The Dimensionality of Reading Self-Concept: Examining Its Stability Using Local Structural Equation Models.

For results from large-scale surveys to inform policy and practice appropriately, all participants must interpret and respond to items similarly. While organizers of surveys assessing student outcomes often ensure this for achievement measures, doing so for psychological questionnaires is also critical. We demonstrate this by examining the dimensionality of reading self-concept-a crucial psychological construct for several outcomes-across reading achievement levels. We use Programme for International Student Assessment 2018 data (N = 529,966) and local structural equation models (LSEMs) to do so. Results reveal that reading self-concept dimensions (assessed through reading competence and difficulty) vary across reading achievement levels. Students with low reading achievement show differentiated responses to the two item sets (high competence-high difficulty). In contrast, students with high reading achievement have reconciled responses (high competence-low difficulty). Our results highlight the value of LSEMs in examining factor structure generalizability of constructs in large-scale surveys and call for greater cognitive testing during item development.

Overcoming Limitations in Peer-Victimization Research That Impede Successful Intervention: Challenges and New Directions.

Peer victimization at school is a worldwide problem with profound implications for victims, bullies, and whole-school communities. Yet the 50-year quest to solve the problem has produced mostly disappointing results. A critical examination of current research reveals both pivotal limitations and potential solutions. Solutions include introducing psychometrically sound measures to assess the parallel components of bullying and victimization, analyzing cross-national data sets, and embracing a social-ecological perspective emphasizing the motivation of bullies, importance of bystanders, pro-defending and antibullying attitudes, classroom climate, and a multilevel perspective. These solutions have been integrated into a series of recent interventions. Teachers can be professionally trained to create a highly supportive climate that allows student-bystanders to overcome their otherwise normative tendency to reinforce bullies. Once established, this intervention-enabled classroom climate impedes bully-victim episodes. The take-home message is to work with teachers on how to develop an interpersonally supportive classroom climate at the beginning of the school year to catalyze student-bystanders' volitional internalization of pro-defending and antibullying attitudes and social norms. Recommendations for future research include studying bullying and victimization simultaneously, testing multilevel models, targeting classroom climate and bystander roles as critical intervention outcomes, and integrating school-wide and individual student interventions only after improving social norms and the school climate.

The consequences of compulsion: A 4-year longitudinal study of compulsive internet use and emotion regulation difficulties.

Little is known about how compulsive Internet use (CIU) relates developmentally to different aspects of emotion regulation. Do young people engage in CIU because they have difficulty regulating emotions (the "consequence" model), does CIU lead to emotion regulation problems (the "antecedent" model), or are there reciprocal influences? We examined the longitudinal relations between CIU and 6 facets of difficulties in emotion regulation. Adolescents (N = 2,809) across 17 Australian schools completed measures yearly from Grades 8 (MAge = 13.7) to 11. Structural equations modeling revealed that CIU preceded the development of some aspects of emotion dysregulation, such as difficulties setting goals and being clear about emotions, but not others (the antecedent model). We found no evidence that emotion regulation difficulties preceded the development of increases in CIU (the consequence model). Our findings indicate that teaching adolescents general emotion regulation skills may not be as effective in reducing CIU as more direct approaches of limiting Internet use. We discuss the implications of our findings for interventions designed to reduce CIU and highlight issues for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A configural approach to aspirations: The social breadth of aspiration profiles predicts well-being over and above the intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations that comprise the profiles.

