Factor structure of the basic personality inventory with incarcerated offenders

The item and scale factor structure of the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI) was examined in a sample of 486 offenders incarcerated for violent and sexual crimes. Separate principal-component analyses of the items for each of the 11 clinical scales, critical item scale, and social desirability scale indicated a one-dimensional factor solution for all scales except Depression and Persecutory Ideation. The Depression scale's two factors were Hopelessness and Depressive Affect and the Persecutory Ideation scale's two factors were General Paranoia and Perception of External Control. Although the factors for these two scales may assist in interpretation, the correlations between the factors and the total score of their respective scale were high. Confirmatory factor analysis of the 220 items from the 11 clinical scales supported the factorial logic of the scoring key. Analysis of the 11 clinical scales resulted in two factors: General Psychopathology/Adjustment and Antisocial Orientation. The results suggest that all but two scales can be viewed as unidimensional thereby allowing for a straightforward clinical interpretation. These analyses support the internal structure of the BPI and lend credence to external validity work with forensic populations.     

Caveats of non-ipsatization of basic values: A review of issues and a simulation study

Ipsatization, or a correction of variables by their common component, is routinely applied to measures of basic values. Although ipsatization has been criticized, the consequences of non-ipsatization are rarely discussed. We show that the ipsatization of values is intertwined with their definition. A common factor involved in ipsatization was suggested to represent a nuisance variable, a response style, social desirability, or other constructs. A simulation study illustrated that within-individual centering revealed more accurate value scores when the common factor was in the data, with exception of the situation when values were consistently and positively correlated with each other. We conclude that in different conditions both applying and failing to apply ipsatization can cause bias. Therefore, no general advice in regard to ipsatization can be provided.     

Effect of autonomy support and dialogic learning on school children’s physical activity and sport

This study applies an intervention based on autonomy support through dialogic learning to examine effects on motivation and the promotion of physical activity and sport involvement during schoolchildren’s leisure time. One hundred and two primary school students, aged 11–13 years, participated (M = 10.93, SD = 0.75). The sample was divided into two groups: an experimental group (49 students) and a control group (53 students). A quasi-experimental study was conducted in physical education classes over the course of 9 months. Assessments of autonomy support from teachers, family, and peers; basic psychological needs; self-determined motivation in physical education and during leisure time; planned behavior variables; physical activity intention; and estimated and actual physical exercise behavior time were included in the model. Following the intervention, the results revealed that greater autonomy support by the teacher, the family and peers, satisfaction of the basic psychological needs, self-determined motivation during physical education class and during free time, greater perceived control, favorable attitude and intention to engage in physical activity contributed to the explanation of student physical activity involvement. These results suggest that when students receive extensive social support from diverse social agents that essential precursors to physical activity are strengthened and contribute to increased motivation and actual physical activity involvement. Efforts to promote effective communications with students and other pedagogical efforts, such as providing dialogic learning opportunities, should be considered in order to strengthen physical activity motivation and involvement in students.     

Changes in students’ goal pursuits and motivational regulations toward healthy behaviors during the pandemic: A Self-Determination Theory perspective

ObjectivesIn this study, we examined how students’ perceptions of teachers and parents’ need-supportive and need-thwarting behaviors, related to their intrinsic and extrinsic goal pursuits, and in turn their motivational regulations toward physical activity in virtual physical education lessons over a semester during the Sars-COV2 pandemic.DesignShort-term longitudinal study.MethodsStudents (M_age = 14.43, SD = 0.99) completed the targeted questionnaires at the beginning (T1, N = 295) and the end (T2, N = 194) of a virtual semester.ResultsThe results of the autoregressive model indicated that all measures were relatively stable from T1 to T2. Neither teachers nor parents’ need-supportive and need-thwarting behaviors at T1 predicted students’ intrinsic goal pursuits at T2, except for teachers’ need-supportive behaviors at T1 negatively marginally predicted students’ extrinsic goal pursuits at T2. The results also showed that intrinsic goal pursuits at T2 positively and negatively related to autonomous motivation and amotivation at T2, respectively. Extrinsic goal at T2 positively related to controlled motivation and amotivation at T2.ConclusionsFindings suggested that teachers need-supportive behaviors are important for decreasing students’ extrinsic goal pursuits, while parents’ need-thwarting behaviors relate to students’ amotivation over time during the lockdown periods. Also, students’ intrinsic goal pursuits would contribute positively to autonomous motivation and negatively to amotivation over time.     

