Rising up to higher virtues: Experiencing elevated physical height uplifts prosocial actions

Many challenges of society involve getting people to act prosocially in ways that are costly for self-interests but beneficial to the greater good. The authors in four studies examined the novel hypothesis that elevating (vertical) height promotes prosocial actions. In Study 1, shoppers riding up (vs. down) escalators contributed more often to charity. In Study 2, participants sitting higher (vs. lower) helped another longer, while in Study 3 participants sitting higher (vs. lower) were more compassionate. In Study 4, watching video primes depicting scenes from a high perspective led to more cooperative resource conservation. These studies contribute uniquely to the prosociality literature by documenting previously unexamined effects of metaphor-enriched social cognition, and to the metaphor-enriched social cognition literature by documenting effects of elevated height on real prosocial actions.     

Experiential Activities in Family Therapy: Perceptions of Caregivers and Youth

Novel and creative therapeutic modalities have been developed in an effort to increase motivation in family therapy for adolescents and families. Many of these approaches incorporate experiential activities or “family play”, which provides a supplemental approach to traditional talk therapy. Incorporating experiential activities into family therapy sessions has been shown to increase engagement and enhance participation in therapy. Therefore, to understand how families view experiential activities within family therapy, we interviewed nineteen adolescents (age 12–17) and their parents/caregivers who were receiving family therapy augmented with experiential activities. We asked a series of open-ended questions to understand the families’ experiences concerning how they initially felt about participating in family therapy and their perceptions of the experiential activities. The activities involved experiential interactions and skill-building exercises that elicited active participation from all family members and encouraged further discussions. Topics of these activities focused on problem areas the family had identified, such as anger management, problem-solving, improving communication, substance use, expressing feelings, coping, etc. Results showed that most caregivers and youth found the experiential activities helpful in creating positive family interactions and developing communication skills. Caregivers and adolescents noted that the activities increased their desire to participate in family therapy sessions and they were more motivated to engage in the treatment process. Clinicians using the methods discussed in this intervention should be aware of the study’s limitations. Implications for clinical practice and research are discussed.     

Social strategies during university studies predict early career work burnout and engagement: 18-year longitudinal study

This longitudinal study spanning 18 years examined the role of social strategies in early career adaptation. The aim was to find out whether individuals' social strategies measured during their university studies had an impact on work burnout and work engagement measured 10–18 years later. A sample of 292 university students completed the SAQ questionnaire three times while at university and the work burnout inventory three times and the work engagement inventory twice during their early career. According to the results, the higher the initial level of social optimism and the more it increased during university studies, and the lower the initial levels of social withdrawal and social handicapping and the more they decreased, the lower was the level of work burnout and the higher the level of work engagement in the early career. The effects of the level of social strategies were stronger on the professional efficacy subscale of burnout.     

青少年的个人未来发展目标和担忧

目标和担忧是个体关于未来的心理表征,对个体日常指向未来的行为具有引导作用。采用青少年未来取向问卷中文版调查了近2000名初中、高中和大学青少年,结果发现,青少年的目标和对未来的担忧反映了青少年期的主要发展任务,同时它们又因被试的年龄、性别、城乡背景以及思考内容领域的不同而表现出不同的特点。     

Young adults' achievement and attributional strategies in the transition from school to work: antecedents and consequences

This study focused on investigating the extent to which the achievement and attributional strategies individuals deploy influence their success in dealing with the transition from school to work, and whether their success or failure in this particular would have consequences for the kinds of strategy they deployed later in life. Two hundred and fifty young adults filled in the Cartoon‐Attribution‐Strategy Inventory, a revised version of Beck's Depression Inventory, and a work status questionnaire at the beginning of the last spring term of their curriculum, four months after their graduation, and a year and a half after it. The results showed that the deployment of maladaptive strategies, such as passive avoidance, led to problems in dealing with the transition from school to work. In turn, young adults' problems in dealing with this transition decreased their use of self‐serving causal attributions, which was also found to lead to increased depressive symptomatology. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dysregulated Motherhood: Exploring the Risk Features in a Mother’s Caregiving Representations

