Normative and idiosyncratic measures of positive and negative affect in sport

Objectives: The purposes of the study were to: (a) ascertain the degree of similarity amongst normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect; (b) test the notion of reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions; (c) analyse the differences on the intensity of facilitating-positive, facilitating-negative, inhibiting-positive, and inhibiting-negative performance emotion content categories, and (d) test whether competitive trait anxiety intensity could predict pre-performance normative or idiosyncratic negative affect intensity.Design: A cross-sectional study design was employed using normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect.Methods: Experienced male soccer and volleyball players (N =124) were individually assessed. Normative scales were the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) used as a sport-specific trait measure of competitive affect, and the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) administered for the assessment of competitive trait anxiety. Idiosyncratic affect occurring prior to or during optimal and poor competitions was identified in the conceptual framework of the Hanin's Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model (Hanin, Y.L. (1997). Emotions and athletic performance: Individual zones of optimal functioning model. European Yearbook of Sport Psychology, 1, 29–72).Results: Findings revealed low overlap amongst the PANAS items and the idiosyncratic items, reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions, higher level of positive affect associated with optimal performance when compared with all other affect categories, and lower levels of facilitating-negative category when compared with the facilitating-positive. Moreover, sport trait anxiety intensity was found to predict negative affect intensity as assessed by the PANAS normative scales and by the idiosyncratic items. For idiosyncratic affect, however, significant differences emerged only when comparing individuals with very high or very low anxiety symptoms.Conclusions: Idiosyncratic affect scales together with normative scales are recommended for research and applied purposes. The functional impact as well as the hedonic tone of emotion items need to be examined according to individual perception.     

How Brands Acquire Cultural Meaning

This article endeavors to advance research on the cultural resonance of brands by building bridges between branding scholarship in the consumer psychology tradition and interpretive research regarding brands and their meaning makers. We adopt a cognitivist conceptualization of cultural meaning and focus on the application of interpretive insights to well‐established constructs in the consumer psychology of brands: brand associations, product category associations, social identity, and self‐identity. This integrative exercise highlights the value of cultural models in explaining the processes whereby brands acquire meaning, and suggests several themes that are under‐valued when considering this process problem through a psychological lens: the motivational underpinnings of myths and other cultural meaning models, the relative value of shared cultural and brand meanings versus idiosyncratic meanings, the power and primacy of category‐level meaning making over brand‐level meaning making, the complex processes whereby brands gain and lose legitimacy, and the influence of lay theories about brands and branding on how consumers co‐create meaning for brands.     

Identifying pre-service teachers’ profiles of conceptions of learning: a cluster analysis

Social Psychology of Education - This study was conducted to track conceptions of learning among pre-service teachers and to verify whether they can be grouped in profiles. A sample of 232...     

Mentoring as a Mediator or Moderator of the Association between Racial Discrimination and Coping Efficacy in Urban,Low‐Income Latina/o Youth

The aim of this study was to examine the associations among mentoring relationship quality (i.e., relational and instrumental quality), racial discrimination and coping efficacy with racial discrimination. Three social support models were tested, including the stress buffering, support mobilization, and support deterioration models. Participants were 257 urban, low‐income Latina/o high school students, who completed surveys in both 9th and 10th grades. While controlling for gender and coping efficacy with discrimination in 9th grade, results supported the social support deterioration model. Specifically, there was a significant indirect effect of racial discrimination in 9th grade on coping efficacy in 10th grade through instrumental mentoring quality. As racial discrimination increased, mentoring quality decreased and then coping efficacy decreased. We also found that more racial discrimination in 9th grade was significantly associated with lower coping efficacy in 10th grade, and higher instrumental mentoring quality in 9th grade was significantly associated with higher coping efficacy in 10th grade, while controlling for gender and coping efficacy in 9th grade. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Hierarchy of interactive functions in father‐mother‐baby three‐way games

