The association of parenting style and child age with parental limit setting and adolescent MySpace behavior

Parent and teen MySpace user pairs completed online surveys administered in June (N = 266) and September 2006 (N = 341) to assess relationships between parenting styles and limit setting and monitoring of online behaviors, the prevalence of Internet dangers and pre-teen and teen MySpace behaviors. Cross-comparison measures of MySpace usage, parenting style, limit setting/monitoring, MySpace problems, and media perceptions were used. Parenting styles were strongly related to adolescent MySpace experiences, behaviors, and attitudes, with some age differences. Parents with older children were more likely to have Neglectful or Indulgent parenting styles and less likely to set limits on online behavior. The extent of sexual solicitation, pornography, and cyberbullying was relatively low as compared with studies asserting a high incidence of Internet-related problems. Parents' high estimates of online dangers were not matched by their low rates of setting limits and monitoring teens. Theoretical and practical perspectives of the results are offered to enhance social networking experiences for parents and their children.     

自尊、归因方式与内疚和羞耻的关系研究

通过对1040名中学生施测问卷,建立自尊、归因方式与内疚和羞耻的结构方程模型。结果表明：1）自尊与内疚和羞耻呈显著正相关,归因方式与内疚或羞耻呈显著负相关;2）自尊是归因方式与内疚和羞耻之间的中介变量,归因方式对自尊的直接作用大于对内疚和羞耻的直接作用,对内疚和羞耻的间接作用大于直接作用;3）个体对内疚事件更倾向于内归因,对羞耻事件更倾向于外归因。     

Integrating Social Information Processing and Attachment Style Research with Cognitive-behavioral Couple Therapy

The majority of the empirically validated interventions for relational distress focus primarily upon improving behavioral functioning, particularly couples’ communication patterns in conflict situations. However, although communication is highly predictive of relationship distress and later divorce, research on the effectiveness of premarital and marital interventions based on communication training has shown limited results. Therefore, although the skills-based approaches can be effective in treating relational discord and instability, they also often neglect another potentially powerful mechanism in the development of relational distress: the social cognitions and/or schemata regarding relationships that individuals carry into their marriages that stem from negative attachment experiences. Thus, this article describes how blending information gleaned from attachment style research with the body of literature addressing social information processing can enhance current methods for the treatment of relational discord. The existing research on adult romantic attachment styles is placed within a social-cognitive information processing framework and a case study demonstrating the utility of this approach with difficult couples is described.     

A friend is a present you give to your “Self”: Avoidance of intimacy moderates the effects of friends on self-liking

The current research proposes that thinking about friends improves feelings about the self and does so differentially depending on avoidance of intimacy. Based on previous findings that individuals who avoid intimacy in relationships (avoidant individuals) contrast their self-concepts with primed friends whereas those who pursue intimacy in relationships (non-avoidant individuals) assimilate their self-concepts to primed friends [Gabriel, S., Carvallo, M., Dean, K., Tippin, B. D., & Renaud, J. (2005). How I see “Me” depends on how I see “We”: The role of avoidance of intimacy in social comparison. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 156-157], we predicted that friends who embody negative aspects of self would lead avoidant individuals to like themselves more, whereas friends who embody positive aspects of self would lead non-avoidant individuals to like themselves more. A pretest determined that good friends were seen as more similar to positive and ideal aspects of the self, whereas friends about whom participants had more mixed feelings (ambivalent friends) were seen as more similar to disliked and feared aspects of the self. Four experiments supported the main hypotheses. In Experiment 1, non-avoidant individuals like themselves more when good friends were primed. In Experiment 2, avoidant individuals like themselves more when ambivalent friends were primed. In Experiment 3, non-avoidant individuals liked themselves better after thinking about a friend’s positive traits, whereas avoidant individuals liked themselves better after thinking about a friend’s negative traits. In Experiment 4, all individuals under self-esteem threat strategically brought friends to mind who would help them like themselves more.     

