Empathy in adolescence: Relations with emotion awareness and social roles

In this study, we aimed at gaining a better understanding of the individual differences contributing to feelings of empathy in adolescents. Therefore, we examined the extent to which emotion awareness (e.g., recognizing and appreciating one's own and the emotions of others) and a tendency for certain social roles (e.g., helping or teasing peers when being bullied) are related to adolescents’ levels of empathy. The sample was comprised of 182 adolescents aged between 11 and 16. Empathy and emotion awareness were assessed using self‐report measures. Peer reports were used to indicate adolescents’ different social roles: Bullying, defending the victim, and outsider behaviour. Outcomes demonstrated that evaluating one's own and the emotions of others, and more defending nominations were associated with both affective and cognitive empathy, whereas aspects of emotion awareness which are linked with internalizing symptoms were related to empathic distress, suggesting maladaptive emotion appraisal. Furthermore, outsider behaviour was associated with empathic distress, emphasizing a self‐focused orientation. In contrast, more bullying was negatively associated with cognitive empathy. Overall, these outcomes demonstrate that, besides social roles, emotion awareness is an important factor for adaptive empathic reactions, whereas emotion dysregulation might cause distress when witnessing the negative feelings of others.     

Editorial: Celebrating the centennial of the RAS Institute of Philosophy

Studies in East European Thought -     

Seeking social connectedness: interdependent self-construal and impression formation using photographic cues of social connectedness

Impression formation research has traditionally focused on either the characteristics of the target or of the participant, failing to examine their interplay. In the present study, we explored the role of interdependent self-construal on ratings of others who are portrayed as alone or connected. We hypothesized that participants with an interdependent view of the self would prefer others who are portrayed as socially connected, while the opposite would be true for participants low on interdependence. Results showed that college students high on interdependence rated a university professor photographed with another person relatively more positively than a professor photographed alone. This pattern was reversed for participants low on interdependence.     

The Role of Maternal Verbal, Affective, and Behavioral Support in Preschool Children's Independent and Collaborative Autobiographical Memory Reports

The authors investigated the individual and relative contributions of different aspects of maternal support (i.e., verbal, affective, and behavioral) in relation to children's collaborative and independent reminiscing. Four-year-old children discussed personal past experiences with their mothers and with a researcher. In collaborative recall with their mothers, children's narrative behavior was regulated best by maternal use of specific elaborative components, such as affirmations. In contrast, in children's independent recall, affective and behavioral qualities of maternal support were related to children's memory performance. Specifically, during free-recall, the dimensions of quality of instruction and respect for autonomy were significant predictors of children's narratives. In the context of prompted recall (supported by wh-questions), respect for autonomy was the only significant predictor of children's involvement in the conversations and of the amount of unique content they provided. The findings suggest that different aspects of maternal behavior facilitate different components of children's reminiscing skills, which children might apply depending on demands of the autobiographical memory conversation.     

Exploring the effects of similarity on mapping spatial relations

Solving a map task requires transferring information acquired in one spatial context to another context, an ability that marks an important step in cognitive development. This study investigated how preschoolers’ mapping performance was affected by the extent of similarity between spaces. Whereas prior work examined effects of similarity in tasks involving matching individual objects, our tasks required considering spatial relations among objects. We found that the accuracy of mapping between two spaces with somewhat different perceptual features was higher than the accuracy of mapping between spaces with identical features. Yet, a further increase in differences between the two spaces had a detrimental effect on mapping. The results suggest that some degree of similarity between spaces is beneficial to children’s ability to transfer relational information. However, when the spaces have the same surface features, it may draw children’s attention to individual objects and inhibit their ability to focus on common relations across contexts.     

Work Passion Through the Lens of Culture: Harmonious Work Passion,Obsessive Work Passion,and Work Outcomes in Russia and China

Purpose

This cross-cultural study with employee–supervisor dyads in Russia and China examines links between harmonious and obsessive work passion and four job- and organization-focused outcomes (job satisfaction, intentions to quit, job performance, and organizational citizenship behaviors) and two career-focused outcomes (career satisfaction and occupational commitment).

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were collected from employee–supervisor dyads in Russia (N = 223) and China (N = 193). We undertook a series of hierarchical regressions to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Findings

We found considerable support for the harmonious passion–work outcome relationships and less support for the obsessive passion–work outcome relationships. In both Russia and China, harmonious passion predicted all six hypothesized outcomes. However, obsessive work passion predicted job satisfaction and occupational commitment in Russia, but was unrelated to any of the hypothesized outcomes in China. We also identified several culture-specific work passion–outcome relationships.

Implications

Our research extends the duality of the work passion construct to non-Western cultures. The examination of a variety of work passion outcomes provides a finer-grained approach to how two types of passion uniquely link to different work consequences. Several culture-specific findings refute the traditionally held assumption that harmonious passion relates to solely positive outcomes, whereas obsessive passion relates to solely negative outcomes. Collectively, the results augment the nomological framework of the passion construct. The study informs managerial practices by suggesting when work passion needs to be encouraged or tamed.

Originality/Value

This is the first study that examines a variety of job-, organization-, and career-focused outcomes of work passion in non-Western organizations.