Journal of General Psychology最新文献

The COVID-19 pandemic's psychological impact prompted this study to investigate the inner child healing course's effectiveness in reducing fear of COVID-19 and improving emotional family relationships. This quasi-experimental research adopted a pretest-posttest design with a control group. Convenience sampling was employed to select 42 women randomly from five psychotherapy centers in Isfahan (Iran) in 2020. They were then randomly assigned to a control group (n = 21) and an experimental group (n = 21). The experimental group received the inner child healing course in six sessions, whereas the control group received no intervention. The Fear of COVID-19 Scale and the Emotional Family Relationships Questionnaire were utilized for data collection. Analysis of covariance was employed for data analysis using SPSS 25. Participants in the inner child healing group reported significantly higher mean scores on happiness (12.40 ± 1.11) compared to the control group (5.90 ± 2.24). This pattern of higher means in the inner child healing group persisted for freedom and intimacy in family relationships (11.50 ± 1.90 vs. 5.12 ± 1.60), trust in the family (13.61 ± 1.90 vs. 6.21 ± 2.04), and collaborative decision-making with family (12.34 ± 2.05 vs. 6.31 ± 1.80). Statistical analysis revealed significant effects of the inner child healing course on happiness (p<.01), freedom and intimacy with family members (p<.01), trust in family members (p<.01), and collaborative decision-making with family members (p<.01) in women. Notably, the intervention did not yield statistically significant effects on commitment and responsibility or fear of COVID-19 in this sample of married women. This suggests the inner child healing course may improve emotional well-being within families during COVID-19.

Although cross-sectional studies have explored the correlation between envy and loneliness, few longitudinal studies have investigated the bidirectional association between envy and loneliness at both trait and state levels. Here, through a longitudinal study and a daily diary investigation, we examined the interrelationships between envy and loneliness at both trait and state levels. In study 1, 288 college students answered the Dispositional Envy Scale (DES) and UCLA Loneliness Scale (UCL-8 Scale) twice with a one-year interval. The results of cross-lagged analysis indicated that dispositional envy could predict trait loneliness, while not vice versa. In study 2, using the adapted items form DES and UCL-8, a 14-day diary survey from a sample of 195 college students was conducted to investigate the interrelationship between state envy and state loneliness. The results of multivariate latent growth models and hierarchical linear models indicated that state envy could positively predict state loneliness and vice versa. Taken together, these findings uncover the bidirectional relationship between envy and loneliness at both the trait and state levels.

Previous studies suggested that individuals with prosocial motivation have better job performance in mission-driven organizations. However, the mediating mechanisms underlying this link remain unclear. On the basis of person-environment theory, this research proposed that work as a calling and job involvement are two important mediators between employees' prosocial motivation and their job performance in mission-driven organizations. Through a multi-wave and muti-source approach, 420 independent subordinate-immediate supervisor dyads from 173 divisions or stations of the police department in Taiwan were obtained. Our results illustrated that the prosocial motivation-job performance relationship is sequentially mediated by work as a calling and job involvement. We further discuss implications for future research and practices in light of these findings.

A considerable amount of research has revealed that there exists an evolutionary mismatch between ancestral environments and conditions following the rise of agriculture regarding the contact between humans and animal reservoirs of infectious diseases. Based on this evolutionary mismatch framework, we examined whether visual attention exhibits adaptive attunement toward animal targets' pathogenicity. Consistent with our predictions, faces bearing heuristic infection cues held attention to a greater extent than did animal vectors of zoonotic infectious diseases. Moreover, the results indicated that attention showed a specialized vigilance toward processing facial cues connoting the presence of infectious diseases, whereas it was allocated comparably between animal disease vectors and disease-irrelevant animals. On the other hand, the pathogen salience manipulation employed to amplify the participants' contextual-level anti-pathogen motives did not moderate the selective allocation of attentional resources. The fact that visual attention seems poorly equipped to detect and encode animals' zoonotic transmission risk supports the idea that our evolved disease avoidance mechanisms might have limited effectiveness in combating global outbreaks originating from zoonotic emerging infectious diseases.

Self-face recognition denotes the process by which a person can recognize their own face by distinguishing it from another's face. Although many research studies have explored the inhibition effect of negative information on self-relevant face processing, few researchers have examined whether negative scenes influence self-relevant face processing. Fearful and disgusting scenes are typical negative scenes, but little research to data has examined their discriminative effects on self-relevant face recognition. To investigate these issues, the current study explored the effect of negative scenes on self-relevant face recognition. In Study 1, 44 participants (20 men, 24 women) were asked to judge the orientation of a target face (self-face or friend-face) pictured in a negative or neutral scene, whereas 40 participants (19 men, 21 women) were asked to complete the same task in a fearful, disgusting, or neutral scene in Study 2. The results showed that negative scenes inhibited the speed of recognizing self-faces. Furthermore, the above effect of negative scenes on self-relevant face recognition occurred with fearful rather than disgusting scenes. Our findings suggest the distinct effects of fearful scenes and disgusting scenes on self-relevant face processing, which may be associated with the automatic attentional capture to negative scenes (especially fearful scenes) and the tendency to escape self-awareness.