We conducted a person-centered analysis of the Aspiration Index to identify subgroups that differ in the levels of their specific (wealth, fame and image, personal growth, relationships, community giving, and health) and global intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. In a Hungarian (N = 3,370; 77% female; age: M = 23.57), an Australian (N = 1,632; 51% female; age: M = 16.6), and an American sample (N = 6,063; 82.2% female; age: M = 21.86), we conducted separate bifactor exploratory structural equation models to disentangle the level of higher-order intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations from the shape of specific aspirations by using the resultant factor scores as indicators in latent profile analyses. The analyses yielded 3 replicable latent profiles: Disengaged from relationships and health (Profile 1); Aspiring for interpersonal relationships more than community relationships (Profile 2); and Aspiring for community relationships more than interpersonal relationships (Profile 3), with Profile 3 reliably experiencing the highest well-being. To demonstrate the incremental value of our approach to more traditional variable-centered methods, we used profile membership to predict well-being while controlling for the aspirations that comprise the profiles. Even in these conservative tests, profile membership explained additional variance in well-being. However, the real-life significance of the size of the incremental value appeared quite small. These studies make a unique contribution to the literature by identifying replicable latent profiles of aspiring, membership to which uniquely predicted well-being, over and above the constituent variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Mindfulness and Its Association With Varied Types of Motivation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Using Self-Determination Theory.

Mindfulness has been shown to have varied associations with different forms of motivation, leading to a lack of clarity as to how and when it may foster healthy motivational states. Grounded in self-determination theory, the present study proposes a theoretical model for how mindfulness supports different forms of human motivation, and then tests this via meta-analysis. A systematic review identified 89 relevant studies (N = 25,176), comprising 104 independent data sets and 200 effect sizes. We used a three-level modeling approach to meta-analyze these data. Across both correlational and intervention studies, we found consistent support for mindfulness predicting more autonomous forms of motivation and, among correlational studies, less controlled motivation and amotivation. We conducted moderation analyses to probe heterogeneity in the effects, including bias within studies. We conclude by highlighting substantive and methodological issues that need to be addressed in future research in this area.

Is Self-Compassion Selfish? The Development of Self-Compassion, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Adolescence.

Both self-compassion and empathy have been theorized to promote prosociality in youth, but there is little longitudinal data examining this possibility. We assessed self-compassion, empathy, and peer-rated prosociality yearly, in a cohort of 2,078 youth across 17 schools (M age at T1 = 14.65 years; 49.2% female), as they progressed from Grade 9-12. We utilized multi-level modeling to predict prosocial behavior, nested within students, classes, and schools. We found that self-compassion and empathy uniquely predicted peer-rated prosocial behavior. However, only empathy predicted increases in prosocial behavior across time. While self-compassion is not selfish, it does not appear to facilitate the development of kindness toward adolescent peers. Self-compassion may help to buffer against possible negative effects of empathic distress.

Discrimination as a frame-of-reference effect in overlapping friendship communities of ethnically diverse youth.

OBJECTIVES: To what extent is the frame of reference of overlapping friendship communities important for young people's feelings of discrimination and subjective well-being? That is, do youth feel better or worse to the extent that they feel less or more discrimination than their friends? METHOD: Participants (N = 898; Mage = 14.13; SDage = 3.37; 46% females; 46% Whites; 20% Indigenous; 34% other minorities) were high school students of three ethnically diverse, low socioeconomic status public schools in New South Wales, Australia. Cross-sectional data were collected to measure felt discrimination, mental health, subjective well-being, social support, and nominations of close friends. A state-of-the-art method of clustering links was used to identify overlapping friendship communities, and multiple membership multilevel models were run to examine whether community-level discrimination moderated the link between individual-level discrimination and well-being. RESULTS: When the community level discrimination was low, there was no well-being related cost or benefit of individual-level discrimination. But when the community-level discrimination was high, individuals in those communities who themselves felt low discrimination had better well-being than individuals who themselves felt high discrimination. CONCLUSIONS: We provide evidence for a frame-of-reference effect involving discrimination. Individuals' relative standing in their friendship communities with high group-level discrimination reliably predicted the individuals' well-being levels, regardless of ethnicity. The results highlight the importance of identifying overlapping friendship communities for understanding the dynamics of discrimination and well-being of ethnically diverse youth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The well-being profile (WB-Pro): Creating a theoretically based multidimensional measure of well-being to advance theory, research, policy, and practice.

