Grateful recounting enhances subjective well-being: The importance of grateful processing

This study examined the interaction of the Thanksgiving holiday with gratitude in relation to well-being using a three-week long, daily diary design with a sample of 172 undergraduate students. Multilevel modeling revealed that without controlling for gratitude, people reported higher levels of positive affect on Thanksgiving holiday than during other days of the study. Reports of life satisfaction, meaning in life, and negative affect did not differ during the holiday. When within-person and between-person levels of gratitude were included, negative relationships were revealed between Thanksgiving and life satisfaction and positive affect. The results from this study sustain the argument that holidays impact people’s well-being depending on certain individual psychological characteristics. In the case of Thanksgiving, gratitude was critical for understanding whether the holiday appeared to positively or negatively influence life satisfaction and positive affect. The present study also supported an important role for gratitude in achieving and maintaining well-being.     

Hiding in plain sight: Older U.S. purpose exemplars

ABSTRACT

Despite significant research on purpose in adolescence and early adulthood, little is known about purpose in older adults. This paper defines purpose as ongoing commitment to and sustained action toward goals that are meaningful to the self and aim to contribute beyond the self. This study of purpose in later life draws on interviews of 102 respondents drawn from a U.S. nationally representative sample of 1198 men and women aged 50–92. Eighteen interviewees are identified as exemplars of purpose beyond the self and are matched with a comparison group of non-purposeful peers. Interview coding revealed that, in contrast to the non-purposeful comparison group, the purpose exemplars describe their lives as including several interconnected sources of well-being: purpose beyond the self, positive relationships, positive life engagement, a sense of competence, and freedom balanced with the desire to contribute. Implications for practitioners and the public are discussed.     

“If only I had” versus “If only I had not”: Mental deletions,mental additions,and perceptions of meaning in life events

ABSTRACT

The present research investigated the relationship between meaning perceptions and the structure of counterfactual thoughts. In Study 1, participants reflected on how turning points in their lives could have turned out otherwise. Those who were instructed to engage in subtractive (e.g. If only I had not done X…”) counterfactual thinking (SCT) about those turning points subsequently reported higher meaning perceptions than did those who engaged in additive (e.g. ‘If only I had done X…’) counterfactual thinking (ACT). In Study 2, participants who reflected upon life events from the perspective of understanding the past (versus preparing for the future) tended to engage in more SCT than ACT. Finally, in Study 3, participants engaged in more SCT than ACT about life events whose meaning was perceived as certain (as opposed to uncertain) – presumably to maintain their pre-existing sense of meaning. Implications for the study of counterfactual thinking and meaning are discussed.     

The Competitive Perception

This paper aims to define what competitive perception is. Using Dufrenne's phenomenological analysis of the art spectator's experience, namely the concept of aesthetic perception, I will claim that it is useful to apply this phenomenological approach to the experience of watching sport events. I will argue that the concepts of uncertainty and auto teleology, being two main features in sport competition, are helpful to define competitive perception.     

The influence of motor expertise and motor experience on action and actor recognition

Two experiments examined whether different levels of motor and visual experience influence action perception and whether this effect depends on the type of perceptual task. Within an action recognition task (Experiment 1), professional basketball players and novice college students were asked to identify basketball dribbles from point-light displays. Results showed faster reaction times and greater accuracy in experts, but no advantage when observing either own or teammates’ actions compared with unknown expert players. Within an actor recognition task (Experiment 2), the same expert players were asked to identify the model actors. Results showed poor discrimination between teammates and players from another team, but a more accurate assignment of own actions to the own team. When asked to name the actor, experts recognised themselves slightly better than teammates. Results support the hypothesis that motor experience influences action recognition. They also show that the influence of motor experience on the perception of own actions depends on the type of perceptual task.