In developmental research, the family has mainly been studied through dyadic interaction. Three‐way interactions have received less attention, partly because of their complexity. This difficulty may be overcome by distinguishing between four hierarchically embedded functions in three‐way interactions: (1) participation (inclusion of all participants), (2) organization (partners keeping to their roles), (3) focalization (sharing a common focus) and (4) affective contact (being in tune). We document this hierarchical model on a sample of 80 families observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play situation across four different sites. Hierarchy between functions was demonstrated by means of Guttman scalability coefficient. Given the importance of the child's development in a threesome, the pertinence of this model for family assessment is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Abductive inference in defeasible reasoning: a model for research programmes

Abduction is regarded as the inference process that goes from observations to explanations within a more general context or theoretical framework. There are good characterizations of abduction of surprising observations in monotonic theories. Also, in normal logic programs there are a tight relation among SLDNF and the abduction of negative literals. However, a problem that faces abduction is the explanation of anomalous observations, i.e., observations that are contradictory with respect to the current theory. For this reason, in this work we will consider the problem of embedding abduction of surprising and anomalous observations in defeasible (nonmonotonic) theories. We discuss some issues arising the pragmatic acceptance of abductive inferences in defeasible theories, and how to accommodate anomalous observations and characterize all the possible outcomes that a defeasible theory may face when confronted with new evidence. We explore the use of partial structures approach as a semantic foundation for our system. Finally, we discuss an application of our system as a formal device for representing the methodology of scientific research programmes. In this representation, a programme is regarded as a defeasible theory that draws predictions. When confronted with surprising or anomalous observations, the programme protects itself by means of heuristic procedures, which are represented in our system as abductive inference procedures.     

Some Thoughts on A. H. Louie’s “More Than Life Itself: A Reflection on Formal Systems and Biology”

We review and discuss A. H. Louie’s book “More than Life Itself: A Reflexion on Formal Systems and Biology” from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, involving both biology and mathematics, taking into account new developments and related theories.     

Causal beliefs and empirical evidence

Causal beliefs often facilitate decision making. However, strong causal beliefs can also lead to neglect of relevant empirical evidence causing errors in risky decision making (e.g., medical, financial). We investigated the impact of pre-training and post-experience on the evaluation of empirical evidence in a two-alternative medical diagnostic task. Participants actively searched for information about two patients on the basis of four available cues. The first experiment indicated that pre-training can weaken the strong influence of causal beliefs reducing neglect of empirical evidence. The second experiment demonstrated that increasing amounts of empirical evidence can improve people's ability to decide in favor of a correct diagnosis. The current research converges with other recent work to clarify key mechanisms and boundary conditions shaping the influence of causal beliefs and empirical evidence in decisions and causal judgments.     

The contribution of personality traits and self‐efficacy beliefs to academic achievement: A longitudinal study

Background. The personal determinants of academic achievement and success have captured the attention of many scholars for the last decades. Among other factors, personality traits and self‐efficacy beliefs have proved to be important predictors of academic achievement. Aims. The present study examines the unique contribution and the pathways through which traits (i.e., openness and conscientiousness) and academic self‐efficacy beliefs are conducive to academic achievement at the end of junior and senior high school. Sample. Participants were 412 Italian students, 196 boys and 216 girls, ranging in age from 13 to 19 years. Methods. The hypothesized relations among the variables were tested within the framework of structural equation model. Results and conclusions. Openness and academic self‐efficacy at the age of 13 contributed to junior high‐school grades, after controlling for socio‐economic status (SES). Junior high‐school grades contribute to academic self‐efficacy beliefs at the age of 16, which in turn contributed to high‐school grades, over and above the effects of SES and prior academic achievement. In accordance with the posited hypothesis, academic self‐efficacy beliefs partially mediated the contribution of traits to later academic achievement. In particular, conscientiousness at the age of 13 affected high‐school grades indirectly, through its effect on academic self‐efficacy beliefs at the age of 16. These findings have broad implications for interventions aimed to enhance children's academic pursuits. Whereas personality traits represent stable individual characteristics that mostly derive from individual genetic endowment, social cognitive theory provides guidelines for enhancing students’ efficacy to regulate their learning activities.