Representational masking and the attentional blink

After successful detection of a target item within a stream of rapidly displayed visual stimuli, subsequent detection of an additional target is impaired for roughly 500 ms. This impairment is known as the “attentional blink” (AB). Previous studies have found that if either the first (Tl; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992) or second target (T2; Giesbrecht & Di Lollo, 1998) is not followed by a mask, the AB impairment is significantly reduced. Whereas low-level perceptual factors have been found to influence the efficacy of masking in the AB (e.g., Seiffert & Di Lollo, 1997), the current experiment used a higher level (representational) manipulation, i.e., repetition blindness to reduce the efficacy of target masking in the AB. These findings contribute to the growing literature suggesting that masking plays more than a perceptual role in the AB phenomenon.     

Keep the fire burning: Reciprocal gains of basic need satisfaction,intrinsic motivation and innovative work behaviour

Drawing on insights from self-determination theory, we explored the dynamic relationship between intrinsic motivation and innovative work behaviour (IWB) over time. Specifically, we investigated how basic need satisfaction influences IWB through its effect on intrinsic motivation and how IWB in turn affects basic need satisfaction as measured the next day (i.e., a reciprocal relationship). The current study used a longitudinal design comprising a 6-day period and relied on multi-source data from 76 students in industrial product design and electronic engineering who participated in an innovation boot camp. In general, results provided support for the mediating role of intrinsic motivation in the relationship between basic need satisfaction and IWB, as well as the reciprocal relationship between basic need satisfaction and IWB.     

Justice as a basic human need

A stark encounter with some of the hostages and their families at the time of a parliamentary coup brought to mind the significance of justice for human development and community discourse. The evidence is presented, the concept of justice explored, human needs defined, and the argument advanced for more psychologists to extend their present academic and professional concerns with aspects of civil and criminal justice to include a concern with the social. The suggestion is that together all three components of justice are sufficiently compelling a component of human welfare to feature in any list of basic needs. Epistemologically they could also be construed as presenting a combined orthogonal domain to be integrated with moral values and be recognised as a stream of the emerging scientist-practitioner-metaphysician model. In raising the topic, attention is paid to the contributions of constitutional and international lawyers, moral philosophers, and a few pioneer psychologists. The hope is that others in such realms as child development, forensic services, industrial/organisational psychology, pastoral psychology, political psychology, and social psychology, might be sufficiently inspired to consider its relevance, undertake requisite training, and redesign their research accordingly.     

The functional theory of human values: From intentional overlook to first acknowledgement—A reply to Schwartz (2014)

Schwartz has been aware of the Functional Theory of Values for over a decade. For the first time, Schwartz (2014) acknowledges the Gouveia theory and provides considerations based on the Gouveia, Milfont, and Guerra (2014) study. In this reply we present a historical overview of the development of the theory, noting unwarranted barriers to the publication of our work. We then address his comments, focusing on the theoretical innovations of the theory and remarking that recent refinements of Schwartz’s model were already evident in the Gouveia theory. Hypotheses tested in Gouveia et al. (2014) are also re-tested and supported with European Social Survey data using the Schwartz PVQ-21. We conclude by summarizing current projects that offer further opportunities to continue the theoretical debate.     

Reliability and validity of the Basic Depression Questionnaire

Background/ObjectiveDepressive disorders have a high prevalence around the world. They present a great comorbidity with other disorders like anxiety, thereby making a differential diagnosis very difficult. The Basic Depression Questionnaire was designed to palliate this issue by isolating specific depression symptoms. Our aim is to study the reliability, factorial structure, and differential item functioning of this questionnaire. Method: The sample consisted of 1,397 adults without psychological problems (M_age = 29.76, SD = 11.25, 64.78% women) who completed the CBD. Results: We observed that none of the items presented differential functioning. A monofactorial structure was established. In this model a good fit was obtained by confirmatory factor analysis and a strict invariance by sex. The ordinal alpha was used to check the reliability and it fetched an index of .95. Conclusions: The Basic Depression Questionnaire has adequate psychometric properties. The absence of differential item functioning and the invariance by sex are guarantees of an adequate use to diagnose depression for men and women. So, its clinical use can help to differentiate between the specific diagnoses for depressive disorders and anxiety disorders.