In the case of a mother with dysregulating attachment experiences and current enrolment in a parent-infant psychotherapy process, we explored which insecure, hostile/helpless, and prementalizing risk features were similar in her attachment and caregiving representations; which risk features were specific to her caregiving representations; and how these theory-defined features overlapped in detecting caregiving risks. Risk features in the attachment representations were assessed from the adult attachment interview and risk features in the caregiving representations from written psychotherapy notes. We found similar insecure (preoccupied and disorganized), prementalizing and hostile/helpless instances from both the attachment and the caregiving representations. However, confusion between self and child, greater variance in lapses into prementalizing, and specific and concrete fears and helplessness were unique to the caregiving representations. Hostile/helpless instances were found in tandem with almost all insecure and prementalizing instances, indicating this conceptualization captured risks in the caregiving representations most comprehensively. Fearful and helpless caregiving representations occurred somewhat independently from other risk conceptualizations, suggesting they need to be identified as independent phenomena. The results imply that detecting specific manifestations of intergenerational risks from caregiving representations is possible.     

Cross-lagged relations between kindergarten teachers’ causal attributions, and children’s interest value and performance in mathematics

The present study investigated mathematics performance and related interest value as the antecedents and consequences of teachers?? causal attributions concerning children??s academic outcomes during their kindergarten year. Sixty-nine children (5?C6?years old at the baseline) and their teachers were examined twice during the kindergarten year. Children were tested in mathematics performance and interviewed about their interest value. Teachers rated their causal attributions in the fall and spring. The results showed that the higher the interest value in mathematics children showed, the more the teacher attributed their success to ability and effort. Teachers?? ability attributions for success, in turn, contributed to an increase in children??s interest value in mathematics. Moreover, attributing children??s success and failure to external causes decreased children??s mathematics-related interest value.     

All our troubles seem so far away: temporal pattern to accessible alternatives and retrospective team appraisals

Three studies tested the hypothesis that thoughts about alternatives become increasingly accessible over time, leading poor outcomes to feel subjectively farther away and less inevitable. This subjective temporal distance bias was obtained even though actual time since poor and good outcomes was identical. In Study 1, participants who recalled distant poor team outcomes thought of alternatives easily and outcomes felt farther away and less inevitable. Thoughts about outcomes were most easily accessible after good outcomes, which felt closer and more inevitable. In Study 2, with measures obtained immediately or at a later time on a negotiation task, changes over time occurred primarily for poor team outcomes. In Study 3, team performance on an investment task indicated it is whether alternatives are thought of easily, not thought content, that produces this effect. Discussion centers on temporal appraisals, other temporal biases, and teams.     

When debiasing backfires: accessible content and accessibility experiences in debiasing hindsight

Two studies demonstrated that attempts to debias hindsight by thinking about alternative outcomes may backfire and traced this to the influence of subjective accessibility experiences. Participants listed either few (2) or many (10) thoughts about how an event might have turned out otherwise. Listing many counterfactual thoughts was experienced as difficult and consistently increased the hindsight bias, presumably because the experienced difficulty suggested that there were not many ways in which the event might have turned out otherwise. No significant hindsight effects were obtained when participants listed only a few counterfactual thoughts, a task subjectively experienced as easy. The interplay of accessible content and subjective accessibility experiences in the hindsight bias is discussed.     

Mood, self-esteem, and simulated alternatives: thought-provoking affective influences on counterfactual direction

Four studies indicated that moods and self-esteem can influence counterfactual thoughts. This was shown for counterfactuals generated for hypothetical situations (Study 1), for recalled life events (Study 2), and for agreement with counterfactual statements after laboratory tasks (Studies 3 and 4). High self-esteem (HSE) and low self-esteem (LSE) persons generated (Studies 1 and 2) or agreed to (Studies 3 and 4) more downward (worse than actuality) than upward (better than actuality) counterfactuals when in good moods, but they diverged in reactions to bad moods: HSE persons thought more about downward counterfactuals, whereas LSE persons thought more about upward counterfactuals. HSE persons felt better after generating downward counterfactuals (Study 2) and took longer to agree to analogous statements (Studies 3 and 4) in bad moods, suggesting attempts at mood repair.