The unconscious pursuit of emotion regulation: implications for psychological health

Because of the central involvement of emotion regulation in psychological health and the role that implicit (largely unconscious) processes appear to play in emotion regulation, implicit emotion-regulatory processes should play a vital role in psychological health. We hypothesised that implicitly valuing emotion regulation translates into better psychological health in individuals who use adaptive emotion-regulation strategies. A community sample of 222 individuals (56% women) who had recently experienced a stressful life event completed an implicit measure of emotion regulation valuing (ER-IAT) and reported on their habitual use of an important adaptive emotion-regulation strategy: cognitive reappraisal. We measured three domains of psychological health: well-being, depressive symptoms, and social adjustment. As hypothesised, individuals who implicitly valued emotion regulation exhibited greater levels of psychological health, but only when they were high in cognitive reappraisal use. These findings suggest that salutary effects of unconscious emotion-regulation processes depend on its interplay with conscious emotion-regulation processes.     

Building a Committed Hospice Volunteer Workforce—Do Variables at the Experience Stage Matter?

Volunteers are crucial to the survival of non‐profit organisations, who therefore have a fundamental interest in sustaining voluntary engagement over time. A central variable regarding sustained voluntary engagement is volunteers' organisational commitment, which has so far been a neglected research issue. The study at hand therefore explicitly focuses on hospice volunteers' commitment. Starting from the assumption that variables at the experience stage of volunteerism may be relevant in predicting volunteer commitment, questionnaire data on volunteers' motives, motive fulfilment and role identity were collected in a sample of hospice volunteers (N = 276). Results of multiple regression analyses show positive relationships between altruistic motive fulfilment and a volunteer role identity on the one hand and volunteer commitment on the other. Observed interaction effects imply that altruistic motive fulfilment is of importance both at the initial phase of volunteering and for long‐term volunteers. Moreover, interaction effects provide evidence that the fulfilment of egoistic motives is of particular importance amongst volunteers to whom egoistic motives are central. Thus, the fulfilment of altruistic motives and facilitating the development of a volunteer role identity should be permanent concerns in building a committed workforce. Egoistic motive fulfilment in contrast is of special relevance, when egoistic motives for volunteering are strong. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of goal progress cues: An implicit theory perspective

Consumers often encounter goods and services that provide cues to mark their progress. We define the term “goal progress cues” to reflect the diverse category of cues that highlight progress towards a goal. Across a series of three studies, we show that entity theorists, who rely on cues that highlight completion in order to signal their abilities to others, evaluate tasks that include these cues more favorably than those that lack these features. In contrast, incremental theorists, who focus on improving competence, are impacted only by progress cues that highlight learning. We demonstrate these findings across a variety of goal pursuit contexts that represent a mix of customer-centric (retail queues), service-oriented managerial (sales calls), and personal achievement consumer product (mazes) domains using both behavioral and self-reported measures. We conclude with a discussion about the theoretical and substantive implications of our findings.     

Young‐age gender differences in mathematics mediated by independent control or uncontrollability

We studied whether the origins of math anxiety can be related to a biologically supported framework of stress induction: (un)controllability perception, here indicated by self‐reported independent efforts in mathematics. Math anxiety was tested in 182 children (8‐ to 11‐year‐olds). Latent factor modeling was used to test hypotheses on plausible causal processes and mediations within competing models in quasi‐experimental contrasts. Uncontrollability perception in mathematics, or (in)dependence of efforts, best fit the data as an antecedent of math anxiety. In addition, the relationship of math anxiety with gender was fully mediated by adaptive perception of control (i.e. controllability). That is, young boys differ from girls in terms of their experience of control in mathematics learning. These differences influence math anxiety. Our findings are consistent with recent suggestions in clinical literature according to which uncontrollability makes women more susceptible to fear and anxiety disorders. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4b_47Y-e_U     

Towards international comparative research on the professionalisation of Religious Education

This article calls for international comparative research on the professionalisation of Religious Education (RE). To this end, it provides a rationale for focusing upon the concept of professionalisation and a theoretical justification for international comparative research, particularly identifying its significance in terms of the development of RE in England and Germany. The article outlines a methodology for exploring the concepts of professional knowledge, professional self-organisation and politics and professional development. The proposed methodology involves a systematic analysis of primary documentary sources including: (1) academic and professional journal articles and textbooks; (2) the archives of relevant institutions and organisations; and (3) external evidence, such as inspection and research reports. An analytical case study of two leading journals in each national context, Religion in Education in England and Der Evangelische Erzieher in Germany, in the immediate post-war era is appended to illustrate the benefits of implementing such a methodology across national boundaries.     

