Children’s Reward and Punishment Sensitivity Moderates the Association of Negative and Positive Parenting Behaviors in Child ADHD Symptoms

Atypical reward processing, including abnormal reward responsivity and sensitivity to punishment, has long been implicated in the etiology of ADHD. However, little is known about how these facets of behavior interact with positive (e.g., warmth, praise) and negative (e.g., hostility, harsh discipline) parenting behavior in the early expression of ADHD symptoms in young children. Understanding the interplay between children’s reward processing and parenting may be crucial for identifying specific treatment targets in psychosocial interventions for ADHD, especially given that not all children benefit from contingency-based treatments (e.g., parent management training). The study consisted of a sample of kindergarten children (N?=?201, 55% male) and their parents, who completed questionnaires about their parenting practices, their child’s behaviors and participated in an observed parent-child play task in the laboratory. Children’s reward responsivity and sensitivity to punishment were positively associated with child ADHD symptoms. However, children with high reward responsivity had more symptoms of ADHD but only under conditions of low negative parenting (self-reported and observed) and high self-reported positive parenting, compared to children with low reward responsivity. Children with high sensitivity to punishment had more ADHD symptoms relative to children with low sensitivity to punishment, but only under conditions in which observed praise was infrequent. Results provide evidence that individual differences in sensitivity to reward/punishment may be an important of marker of risk for ADHD, but also highlights how children’s responses to positive and negative parenting behavior may vary by children’s sensitivities. Clinical and treatment implications are discussed.     

The Role of Character Strengths and Importance of Family on Mexican American College Students' Career Decision Self‐Efficacy

This study examined how character strengths and the importance of family influenced Mexican American college students' (N = 129) career decision self‐efficacy. Findings from a multiple regression analysis indicated that psychological grit and curiosity were significant predictors of career decision self‐efficacy. The authors discuss the importance of these findings and provide recommendations for future research.     

From Puddles to Potholes: The Role of Overvalued Beliefs in Emotional Problems

The bygone notion of a “fixed idea” has evolved into an appreciation for overvalued beliefs, automatic thoughts, irrational beliefs, and dysfunctional attitudes and the role they can play in the lives of many clients. Overvalued beliefs are common and can be destructive when they guide the client toward extreme emotional reactions, disruptive behavioral patterns or create negative views of self or others. Overvalued beliefs become problematic when they are not aligned with commonly accepted views of reality, they are rigidly maintained despite insufficient evidence, and they create maladaptive self-perpetuating patterns. A metaphor is used to explain how minor puddles can evolve into major potholes, creating lasting damage. The destructive power of puddles shares some similarities with the subtle influence of overvalued beliefs on a client’s emotional and interpersonal functioning. Psychotherapy can help clients to confront the misguided accuracy, limited utility, and exaggerated potency of their beliefs. Therapy can help clients to disengage from the directive power of their beliefs, learning to tolerate various thoughts without reacting at an emotional or behavioral level.     

Problem Clarity as a Moderator between Trait Affect and Self‐Perceived Creativity

Empirical studies on the relationship between affect and creativity often produce conflicting results. This inconsistency has led us to believe that the relationship between affect and creativity may be better understood by looking at potential moderators. Our study looked specifically at trait affect and self‐perceived creativity. Using the Affect Infusion Model (AIM) theory with problem clarity as the potential moderator, we hypothesized that when individuals are faced with problems that lack clarity, trait affect has greater sway over their self‐perceived creativity. Our results provided evidence that problem clarity moderated the relationship between positive trait affect and self‐perceived creativity; the positive relationship between positive trait affect and self‐perceived creativity is stronger when problem clarity is low and weaker when problem clarity is high. No moderating effect was found in the relationship between negative trait affect and self‐perceived creativity.     

Political Skill and Work Outcomes: A Theoretical Extension,Meta‐Analytic Investigation,and Agenda for the Future

This quantitative review explored the political skill construct and its predictive ability across a number of organizational outcomes. First, we extended the Ferris et al. meta‐theoretical framework of political skill. Next, incorporating meta‐analysis, we found political skill is positively related to self‐efficacy, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, work productivity, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), career success, and personal reputation, and negatively related to physiological strain. Political skill was not significantly related to psychological strain or perceptions of organizational politics. Using meta‐regression and dominance analyses, political skill predicted task performance after controlling for the Big Five personality characteristics and general mental ability. In a test of indirect relationships, our results suggest that personal reputation and self‐efficacy partially mediate the political skill–task performance relationship. Finally, in a post hoc test of political skill dimensions, we found that networking ability, interpersonal influence, and apparent sincerity (but not social astuteness) predicted task performance. Our findings provide a comprehensive assessment of theory and research to date on political skill and extend theoretical foundations to stimulate new inquiry into the operation of this important construct.     

Specificity Matters: Criterion-Related Validity of Contextualized and Facet Measures of Conscientiousness in Predicting College Student Performance

To enhance the predictive validity of self-report personality measures, 2 distinct ways of increasing specificity of personality measures have been proposed in the literature—contextual specificity (i.e., providing a contextual referent) and content specificity (i.e., focusing on more specific constructs such as the Big Five facets). This study extends this line of research by examining whether there is an optimal way to configure, align, or integrate contextual and content specificity using measures of conscientiousness to predict college student success. A sample of 478 undergraduate students completed 4 measures of conscientiousness that varied in the level of content and contextual specificity. These forms of specificity were crossed to yield 4 distinct measures of conscientiousness. We then evaluated and compared the relative importance and the incremental importance of these different measures in the prediction of academic success. Superior predictive validity was found for both contextualized and facet measures of conscientiousness compared to a measure of global conscientiousness in predicting grade-point average and a broader behavioral criterion of student performance. When contextual and content specificity approaches were compared and combined, we observed the strongest predictive validity when the level of specificity is appropriately matched between predictor and criterion.     

The Role of Neighborhood in the Development of Aggression in Urban African American Youth: A Multilevel Analysis

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of neighborhood disadvantage and perceptions of neighborhood on the development of aggressive behavior among a sample of urban low‐income African American middle school aged youth (mean age = 11.65 years). Results of hierarchical linear modeling indicated that youth experienced significant changes in rates of aggression across the three middle school years, and that on average, negative youth perceptions of neighborhood predicted increases in aggression. Both parent and youth perceptions of neighborhood disadvantage trended toward significance as a moderator between objective neighborhood characteristics and aggression. These results are in accordance with past research, which suggests that personal evaluations of the disadvantage of a neighborhood influence child development and behavior. Future studies should examine the role that perceptions play in youth development, as well as in interventions geared towards thwarting youth aggression.     

Élan Vital Revisited: Bergson and the Thermodynamic Paradigm

The received view of Bergson's philosophy of life is that it advances some form of vitalism under the heading of an “élan vital.” This paper argues against the vitalistic interpretation of Bergson's élan vital as it appears in Creative Evolution (1907) in favor of an interpretation based on his overlooked reflections on entropy and energetics. Within the interpretation developed here, the élan vital is characterized not as a spiritualistic “vital force” but as a tendency of organization opposed to the tendency of entropic degradation. It is then shown how Bergson's view of evolution and living organization resonates with more contemporary scientific approaches belonging to a “thermodynamic paradigm” in theoretical biology in different respects, including the critique of neo‐Darwinism and the positing of a driving force behind evolution. Finally, the special interest that Bergson's philosophical biology bears today is considered in terms of the connection between the concepts of élan vital and duration.