The role of teammate relationships,communication and self-efficacy in predicting athlete flow experience

This study aimed at testing a structural model of athlete flow in a sample of South African students. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was implemented. Participants completed self-report measures at pre-arranged times that were in close proximity to the completion of athletic activity. Student athletes (n = 235) participating in South Africa's two major sports, football and rugby, were surveyed. The instruments utilised in this study included the Short Flow State Scale-2, the Questionnaire on Experience and Assessment of Work, and the Generalised Self-Efficacy Scale. The results indicated positive relationships between the variables and established predictor paths. Teammate relationships and self-efficacy were established to as the best predictors of flow experiences of athletes.     

Dante’s Divine Comedy and modern depth therapy

The author discusses a connection between the modern analysand’s experience of depth therapy and the Christian pilgrim’s experience of confession, penitence and transformation as described by Dante in his Divine Comedy. She looks at structure and order in the context of psychotherapy. Taking Adriana Mazzarella’s ‘In Search of Beatrice’ as a guide, she examines a Jungian interpretation of the poem as an analogy of therapeutic initiation. She explores the idea of cultural complexes via the study of the medieval world view as one distinct from our own. She demonstrates the way in which study of the Comedy unexpectedly helped her survive an experience of long-term psychotherapeutic work.     

Sourcing stereotypes: constructing and challenging simplified knowledge

The social media uproar in Fall 2017 over a nursing textbook chart that presented generalised characterisations of minority groups generated an assumption that medical training needs more Religious Studies expertise. Analysing the sources that the chart cited, we trace the authors’ assertions to studies of varying quality and identify several specific processes involved in simplifying knowledge for dissemination, as the authors disregarded the limits of each specific study and ignored counter-evidence or otherwise evaded critical scrutiny. Comparing this example to examples from world religions discourse illustrates both differences and similarities in the process of constructing simplified presentations. While both presumably developed out of good intentions, they generate significant problems in their effort to shape material to support larger arguments. Thus, scholars across disciplines should critique and complicate their own processes for generating simplified knowledge.     

Bin Laden is one of us! Representations of religious identity at the Parliament of the World's Religions

In July 2004 the fourth Parliament of the World's Religions took place in Barcelona. As with previous modern sessions, the Barcelona event was inspired by the original Parliament, which famously took place in Chicago in 1893. This paper examines the idea of the Parliament as a significant forum for the public representation of religious identity in global context. One way this was expressed in 2004 was in relation to political violence. As one delegate exclaimed rhetorically, ‘Bin Laden is one of us!’ This anxious rhetoric highlighted the problem of how to represent religious identity in the contemporary world. Who is included and who excluded from the global community of the religious? By drawing comparison with the 1893 Parliament, the paper argues that representational strategies deployed at the 2004 Parliament demonstrate the tensions and potential ruptures that confront the idea of religious identity in the context of late modernity.     

What Are You Really Saying? Associations between Shyness and Verbal Irony Comprehension

Verbal irony exploits the ambiguity inherent in language by using the discrepancy between a speaker's intended meaning and the literal meaning of his or her words to achieve social goals. Irony provides a window into children's developing pragmatic competence. Yet, little research exists on individual differences that may disrupt this understanding. For example, verbal irony may challenge shy children, who tend to interpret ambiguous stimuli as being threatening and who have difficulty mentalizing in social contexts. We examined whether shyness is related to the interpretation of ironic statements. Ninety‐nine children (8–12 year olds) listened to stories wherein one character made either a literal or ironic criticism or a literal or ironic compliment. Children appraised the speaker's belief and communicative intention. Shyness was assessed using self‐report measures of social anxiety symptoms and shy negative affect. Shyness was not related to children's comprehension of the counterfactual nature of ironic statements. However, shyness was related to children's ratings of speaker meanness for ironic statements. Thus, although not related to the understanding that speakers intended to communicate their true beliefs, shyness was related to children's construal of the social meaning of irony. Such subtle differences in language interpretation may underlie some of the social difficulties facing shy children. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Associations of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negative Past Events,Coping, and Self‐Concept in Early Childhood