There is no universally agreed definition of well-being as a subjective experience, but Huppert and So (2013) adopted and systematically applied the definition of well-being as positive mental health-the opposite of the common mental disorders described in standard mental health classifications (e.g., Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). We extended their theoretical approach to include multi-item scales, using 2 waves of nationally representative U.S. adult samples to develop, test, and validate our multidimensional measure of well-being (WB-Pro). This resulted in a good-fitting a priori (48-item, 15-factor) model that was invariant over time, education, gender, and age; showed good reliability (coefficient αs .81-.93), test-retest correlation (.73-.85; M = .80), and convergent/discriminant validity based on a multitrait-multimethod analysis, and relations with demographic variables, selected psychological measures, and other multidimensional and purportedly unidimensional well-being measures. Further, we found that items from 2 widely used, purportedly unidimensional well-being measures loaded on different WB-Pro factors consistent with a priori predictions based on the WB-Pro factor structure, thereby calling into question their claimed unidimensionality and theoretical rationale. Because some applications require a short global measure, we used a machine-learning algorithm to construct 2 global well-being short versions (five- and 15-item forms) and tested these formative measures in relation to the full-form and validity criteria (to download short and long versions see https://ippe.acu.edu.au/research/research-instruments/wb-pro). The WB-Pro appears to be one of the most comprehensive measures of subjective well-being, based on a sound conceptual model and empirical support, with broad applicability for research and practice, as well as providing a framework for evaluating the breadth of other well-being measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Upsides and Downsides of the Dark Side: A Longitudinal Study Into the Role of Prosocial and Antisocial Strategies in Close Friendship Formation.

Resource control theory (RCT) posits that both antisocial and prosocial behaviors combine in unique ways to control resources such as friendships. We assessed students (N = 2,803; 49.7% male) yearly from junior (grades 8-10) to senior high school (11-12) on antisocial (A) and prosocial (P) behavior, peer nominated friendship, and well-being. Non-parametric cluster analyses of the joint trajectories of A and P identified four stable profiles: non-strategic (moderately low A and P), bi-strategic (moderately high on A and P), prosocial (moderately low A and moderately high on P), and antisocial (moderately low on P, and very high on A). There were clear benefits to youth using bi-strategic strategies in junior high: they attracted relatively high levels of opposite sex friendship nominations. However, this benefit disappeared in senior high. There were also clear costs: bi-strategic youth experienced relatively low well-being, and this effect was significantly more pronounced for females than males. Prosocial youth were the only ones who maintained both high friendship numbers and high well-being throughout high school. We discuss the cost/benefit trade-offs of different resource control strategies.

Does your mindfulness benefit others? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the link between mindfulness and prosocial behaviour.

Mindfulness-based meditation practices have received substantial scientific attention in recent years. Mindfulness has been shown to bring many psychological benefits to the individual, but much less is known about whether these benefits extend to others. This meta-analysis reviewed the link between mindfulness - as both a personality variable and an intervention - and prosocial behaviour. A literature search produced 31 eligible studies (N = 17,241) and 73 effect sizes. Meta-analyses were conducted using mixed-effects structural equation models to examine pooled effects and potential moderators of these effects. We found a positive pooled effect between mindfulness and prosocial behaviour for both correlational (d = .73 CI 95% [0.51 to 0.96]) and intervention studies (d = .51 CI 95% [0.37 to 0.66]). For the latter, medium-sized effects were obtained across varying meditation types and intensities, and across gender and age categories. Preliminary evidence is presented regarding potential mediators of these effects. Although we found that mindfulness is positively related to prosociality, further research is needed to examine the mediators of this link and the contexts in which it is most pronounced.

Compulsive internet use and the development of self-esteem and hope: A four-year longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE: Compulsive internet use (CIU) has been linked to decrements in mental health and well-being. However, relatively little is known about how CIU relates to evaluations of the self, and in particular, whether CIU is antecedent to or is a consequence of negative evaluations of one's social worth (self-esteem) and general efficacy (hope). To examine this, we explored the longitudinal relations between CIU and the development of self-esteem and hope among adolescents over a four-year period. METHOD: Two thousand eight hundred and nine adolescents completed measures yearly from Grade 8 (MAge = 13.7) to Grade 11. Autoregressive cross-lagged structural equation models were used to test whether CIU influenced or was influenced by self-esteem and hope. RESULTS: We found consistent support for a CIU-as-antecedent model. CIU preceded reductions in trait hope, and small reductions in self-esteem. In contrast, we did not find evidence for a CIU-as-consequence model: low self-esteem and hope did not predict increases in CIU over time. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that CIU has negative consequences for young people's feelings of goal-efficacy, and that interventions that address the compulsive use of the internet are likely to strengthen hope and self-esteem among young people.

