Validation of a Portuguese Version of the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale

The paper describes the development of the Portuguese version of the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale and the examination of its psychometric properties. A sample of 367 Portuguese students completed the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS; Huebner in Sch Psychol Int 12:231–240, 1991a), Children’s Hope Scale (CHS; Synder in J Pediatr Psychol 22:399–421, 1997), Global Self-Worth Sub-scale (Harter, S. (1985). Manual for the self-perception profile for children. Denver: University of Denver) and Mental Health Inventory-5 (MHI-5; Berwick et al. in Medical Care 29:169–176, 1991). The first step includes translation, back-translation, inspection for lexical equivalence and content validity, and cognitive debriefing. Then we considered reliability, factor structure, and criterion-related validity. The validation process of the Portuguese SLSS version shows psychometric properties similar to the English language SLSS, suggesting that it measures the same construct in the same way. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Concurrent task performance enhances low-level visuomotor learning

Visuomotor association learning involves learning to make a motor response to an arbitrary visual stimulus. This learning is essential for visual search and discrimination performance and is reliant upon a well-defined neural circuit in the brain that includes the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampal formation. In the present study, we investigated the possible role of attentional processes during such learning using dual-task interference. A motor, verbal, or perceptual concurrent task was performed during the learning/training block of a simple visual discrimination task. Contrary to expectation, the dual-task groups showed improved learning and learning-dependent performance compared with untrained control and non-dual-task trained groups. A second experiment revealed that this effect did not appear to be due to increased arousal level; the inclusion of alerting tones during learning did not result in facilitation. These findings suggest that the engagement of attention, but not arousal, during the acquisition of a visuomotor association can facilitate this learning and its expression.     

Self-reported physical aggression among young men

This article describes two studies involving a questionnaire asking about the circumstances, antecedents, and consequences of the most recent fight among samples of young men (100 students in Study I; 88 students and 87 unemployed men in Study II). In Study I, the students alos completed a standard aggression questionnaire and one concerning masculine values to assess whether measures of physical aggressiveness were associated with traditional masculine role norms. There was a weak association with physical aggressiveness but not with reported fights. Students with traditionally masculine interests did report more fights. In Study II, both subsamples showed significant correlations between a masculine role subscale involving toughness from this study were primarily assessed in relation to hyphotheses derived from Darwinian sexual selection theory: that fights between young men are likely to arise from threats to personal integrity and status, women, and resoureces; that fights will be more related to social status and be more damageing among the unemployed men than the students. In line with these predictions, insults were a potent cause of fights in both samples, but public humiliation was a more common reason among the unemployed men, Money or property was more often a reason for fighting among the unemployed men also showed higher levels of anger and physical aggression (but not verbal aggression) on a standard aggression questionnaire. Other differences included the location of the fight, but there were no significant differences between the two samples in whether or not a fight had occured in the last 5 years. © 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

The Use of Prayer to Manage Anger: Do Characteristics of the Emotional Experience Matter?

Research has established that individuals use prayer to manage negative emotions, yet little is known about how the characteristics of individuals’ emotional experiences—such as how long the emotions last and the source of emotions—influence the use of this emotion management strategy. Using data from the 1996 General Social Survey emotion module (N = 1114), we evaluate the extent to which the use of prayer to manage anger is associated with: the intensity, source, and duration of negative emotions experienced; reflection on the negative emotion-inducing incident; and perceived appropriateness of emotional reaction. Estimated logistic regression models show that characteristics of emotional experiences (except perceived appropriateness) are significantly associated with the use of prayer to manage anger. The analyses reveal that the appropriateness of using prayer to manage negative emotions varies based on specific aspects of the emotional experience, carrying implications for interventions such as pastoral counseling or anger management programs.     

