Validation of the German version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale and its relation to orientations to happiness and work stress

Career adapt-ability has recently gained momentum as a psychosocial construct that not only has much to offer the field of career development, but also contributes to positive coping, adjustment and self-regulation through the four dimensions of concern, control, curiosity and confidence. The positive psychology movement, with concepts such as the orientations to happiness, explores the factors that contribute to human flourishing and optimum functioning. This research has two main contributions; 1) to validate a German version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS), and 2) to extend the contribution of adapt-abilities to the field of work stress and explore its mediating capacity in the relation between orientations to happiness and work stress. We used a representative sample of the German-speaking Swiss working population including 1204 participants (49.8% women), aged between 26 and 56 (M_age = 42.04). Results indicated that the German version of the CAAS is valid, with overall high levels of model fit suggesting that the conceptual structure of career adapt-ability replicates well in this cultural context. Adapt-abilities showed a negative relationship to work stress, and a positive one with orientations to happiness. The engagement and pleasure scales of orientations to happiness also correlated negatively with work stress. Moreover, career adapt-ability mediates the relationship between orientations to happiness and work stress. In depth analysis of the mediating effect revealed that control is the only significant mediator. Thus control may be acting as a mechanism through which individuals attain their desired life at work subsequently contributing to reduced stress levels.     

Flexibility and Originality in Children's Divergent Thinking

Previous research on the ideational process indicates that original ideas increase in frequency as an examinee works through an open-ended task. In the present investigation, ideational flexibility was evaluated to determine if ideas also become more varied and diverse. Additionally, the relationship of intelligence (IQ) with order effects of both originality and flexibility was investigated. Tests of verbal and figural divergent thinking were administered to 80 intermediate school children. The midpoint of each individual's ideational set was found, and the flexibility and originality scores of each half of the set were compared. Results indicated that flexibility and originality scores were higher in the second half than the first half of the ideational set, but there were significant differences between high- and low-originality subjects and differences between the verbal and the figural tests. The order effect was unrelated to the IQ scores of the subjects. Suggestions are made to integrate ideational flexibility into existing theories of divergent ideation.     

Some thoughts on happy and unhappy love

The subjective nature of love and happiness makes it difficult to examine them objectively. Outlining the purpose of human life as the search for happiness and the avoidance of suffering, Freud began the systematic study of the psychology of love. His most enduring contribution was the discovery of the link between adult and infantile love. Oedipal love gives us the feeling of certainty about what true love is. Mutuality and positive reciprocity are the secret of happy love. Love is a strong motivational drive in life, a force for psychosocial development and a central interest for humanity. It has a remarkable power for the enhancement of integration. Love is a simultaneous attempt to find something new and re-find something old. The author examines which psychological factors lead to a happy result and what factors lead to failure.     

The beneficial effects of prosocial spending on happiness: work hard,make money,and spend it on others?

Previous research has shown that the way people spend their money is as important to happiness as how much money people earn. Specifically, it has been shown that spending money on others contributes more to an individual’s happiness than spending money on oneself. In the present study, we investigated this effect and examined the role of the money’s origin. Students were randomly assigned either to spend a small amount of money on themselves or to spend the money on others. Moreover, half of the participants received the money as a wage, whereas the other half received the money as a windfall. The results replicated previous research indicating that prosocial spenders report greater happiness than do selfish spenders. However, the happiness effect was unaffected by the source of the money (i.e. wage vs. windfall). Implications for well-being and happiness are discussed.     

Development and evaluation of the positive psychology intervention for older adults

Although research suggests that positive psychology intervention can enhance subjective well-being and reduce depression, its effectiveness on older adults remains largely unknown. Therefore the present study aimed to develop and evaluate a custom-tailored positive psychology intervention program for older adults. The program offered nine-week group sessions to 74 older people recruited from district community centers and nursing homes in Hong Kong. The intervention program covers eight themes, including optimism, gratitude, savoring, happiness, curiosity, courage, altruism, and meaning of life. The participants consisted mostly of females aged between 63 and 105?years. One-group pre-test/post-test design was adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention on depression, life satisfaction, gratitude, and happiness. Results revealed that the intervention reduced the number of depressive symptoms and increased the levels of life satisfaction, gratitude, and happiness. Effectiveness of the intervention is discussed in relation to self-awareness, education, self-reinforcement, and sensitivity to age and culture.     

