Self‐Compassion,Self‐Esteem,and Well‐Being

This article focuses on the construct of self‐compassion and how it differs from self‐esteem. First, it discusses the fact that while self‐esteem is related to psychological well‐being, the pursuit of high self‐esteem can be problematic. Next it presents another way to feel good about oneself: self‐compassion. Self‐compassion entails treating oneself with kindness, recognizing one’s shared humanity, and being mindful when considering negative aspects of oneself. Finally, this article suggests that self‐compassion may offer similar mental health benefits as self‐esteem, but with fewer downsides. Research is presented which shows that self‐compassion provides greater emotional resilience and stability than self‐esteem, but involves less self‐evaluation, ego‐defensiveness, and self‐enhancement than self‐esteem. Whereas self‐esteem entails evaluating oneself positively and often involves the need to be special and above average, self‐compassion does not entail self‐evaluation or comparisons with others. Rather, it is a kind, connected, and clear‐sighted way of relating to ourselves even in instances of failure, perceived inadequacy, and imperfection.     

Self‐awareness and self‐understanding

In this paper, I critically examine Dan Zahavi's multidimensional account of the self and show how the distinction he makes among “pre‐reflective minimal,” “interpersonal,” and “normative” dimensions of selfhood needs to be refined in order to accommodate what I call “pre‐reflective self‐understanding.” The latter is a normative dimension of selfhood manifest not in reflection and deliberation, but in the habits and style of a person's pre‐reflective absorption in the world. After reviewing Zahavi's multidimensional account and revealing this gap in his explanatory taxonomy, I draw upon Heidegger, Merleau‐Ponty, and Frankfurt in order to sketch an account of pre‐reflective self‐understanding. I end by raising an objection to Zahavi's claim for the primitive and foundational status of pre‐reflective self‐awareness. To carve off self‐awareness from the self's practical immersion in a situation where things and possibilities already matter and draw one to act is to distort the phenomena. A more careful phenomenology of pre‐reflective action shows that pre‐reflective self‐awareness and pre‐reflective self‐understanding are co‐constitutive, both mutually for each other and jointly for everyday experience.     

Children's meta‐perceptions and meta‐accuracy of acceptance and rejection by same‐sex and other‐sex peers

The goals of this study were to examine children's meta‐perceptions and meta‐accuracy of acceptance and rejection in the peer group, the degree to which these perceptions vary by perceiver sex and sex of the reference group, and the association between these perceptions and children's actual functioning in the peer group. Participants were 644 fourth‐grade children. Meta‐perceptions and meta‐accuracy were derived from sociometric nominations of actual and perceived acceptance and rejection. Children more accurately perceived how they were seen by same‐sex peers than how they were seen by other‐sex peers. They also perceived more rejection than acceptance from other‐sex peers. Meta‐accuracy for rejection was low regardless of the sex of the reference group. Sex of the reference group significantly moderated the association between meta‐perceptions and meta‐accuracy of acceptance and rejection and children's actual peer relationships. These findings indicate the importance of examining these relatively understudied social cognitions in research with children and the importance of taking the sex of the reference group into account in future peer relations studies using peer nomination methods.     

Learning from Instructor‐managed and Self‐managed Split‐attention Materials

Instructor‐managed physical integration of mutually dependent, but spatially separated materials, is an effective way to overcome negative effects of split‐attention on learning. This study examined whether teaching students to self‐manage split‐attention materials would be effective for learning. Seventy‐eight primary‐school students learned about the water cycle, either by studying split‐attention examples, integrated examples or self‐managed split‐attention examples. It was hypothesised that students who study instructor‐integrated materials and students who study self‐integrated materials would outperform students who study split‐attention materials. The results showed that students learned more from instructor‐integrated materials than from split‐attention materials, thereby confirming the split‐attention effect. The implications for future research on self‐management are discussed.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Feeling and thinking: An affect‐as‐cognitive‐feedback account

Despite the abundance of evidence demonstrating a dedicated link between positive and negative affect and specific ways of thinking, not all findings are consistent with this view. New research suggests that the relationship between affect and thinking can be altered and often reversed, by varying the mental context in which affect is experienced. The affect‐as‐cognitive‐feedback account can explain a wide range of phenomena, including both prior findings and this more recent research, and generate new predictions. According to this account, affective reactions confer value on accessible information processing strategies (e.g., global vs. local processing) and other mental content that happens to be accessible at the time. This view underscores that the relationship between affect and cognition is not fixed but instead is highly malleable. We present evidence that supports this account, along with new findings that suggest a malleable influence of specific affective states on cognition.     

