The association between stress,self‐esteem and depressive symptoms in adolescents

This cross‐sectional study investigated gender and age differences on domains of stress, self‐esteem and depressive symptoms, as well as the association between those domains using a sample of Norwegian adolescents (N = 1,239). The data was analysed using Pearson product moment correlation, t‐tests, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The results showed significant differences between genders. Girls scored higher on five of seven stressor domains comprising peer pressure, home life, school attendance, school/leisure conflict and school performance as well as depression, while boys scored significantly higher on self‐esteem. The hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that higher stress from school performance and school attendance related significantly to more depressive symptoms in both genders. Additionally, stress of home life significantly related to more depressive symptoms in girls, whereas stress of peer pressure was significant in association with depressive symptoms in boys. A strong, inverse association was found between self‐esteem and depression controlled for stress, especially in girls. Self‐esteem was not found to be a moderator of any stressor‐depression interactions. In conclusion, the results give support for the significant role of stress and self‐esteem on the experience of depressive symptoms in adolescents.     

Attentional control mediates fearful responding to an ecologically valid stressor

Background and Objectives: Attentional control (AC) is defined as the ability to voluntarily shift and disengage attention and is thought to moderate the relationship between preexisting risk factors for fear and the actual experience of fear. Design: This longitudinal study elaborates on current models of AC by examining whether AC moderates or mediates effects of an ecologically valid stressor (a college examination) and also whether AC is predictive of state-like fear over longer timescales than previously reported. Methods: Based on previous findings, we hypothesized that AC would moderate the relationship between trait anxiety and affective distress in response to the examination stressor. We also tested a competing mediational model based on AC theory. These models were tested in two separate samples (sample 1, N = 219; sample 2, N = 129; Total N = 348) at two time points, at the beginning of a college semester in a large undergraduate class and 5 minutes prior to a college examination. Results: Mediation but not moderation of anxiety by AC was supported in both samples using multiple dependent measures. Conclusions: We conclude that AC may be useful in predicting affective distress in naturalistic settings, particularly in cases where anxiety is anticipatory.     

Meta‐Analysis of Counseling Outcomes for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

This meta‐analysis of 152 published posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) clinical trials from 1990 to 2012 concluded that counseling generally produced a small to large effect of treatment across all comparison conditions at termination (d+ = 0.30 to 0.89). These gains were maintained at longest follow‐up (d+ = 0.58 to 0.86) for the wait‐list, treatment‐as‐usual, and single‐group comparisons, but not for the follow‐up placebo comparison (d+ = 0.15), probably because of the low power (j = 3 placebo studies). Clinical trial findings were synthesized using a random‐effects model. No effects of publication bias or moderating variables were evident. No difference was found between trauma‐focused and non‐trauma‐focused approaches. Implications for counseling practice and future PTSD outcome research are addressed.     

Customer Reactions to Staff Empowerment: Mediators and Moderators

For over a decade, the empowerment of service staff has been touted as an effective means of improving worker satisfaction and performance. The 2 studies described in this paper assess likely customer reactions to staff empowerment. In Study I, conditions of full empowerment produced higher customer satisfaction ratings than did either limited or no empowerment, with evidence that the link between empowerment and satisfaction is mediated primarily by perceptions of procedural fairness. In Study 2, full empowerment was again associated with high satisfaction and with positive appraisals of the empowered staff member, although these effects were moderated by the employee's communication style.     

Feature Centrality and Conceptual Coherence

Conceptual features differ in how mentally tranformable they are. A robin that does not eat is harder to imagine than a robin that does not chirp. We argue that features are immutable to the extent that they are central in a network of dependency relations. The immutability of a feature reflects how much the internal structure of a concept depends on that feature; i.e., how much the feature contributes to the concept's coherence. Complementarily, mutability reflects the aspects in which a concept is flexible. We show that features can be reliably ordered according to their mutability using tasks that require people to conceive of objects missing a feature, and that mutability (conceptual centrality) can be distinguished from category centrality and from diagnosticity and salience. We test a model of mutability based on asymmetric, unlabeled, pairwise dependency relations. With no free parameters, the model provides reasonable fits to data. Qualitative tests of the model show that mutability judgments are unaffected by the type of dependency relation and that dependency structure influences judgments of variability.     

Trait anxiety, defensiveness and selective processing of threat: an investigation using two measures of attentional bias

Attentional biases for threat were examined in a non-clinical sample (N=60), with each participant tested on both the modified Stroop colour-naming and dot probe tasks. Three groups were selected on the basis of trait anxiety and social desirability scale (SDS) scores: “low anxiety” (LA: low trait, low SDS), “repressor” (REP: low trait, high SDS) and “high anxiety” (HA: high trait, low SDS). Results from the colour-naming task suggested that high levels of defensiveness (in combination with low trait anxiety) were associated with greater avoidance of threat. The REP group showed less interference in colour-naming threat than neutral words; whereas the HA group showed increased interference due to threat words. On the dot probe task, there was a general tendency for this non-clinical sample as a whole to show avoidance of social threat relative to neutral words, but there was no bias for physical threat words. Avoidance of social threat was significant only within the REP group. No relationships were found between the measures of cognitive bias from the two tasks, suggesting different underlying mechanisms. Results are discussed in relation to previous findings and theoretical views of the effects of anxiety and defensiveness on the processing of threat.