Parent–child reminiscing conversations in early childhood have received theoretical attention as a forum for children's self‐concept development, but this has been little addressed in empirical work. This study examines associations between emotion reminiscing and children's self‐concepts and, building from the reminiscing and personality development literatures, also explores the role of children's coping. Sixty 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children and their mothers completed reminiscing conversations about events in which the child had experienced negative emotion, children completed an age‐appropriate assessment of their self‐concept, and mothers and teachers reported on children's coping strategies. Children's self‐perceived timidity was associated with their explanations for negative emotions during reminiscing. Children's self‐perceived negative affect was associated with fewer emotion resolutions during reminiscing, and with distinctive patterns of coping. Both reminiscing and coping made unique contributions to children's self‐concepts, and findings also suggest that coping may in some contexts indirectly connect reminiscing with self‐concept. These findings suggest that reminiscing conversations both reflect children's characteristics and provide a context for learning about their characteristics, along with strategies for emotion management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Love Inspires Hate

SUMMARY

In this study the relationship between childhood perception of rejection and a conflicted marital relationship was explored. Sixty subjects participated in a causal comparative ex post facto study. The Parent Acceptance Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) was used to measure perception of rejection by mother and father. The Pair Attraction Inventory (PAI) was used to assess the type of marital relationship. The subjects were divided into two groups, those who felt accepted by mother or father (n = 33) and those who felt rejected by mother or father (n = 27), based on the PARQ scores. Those who perceived a rejecting experience with their mother were significantly more likely to experience a hostile and rejecting interactional pattern with their marital partner. Conversely, those who perceived acceptance by their mother were significantly more likely to experience a harmonious, healthy interdependency with their spouse. There is a need for clinicians to be prepared to assess and treat couples caught in a collusive recreation of a rejecting or “bad object” relationship from childhood.     

A Self-Modeling Intervention for High School Students with Public Speaking Anxiety

ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effectiveness of self-modeling as an intervention for public speaking anxiety. The participants were six high school students with elevated levels of self-reported public speaking anxiety. Students presented public speeches to randomly selected peer audiences. Direct observations measured the behavioral manifestations of public speaking anxiety. In the intervention phase, students viewed self-modeling videotapes that were edited to remove speech dysfluencies and behavioral symptoms of speech anxiety. The self-modeling tapes depicted only adaptive, exemplary behavior with an edited-in audience feature making it appear that the students were producing a fluent speech to an audience of their peers. All of the participants evidenced substantial decreases in behavioral symptoms of speech anxiety and these changes were maintained throughout follow-up. The range of the participants' effect sizes was 2.7 to 4.9. Self-report measures of state anxiety and confidence as a speaker were used to assess additional effects of treatment. For all participants, there were also substantial decreases in self-reported public speaking anxiety and state anxiety from baseline to follow-up. A post-treatment interview revealed high social validity and self-reported generalization of treatment.     

对环保行为的心理学解读——规范焦点理论述评

社会规范对个体行为的影响常被低估.通过将社会规范区分为描述性规范和命令性规范,并强调注意焦点的作用,规范焦点理论重新强调了社会规范的重要作用.根据规范焦点理论,不同类型的社会规范有不同的作用,恰当地使用相应的社会规范信息对环保行为进行干预,可以减少乱丢垃圾、促进垃圾分类,改善节能、节约和保护资源等行为.立足于环保应用,总结了运用这种既科学又省力的措施时应注意的问题.最后,从文化差异和我国社会现阶段特征两个方面,论述了规范焦点理论及其所倡导的措施对我国环保工作的适用性.     

Effects of membership change on open discussion and team performance: The moderating role of team tenure

This study identified temporal conditions when membership change may enhance or diminish team functioning. Using a longitudinal repeated measures design surveying 41 R&D teams, this study examined whether team tenure moderated the relationship of membership change with open discussion and team performance. The results illustrated that increasing membership change was positively associated with both open discussion and team performance for newly formed teams, whereas this association was negative for long-serving teams. Thus, what matters is not so much whether a team's membership changes but rather whether the team's longevity supports or impedes adaptation to personnel changes.