Counselling and psychotherapy post‐COVID‐19

We consider how the prolonged, complex and uncertain aftermath of the COVID‐19 crisis will present challenges and opportunities for counselling and psychotherapy. Increased mental strain on populations, individuals and professionals is likely to be compounded by further constraints in therapeutic resources. Nevertheless, emerging needs and priorities will offer ground for systems thinking in linking the application of a range of therapeutic frameworks, theories to address global challenges, integration of counselling and psychotherapy into new sectors, service models for the most vulnerable, use of digital approaches, support mechanisms for professionals and interdisciplinary research.     

Stability and Change in Domain‐specific Self‐esteem and Global Self‐esteem

A notable uptick of interest in the stability of self‐esteem has been observed over the past few years. Most researchers, however, have focused on unidimensional rather than multidimensional conceptualizations of self‐esteem. The paucity of empirical research is surprising given conflicting theoretical perspectives on the stability of self‐esteem. The goal of the present study was to thoroughly disentangle different conceptualizations of self‐esteem and test opposing classical theories on (i) the stability and (ii) the direction of mutual influence of these different forms of self‐esteem. We analysed two‐year longitudinal data from participants (N = 644 at T1, N = 241 at T2) with an average age of 47.0 years (SD = 12.4). Analyses using a latent variable approach revealed that the domains of self‐esteem were relatively stable in terms of rank order and mean levels. In fact, the size of the stability coefficients was comparable to that of other trait measures that have been reported in the literature and paralleled the stability observed for global self‐esteem. Results did not provide support for either top‐down or bottom‐up effects between domain‐specific and global self‐esteem. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications regarding the stability and development of self‐esteem in adulthood and advance the understanding of self‐esteem in personality theory. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

ON THE WHAT‐IT‐IS‐LIKE‐NESS OF EXPERIENCE

It is common for philosophers to hold that experience can be characterized in a basic way as being something it is like for someone to undergo. In the paper it is argued that when this slogan is examined it is in some respects trivial and in others mistaken. It is concluded that the slogan should be abandoned.     

Victimization and Exposure to Pro‐Self‐Harm and Pro‐Suicide Websites: A Cross‐National Study

The study of websites displaying methods of both physical self‐harm and suicide has become an important aspect of deliberate self‐injury and suicide research. However, little is known about contextual factors related to entering such sites. Using data from 3,567 respondents aged 15–30 in the US, UK, Germany, and Finland, we found that experiences of victimization are associated with entering pro‐self‐harm sites and pro‐suicide sites. Also, the victimization context had relevance, as online victimization was particularly related to pro‐self‐harm behavior. The findings suggest a need to organize more specific online support for the victims of violence and online aggression.     

Inter‐ and intra‐cultural variations in self‐other boundary: A qualitative‐quantitative approach

