Marital Interactions,Family Intervention,and Disagreements: A Daily Diary Study in a Low‐income Sample

Little research has examined associations between low‐income married couples’ daily interactions and severity of disagreements. Similarly, few researchers have considered how family‐strengthening interventions for low‐income couples may affect the quality of daily interactions and associations between interactions and conflict experiences. This study aims to fill these gaps in the literature by leveraging daily diary data from a random assignment study of a family‐strengthening intervention with low‐income husbands and wives 30 months postenrollment. Married couples randomly assigned to the intervention participated in 10 weeks of relationship education services. Control group couples received no services. Thirty months postrandom assignment, participants reported on the severity of daily marital disagreements over a 15‐day period, as well as their positive and negative emotions during inter‐spousal interactions. Multi‐level models demonstrated associations between reports of emotions in interactions and severity of disagreements. In addition, wives assigned to the family strengthening program reported fewer negative emotions during interactions at follow‐up than wives in the control condition. Finally, negative associations between positive emotions in interactions and severity of disagreements were stronger for wives assigned to the intervention, while positive associations between negative emotions in interactions and severity of disagreements were weaker for wives assigned to the intervention. Implications for future research and intervention development are discussed.     

Daily manifestations of career adaptability: Relationships with job and career outcomes

Most research on career adaptability has examined the construct as an individual differences variable and neglected that it may vary within an individual over a short period of time. In two daily diary studies, the author investigated the relationships of career adaptability and its four dimensions (concern, control, curiosity, and confidence) to their daily manifestations as well as daily job and career outcomes. Both Study 1 (N = 53) and Study 2 (N = 234) demonstrated substantial within-person variability in employees' behavioral expressions of career adaptability across five work days. Results further showed that daily career adaptability and daily confidence positively predicted daily task and career performance, as well as daily job and career satisfaction. Daily control positively predicted daily task performance, as well as daily job and career satisfaction. Daily concern positively predicted daily career performance and satisfaction, and daily curiosity positively predicted daily career satisfaction.     

The role of passion for work and need satisfaction in psychological adjustment to retirement

Two studies tested a model in which passion for work predicts psychological adjustment to retirement through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs. With a sample of 103 French-Canadian retirees from a variety of occupations, the first study used a retrospective cross-sectional design. The second study followed 73 French-Canadian teachers over a 6-year period and examined the relationship between passion for work, assessed when participants were still working, and psychological adjustment to retirement, measured when participants were retired. All participants completed questionnaires on demographics, passion for work, basic psychological needs and psychological adjustment to retirement. Results from structural equation modeling confirmed the hypothesized model, such that both studies confirmed the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction in the passion–psychological adjustment to retirement relationship. Need satisfaction significantly mediated the relationship between harmonious passion for work and psychological adjustment to retirement in Studies 1 and 2. The mediation was also confirmed between obsessive passion and psychological adjustment to retirement in Study 1, but not in Study 2. These findings suggest that passion for work matters in psychological adjustment to retirement. Being passionate about work can thus lead to positive or negative outcomes in retirement, depending on whether the passion is harmonious or obsessive, respectively.     

Career adaptability and academic satisfaction: Examining work volition and self efficacy as mediators

The present study examined the relation between the four components of career adaptability – concern, control, curiosity, and confidence (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012) – and academic satisfaction. Drawing from a diverse sample of 412 undergraduate students, all four components moderately correlated with academic satisfaction. In an effort to explain these relations, work volition and career decision self-efficacy (CDSE) were examined as potential mediator variables. Using structural equation modeling, work volition significantly mediated the control to satisfaction relation and CDSE significantly mediated the concern, control, and confidence to satisfaction relations. After including all variables in the model, none of the career adaptability components significantly related with academic satisfaction. These results suggest that for undergraduate students, feeling adaptable in one's career may link to greater levels of academic satisfaction due, in part, to greater feelings of control and confidence in one's career decision making.     

Perceived Overqualification: A Multi-Source Investigation of Psychological Predisposition and Contextual Triggers

ABSTRACT. Although employee (subjective) perceived overqualification (POQ) has recently been explored as a meaningful organizational construct, further work is needed to fully understand it. We extend the theoretical psychological underpinnings of employee POQ and examine both its determinants and outcomes based on established and newly proposed theoretical developments. Four-hundred and fifteen employees completed an online questionnaire and 208 of their supervisors completed corresponding surveys about the employees’ withdrawal behaviors and job-related attitudes, in order to explore potential predictors and outcomes of subjectively experienced POQ. Among the predictors, work conditions (uniform requirements and repetitive tasks) were most strongly associated with POQ. In terms of individual differences, narcissism predicted higher POQ while general mental ability only did when holding other variables constant. In addition, among the outcomes, higher POQ was related to lower job satisfaction and organizational commitment, but was not related to withdrawal behaviors such as truancy, absenteeism, and turnover intentions.     

