The Effect of Motive‐Trait Interaction on Satisfaction of the Implicit Need for Affiliation Among German and Cameroonian Adults

Research provided evidence that personality traits influence the realization of implicit motives: Extraversion supported the successful realization of the implicit motives for affiliation and power, whereas introversion deflected implicit motives away from significant goals and created difficulties in goal attainment. Based on those findings on motive‐trait interaction, we tested whether the traits of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Extraversion affect the satisfaction of the implicit affiliation motive (i.e., the need for establishing and maintaining close relationships with other people) approximately 18 months later. Data on personality traits, the implicit affiliation motive, and need satisfaction were assessed from 244 Cameroonian and German adults. As expected, across cultural groups, Neuroticism constrains but Agreeableness supports the realization of the implicit affiliation motive. No significant results could be found for Extraversion, even if the effect was in the assumed direction. The findings support the argument that different significant personality components ought to be taken into account in research on implicit motives and their psychological and behavioral correlates.     

Testing the Situationism Scale in Europe: Scale validation,self‐regulation and regional differences

The term situationism refers to an individual's belief about the importance of a behaviour's context. This study tested whether the degree of situationism expressed by individuals in various regions of Europe was consistent with self‐regulation and cross‐cultural theories. The English version of a Situationism Scale (measuring beliefs about the relation between the environment and one's own behaviour) was translated into five additional languages: Dutch, German, Hungarian, Italian and Slovenian. Young adults (N = 1106, M_Age = 22.9 years, 79% female) across Europe responded to one of the six language versions of the scale as part of a larger survey. Results indicated that: new language versions were psychometrically valid; there was a positive relation between situationism and the use of situation‐control strategies; and situationism was higher for individuals from regions that are Eastern European and relatively more interdependent, compared with individuals from regions that are Western European and relatively less interdependent. As the first evaluation of the Situationism Scale outside America, this study supports the Scale's validity and suggests not only may some effects of situationism be universal, but between‐ and within‐culture differences in situationism exist. Overall, when making judgments and decisions about the self, cultural background and individual differences in situationism may come into play.     

Socio-Economic Status,Time Spending,and Sleep Duration in Indian Children and Adolescents

In this article physical activity, screen time, and academic work are studied as mediators between socio-economic status and sleep duration among school children in India. Participants were 268 school children aged 10–15 from Pune, India. They were sampled from private schools and impoverished public schools. We found that the highest socio-economic status children reported almost an hour and a half less sleep than their lowest socio-economic status counterparts. The lower socio-economic status children reported more physical activity and screen time, and the higher socio-economic status children reported spending more time on academic work. Although screen time was negatively related to sleep duration, academic work was the strongest mediator between socio-economic status and sleep duration. Physical activity was not a significant mediator. In India, academic work is a strong predictor of a lower sleep duration among children and adolescents.     

The Interplay of Implicit Causality,Structural Heuristics,and Anaphor Type in Ambiguous Pronoun Resolution

Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigating pronoun resolution in Finnish examined the time course of implicit causality information relative to both grammatical role and order-of-mention information. Experiment 1 showed an effect of implicit causality that appeared at the same time as the first-mention preference. Furthermore, when we counterbalanced the semantic roles of the verbs, we found no effect of grammatical role, suggesting the standard observed subject preference has a large semantic component. Experiment 2 showed that both the personal pronoun hän and the demonstrative tämä preferred the antecedent consistent with the implicit causality bias; tämä was not interpreted as referring to the semantically non-prominent entity. In contrast, structural prominence affected hän and tämä differently: we found a first-mention preference for hän, but a second-mention preference for tämä. The results suggest that semantic implicit causality information has an immediate effect on pronoun resolution and its use is not delayed relative to order-of-mention information. Furthermore, they show that order-of-mention differentially affects different types of anaphoric expressions, but semantic information has the same effect.     

