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.     

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.     

Enjoying influence on others: Congruently high implicit and explicit power motives are related to teachers’ well-being

The present study examined the associations of implicit and explicit power motives with the well-being of teachers. Teachers (N = 170) participated in an online assessment, which included measures for implicit motives (assessed by the operant motive test), explicit motives, and well-being. We expected congruently high power motives to be linked with the highest levels of well-being. We tested this assumption using polynomial regressions with response surface analysis. Results were consistent with our hypothesis. Additionally, there was an effect of directional motive incongruence (a combination of a low implicit and a high explicit power motive was associated with higher well-being than a high implicit/low explicit combination), which did not hold when controlling for emotional stability. Results for achievement were comparable, but weaker, and there was no effect for motive incongruence. No significant associations were found for motive (in)congruence in the affiliation domain. Our findings underline the importance of the power motive in understanding individual differences in teachers’ well-being.     

Defective food concepts

Our aim in this paper is to employ conceptual negotiation to inform a method of rethinking defective food concepts, that is concepts that fail to suitably represent a certain food-related domain or that offer representations that run counter to the interests of their users. We begin by sorting out four dimensions of a food concept: (i) the data upon which it rests and the methodology by which those data are gathered; (ii) the ontology that sustains it; (iii) the social acts that serve to negotiate and establish the concept; (iv) and the aims and values that it fosters. We then discuss the conditions that make a food concept defective, pointing out four types of defects—fragility, polarization, incoherence, and schizophrenia—which we illustrate by means of two specific examples: local food and healthy food.