Prospective memory is an important and complex social cognitive ability, which is easily disturbed by negative emotions. According to the relationship between prospective memory cues and ongoing tasks, prospective memory can be divided into focal prospective memory and non-focal prospective memory. This study focuses on the influence of negative emotions on different types of prospective memory. In Experiment 1, 117 participants were recruited, using a 2 (emotion: negative, neutral) × 2 (cue focality: focal, non-focal) between-subjects design to initially explore whether negative emotions can interfere with the prospective memory of both focal cue and non-focal cue. The results show that negative emotions simultaneously reduce both types of prospective memory performance. At the same time, negative emotions occupy additional attention resources and impair the prospective component of prospective memory with non-focal cues. In Experiment 2, 64 participants were recruited to improve the difficulty of the retrospective component of prospective memory with non-focal cues, and the influence of negative emotions on different components of prospective memory with non-focal cues was further explored. The results show that negative emotions can impair both the prospective and retrospective components of prospective memory. In short, the results of this study indicate that negative emotion can impair prospective memory, and the impairment effect is not limited by the cue type of prospective memory. Meanwhile, negative emotion will occupy more attentional resources and simultaneously affect the prospective and retrospective components of prospective memory.

Extant research has demonstrated the positive roles of workplace friendships and has recently found the negative effect or the double-edged effect on employees and organizations. Unfortunately, little is known about the boundary condition of the double-edged effects of workplace friendships and the elaborated understanding of the mechanism of positive and negative effects of workplace friendship simultaneously. Our purpose is to reveal that workplace friendship is a mixed blessing by investigating when and how workplace friendships are likely to promote versus inhibit voice behavior. We propose that the double-edged effect of workplace friendship hinges on the competitive climate. Specifically, when the competitive climate is low, workplace friendship is positively related to employees' psychological safety, promoting voice behavior. In contrast, workplace friendship is positively related to employees' face concern, inhibiting voice behavior when the competitive climate is high. Our hypotheses were supported across the three waves of surveys and experimental studies. Taken together, our findings reveal the perils and benefits of workplace friendship and the importance of boundary conditions resulting in employees' differential psychological processes in friendship interaction.

Anxiety is a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary society. With increased internet use in recent years, more people in the general population are seeking and providing help and participating in community online. The goal of our study was to evaluate the content of internet narratives among those who post about anxiety and determine what stakeholder groups are saying online. We used the bifurcated method; it is a multi-method (qualitative) approach with inductive, thematic analyses, and with quantification of content-related words via a computer program that crawls websites and counts the occurrences of specified terms (for cross-checking purposes). Themes of posts and webpages about anxiety were: using/reporting treatment strategies (83.3% saturation), providing help (77.8% saturation), telling personal stories (72.2% saturation), seeking help (61.1% saturation), and illustrating interpersonal impact (50% saturation). We argue that anxiety stakeholders may take part in health co-inquiry online (i.e., cooperating with others) in many of the same ways that they might collaborate in person. We recommend that clinicians query their clients about use of the internet in ways related to their anxiety (e.g., seeking information/treatment strategies, offering help to others, telling their personal stories, etc.) so that they might help them process what they experience online.

Agency is action aimed at goals selected by an agent. A deterministic world view leaves scant room for agency. To reconcile the arguments, we represent action as nested control systems, ranging from clearly deterministic to clearly volitional. Negative feedback minimizes deviations from setpoints (goals). Goals are determined by higher modules in a hierarchy of systems, ranging from gamma-efferent spindles through reflexes to operant responses; these last, and the larger system that contains them, called the Self, comprise volitional agents. When operants become habitual they descend to closed teleonomic systems-automaticity. Change in emotional states, and unpredicted changes in the context-raise them back to full volitional systems. At the highest level is the Self-the brain's model of the agent. When aroused out of open teleonomic functioning, it must reconsider means and ends. It does so by simulating action plans, using the same neural systems it uses to effect them. The simulated stimuli and responses are conscious, approximating their perceptions as experienced in real time; this verisimilitude gives them their hedonic value. Positive feedback plays a key role in these complex adaptive systems, as it focuses and holds attention on the most salient percepts and goals, permitting the self-organization of action plans. The Self is not a separate entity, but a colloquy of command modules wearing the avatar of the agent. This system is put into correspondence with Grossberg's Adaptive Resonance Theory. Free will and determinism emerge not as binary opposites, but the modulating inputs to a spectrum of systems.

The study of spatial skills is gaining importance due to their relevance in everyday activities and their critical role in developing competencies across various academic disciplines. The main goal of this study was to explore whether mental rotation strategies, such as the so-called holistic -rotating an entire object- and piecemeal -rotating individual parts of the object- approaches, can be induced, and whether sex differences emerge during the process of strategy induction. This objective holds a pivotal role as it could lead to the enhancement of mental rotation abilities and the development of effective interventions. To achieve this, a mental rotation task was conducted while eye movements were recorded. In the first block, participants solved the task freely, while in the second block, they received instructions to solve it through either a holistic (42 participants) or a piecemeal (43 participants) strategy in a between-subjects design. In both strategies, participants showed better performance in the second block compared to the first. Males outperformed females. The holistic strategy resulted in faster reaction times in the second block. The number of fixations and saccadic movements decreased in the second block compared to the first for the holistic strategy, while the piecemeal strategy exhibited the opposite ocular pattern. These results indicate that effective mental rotation strategies were successfully elicited. No sex differences were found in the analyzed eye movement variables.