this survey is relevant to concerns about young people's life online.