Psychological well-being,life satisfaction,and self-esteem among adaptive perfectionists,maladaptive perfectionists,and nonperfectionists

Using a tripartite model of perfectionism and positive psychology framework, the present study examined patterns of psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and self-esteem across three groups: adaptive perfectionists, maladaptive perfectionists, and nonperfectionists. The participants were 200 college students in South Korea. Cluster analysis confirmed the existence of the three groups, mirroring findings from the previous literature. Adaptive perfectionists reported higher levels of environmental mastery and purpose in life of psychological well-being than nonperfectionists and maladaptive perfectionists. Adaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists showed higher life satisfaction and self-esteem than maladaptive perfectionists; however, no significant differences between adaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists were found on these variables. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Relational self-construal moderates the effect of social support on life satisfaction

While social support is associated with a host of important physical and psychological benefits, these effects are not always straightforward. Still, the moderating factors that might underlie individual differences in reactions to social support are not well-understood. In the current studies, we examined individual differences in relational self-construal in the typically positive relationship between social support and life satisfaction. In Study 1 (N = 79) relational self-construal moderated the relationship between social support and life satisfaction such that social support was especially beneficial for those with high relational self-construal. We replicated this effect in Study 2 (N = 284), and also found that social support was especially important for individuals with high relational self-construal in the context of high feelings of stress. These studies suggest that social support has differently gauged effects on life satisfaction depending on an individual’s relational self-construal.     

Locus-of-hope and life satisfaction: The mediating roles of personal self-esteem and relational self-esteem

Research has demonstrated that hope is linked to better psychological well-being; however, little research has been conducted to examine the mechanisms underlying the link between hope and psychological well-being. The current study examined whether two types of self-esteem (personal and relational) would mediate the relationship between four loci-of-hope (internal, family, peers, and spiritual) and life satisfaction among Hong Kong and Macau college students (n = 1008). Structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses. Consistent with the hypotheses, both personal self-esteem and relational self-esteem partially mediated the effects of internal hope on life satisfaction. Moreover, relational self-esteem mediated the effect of external-family locus-of-hope on life satisfaction. Interestingly, a suppressing effect of personal self-esteem on the relationship between external-peers locus-of-hope and life satisfaction was found. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

How satisfying is the Scale for Travel Satisfaction?

The Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS) has recently been developed to measure people’s satisfaction with travel. It supposedly consists of two affective and one cognitive dimension. As there have only been a few tests of its reliability and structure to date, this paper reports new tests using data on leisure trips from Ghent (Belgium). Differences in the reliability and structure of the STS by transport mode – car, public transport, bicycling and walking – are also considered. Overall, the results suggest that the specification of a single underlying dimension for affect rather than two offers a superior fit to the Ghent data, both for all modes combined and for car use and cycling separately. For public transport and walking a three-dimensional structure is more appropriate although individuals items do not load on the two affective dimensions as expected. Differences between previous studies and ours are partly caused by differences in how two of the scale’s items – alert/tired and confident/worried – are correlated with the other items. Future studies using the STS may want to adapt the structure of STS by omitting some items or replacing them with alternatives as this may reduce respondent burden and increase internal consistency of the STS.     

Parental Division of Household Labour and Sibling Relationship Quality: Family Relationship Mediators

Research examining antecedents to sibling relationship quality have explored factors such as parenting and temperament (Brody, 1998); however, there has been no previous research on the topic of the current study. The present study used a cross‐informant approach to examine parent–child and marital relationships as potential mediators of links between parents' gendered attitudes and behaviours and sibling relationship quality. One hundred and twenty‐four families with older (M = 7.4 years) and younger (M = 5.2 years) siblings were assessed. Parents reported on division of household labour, gender‐role attitudes and marital satisfaction. Each child reported on sibling relationship quality and parental warmth and hostility. Results revealed a link between more egalitarian division of household labour and more positive sibling relationship quality. Furthermore, this association was not mediated by the marital nor parent–child relationship. We conclude that families with a more egalitarian division of household labour may model positive interactions for siblings. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.