Emotions at primary school: Negative achievement emotions and their relation with emotional competencies in ethnic minority and majority students

Scarce attention has been paid to ethnic minority students' emotions and related competencies at school. Nevertheless, theoretical frameworks such as the control–value theory underline the importance of achievement emotions for students' performance and well‐being. We involved minority (n = 63) and majority (n = 103) students attending the first, third, and fifth grade of primary school. We assessed negative achievement emotions (anxiety, anger, embarrassment, boredom, and hopelessness), emotion understanding, and emotion regulation. Factorial analyses supported the goodness of the structure of a questionnaire measuring the five achievement emotions in Italian and mathematics and its invariance across minority and majority students. Analyses of variance indicated that minority students felt more intense anger, embarrassment, and boredom for Italian and anxiety and embarrassment for mathematics. Path analyses revealed that emotion understanding and emotion regulation were significantly related to achievement emotions. Findings are discussed for their theoretical and applied relevance in promoting well‐being at school among minority and majority students.     

Book Review: Allocating Scarce Medical Resources

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Delayed search for a concealed imprinted object in the domestic chick

Five-day-old chicks were accustomed to follow an imprinted object (a small red ball with which they had been reared) that was moving slowly in a large arena, until it disappeared behind an opaque screen. In experiments, each chick was initially confined in a transparent cage, from where it could see and track the ball while it moved towards, and then beyond, one of two screens. The screens could be either identical or differ in colour and pattern. Either immediately after the disappearance of the ball, or with a certain delay, the chick was released and allowed to search for its imprinted object behind either screen. The results showed that chicks took into account the directional cue provided by the ball movement and its concealment, up to a delay period of about 180 s, independently of the perceptual characteristics of the two screens. If an opaque partition was positioned in front of the transparent cage immediately after the ball had disappeared, so that, throughout the delay, neither the goal-object nor the two screens were visible, chicks were still capable of remembering and choosing the correct screen, though over a much shorter period of about 60 s. The results suggest that, at least in this precocial bird species, very young chicks can maintain some form of representation of the location where a social partner was last seen, and are also capable of continuously updating this representation so as to take into account successive displacements of the goal-object. Received: 17 January 1998 / Accepted after revision: 29 March 1998     

Testing Underlying Assumptions of the Family Empowerment Perspective

We examined two underlying assumptions of the family empowerment perspective. The first assumption is that a well-validated family-based treatment that explicitly aims to empower caregivers can do so. The second assumption is that increased caregiver empowerment should be associated with improved youth and family functioning. The data used to examine these assumptions are based on a randomized trial of multisystemic therapy versus usual community services for 118 substance abusing and dependent juvenile offenders. Results provided partial support for the underlying assumptions of the family empowerment perspective. The family-based treatment in comparison with usual services increased caregiver perceptions of empowerment at the service system level, but not at the family level. In addition, increased empowerment at the family and service system levels were associated with improved family relations, but not with decreased youth behavior problems. The conceptual implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.     

Quality of Relationship with Parents and Emotional Autonomy as Predictors of Self Concept and Loneliness in Adolescents with Learning Disabilities: The Moderating Role of the Relationship with Teachers

The present study aims to investigate the impact of family-level variables (emotional autonomy and the quality of the parents-adolescent relationship) on socio-emotional adjustment (loneliness and self-esteem) in adolescents with learning disabilities (LDs) and the role of the quality of the teacher-adolescent relationship in moderating the effects of these impacts. The participants are 293 typically developing adolescents (TD group) and 50 adolescents with learning disabilities (LD group), aged between 13 and 20. The following measures were administered: the Emotional Autonomy Scale (EAS), the Loneliness and Aloneness Scale for Children and Adolescents (LACA), the Assessment of Interpersonal Relations (AIR), and the Multidimensional Self Concept Scale (MSCS). The data showed that adolescents with LDs display significantly higher levels of peer-related loneliness, and lower levels of self-concept and perceived quality of relationships with parents and teachers. No significant differences emerged between the groups in emotional autonomy and in parent-related loneliness. Path analysis indicated that, in adolescents with LDs, emotional autonomy was more closely related to self-concept than in typically developing adolescents. A positive teacher-adolescent relationship could have a moderating effect on the relationships between the dimension considered only in the LD group. The findings have important implications for the implementation of intervention programs focused on social and emotional competences in young people with LDs.     

