Temperament and Personal Wellbeing in a Sample of 12 to 16 Year-Old Adolescents

Working on the basis that temperament – understood as the root from which personality traits emerge – is related to subjective wellbeing, a study was conducted on a sample of 1.483 students in compulsory secondary education aged between 12 and 16, half of whom attended schools in a rural or semiurban area and half in an urban setting. The aims of the study were as follows: a) to determine the level of personal wellbeing in a sample of 12 to 16 year-old adolescents measured using scores obtained from the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI), and b) to analyse the relationship between temperament, measured using the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire (EATQ-R), and personal wellbeing. Results indicate, among other things, that those temperament dimensions which best predict a high level of personal wellbeing are activity level, affiliation, shyness (with a negative weight), inhibitory control and activation control.     

Can Culture Influence Body‐Specific Associations Between Space and Valence?

People implicitly associate positive ideas with their dominant side of space and negative ideas with their non‐dominant side. Right‐handers tend to associate “good” with “right” and “bad” with “left,” but left‐handers associate “bad” with “right” and “good” with “left.” Whereas right‐handers' implicit associations align with idioms in language and culture that link “good” with “right,” left‐handers' implicit associations go against them. Can cultural conventions modulate the body‐specific association between valence and left‐right space? Here, we compared people from Spanish and Moroccan cultures, which differ in the strength of taboos against the use of the left hand, and therefore in their preference for the right. Results showed stronger explicit associations between space and valence in Moroccan participants than in Spaniards, but they did not show any increased tendency for right‐handed Moroccans to associate “good” with “right” implicitly. Despite differences in cultural conventions between Spaniards and Moroccans, we find no evidence for a cross‐cultural difference in the implicit association between space and valence, which appears to depend on patterns of bodily experience.     

On feeling good at work: the role of regulatory mode and passion in psychological adjustment

The major postulate of this work is that regulatory modes influence the type of passion people experience with regard to an activity, which in turn influences their psychological adjustment. Integrating regulatory mode theory and the dualistic model of passion, we hypothesized that locomotion—associated with intrinsic and autonomous motivations—would positively predict harmonious passion, which in turn would enhance workers' psychological adjustment. In contrast, we hypothesized that assessment—associated with extrinsic and non‐autonomous motivations—would positively predict obsessive passion, which in turn would reduce workers' psychological adjustment. Two field studies supported these hypotheses with psychological adjustment measures of stress (Study 1) and burnout (Study 2) in different work contexts.     

Reliability Generalization Study of the Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale for Children and Adolescents

The Yale–Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale for children and adolescents (CY–BOCS) is a frequently applied test to assess obsessive–compulsive symptoms. We conducted a reliability generalization meta-analysis on the CY–BOCS to estimate the average reliability, search for reliability moderators, and propose a predictive model that researchers and clinicians can use to estimate the expected reliability of the CY–BOCS scores. A total of 47 studies reporting a reliability coefficient with the data at hand were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed good reliability and a large variability associated to the standard deviation of total scores and sample size.     

Analysis of the Impact of Creative Technique on the Motivation of Physical Education Students in Dance Content: Gender Differences

The aim of this study was to learn about the effectiveness of two dance teaching techniques, the creative examination technique and the direct instruction technique, on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, the level of self‐determination, the perception of usefulness, enjoyment and effort of physical education students. Likewise, it purports to analyze the gender difference in the psychological variables addressed in agreement with the teaching technique used, to guide and personalize the treatment of these contents in physical education. A quasi‐experimental design was carried out with four natural groups from two school centers. The direct instruction technique was applied with two groups and the creative examination technique with the other two, in a total of 12 sessions. An initial and final measurement was taken in both groups, and the results revealed the complexity to motivate students after 12 sessions. However, the gender‐dependent analyses offer methodological guidelines, as the creative technique causes adaptative consequences on the male gender and disadaptative consequences on the female gender. By way of conclusion, we can highlight the need to devote more sessions to dance teaching and to apply different treatments depending on the gender.     

A Recursive Partitioning Method for the Prediction of Preference Rankings Based Upon Kemeny Distances

Preference rankings usually depend on the characteristics of both the individuals judging a set of objects and the objects being judged. This topic has been handled in the literature with log-linear representations of the generalized Bradley-Terry model and, recently, with distance-based tree models for rankings. A limitation of these approaches is that they only work with full rankings or with a pre-specified pattern governing the presence of ties, and/or they are based on quite strict distributional assumptions. To overcome these limitations, we propose a new prediction tree method for ranking data that is totally distribution-free. It combines Kemeny’s axiomatic approach to define a unique distance between rankings with the CART approach to find a stable prediction tree. Furthermore, our method is not limited by any particular design of the pattern of ties. The method is evaluated in an extensive full-factorial Monte Carlo study with a new simulation design.     

The Relation of Pro‐Sociality to Self‐Esteem: The Mediational Role of Quality of Friendships

The present longitudinal study examined the role of quality of friendship in mediating the relation of pro‐sociality to self‐esteem over time. Participants were 424 Italian young adults (56% females) assessed at two waves (M_age = 21.1 at Time 1; M_age = 25 at Time 2). An autoregressive cross‐lagged panel model was used to test the mediational model. Self‐ and friend‐report measures of pro‐sociality, quality of friendship, and self‐esteem were included in the analyses. Results were in line with the hypothesized paths, with quality of friendship mediating the relation of pro‐sociality to later self‐esteem above and beyond its high stability. Self‐esteem, in turn, predicted pro‐sociality 4 years later. Overall, the present findings support the potential benefits of behaving pro‐socially for an actor in terms of increased perceived self‐worth and also expand previous work by outlining the specific mediational role of the quality of friendships. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Mistakes pertaining to undesired (relative to desired) self-standards elicit immediate enhanced electrocortical signals of error processing

Past research provides initial evidence that errors pertaining to undesired (vs. desired) self-standards are of greater motivational significance, but little is known about how quickly people recognize and respond to such errors. To examine immediate responses to errors pertaining to desired and undesired self-standards, we assessed event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants judged self-attributes as personally desirable or undesirable. No discernible differences emerged in ERPs associated with correct responses to undesired compared to desired self-standards. Error-related negativities, shown in past work to index motivational significance, and error positivities, shown in past work to index post-error adjustment, were more pronounced when participants erroneously endorsed undesirable self-standards than when they erroneously failed to endorse desirable self-standards. These electrophysiological correlates of differences in the motivational significance of undesired versus desired self-standards emerged within 400 ms of making an error, suggesting that the impact of these errors does not require extensive deliberation.