What's mom got to do with it? Contributions of maternal executive function and caregiving to the development of executive function across early childhood

Executive functions (EFs; e.g. working memory, inhibitory control) are mediated by the prefrontal cortex and associated with optimal cognitive and socio‐emotional development. This study provides the first concurrent analysis of the relative contributions of maternal EF and caregiving to child EF. A group of children and their mothers (n = 62) completed age‐appropriate interaction (10, 24, 36 months) and EF tasks (child: 24, 36, and 48 months). Regression analyses revealed that by 36 months of age, maternal EF and negative caregiving behaviors accounted for unique variance in child EF, above and beyond maternal education and child verbal ability. These findings were confirmed when using an early child EF composite‐our most reliable measure of EF – and a similar pattern was found when controlling for stability in child EF. Furthermore, there was evidence that maternal EF had significant indirect effects on changes in child EF through maternal caregiving. At 24 months, EF was associated with maternal EF, but not negative caregiving behaviors. Taken together, these findings suggest that links between negative caregiving and child EF are increasingly manifested during early childhood. Although maternal EF and negative caregiving are related, they provide unique information about the development of child EF. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPKXFbbrkps     

Sensitivity to social and non‐social threats in temperamentally shy children at‐risk for anxiety

In the current brief report, we examined threat perception in a group of young children who may be at‐risk for anxiety due to extreme temperamental shyness. Results demonstrate specific differences in the processing of social threats: 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds in the high‐shy group demonstrated a greater bias for social threats (angry faces) than did a comparison group of low‐shy children. This pattern did not hold for non‐social threats like snakes: Both groups showed an equal bias for the detection of snakes over frogs. The results suggest that children who are tempermentally shy have a heightened sensitivity to social signs of threat early in development. These findings have implications for understanding mechanisms of early threat sensitivity that may predict later socioemotional maladjustment.     

Teaching moral reasoning through gesture

Stem‐cell research. Euthanasia. Personhood. Marriage equality. School shootings. Gun control. Death penalty. Ethical dilemmas regularly spark fierce debate about the underlying moral fabric of societies. How do we prepare today's children to be fully informed and thoughtful citizens, capable of moral and ethical decisions? Current approaches to moral education are controversial, requiring adults to serve as either direct (‘top‐down’) or indirect (‘bottom‐up’) conduits of information about morality. A common thread weaving throughout these two educational initiatives is the ability to take multiple perspectives – increases in perspective taking ability have been found to precede advances in moral reasoning. We propose gesture as a behavior uniquely situated to augment perspective taking ability. Requiring gesture during spatial tasks has been shown to catalyze the production of more sophisticated problem‐solving strategies, allowing children to profit from instruction. Our data demonstrate that requiring gesture during moral reasoning tasks has similar effects, resulting in increased perspective taking ability subsequent to instruction. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v/gAcRIClU_GY     

Neural correlates of infant accent discrimination: an fNIRS study

The present study investigated the neural correlates of infant discrimination of very similar linguistic varieties (Quebecois and Parisian French) using functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy. In line with previous behavioral and electrophysiological data, there was no evidence that 3‐month‐olds discriminated the two regional accents, whereas 5‐month‐olds did, with the locus of discrimination in left anterior perisylvian regions. These neuroimaging results suggest that a developing language network relying crucially on left perisylvian cortices sustains infants’ discrimination of similar linguistic varieties within this early period of infancy.     

Aligning inside and outside perspectives of the self: A cross‐cultural difference in self‐perception

Past research shows that European Americans tend to take a first‐person perspective to understand the self and are unlikely to align the inside look with the outside gaze, whereas Asians tend to take a third‐person perspective and are likely to shift their inside look in the direction of the outsize gaze. In three experiments, we compared Asians and European Americans' self‐perceptions when the presence of their parents in the background of self‐perception was primed or otherwise. Without the priming, both European Americans and Asians viewed themselves more positively from their own perspective than from their parents' perspective. With the priming, only Asians lowered the positivity of their self‐perceptions to match the perceived positivity of the self in the parents' perspective. These results suggest that Asians do not have a static, passive tendency to assimilate their self‐views into the perceived external assessments of the self. Rather, their self‐views are fluid and flexible.