Psychological strengths and subjective well-being in South African white students

This study investigated the role of individual resources, notably self-efficacy, gratitude, and hope, in subjective well-being of white dormitory students at a historically white institution of higher learning. Using a convenience sample of white students (N?=?227), we tested the role of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, and hope as indicators of a latent factor, labelled personal resources, in a structural equation model with subjective well-being as the latent output variable, measured by self-esteem and satisfaction with life. Path analyses indicated a reasonable fit between the data and our hypothesised theoretical model which proposed positive relations between levels of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, dispositional hope, self-esteem and satisfaction with life. White students were psychologically doing well, considering above-midpoint levels obtained for levels of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, dispositional hope, and satisfaction with life However, scores obtained for self-esteem and adult dispositional hope were below the mid-point and neutral respectively, indicating that White students do not agree that they experience high levels of these two psychological strengths. White female students experienced higher levels of hope, gratitude, and life satisfaction, while no significant gender differences were found for generalised self-efficacy and self-esteem. The results of this study highlight the potential for using psychological strengths to promote well-being in racially diverse students.     

The relationship between employees’ experience of performance management and work engagement within a South African organisation

The study investigated the relationship between employees’ experience of performance management and work engagement. Participants were a convenience sample of employed adults (N=202; females=59%, middle management?=?48%, White?=?54%, tenure more than 9 years?=?48%) in an organisation in the vehicle and asset-based finance industry. They completed the Performance Management Questionnaire (PMQ) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the proportion of variance of work engagement that is explained by employees’ experience of performance management. Results revealed that only empowerment significantly predicted work engagement. These findings suggest that when employees experience performance management as empowering, they are also likely to have higher levels of work engagement.     

The timing of meals

In most individuals, food intake occurs as discrete bouts or meals, and little attention has been paid to the factors that normally determine when meals will occur when food is freely available. On the basis of experiments using rats, the authors suggest that when there are no constraints on obtaining food and few competing activities, 3 levels of interacting controls normally dictate when meals will start. The first is the genetically determined circadian activity pattern on which nocturnal animals tend to initiate most meals in the dark. The second is the regularly occurring changing of the light cycle: These changes provide temporal anchors. The third relates to the size of the preceding meal, such that larger meals cause a longer delay until the onset of the next meal. Superimposed on these 3 are factors related to learning, convenience, and opportunity.     

The development and validation of an implicit measure of competence need satisfaction

Research on self-determination theory has typically relied on explicit measures when examining the concept of competence need satisfaction. As a result, we know relatively little about competence need satisfaction that arises under conditions of automaticity. Across four studies, we developed and validated implicit measures of competence need satisfaction by drawing on two tasks: a relational variant of the implicit association test (IAT; Study 1, 3, and 4) and the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP; Study 2–3). Results across these studies revealed that both implicit measures were either unrelated or moderately related to their explicit counterpart. They were also unrelated to one another. Unlike the IRAP, the IAT was found to be reliable, to display discriminant validity, and to yield meaningful but modest relations with constructs in a nomological network. Together, these results provide modest support for the usefulness of the competence need satisfaction IAT but not of the competence need satisfaction IRAP as an implicit measure of the need for competence. Future research examining the unique predictive value of this IAT is needed, together with research on possible explanations for the low reliability of the IRAP.     

Pupil dilation as an index of effort in cognitive control tasks: A review

Pupillometry research has experienced an enormous revival in the last two decades. Here we briefly review the surge of recent studies on task-evoked pupil dilation in the context of cognitive control tasks with the primary aim being to evaluate the feasibility of using pupil dilation as an index of effort exertion, rather than task demand or difficulty. Our review shows that across the three cognitive control domains of updating, switching, and inhibition, increases in task demands typically leads to increases in pupil dilation. Studies show a diverging pattern with respect to the relationship between pupil dilation and performance and we show how an effort account of pupil dilation can provide an explanation of these findings. We also discuss future directions to further corroborate this account in the context of recent theories on cognitive control and effort and their potential neurobiological substrates.