How to combat the negative impact of discrimination in a collectivist context? The safeguarding function of peer-oriented hope

The objective of the study was to assess the moderating role of locus-of-hope on the relations between everyday discrimination and well-being outcomes in a collectivist setting. There were 444 Filipino undergraduate students who participated in the research. Findings showed that discrimination was negatively linked to subjective well-being and flourishing while loci-of-hope (internal, external-spiritual, external-family, and external-peers) were positively associated with well-being indices. Further, external-peer locus-of-hope moderated the relations between everyday discrimination and well-being outcomes such that for those who had higher external-peer locus-of-hope, everyday discrimination may still be linked to greater well-being. The theoretical and practical implications are elucidated.     

Prediction and Cross-Situational Consistency of Daily Behavior across Cultures: Testing Trait and Cultural Psychology Perspectives

Trait and cultural psychology perspectives on the cross-situational consistency of behavior, and the predictive validity of traits, were tested in a daily process study in the United States (N = 68), an individualistic culture, and the Philippines (N = 80), a collectivistic culture. Participants completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and a measure of self-monitoring, then reported their daily behaviors and associated situational contexts for approximately 30 days. Consistent with trait perspectives, the Big Five traits predicted daily behaviors in both cultures, and relative (interindividual) consistency was observed across many, although not all, situational contexts. The frequency of various Big Five behaviors varied across relevant situational contexts in both cultures and, consistent with cultural psychology perspectives, there was a tendency for Filipinos to exhibit greater situational variability than Americans. Self-monitoring showed some ability to account for individual differences in situational variability in the American sample, but not the Filipino sample.     

Structure of personality pathology in normal and clinical samples: Spanish validation of the DAPP-BQ

Given that the DSM taxonomy of personality disorders is flawed by severe classificatory problems, the development of alternative classificatory systems, such as the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ), has now become a priority. This study examined the internal consistency, second-order factor structure, and criterion validity of a Spanish translation of the DAPP-BQ in two samples: subjects with personality disorder (n = 155) and subjects from the general population (n = 300). Alpha coefficients ranged satisfactorily from .75 to .93. Four second-order factors of Emotional Dysregulation, Dissocial Behavior, Inhibitedness, and Compulsivity were obtained, which were replicable between samples and identical to those reported in the literature. Finally, disordered subjects scored significantly higher than normal subjects on 17 of the 18 DAPP-BQ traits. Some pending issues in the construction of an alternative taxonomy of personality disorders are discussed.     

Variations in Psychological Profile Among Children with Recurrent Abdominal Pain

This study was designed to determine whether distinct subgroups of children with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP) could be identified based on patterns of psychological functioning. Two hundred and eighty-three children (ages 8–17 years), and a primary caretaker, completed the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) during the initial evaluation of RAP at a pediatric gastroenterology clinic. Cluster analysis of BASC scores supported a 3-cluster solution, with fair agreement observed between parents and children on cluster assignment. Approximately half of the sample identified no significant psychological problems. A small percentage (13%) evidenced intense and broad-based psychological problems, while the remainder (35–45%) indicated relative elevations in anxiety only. Cluster membership did not vary systematically by age, gender, race, or functional gastrointestinal disorder diagnosis. Distinct psychological profiles appear to exist for children with RAP. Targeting treatments to these profiles may improve the effectiveness and efficiency with which health professionals address pediatric abdominal pain. This study was supported in part by a grant from the Hall Family Foundation. Portions of this work were presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in July 2004 (Honolulu, HI) and at Digestive Diseases Week in May 2004 (New Orleans, LA).     

Role of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex in mediating behavioral control-induced reduction of later conditioned fear

A prior experience of behavioral control over a stressor interferes with subsequent Pavlovian fear conditioning, and this effect is dependent on the activation of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFCv) at the time of the initial experience with control. It is unknown whether mPFCv activity is necessary during fear learning and/or testing for this interference to occur. One week following controllable stress, the infralimbic cortex (IL) was temporarily inactivated either before fear learning or later testing. Inactivation of the IL before the test for conditioned fear, but not before conditioning, blocked the fear reducing effects of prior controllable stress. This suggests that the experience with control interferes with the expression of fear behavior and not the learning of the association, and that the mPFCv is needed to regulate conditioned fear behavior.     

Further exploration of Filipino personality structure using the lexical approach: do the big-five or big-seven dimensions emerge?

Filipino college students (N=740) rated their personalities using 502 reasonably familiar terms from a comprehensive taxonomy of Filipino trait adjectives. Using factor analysis, we replicated the seven Filipino personality dimensions identified in a previous study (Church, Reyes, Katigbak and Grimm, 1997). At least seven factors are needed to identify dimensions resembling all of the Big Five. When positive- and negative-evaluation terms are included a Negative-Valence dimension is found, but positive-evaluation terms blend with Intellect terms rather than identifying a distinct dimension. Thus, the cross-cultural generalizability of the Big-Seven model (Tellegen and Waller, 1997) is not completely supported. Correlational analyses consistently show good one-to-one correspondence between the Filipino Gregariousness, Concern for Others versus Egotism, Conscientiousness, and Intellect dimensions and Big-Five Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Intellect, respectively. The Filipino Temperamentalness and Self-assurance dimensions, although moderately correlated with Neuroticism, are multidimensional in terms of the Big Five. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analysis of sustainable consumption practices through the role of the consumer behavior in the circular economy

Sustainable consumption analyses the choice of products to address environmental issues. In recent years, the circular economy model () has offered strategies as possible solutions to address the growing demand for action on climate justice. The success of a business model depends on understanding the consumer's role. The power of individual consumer actions is vital for minimizing the adverse impacts of climate change. Although the effectiveness of in the business sector has been studied, the literature has ignored the role of consumers in sustainable consumption practices through. Thus, using a survey technique, this quantitative study analyzed part of the theoretical model of Mostaghel and Chirumalla to analyze how awareness and consumer attitude significantly impact purchase intention and ethical purchasing behavior. The data analyzed through PLS-SEM reflected several theoretical implications in the forms of consumer behavior, a topic that has not been addressed in the literature.     

Examining the cross‐cultural validity of the positive affect and negative affect schedule between an Asian (Singaporean) sample and a Western (American) sample

The positive affect and negative affect schedule (PANAS) is a popular measure of positive (PA) and negative affectivity (NA). Developed and validated in Western contexts, the 20‐item scale has been frequently administered on respondents from Asian countries with the assumption of cross‐cultural measurement invariance. We examine this assumption via a rigorous multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, which allows us to assess between‐group differences in both strength of scale item‐to‐latent factor relationship (metric invariance test) and mean of each scale item (scalar invariance test), on a large sample of 1,065 respondents recruited from Singapore (Asian sample) and the United States (Western sample). We found that two items assessing PA (“excited” and “proud”) and three items assessing NA (“guilty,” “hostile,” and “ashamed”) exhibited metric noninvariance whereas 11 of the remaining metric invariant items exhibited scalar noninvariance, suggesting that the PA and NA constructs differ from what the PANAS is expected to measure for Asian respondents. Our findings serve as a cautionary note to researchers who intend to administer the PANAS in future studies as well as to researchers interpreting the results of past studies involving respondents from Asian countries.