BMC Psychology最新文献

Background: The interplay between motivational traits and work values is essential for understanding life satisfaction among Chinese high school English teachers. This study investigates how motivation and teaching work values relate to life satisfaction, situating the research within the unique context of Chinese educators.

Methods: Participants are Chinese High School English teachers (N = 742) who answered a self-reported questionnaire conducted online using a web survey during April-May 2024. The analysis included hypothesis testing using Model 4 of the PROCESS macro for SPSS, which examines both the direct and indirect effects of an independent variable (X) on a dependent variable (Y) through a mediator (M). This model was tested separately for each independent variable: personal mastery, competitive excellence, and motivation anxiety.

Results: The results indicated that personal mastery is positively associated with life satisfaction, and a significant positive relationship exists between personal mastery and work values. The findings also revealed a positive association between work values and life satisfaction, with mediation analysis showing that work values partially mediate the relationship between personal mastery and life satisfaction. While the direct effect of competitive excellence on life satisfaction was not significant, its indirect effect through work values was significant. Conversely, although the direct effect of motivation anxiety on life satisfaction was significant, the indirect effect through work values was not.

Conclusions: These results underscore the importance of aligning work environments with educators' values to enhance their professional performance and overall quality of life. Practical implications include guiding school administrators and policymakers to foster environments that support teachers' motivational traits and work values, which can lead to improved job satisfaction, reduced stress, and greater retention among educators.

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are highly prevalent, with long-lasting effects on physical and mental health that vary among individuals across their lifespan. Notably, ACE is associated with depression and anxiety disorders, which are major public health concerns. However, the factors involved in the detrimental effects of ACE on women in the perinatal period, a time of heightened vulnerability to physical and mental health outcomes for both mothers and their offspring, require further investigation.

Methods: To investigate the role of perceived stress in the association between ACE and maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms across the perinatal period, we included 138 pregnant women recruited for a prospective longitudinal study that examined the effects of increased maternal prenatal stress on pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants self-reported adverse childhood experiences and serial measures of perceived stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. Linear mixed-effects (LME) models were employed to assess the association between ACE, perceived stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms and to determine an interaction effect between ACE and perceived stress on state anxiety, trait anxiety, and depressive symptoms.

Results: On average, participants were 34 years of age and at 26 weeks of gestation (gestational age; GA). We found a significant interaction between ACE and perceived stress on trait anxiety (β = 0.06, SE = 0.01, p < .001) and depressive symptoms (β = 0.07, SE = 0.01, p < .001) in the perinatal period. Perceived stress moderated the association between ACE and trait anxiety symptoms in the third trimester (β = 0.07, SE = 0.02, p < .001). The association between ACE and depressive symptoms was moderated by perceived stress in the first trimester (β = 0.23, SE = 0.09, p < .05), second trimester (β = 0.09, SE = 0.03, p < .05), and third trimester (β = 0.04, SE = 0.02, p < .05).

Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of assessing ACE as a risk factor when evaluating maternal mental health to identify individuals susceptible to depressive and anxiety disorders in the perinatal period. Moreover, multiple mental health screenings in the perinatal period reduce the risk of missed opportunities for intervention and preventative actions.

As global carbon emissions continue to rise and climate targets grow increasingly urgent, promoting voluntary low-carbon behaviors has become a critical component of climate policy. Among various behavior-oriented instruments, Personal Carbon Trading (PCT) offers a promising yet underutilized strategy for incentivizing individual emissions reduction, though public participation remains limited due to psychological and communicative barriers. This study investigates how message framing (gain vs. loss) influences individuals' willingness to participate in PCT, and whether this effect is mediated by climate change anxiety (CCA) and moderated by two psychological traits: felt responsibility (FR) and green self-efficacy (GSE). Drawing upon Prospect Theory, Norm Activation Theory, and Self-Efficacy Theory, we conducted an online experiment with randomized stimuli and analyzed the responses of 788 participants. The results show that loss-framed messages significantly enhance voluntary engagement intention (VEI) towards PCT compared to gain-framed messages. Moreover, CCA partially mediates the relationship between message framing and VEI, confirming the emotional pathway through which message framing operates. Importantly, both FR and GSE moderate these effects, such that loss framing is more effective among individuals with higher levels of responsibility or efficacy. These findings advance theoretical understanding of the framing-emotion-intention pathway while offering evidence-based strategies for designing personalized environmental communications that promote voluntary participation in PCT.

Background: With the rapid advancements in emotion processing algorithm within artificial intelligence, it is essential to explore the evolving relationships between humans and robots. This exploration can prepare society for the future widespread application of social robots and address the new social dynamics involving AI agents. Human-robot empathy emerges as a crucial avenue for exploring the emotional connections between humans and robots. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of users' perceptions of robots' minds on human-robot empathy.

Methods: This study manipulated perceived theory of mind (ToM) in robots through human-robot interaction scenarios, utilizing four experiments to assess the effects of perceived ToM in robots-categorized as cognitive ToM (cToM) in Experiments 1a and 2a, and affective ToM (aToM) in Experiments 1b and 2b-on human-robot empathy, including pain empathy and empathic concern. Experiments 1a and 1b examined the influence of perceived ToM in robots on human-robot empathy within classic ToM scenarios, while Experiments 2a and 2b were conducted within real service contexts, further investigating the mediating role of users' mind perceptions of robots.

Findings: First, perceiving a robot with high aToM significantly enhanced users' pain empathy and empathic concern towards robots, with the experience dimension of mind perception potentially serving as an indirect-only mediator in this relationship. Second, in real home service scenarios in Experiment 2, while the total effect of high cToM on empathic concern was not statistically significant after multiple comparisons correction, mediation analysis revealed a significant negative direct effect alongside a positive indirect effect through agency. This pattern suggests that perceiving high cToM may simultaneously inhibit empathic concern directly while potentially fostering it through enhanced agency perception.

Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that perceived aToM in robots consistently enhances human-robot emotional interactions, while revealing a more complex dual-pathway mechanism for cToM effects. These results provide valuable insights into how distinct dimensions of mind perception shape human-robot relationships.