Possession and Applicability of Signature Character Strengths: What Is Essential for Well-Being,Work Engagement,and Burnout?

Signature character strengths can foster health-related outcomes in work and private life, thus being particularly important for endangered occupational groups like physicians. However, situational circumstances need to allow character strengths demonstration (applicability) first to enable their application. Therefore, this study addresses the role of (1) applicability of signature character strengths in work and private life beyond their possession and (2) relationships with well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment). Hospital physicians (N = 274) completed an online survey examining their signature character strengths and applicability, well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions. The top-five individual signature character strengths were fairness, honesty, judgment, kindness, and love. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions revealed that the possession as well as the applicability of signature character strengths was important in work and private life, but to different degrees. Possessing fairness, honesty, or kindness indicated significant positive relations with subjective well-being, whereas judgment and kindness seemed to negatively interact with reduced personal accomplishment. Hospital physicians’ applicability of fairness, honesty, judgment, and love was particularly essential for their psychological well-being and work engagement, whereas the applicability of fairness (reduced personal accomplishment) and judgment (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization) at work interacted negatively with the respective outcomes. Therefore, creating awareness for individual signature character strengths as well as providing applicability in hospitals and private life could be a promising approach to improve physicians’ well-being and consequently patient care as well as the performance of the health-care system in general.

     

Psychometric Characteristics of the German Values in Action Inventory of Strengths 120-Item Short Form

The original Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is an international 240 item validated self-report questionnaire measuring character strengths. A validated and reliable English 120-item short form (VIA-120) is available. However, there is limited information about the psychometric properties of the German VIA-120. This article addresses this gap and reports the reliability, validity and comparability of the German VIA-120 with the German VIA-240 version. Two independent samples were recruited: a general population sample (N = 1073, Sample 1) and a sample consisting of medical students and physicians (N = 685, Sample 2). Internal consistency of the VIA-120-scales ranged from α = .58 (modesty) to α = .87 (spirituality) in Sample 1 and α = .63 (honesty) to α = .90 (spirituality) in Sample 2. Intercorrelations between the scales of the 120-item version and the original 240-Items version (Sample 1) ranged from r = .52 (hope) to r = .89 (prudence). Criterion validity with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT) was demonstrated. The comparison of the factor structure between the original and the short form showed a good convergence (Tucker’s Phi .93–.99 Sample 1, .95–.98 Sample 2). Overall, the German VIA-120 was reliable, showed good convergence with the German VIA-240 and thus presents a similar level of validity for the assessment of character strengths. This study provides the first indication that the VIA 120 short form is comparable regarding the validity and reliability of the original VIA 240-item version indicating its potential to be used in large scale research studies.

     

Unawareness is more than a chance event: comment on Lovibond and Shanks (2002)

P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks (2002) suggested that expectancy of the unconditional stimulus and emotional ratings are valid indexes of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning and that participants are aware if they can discriminate the conditional stimuli. However, research suggests that processes that are irrelevant to awareness affect these measures. Further, as awareness refers to conscious experience, a valid measures needs to index subjective state rather than discrimination ability. In support, research using subjective measures has demonstrated qualitatively different effects depending on whether participants reported being aware or unaware of the stimuli. In this research, participants reported being unaware of the stimuli even though they were clearly able to discriminate the stimuli. These findings question the validity of Lovibond and Shanks' concept of awareness and their suggestion of a close association between conditioning and awareness.     

Applications Of Elementary Submodels In General Topology

Elementary submodels of some initial segment of the set-theoretic universe are useful in order to prove certain theorems in general topology as well as in algebra. As an illustration we give proofs of two theorems due to Arkhangelskii concerning cardinal invariants of compact spaces.     

Giving advice or making decisions in someone else's place: the influence of impression, defense, and accuracy motivation on the search for new information

When making decisions, people have been found predominantly to seek information supporting their preferred choice and to neglect conflicting information. In this article, the authors investigate to what extent different types of advisors, who recommend a choice to someone or make a decision on behalf of someone, show the same confirmatory information search. In Experiment 1, the authors presented participants, in the role of advisors, with a client's decision problem and found that when making a recommendation, advisors conducted a more balanced information search than participants who were making a decision for themselves. However, advisors who had to make a decision on behalf of their clients revealed an increased preference for information supporting their position. Experiment 2 suggested that this confirmatory information search was caused by impression motivation: The advisors bolstered their decision to justify it to the client. The results are discussed within the multiple motive framework of the heuristic systematic model.     

Predicting without modeling: a critique of Trabasso and Bartolone (2003)

T. Trabasso and J. Bartolone (2003) used a computational model of narrative text comprehension to account for empirical findings. The authors show that the same predictions are obtained without running the model. This is caused by the model's computational setup, which leaves most of the model's input unchanged.     

Measuring task-switching ability in the Implicit Association Test

Recently, the role of method-specific variance in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) was examined (McFarland & Crouch, 2002; Mierke & Klauer, 2003). This article presents a new content-unspecific control task for the assessment of task-switching ability within the IAT methodology. Study 1 showed that this task exhibited good internal consistency and stability. Studies 2-4 examined method-specific variance in the IAT and showed that the control task is significantly associated with conventionally scored IAT effects of the IAT-Anxiety. Using the D measures proposed by Greenwald, Nosek, and Banaji (2003), the amount of method-specific variance in the IAT-Anxiety could be reduced. Possible directions for future research are outlined.