Validity and Reliability of the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire: Empirical Evidence from an Italian Study

Interpersonal competence is crucial to human life, and poor social functioning is a typical feature of various psychopathological conditions. Given the relevance of the construct, increasing attention has recently been paid to the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire (ICQ; Buhrmester et al. 1988), a 40-item self-report measuring five domains of interpersonal competence. To provide additional data on the cross-cultural adaptability of the ICQ, we developed an Italian version and investigated its psychometric properties with two independent student samples. Respondents were mostly women (about three quarters), ranging in age from 18 to 57. Study 1 (n?=?408) tested factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity. Study 2 (n?=?59) investigated test-retest reliability. Taken together, the results of both these studies provided support for the cross-cultural applicability of the ICQ, and revealed interesting associations between interpersonal competence and constructs such as well-being, emotion dysregulation and empathy.     

Empathy and contextual social cognition

Empathy is a highly flexible and adaptive process that allows for the interplay of prosocial behavior in many different social contexts. Empathy appears to be a very situated cognitive process, embedded with specific contextual cues that trigger different automatic and controlled responses. In this review, we summarize relevant evidence regarding social context modulation of empathy for pain. Several contextual factors, such as stimulus reality and personal experience, affectively link with other factors, emotional cues, threat information, group membership, and attitudes toward others to influence the affective, sensorimotor, and cognitive processing of empathy. Thus, we propose that the frontoinsular-temporal network, the so-called social context network model (SCNM), is recruited during the contextual processing of empathy. This network would (1) update the contextual cues and use them to construct fast predictions (frontal regions), (2) coordinate the internal (body) and external milieus (insula), and (3) consolidate the context–target associative learning of empathic processes (temporal sites). Furthermore, we propose these context-dependent effects of empathy in the framework of the frontoinsular-temporal network and examine the behavioral and neural evidence of three neuropsychiatric conditions (Asperger syndrome, schizophrenia, and the behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia), which simultaneously present with empathy and contextual integration impairments. We suggest potential advantages of a situated approach to empathy in the assessment of these neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as their relationship with the SCNM.     

Gratitude as a Variable of Mediation between Parental Support and Self-Esteem in Adolescence

Despite there has been a growing interest in the study of gratitude, few studies have investigated which factors support and promote it; notably, no study has yet addressed ways in which parents could promote gratitude in their children. The present study aims to investigate the relation between parental emotional support and self-esteem through the mediation of gratitude. The analyses have been conducted considering both the maternal and the paternal roles. To that end, an explorative model has been proposed of these relations. A self-report questionnaire was administered to 279 15–19 year-old adolescents (M?=?16.83, SD?=?.85) living in Northern Italy. Findings show that (a) the mother’s emotional support, but not the father’s, sustains gratitude, and (b) gratitude completely mediates the relation between maternal emotional support and self-esteem. Limitations and research implications are discussed.     

Don’t worry,be happy! Positive affect at work,greater balance at home. A daily diary study on work-family balance

IntroductionThe dynamics pertaining to work-family interface such as conflict, enrichment, etc. have received considerable scholarly attention in social sciences. However, the daily processes that are involved have been examined to a lesser extent, least of all including the role played by emotions.ObjectiveThis study aimed at examining, consistently with the Affective Events Theory, if positive and negative affect experienced during the working day played a mediational role in the associations between daily levels of work-family conflict and work-family enrichment on one side, and work-family balance on the other. Moreover, the moderating cross-level role of trait emotional stability was examined.MethodThe study included a convenience sample of 104 Italian employees who completed a diary-book over five consecutive working days.ResultsMultilevel-modelling results highlighted, controlling for emotional stability, a mediational role of only daily positive affect in the relationships between both work-family conflict and enrichment on the one side and work-family balance on the other side.ConclusionThis study contributed to the literature emphasizing the role of positive affective states experienced at the workplace and their connections with the private life. Limitations and implications for research and practice are described.     

University Teachers During the First Lockdown Due to SARS-CoV-2 in Italy: Stress,Issues and Perceptions of Misconduct

Science and Engineering Ethics - In this paper, we apply the capabilities approach—with the addition of capability ceilings—to energy justice. We argue that, to ensure energy justice,...