Relationships between individual-level factors and burnout: A meta-analysis of Chinese participants

We meta-analytically tested the relationships between job burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment) and five factor model personality traits, personal resources, and coping strategies in Chinese participants. It showed that most of the variables considered were significantly related to job burnout dimensions in the expected direction. A comparison of the results of this study with Alarcon’s meta analysis showed that the correlations of burnout with individual level factors were in the same direction, but the magnitudes of the effect sizes differed to a certain extent. Implications of the findings and future research directions were discussed.     

Development and initial validation of the Role Strain Questionnaire for Junior Athletes (RSQ-JA)

In a series of related studies, the relevance of a role strain framework to interpret the difficulties junior elite athletes experience in their multiple life domains was assessed. Here, the Role Strain Questionnaire for Junior Athletes (RSQ-JA) was developed to measure the role strain experienced by junior athletes. In Study 1, role strain was explored via interviews with 20 elite junior athletes. Based on themes emerging from these interviews, an initial 65-item pool for the RSQ-JA was created and subjected to an exploratory factor analysis in Study 2. The factors derived in Study 2 were tested for factorial validity using confirmatory factor analysis in Study 3. Results supported a 22-item five factor structure for the RSQ-JA. These factors reflected the salient sources of role strain, namely; (i) overload in school, (ii) overload in sport and between roles, (iii) between-role conflict, (iv) underload, and (v) ambiguity. The RSQ-JA therefore provides the initial validation of the first measure of role strain experienced by junior elite athletes.     

The effects of a short-term mindfulness meditation intervention on coping flexibility

Background and objectives: Mindfulness meditation (MM) training promotes health and well-being. One potential mechanistic link between MM and health may be coping flexibility, (e.g., the ability to monitor and modify coping strategies based on situational needs and strategy effectiveness). We hypothesized that MM training would increase coping flexibility and also explored whether gains in coping flexibility continued to increase after training, or whether they were maintained or lost with time.

Methods and design: One hundred thirteen students (71 female, M_age?=?18.97) were randomly assigned to a waitlist control or MM condition. Participants in the MM condition were trained by a certified MM instructor and given guided recordings for one-week of at-home practice. Participants provided reports of coping flexibility over a three-week span.

Results: Results from multilevel modeling indicated that MM increased coping flexibility among those in the MM condition and among those who spent relatively more time meditating. Results further suggested that the gains in coping flexibility that were evident at post-test were not only maintained but increased in the two weeks after the intervention.

Conclusions: This study provides preliminary support for the assertion that MM increases the ability to monitor and modify coping strategies during times of stress.     

The location of coping strategies within the Alternative Five Factor Model of personality

This study aimed to determine which personality dimension(s) as measured by the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire best explain a given coping strategy as measured by the COPE-48. Additionally, to clarify the location of these strategies in the broader framework of personality structure. Neuroticism-Anxiety contributed mostly to strategies focused on emotions, acceptance and denial, Activity to proactive and resolute strategies, and Sociability to obtaining emotional support and advice. Moreover, Impulsive Sensation-Seeking contributed to denial and substance use while Aggression-Hostility to focus on and venting of emotions, and inversely to restrain coping. Besides, we replicated the approach-avoidance axis and obtained an independent component grouping Religion and the inverse of Drugs, Humor and Impulsive Sensation-Seeking. Positioning coping strategies within the well-known, broader and multidimensional space of personality structure may help in a better understanding of its organization and a rethinking of its conceptualization including their underlying neurobiological basis, ultimate evolutionary nature and survival functions.     

"易卦"的序结构数学模型在对策理论中的应用

通过分析人类的基本行为元素,并借助于"卦象"序结构数学模型的建立,从而初步讨论了一般谋略方法的产生和起源,以及谋略对策的系统核心元素结构;最后讨论了它们在应用中的初步分类.     

Why expectations do or do not change after expectation violation: A comparison of seven models

Individuals are often confronted with events that violate their expectations, but disconfirming evidence does not always lead to expectation change. We review seven theoretical models on how individuals cope with disconfirming expectations: associative learning theories, the ViolEx Model, the model of coping with expectation disconfirmation (Roese & Sherman, 2007), the Meaning Maintenance Model, the Predictive Processing Framework, Expectancy Violations Theory, and the Expectation-Disconfirmation Model of consumer satisfaction. We focus on the proposed processes that relate to persistence or change of expectations. We discuss similarities and differences between the models. Three core coping processes are identified across most of these models – minimization of the importance of expectation-disconfirming evidence, search for/production of future expectation-confirming evidence, and expectation change. Suggestions for refinements and extensions of the models as well as for future empirical work on model testing are drawn.     

Humour is serious: Minority group members’ use of humour in their encounters with majority group members

This article adds to the social psychological literature on how minority group members seek to manage their interactions with majority group members. Specifically, it focuses on minority group members’ use of humour in interactions where they anticipate or actually experience prejudice. The data on which our analysis is based originate from interviews conducted with Roma in Hungary (N = 30). Asked about their interactions with majority group members, interviewees reported using humour as a means to (a) manage embarrassment; (b) gather information about the other's intergroup attitudes; and (c) subvert taken-for-granted understandings of social relations. The humour involved was diverse. Sometimes it entailed the telling of (Roma-related) jokes. Sometimes it involved the exaggerated performance of roles and identities that ironised majority–minority social relations. The significance of humour as a tool for minority group members to exert some control over their interactions with majority group members is discussed.     

Coping,caring and believing: The embodied work of disaster recovery workers

This paper examines the embodied experiences of coping, caring and believing by disaster recovery workers in Australia in the context of the growing frequency and intensity of disasters, especially bushfires. The study draws on three concepts: faith as performative, embodiment, and the ‘holding environment’ as a system that shapes coping capacity. Faith emerges in the study as having two modalities (introspection and group-communion) that are not synonymous with religious adherence. Instead it is linked to the holding environment, which comprises the strategies that individuals and groups have developed to cope with risks and exposure, through their embodied responses, and the observed responses of others, to the impact of potential and actual harm. The holding environment provides mental, spiritual and physical spaces and practices where disaster recovery workers can safely confide, reflect, debate, grow and heal. These processes, in turn, provide anchor points and sense of purpose. They also accentuate the individual and collective choices we face in terms of mitigating and adapting to growing social and environmental uncertainty with climate change.     

老年人乐观、领悟社会支持与主观幸福感的关系—控制策略的中介作用

基于毕生控制理论，方便选取杭州市60~95岁的老年人320名，采用问卷法考察了老年人控制策略使用的现状和特点，并在控制了年龄、健康状况、日常活动数量后，探讨了老年人的乐观、领悟社会支持与主观幸福感的关系，以及控制策略的中介作用。结果发现：低龄的老年男性和女性更偏好选择初级和补偿初级策略，而高龄老年女性更偏好补偿初级策略；乐观和领悟社会支持不仅可以直接影响老年人的主观幸福感，还可以通过选择初级策略间接影响主观幸福感。初级控制在老年人中依然具有首要性地位，老年人的资源越丰富，越有可能采用积极的控制策略（选择初级），进而提高主观幸福感，实现成功老龄化。