Photovoice and pre-service geography teachers' visual sense of place

This study researched the development of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of pre-service geography teachers (PGTs), adopting a place-based approach. The study planned and implemented a photovoice-based semester class on visualization, happiness and sense of place. Data were collected through photographs taken by PGTs, including their narratives and reflections and analyzed through grounded theory. The geographical place where PGTs felt happiest was the first-place they lived as a child. Participants' affective feelings of place happiness appeared attached to objects that reflected mobility such as a cellular phone or a transportation means, such as bus.     

Fragility of happiness moderates the influence of negative predictors of subjective well-Being

Background and Objectives: Valuing happiness, negative life circumstances, and neuroticism have been found to negatively predict subjective well-being (SWB). It was hypothesized that holding fragility of happiness beliefs (the belief that happiness is fleeting and may easily turn into less favorable states) would moderate the relationships between these predictors and SWB.

Methods: The sample consisted of 338 Korean participants who responded to an online survey (M_age?=?26.19). Multiple regression with centered variables was used to test the hypotheses.

Results: Consistent with the hypotheses, the results showed that fragility of happiness had an exacerbating effect on these negative associations. That is, the negative relationships between the predictors and SWB were stronger for individuals who reported higher fragility of happiness.

Conclusions: These results indicate that people’s notions of the nature of well-being may come to exacerbate the impact of negative predictors of SWB.     

The relations of gratitude to religiosity,well-being,and personality

The relations of gratitude toward God and dispositional gratitude with well-being and personality were investigated, in an Iranian sample. As expected, gratitude was associated with higher scores on happiness, life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and the Big Five factors of personality. Dispositional gratitude out-predicted religious gratitude in relation with well-being. A second study confirmed the results in a second sample of Iranian Muslims, and in a sample of Polish Christians, providing cross-cultural evidence that the dispositional gratitude is a unique predictor of well-being. Positive links between gratitude and Honesty–Humility provided additional construct validity for these variables, as personality dimensions representing the bases of reciprocal altruism.     

Disinterested Love: Understanding Leibniz's Reconciliation of Self- and Other-Regarding Motives

While he was in the employ of the Elector of Mainz, between 1668 and 1671, Leibniz produced a series of important studies in natural law. One of these, dated between 1670 and 1671, is especially noteworthy since it contains Leibniz's earliest sustained attempt to develop an account of justice. Central to this account is the notion of what Leibniz would later come to call `disinterested love', a notion that remained essentially unchanged in Leibniz's work from this period to the end of his life. Through his notion of disinterested love, Leibniz sought to resolve the supposed conflict between self- and other-regarding motives. For a variety of reasons, many commentators have failed to understand the basis of Leibniz's proposed resolution. My purpose in the present paper is to clarify the terms in which Leibniz effected this resolution, as well as to point out important developments in his later thought concerning the relation between pleasure, good, and happiness.     

The unconscious pursuit of emotion regulation: Implications for psychological health

Because of the central involvement of emotion regulation in psychological health and the role that implicit (largely unconscious) processes appear to play in emotion regulation, implicit emotion-regulatory processes should play a vital role in psychological health. We hypothesised that implicitly valuing emotion regulation translates into better psychological health in individuals who use adaptive emotion-regulation strategies. A community sample of 222 individuals (56% women) who had recently experienced a stressful life event completed an implicit measure of emotion regulation valuing (ER-IAT) and reported on their habitual use of an important adaptive emotion-regulation strategy: cognitive reappraisal. We measured three domains of psychological health: well-being, depressive symptoms, and social adjustment. As hypothesised, individuals who implicitly valued emotion regulation exhibited greater levels of psychological health, but only when they were high in cognitive reappraisal use. These findings suggest that salutary effects of unconscious emotion-regulation processes depend on its interplay with conscious emotion-regulation processes.