The important role of the context in which achievement goals are adopted: an experimental test

Two experimental studies using Elliot, Murayama, and Pekrun’s (Journal of Educational Psychology 103(3):632–648, 2011) differentiation between self-goals and task-goals, were conducted to examine the relative influence of achievement goals and motivational contexts on behavioral and emotional engagement. In Study 1, 133 college students were prompted to adopt self-goals (intrapersonal standards) or other-goals (performance standards) in one of two motivational contexts (autonomy-supportive or autonomy-suppressive) while playing a computer game. In Study 2, 129 college students performed the same assignment, this time adopting either other-goals or task-goals (absolute standards). Study 1 indicated that autonomy-support facilitated behavioral and emotional engagement in autonomy suppressive contexts, but self-goals merely promoted emotional engagement relative to other-goals. Study 2 replicated Study 1’s findings by showing that autonomy support promoted self-reported behavioral engagement and task-goals promoted emotional engagement but further revealed that only when task-goals were adopted in an autonomy-supportive context did they promote better behavioral engagement than other-goals. Thus, Study 2 highlighted the importance of the context in which the achievement goals were adopted (i.e., autonomy-supportive versus suppressive) as an important determinant of the outcome.     

Empathising with the enemy: emotion regulation and support for humanitarian aid in violent conflicts

Considering that negative intergroup emotions can hinder conflict resolution, we proposed integrative emotion regulation (IER) as possibly predicting conciliatory policies towards outgroups in violent conflict. Two studies examined Jewish Israelis’ self-reported IER, empathy, liberal attitudes, and support for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Study 1 (N?=?298) found that unlike reappraisal Jewish Israelis’ ability to explore emotions (e.g. IER) promoted concern for others’ emotions (empathy), which in turn predicted support for humanitarian aid (while controlling for education level, and religiosity). Study 2 (N?=?291) replicated this mediation model, additionally confirming that liberal attitudes (upholding equal, fair treatment for minorities) moderated the relation between IER and support for humanitarian aid. Thus, IER linked more strongly with humanitarian support when the commitment for liberal egalitarian beliefs was high. Preliminary results hold important theoretical and practical implications regarding the potential to empathise with outgroup members in intractable conflicts.     

Are Ethics Training Programs Improving? A Meta-Analytic Review of Past and Present Ethics Instruction in the Sciences

Given the growing public concern and attention placed on cases of research misconduct, government agencies and research institutions have increased their efforts to develop and improve ethics education programs for scientists. The present study sought to assess the impact of these increased efforts by sampling empirical studies published since the year 2000. Studies published prior to 2000 examined in other meta-analytic work were also included to provide a baseline for assessing gains in ethics training effectiveness over time. In total, this quantitative review consisted of 66 empirical studies, 106 ethics courses, 150 effect sizes, and 10,069 training participants. Overall, the findings indicated that ethics instruction resulted in sizable benefits to participants and has improved considerably within the last decade. A number of specific findings also emerged regarding moderators of instructional effectiveness. Recommendations are discussed for improving the development, delivery, and evaluation of ethics instruction in the sciences.     

A dual-process account of the development of scientific reasoning: The nature and development of metacognitive intercession skills

Metacognitive knowledge of the dual-processing basis of judgment is critical to resolving conflict between analytic and experiential processing responses [Klaczynski, P. A. (2004). A dual-process model of adolescent development: Implications for decision making, reasoning, and identity. In R. V. Kail (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior, Vol. 31 (pp. 73–123). San Diego, CA: Academic Press]. Such conflict is ubiquitous when reasoning scientifically. Three studies explored the nature, development, and stability of this metacognitive knowledge. In each study, participants completed the ratio-bias judgment task, which assessed their tendency to make analytically based responses, and the ratio-bias evaluation task, which assessed their metacognitive knowledge of the processing basis of judgments on the task (Metacognitive Status). In Study 1, college students’ judgment performance was related to metacognitive status but not to general cognitive ability. In Study 2, metacognitive status was related to age and mathematics-related changes. Metacognitive status again predicted participants’ tendency to make analytically based judgments. In Study 3, college students’ judgments, but not metacognitive status, were affected by task conditions. The evidence suggests that assessing metacognitive knowledge is important for understanding how conflict between analytically and experientially based judgments is resolved.