Users' Intrinsic Goals Linked to Alcohol Dependence Risk Level and Engagement With a Health Promotion Website (Hello Sunday Morning): Observational Study.

BACKGROUND: Hello Sunday Morning (HSM) is a self-guided health promotion website with the aim to improve drinking culture. Members are encouraged to sign up for a 3-month period of alcohol abstention and record and track their progress and goals. OBJECTIVE: This study used self-determination theory (SDT) to examine the nature of goals subscribed by HSM users to test the extent to which intrinsic goal pursuit was linked to lower alcohol dependency risk and higher engagement with the HSM website. METHODS: HSM users (N=2216; 59.75%, 1324/2216, females; aged 18-79 years) completed the World Health Organization's Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (WHO-AUDIT, which measures alcohol dependence risk level) at sign-up and at 4 and 6 months after sign-up. In addition, the website had a goals-subscription feature that allowed participants to share their goals. Two independent raters classified the goals according to a coding system we devised based on SDT, which proposes that intrinsic goals (eg, growth, relationships, community, and health) better promote positive outcomes than extrinsic goals (eg, wealth, fame, and image). RESULTS: Although there was substantial (1016/2216, 45.84%) attrition of HSM users from sign-up to 6 months, the attrition rate could not be attributed to alcohol dependency risk because people in different WHO-AUDIT risk zones were equally likely to be missing at 4 and 6 months after sign-up. The SDT-driven coding of goals yielded the following categories: wealth and image (extrinsic goals); relationships, personal growth, community engagement, and physical health (intrinsic goals); and alcohol use-related goals (which were hard to classify as either extrinsic or intrinsic). Alcohol dependence risk level correlated positively with goals related to money (r=.16), personal growth (r=.17), relationships (r=.10), and alcohol use (r=.25). Website engagement correlated negatively with alcohol dependence risk level (r=.10) and positively with relationship (r=.10) and community goals (r=.12). CONCLUSIONS: HSM users with higher alcohol dependence risk tended to engage with the website less, but to the extent that they did, they tended to subscribe to goals related to alcohol use and improving their personal growth, relationships, and finances. In line with SDT, engagement with goals-particularly the intrinsic goals of connecting with close-others and the broader community-related to increased website engagement. Web-based tools intended to promote healthy behaviors in users may be effective in engaging their users if the users' experience on the website supports the pursuit of intrinsic goals.

Network analysis for the visualization and analysis of qualitative data.

We present a novel manner in which to visualize the coding of qualitative data that enables representation and analysis of connections between codes using graph theory and network analysis. Network graphs are created from codes applied to a transcript or audio file using the code names and their chronological location. The resulting network is a representation of the coding data that characterizes the interrelations of codes. This approach enables quantification of qualitative codes using network analysis and facilitates examination of associations of network indices with other quantitative variables using common statistical procedures. Here, as a proof of concept, we applied this method to a set of interview transcripts that had been coded in 2 different ways and the resultant network graphs were examined. The creation of network graphs allows researchers an opportunity to view and share their qualitative data in an innovative way that may provide new insights and enhance transparency of the analytical process by which they reach their conclusions. (PsycINFO Database Record

A worthy self is a caring self: Examining the developmental relations between self-esteem and self-compassion in adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: Self-compassion has been framed as a healthy alternative to self-esteem, as it is nonevaluative. However, rather than being alternatives, it may be that the two constructs develop in a mutually reinforcing way. The present study tested this possibility among adolescents. METHOD: A large adolescent sample (N = 2,809; 49.8% female) reported levels of trait self-esteem and self-compassion annually for 4 years. Autoregressive cross-lagged structural equation models were used to estimate the reciprocal longitudinal relations between the two constructs. RESULTS: Self-esteem consistently predicted changes in self-compassion across the 4 years of the study, but not vice versa. CONCLUSIONS: Self-esteem appears to be an important antecedent of the development of self-compassion, perhaps because the capacity to extend compassion toward the self depends on one's appraisals of worthiness. These findings add important insights to our theoretical understanding of the development of self-compassion.