高中生父母教养方式、身体自我认知对性别角色发展的影响

采用问卷法对264名高中生进行调查,探讨了父母教养方式、身体自我认知对高中生性别角色发展的影响作用。结果发现:(1)从总体上,男生比女生更多地呈现出双性化发展的趋势;(2)母亲干涉保护,身体自我的力量、体育活动和自尊对男生的男性气质影响显著,而母亲温暖理解和身体自我的灵活对男生的女性气质影响显著;(3)身体自我的自尊会促进女生的男性气质特点,身体自我的力量对女生的女性气质有负向作用,身体自我的外表对女生的女性气质有正向影响。     

Happiness in the Garden of Epicurus

Epicurus was a philosopher who lived in Greece in the 3rd century B.C. Like his contemporaries, he was much concerned with the question of how to live a good life. In his view the Chief Good is to decrease pain and increase pleasure. Though Epicurus is reputed for advocating the pursuit of refined sensorial pleasures, he recognized the need for deferring gratification or enduring pain. He advised his followers to lead a modest and contemplative life in friendly communities. His advice can be characterized as ‘serene hedonism’. This paper explains that position and considers its applicability for the present day. It concludes that Epicureanism was quite accurate in describing the conditions of happiness and that he offered valuable guidelines in dealing with hardship and difficult emotional content. His ideas that happiness is the same as the absence of pain and that one should withdraw from society are less fortunate. It made him assume that happiness automatically follows if one is in the right state of mind, and that there is no need to actively seek interaction with the environment for the betterment of the circumstances of life. However, Epicurus’ advice might have been a good option for his contemporaries given the societal turmoil in his times.

Ancient Chinese philosophical advice: can it help us find happiness today?

Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism are three main classic Chinese philosophy schools, which all deal with the question of how one should live. In this paper, we first review these ancient recommendations and next consider whether they promise a happy life in present-day society. Recommended behaviours found in the ancient texts are compared with conditions for happiness as observed in present-day empirical investigations. Classic Confucianism appears to offer the most apt advice for finding happiness in present-day society, in particular because it recommends that one should be involved in real life. Classic Taoist advice is second best: its strong point is that it advises us against too much social conformism and bookishness. The advice given by classic Buddhists is better not followed in modern society.     

The Confucian Self and Experiential Spirituality

Since the publication of his book on Zhongyong (Tu 1976), Tu Weiming has worked for more than 30 years on an anthropocosmic reconstruction of the Confucian universe, in which self-transformation is defined both as the starting point and as the necessary vehicle for one’s spiritual journey. This article is primarily intended to examine Tu’s attempts to reconstruct Confucian spirituality but further to take a step forward to argue that in the spiritual world as construed by Confucius and Mencius, the experiential functions as transcendental by which the self initiates and empowers the transformative process. Through exploring the spiritual significance of Confucian experiences, this essay will conclude that although “transcendental experience” is only one of many dimensions in other religious or intellectual traditions, it is the most important path for Confucians by which the self is enabled to become fully integrated with ultimate reality.     

辩证思维降低攻击性倾向

辩证思维是一套根据变化原则、矛盾原理和整体论原理看待世界的思维模式。本研究从思维模式对攻击性影响的角度出发, 采用相关研究及启动范式探讨辩证思维对攻击性的影响。研究一是一个相关研究, 结果显示, 辩证思维与攻击性呈显著负相关。在研究二和研究三中, 操纵了辩证思维。在研究二中, 在启动被试的辩证思维后, 与控制组相比, 他们的攻击性行为倾向显著降低。在研究三中, 对控制组的指导语进行了修改并且增加了启动效应检查程序, 也获得了与研究二类似的结果, 即实验组被试的辩证思维量表得分显著提高, 而攻击性量表得分和攻击性行为倾向显著降低。通过中介效应分析, 也发现启动操作对攻击性的影响是通过增加辩证思维程度实现的。以上系列研究表明, 辩证思维可以降低攻击性行为倾向。     

Humour's role in the relation between attributional style and dysphoria

The present study empirically investigated the role of adaptive and maladaptive components of humour in the relation between attributional style and dysphoria. Four hundred eighteen students (134 male, 282 female; 2 respondents did not indicate gender) completed questionnaires measuring attributional style, humour styles and depressive symptoms. Among men and women, higher levels of affiliative and self‐enhancing humour, and lower levels of self‐defeating humour, were each associated with fewer depressive symptoms. Additionally, higher levels of affiliative humour provided a buffer against the deleterious effects of a negative attributional style in men, but not women. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.