Suchergebnisse

Abstract. Does personality stay stable after young adulthood or is there continued change throughout middle and later adulthood? For decades, this question has caused heated debate. Over the last couple of years, a consensus has emerged based on recent cross-cultural as well as longitudinal evidence. This consensus confirms that indeed there is personality change in middle and later adulthood. Many authors have labeled this change personality maturation or growth. In somewhat simplified terms the observed pattern is as follows: neuroticism declines, conscientiousness and agreeableness increase. At the same time it has been argued that this pattern of personality change is the result of coping with the developmental tasks of adulthood and, thus, increased adjustment. We would like to examine this practice of equating developmental adjustment with growth and ask how to define personality growth. To answer this question, we consult theories of personality development as well as lifespan theory.

Abstract. This research investigates mortality salience (MS) and national pride in Germany, a country in which, for historical reasons, attitudes toward the nation are negatively valued. Within this cultural context, utilizing national pride as a coping strategy for dealing with MS may require well-developed self-regulatory abilities: It was hypothesized that the typical increment in national pride after induced MS would be confined to action-oriented individuals, who are able to self-regulate after exposure to threatening information. Two studies with German participants showed that they negatively evaluated national pride. Consistent with expectations, action-oriented participants in the MS condition revalued this symbol and also gave higher attractiveness ratings to attributes related to their own culture. Results remained unchanged after controlling for participants' self-esteem. The combined role of self-regulation and culture in terror management is discussed.

Abstract. This article brings to the fore the sociocognitive aspect of metacognition and processes involved in coregulation. We argue that coregulation in a learning situation that involves the interaction of teachers and students or peers is based on awareness of the partners' cognition, metacognition, affect, and motivation, as well as interpersonal perception processes and/or interpersonal relational control processes. One aspect of metacognition, particularly relevant to coregulation of learning, is metacognitive experience, i.e., how the interacting partners feel and what they think about the task at hand. Awareness of one's own and the other's cognition and of metacognitive experiences is necessary for metacommunication control processes. Evidence from two independent studies suggests that there can be misperception of the interacting partners' metacognitive experiences because of "theory-driven" conceptions of the other person or lack of metacognitive coregulation because of the prevalence of relational control processes. We suggest that this may lead to scaffolding mismatch in instruction, failure in coregulation, and negative feelings and behaviors of the interacting partners in certain learning situations.

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether the combination of paid employment and taking care of children promotes or challenges the life satisfaction of married and divorced men and women in the UK, Estonia, and Finland. The UK sample stems from the National Child Development Study, at age 42 (N = 10280; 48% of men, 52% of women). The Estonian data come from a representative sample of 1164 participants (507 men, 657 women; mean age 42). The Finnish data stems from an ongoing longitudinal study on 1390 participants (447 men and 943 women; mean age = 41). The results showed that in all three countries women report higher levels of life satisfaction than men, couples are generally more satisfied than divorcees, and those who are employed are generally more satisfied with their lives than those who are not. Second, for men in general as well as for divorced women higher levels of life satisfaction appear to be associated with full-time work. Third, men and women pursuing a professional career are more satisfied with their lives than men and women in unskilled jobs. Finally, having a child shows no significant association with life satisfaction in any of our three countries, although there were significant interactions between gender, marital status, employment, and parenthood. Divorced women in all three countries appear to be more satisfied with their lives if they do not have children, especially after adjusting life satisfaction by occupational status. Findings are discussed with regard to role stress and role accumulation theories.

Abstract. Individuals, as living open systems, actively interact with their environment. Throughout their life, they preferentially replicate a subset of the available opportunities for action. This process has been labeled psychological selection, and it is based on the quality of experience reported in daily situations. Empirical evidence has shown that individuals preferentially select, reproduce, and cultivate the activities associated with optimal experience, a distinctively positive and complex state of consciousness characterized by the perception of high challenges balanced with adequate skills, concentration and engagement, clear goals and rules, and control of the situation. From this perspective, optimal experience fosters the development of individual competencies, shaping the pattern of psychological selection. Empirical evidence was also gathered for apathy, the negative pole of experience fluctuation, characterized by disengagement, disruption of attention, negative affect, and low perceived challenges. This paper will provide findings concerning the psychological features of optimal experience and apathy across different samples and activities. A stable cognitive core was detected for both states, around which affective and motivational variables fluctuate according to the structure of the associated activities. The regulating function of short-term desirability and perceived long-term goals on the quality of experience was also highlighted. Results suggested that the association of optimal experiences and skill cultivation with structured and long-term meaningful activities could be used as an intervention tool for the promotion of individual development and social integration in youth and adults.

Abstract. Theories of smoking have been developed about the conditions and causes of smoking as well as for explaining its maintenance. Moreover, factors of smoking motivation have been identified, which describe incentives to smoke and types of smoking behavior. The most frequently reported motives are psychosocial smoking, sensorimotor smoking, indulgent smoking, stimulation smoking, sedation smoking, dependent smoking, and automatic smoking. In the first phase after the start of smoking, psychosocial smoking is the dominating motive, which is best represented by theories of social psychology. Sensorimotor smoking may be best explained by theories of classical and operant conditioning. Indulgent smoking (= smoking for pleasure) may be explained by neurochemical theories and by the neurobiological theories of dependence emphasizing nicotine-induced activation of mesolimbic dopaminergic reinforcement. Stimulation smoking and sedation smoking are related to arousal models. Moreover, sedation smoking is also explained by aspects of reducing negative affect (as claimed by theories of affect regulation) and by biochemical theories emphasizing serotonergic mechanisms in modulating anxiety as well as by theories of dependence. Dependent smoking, which is mostly based on negative reinforcement (suppression of withdrawal symptoms) may be explained by neurochemical theories as well as by neurobiological theories of psychological and physical dependence explaining blunted dopaminergic and serotonergic responsivity as due to desensitization of respective receptors. Also automatic smoking may be explained by processes of habit learning and neurobiological theories of dependence. Finally, personality theories have been applied to all of these smoking motives.

Abstract. The focus of the study is on the importance of early optimism for adult subjective well-being (SWB). Only females were studied. Data from age 13 and age 43 were taken from the Swedish longitudinal research program Individual Development and Adaptation (IDA, Magnusson, 1988 ). We investigated the longitudinal relationship between early optimism and optimism at age 43, its mediation via positive and negative affect measured at age 43, and finally the "effect" on global life satisfaction at age 43. For this purpose, structural equation methodology was used and the fit indices were compared among three extended cognitive-affective models, based on Chang's work ( Chang, 2002 ). The best fitting model suggests that early optimism influences optimism at middle age, which in its turn has both a direct influence on global life satisfaction and an indirect influence via the negative affect dimension. In further analyses we studied the importance of early optimism for adult SWB in relation to the importance of a number of other factors measured in adolescence. Optimism at age 13 was the only factor that was consistently related to women's SWB at age 43.