Past research on the theories of self‐construal and individualism‐collectivism in cross‐cultural contexts presents inconsistent and inconclusive results. Some researchers have seriously questioned the validity of major instruments measuring self‐construal across cultural groups. To address the validity issue, this study developed quantitative measures from ethnographic data. In five scenarios mapping self to close‐other boundaries, 171 Anglo‐Canadians and 224 Mainland Chinese were asked to make a decision and offer a reason for the decision. Two intriguing findings emerged from the data. (1) In comparison with Anglo‐Canadians, Mainland Chinese were more likely to share material belongings with close‐others and less likely to share their thoughts/opinions. The first part of this finding provides unequivocal support for the theories of self‐construal and individualism‐collectivism, whereas the latter part challenges an important assumption of these theories, which contends that collectivists should be more likely than individualists to share everything they own (including opinions) with close‐others. This unconventional finding proposes the division of material belongings and thoughts/opinions sharing of the self‐other boundary in future cross‐cultural self‐construal research. (2) There were significant differences in the reasons Canadians and Chinese offered for what they would or would not do in a specific situation. For example, the reasons for not telling the truth about a roommate's nonmatching outfit were “tastes differ from person to person” for a Canadian and “I don't tell others what I think of them” for a Chinese. The Canadians clearly show respect for the other's personal preference and the Chinese were thinking “what can I benefit from telling her the truth?” It was reasoned that underneath the giving and generous Chinese lies a shrewd mind, and underneath the frank Canadian lies a materialistic mind. In conclusion, this article contributes to the field in that it reports pioneering research, via both qualitative and quantitative means, on sharing material belongings and opinions/thoughts in samples from individualistic and collectivistic cultures. The findings of this study illustrate, specify, and challenge the universal utility of the theories of self‐construal and individualism‐collectivism.     

Mirror Self‐Recognition and Self‐Identification

That great apes are the only primates to recognise their reflections is often taken to show that they are self‐aware—however, there has been much recent debate about whether the self‐awareness in question is psychological or bodily self‐awareness. This paper argues that whilst self‐recognition does not require psychological self‐awareness, to claim that it requires only bodily self‐awareness would leave something out. That is that self‐recognition requires ‘objective self‐awareness’—the capacity for first person thoughts like ‘that's me’, which involve self‐identification and so are vulnerable to error through misidentification. This objective self‐awareness is distinct from bodily or psychological self‐awareness, requires cognitive sophistication and provides the beginnings of a more conceptual self‐representation which might play a role in planning, mental time travel and theory of mind.     

Learning by Preparing‐to‐Teach and Teaching: A Meta‐Analysis

The present research meta‐analytically examined the effects of preparing‐to‐teach and subsequent teaching (relative to mere studying without teaching expectancy) on the acquisition of domain knowledge. The synthesis of 28 studies indicated that the estimated effect sizes (Hedges' gs) were 0.35 for preparing‐to‐teach and 0.56 for teaching with preparing‐to‐teach. Both preparing‐to‐teach and teaching with preparing‐to‐teach were effective in promoting deep learning (as well as surface learning) and even after a delay. The learning benefits of teaching with preparing‐to‐teach were larger when students expected and engaged in an interactive teaching activity than when they expected and engaged in a non‐interactive teaching activity. The mere expectation of interactive teaching also produced larger learning effects than the expectation of non‐interactive teaching. These results suggest that preparing‐to‐teach and teaching, interactive teaching after preparing to do so in particular, are useful for enhancing learning.     

Imitation from television by 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds

Infants’ imitation of complex actions was examined in three experiments with 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds. In all experiments, an adult modeled a series of actions with novel stimuli and the infant's reproduction of those actions was assessed either immediately or after a 24‐hour delay. Some infants watched the demonstration live, while other infants watched the same demonstration on television from a pre‐recorded videotape. Both 24‐ and 30‐month‐olds imitated actions that had been modeled on television; however, their performance was consistently inferior to that of infants of the same age who watched the demonstration live.     

Association Learning with Own‐ and Other‐race Faces in three‐ and six‐month old infants – A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study assessed 133 Caucasian German infants at 3 and 6 months of age to investigate the influence of own‐race and other‐race faces as visual stimuli on association learning in the visual expectation paradigm (VExP). The study is related to the findings on the other‐race‐effect (ORE) which is said to emerge at 6 months of age. Caucasian faces were used as stimuli of a familiar ethnic category, whereas African faces were used as stimuli of an unfamiliar ethnic category. There was no significant difference between the two stimulus classes in infants' reaction time (RT) to stimulus shifts at 3 months. At 6 months of age, infants' RT decreased significantly in the Caucasian faces condition but not in the African faces condition. These results indicate that the processing of other‐race versus own‐race faces by the age of 6 months, which is also the relevant age for the onset of the ORE, has an important influence on the performance on the VExP. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.