Person–Situation Interaction in Adaptive Emotional Functioning

Two studies applied a person–situation model to examine the effect of emotional affordances of situations. Participants rated their emotional functioning as more extensive in situations classified as being high in emotional affordance than those classified as low in emotional affordance. Participants who scored higher on the individual difference characteristic of emotional intelligence were more interested in entering high emotional affordance situations than were individuals lower in emotional intelligence, and participants who scored higher on emotional intelligence were rated by others as being more successful in high emotional affordance situations than individuals lower in emotional intelligence. These results provide preliminary evidence that the interaction between emotional intelligence and situations may influence emotional functioning.     

The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scales: Reference data from a large psychiatric outpatient sample

The published norms for the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS) give results for clinical populations that largely fall in the severe to very severe categories. As a result, within this population, the ability to compare the comparative contributions of the underlying emotional components is reduced. The present study presents results from a large general psychiatric outpatient population and provides percentile norms with confidence intervals for both the original DASS and the shorter 21‐item form. It is noted that both forms have high validity but that the correlations between scales are higher than those reported in non‐clinical populations. There was little variation between sexes but some variation of results with age with both younger and older cohorts having lower scores except for the Stress scale where there were higher scores in the older group. There is some evidence of a ceiling effect in the Depression and Stress scales. It was noted that nearly a quarter of patient scores fell within the originally defined normal range suggesting that the DASS would not be a particularly sensitive instrument in its previously reported use as a screening instrument for psychiatric illness.     

Sociopolitical Control for Immigrants: The Role of Receiving Local Contexts

This study examines the individual and contextual factors associated with sociopolitical control expressed by immigrants in southern Spain. We used hierarchical linear modeling to evaluate the relations between individual (community participation, social connectedness, and perceived cultural competence of receiving community services) and municipality characteristics (city community participation, city social connectedness, and city community services’ cultural competence) and immigrants’ feelings of sociopolitical control. Data were analyzed using a two‐level model based on 707 Moroccan immigrants in 25 municipalities. After adjusting for gender, educational level, and psychosocial confounding factors, we observed a positive association between social connectedness and sociopolitical control at the individual level. At the contextual level, we observed a positive association between (a) city community participation, (b) city social connectedness, and (c) city community services’ cultural competence, and sociopolitical control. Indeed, living in a municipality where there are community services with high levels of cultural competence and where, on average, many people participate in organizations and neighbors are connected, was associated with higher levels of perceived control in the sociopolitical domain for immigrants. We also discuss implications for community‐based research and practice.     

Trusting the Media? TV News as a Source of Knowledge

Abstract

Why do we trust TV news? What reasons might support a recipient’s assessment of the trustworthiness of this kind of information? This paper presents a veritistic analysis of the epistemic practice of news production and communication. The topic is approached by discussing a detailed case study, namely the characteristics of the most popular German news programme, called the ‘Tagesschau’. It will be shown that a veritistic analysis can indeed provide a recipient with relevant reasons to consider when pondering on the trustworthiness of sources of information. Moreover, it will turn out that these reasons are part of what recipients might gather from media literacy.     

Workplace Violence Toward Hospital Staff and Volunteers: A Survey of an Italian Sample

Interest in the phenomenon of workplace violence has increased in recent years because such violence is evident in the healthcare sector. The prevalence and consequences of victimization among healthcare professionals have been well-investigated but not in volunteers who have direct and prolonged contact with patients and visitors. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of physical and psychological workplace violence, the psychological and emotional consequences for hospital staff and volunteers, and the coping strategies that they adopted. In the current study, both of these groups worked with patients suffering from chronic diseases in a hospital in northern Italy. The participants included 108 hospital staff and 96 volunteers in cardiology and oncology units. The results revealed that for the staff victims of physical or psychological violence, the increase in depressive and anxiety symptoms (both state and trait) corresponded to a greater use of coping strategies to avoid facing the event. For the volunteer victims of physical violence, an increase in state anxiety was associated with an attempt to cope with the discharge of emotion, whereas trait anxiety was associated with a coping strategy that represents a positive interpretation of life events. A worrisome finding was the number of staff and volunteer victims of physical and psychological violence who did not report these occurrences: only one third of staff and volunteers reported these events to management or to the police.     

Glucose regulation and face recognition deficits in older adults: the role of attention

The present study investigated the perceptual, attentional, and memory processes underlying face recognition deficits observed in older adults with impaired glucoregulation. Participants were categorized as good glucoregulators or poor glucoregulators on the basis of an oral glucose tolerance test. Using event-related potential (ERP) methodology, 23 participants (62–88 years) performed a 2-stimulus oddball task. Participants were asked to rate and memorize 10 “target” faces, which were then presented amongst 120 unfamiliar foils. Behavioral results indicated that good glucoregulators were significantly more accurate at recognizing target faces. ERP markers of early visual perception (P1 and N170 components) and memory formation (P3 component) were unaffected by glucoregulatory efficiency. The P2 component, an index of attentional processing, was larger and delayed in the poor glucoregulators. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to suggest that face recognition deficits in poor glucoregulators may be due to impairments in attentional processing.     

Happy PIIGS?

This paper investigates the causality dynamics between happiness and per capita GDP growth and the impact of the recent financial crisis using a VAR–GARCH model for 10 European EMU countries divided in peripheral and non-peripheral members. The rationale of the analysis is to look at the two different dimensions (mean and variance) of economic growth and happiness within a time-series framework. The results show that GDP growth has significant positive effects on happiness in all countries considered, particularly in the PIIGS countries; happiness volatility is responsive to economic uncertainty. The size of this effect is bigger following the most recent crisis period, especially for the PIIGS countries. Our findings confirm the important role played by economic growth in determining population happiness and, most importantly, provides new evidence on the existence of causality linkages between economic uncertainty and happiness volatility.     

Dilemmas that undermine supervisor confidence

Background

Conventional wisdom links supervisor self‐confidence with experience in supervisory practice.

Aims

This study explored the nature of confidence from an emic perspective.

Method

Twelve experienced Canadian supervisors were interviewed, and data was analysed using Structured Thematic Analysis.

Results

Aspects of the role and process produce tensions that create ambiguity that may diminish self‐confidence. Five main themes were distilled: (a) building supervisee confidence when experiencing self‐doubt as supervisor or clinician;(b) parallel process‐what disturbs therapy disturbs supervision; (c) expert vs. co‐explorer; (d) engaging in supervision while maintaining boundaries; and (e) catch 22 – inviting disclosures of difficulties and evaluation.

Conclusion

The study adds nuance to the scholarly work that informs supervisor self‐confidence.