Associations of social and emotional competencies,academic efficacy beliefs,and emotional distress among students in lower secondary school

Social Psychology of Education - This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate how perceived social-emotional competencies (SECs), relationship skills, emotional regulation, and the ability to...     

Alliance rupture and repair processes in borderline personality disorder: A case study using dialogical sequence analysis

Objective: This study examined alliance rupture and repair processes in borderline personality disorder (BPD) and how the content of sessions interacts with the quality of the alliance.

Design: A mixed methods single case study design was employed incorporating quantitative and qualitative measures of process and outcome.

Methods: This case study examined a 22-year-old female with BPD who received 16 sessions of Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Measures of alliance, symptoms and global functioning were taken across multiple time-points. Selected sessions were analysed using dialogical sequence analysis (DSA), a theory-driven method of psychotherapy research that analyses utterances according to their author, addressee and referential object.

Results: Quantitative data indicated symptom reduction without functional improvement. DSA demonstrated that the first exchanges in therapy were reflective of key relational themes. The case suggests that, rather than simply negotiating tasks and goals, repairing ruptures involves systematically linking the manifest topic to the client’s core problems.

Conclusions: This case study points to the mediating role that the content of sessions has on alliance quality. Results underline the importance of the therapist stance, the need for a shared formulation to make sense of relational processes and the use of responsively timed interventions to decrease desperation and improve self-reflection.     

Why Does Frustration Predict Psychopathology? Multiple Prospective Pathways Over Adolescence: A TRAILS Study

Adolescents' temperamental frustration is a developmental precursor of adult neuroticism and psychopathology. Because the mechanisms that underlie the prospective association between adolescents' high frustration and psychopathology (internalizing/externalizing) have not been studied extensively, we quantified three pathways: stress generation [mediation via selection/evocation of stressful life events (SLEs)], cross‐sectional frustration‐psychopathology overlap (‘carry‐over’/common causes), and a direct (non‐mediated) vulnerability effect of frustration, including moderation of SLE impact. Frustration and psychopathology were assessed at age 16 with the Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire and the Youth Self‐Report. No gender differences in frustration were observed. At age 19, psychopathology was reassessed by using the Adult Self‐Report, while occurrence of endogenous (self‐generated) and exogenous (not self‐generated) SLEs during the interval (ages 16–19) were ascertained with the Life Stress Interview, an investigator‐based contextual‐stressfulness rating procedure (N = 957). Half of the prospective effect of frustration on psychopathology was explained by baseline overlap, including effects of ‘carry‐over’ and common causes, about 5% reflected stress generation (a ‘vicious’ cycle with the environment adolescents navigate and shape), and 45% reflected unmediated association: a direct vulnerability effect including stress sensitivity or moderation of SLE impact. After adjustment for their overlap, frustration predicted the development of externalizing but not internalizing symptoms. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Impulsivity as a predictor of newly diagnosed depression

Depression is a severe mental disorder, whose onset has been related to environmental, genetic and personality factors. This study examined the association between impulsivity and incidence of depression. Logistic regression models were related to prospective data from two surveys (2-year time lag) conducted in a large cohort of hospital employees (N= 4,505). Only respondents with no history of depression at baseline were included. Impulsivity was predictive of the onset of depression (OR = 1.95, CI 95%= 1.28-2.97) after adjustment for age, sex and education. This association remained statistically significant after additional adjustment for a variety of baseline characteristics, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and size of social network. A measure of mental distress (GHQ-12 responses), which may serve as a proxy measure for undiagnosed depression, was also associated with impulsivity. Impulsivity appears to be a distinct personality factor that may contribute to the onset of depressive illness in adults.     

Concurrent explanations can enhance visual decision making

The verbalization of one's thoughts has been shown to impair judgment and decision making in some cases, particularly when targets are perceptual. This finding has been attributed to the fact that non-verbal processes are sometimes difficult to verbalize, which may cause a shift in processing that is maladaptive to the task. The study shows that concurrent written explanations can also enhance judgment and decision making in certain visual choice tasks. This finding suggests that the effect of verbalization on perceptual tasks is not dependent on whether the targets of the judgment are verbal or perceptual but rather on whether there is adequate vocabulary to execute the task and whether the task benefits from a more analytic approach.     

Understanding consumers' brand‐induced food taste perception: A comparison of ‘brand familiarity’ – and ‘consumer value – brand symbolism (in)congruity’ – accounts

Past research has shown that familiar brands can boost consumers' food taste experiences. On the other hand, more recent evidence suggests that the (in)congruity between consumer values and brand symbolism can affect the food taste perception. This study is the first one to integrate these two accounts into one single conceptual framework and to empirically evaluate their relative roles in explaining consumers' brand‐induced taste perception. Two experiments involving taste trials (blind vs brand‐cued sensory evaluation) were conducted. The first experiment analysed the brand familiarity effect, whereas the second experiment addressed also the taste perception of yogurts with differing brand symbolism amongst food consumers with distinct value orientations to find support for the (in)congruity effects. This research implies that congruity is not responsible for enhancing consumers' taste perception beyond the level that is produced by the brand familiarity. In contrast, the incongruity effect appears capable of neutralising the brand familiarity effect. Therefore, these two explanations may operate independently. More generally, this study speaks for the importance of incorporating consumer value – brand symbolism incongruity mechanism into food consumption studies; even owners' of strong food brands cannot trust the ability of their brands to boost a consumer's taste experience if there is no correspondence between his or her central values and brand symbolism. Thus, an objectively better taste is not necessarily decisive; satisfactory sensory quality can suffice if it is coupled with imaginative and daring brand marketing that delivers unique emotional and functional benefits for well‐defined food consumer target segments. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sleeping problems and health behaviors as mediators between organizational justice and health.

The aim of this longitudinal cohort study was to investigate whether sleeping problems and health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, and sedentary lifestyle) mediate the association between organizational justice and employee health. Health indicators were minor psychiatric morbidity, as assessed by the General Health Questionnaire (U. Werneke, D. P. Goldberg, I. Yalcin, & B. T. Ustun, 2000), and poor self-rated health status. The results of logistic regression analysis of data for 416 male and 3,357 female hospital employees working during the 1998-2000 period in 10 Finnish hospitals suggest that sleeping problems are one of the underlying factors causing the adverse health effects of low organizational justice at work. No support for a mediating role of health behaviors between low organizational justice and health problems was obtained.     

Drivers and outcomes of salespersons’ value opportunity recognition competence in solution selling

Abstract

In B2B markets, firms seek to provide customer solutions instead of merely selling goods or services. As boundary-spanners, salespeople are pivotal for implementing this strategic shift. Yet, extant literature provides limited insights into salesperson’s resources and competencies required for customer solutions, particularly in the early phases of solution selling. This research focuses on salesperson’s value opportunity recognition competence (VOR), which is a central requirement for salespeople to be able to navigate the early phases of solution selling. Analyzing large-scale, multi-level data of 799 salespeople and their respective sales managers in 29 sales organizations, the authors investigate the role of different salesperson resources and work environment characteristics for strengthening their VOR. The authors find that salespeople need both customer and technical knowledge, but customer knowledge is more important. Salespeople also can substitute individual technical knowledge with strong internal relations, but strong customer relations are no substitute for individual knowledge about customers’ business models and processes. Formalization turned out to be a double-edged sword in the context of VOR development, while transformational leadership has positive effects only. The findings bear concrete implications for improving the selection, training, and work environment of solution salespeople.