A longitudinal person-centered perspective on youth social support: Relations with psychological wellbeing.

Past research suggests that perceived social support from parents, teachers, and peers are all positively associated with wellbeing during adolescence. However, little longitudinal research has examined the implications of distinctive combinations of social support for developing adolescents. To address this limitation, we measured multiple dimensions of social support, psychological ill-health, and wellbeing in a sample of 2034 Australian adolescents (Mage = 13.7; 49.6% male) measured in Grades 8 and 11. Latent transition analyses identified a 6-profile solution for both waves of data, and revealed substantial inequality in perceived social support. Two "socially rich" profiles corresponded to 7% of the sample and had high social support (>1SD above sample mean) from at least two sources. (Fully Integrated; Parent and Peer Supported). In contrast, 25% of the sample was "socially poor," having support that was between -.65 to -.86 SD below the sample mean for all 3 sources (Isolated profile). None of the other profiles (Peer Supported; Moderately Supported; Weakly Supported) had levels of support below -.37 SD from any source. Furthermore, almost all wellbeing problems were concentrated in the Isolated Profile, with negative effects more pronounced in Grade 11 than Grade 8. Despite feeling low parent and teacher support, adolescents in the Peer Supported profile felt strong peer support and average to above-average levels of wellbeing in Grades 8 and 11. However, they also had an 81% chance of making a negative transition to either the Isolated or Weakly Supported profiles in Grade 11. (PsycINFO Database Record

When Empathy Matters: The Role of Sex and Empathy in Close Friendships.

Based on prior theory and research (Ciarrochi & Heaven, 2009; Eagly & Wood, 1999), we hypothesized that the link between empathy and friendship would be moderated by sex: Girls will nominate empathic boys as friends, whereas boys will not tend to nominate empathic girls. We collected measures of empathy, friendship social support, and close friendship nominations in grade 10 across 1,970 students in 16 schools (Mage = 15.70, SD = .44; males = 993, females = 977). Multilevel models revealed that boys high in cognitive empathy attracted an average of 1.8 more girl friendship nominations than did their low empathy counterparts, whereas empathic girls did not attract a greater number of opposite-sex friends. In addition, the more friendship nominations a boy received from either boys or girls, the more they felt supported by their friends; the number of friendship nominations received by girls, in contrast, had no effect on their felt support by friends. Regardless of the quantity of friendship nominations, empathy was linked to more supportive friendships for both males and females. These results inform a contextual understanding of the role of empathy in selecting and maintaining friendships.

Contextual Positive Psychology: Policy Recommendations for Implementing Positive Psychology into Schools.

There has been a rapid growth in positive psychology, a research and intervention approach that focuses on promoting optimal functioning and well-being. Positive psychology interventions are now making their way into classrooms all over the world. However, positive psychology has been criticized for being decontextualized and coercive, and for putting an excessive emphasis on positive states, whilst failing to adequately consider negative experiences. Given this, how should policy be used to regulate and evaluate these interventions? We review evidence that suggests these criticisms may be valid, but only for those interventions that focus almost exclusively on changing the content of people's inner experience (e.g., make it more positive) and personality (improving character strength), and overemphasize the idea that inner experience causes action. We describe a contextualized form of positive psychology that not only deals with the criticisms, but also has clear policy implications for how to best implement and evaluate positive education programs so that they do not do more harm than good.

A Heart and A Mind: Self-distancing Facilitates the Association Between Heart Rate Variability, and Wise Reasoning.

Cardiac vagal tone (indexed via resting heart rate variability [HRV]) has been previously associated with superior executive functioning. Is HRV related to wiser reasoning and less biased judgments? Here we hypothesize that this will be the case when adopting a self-distanced (as opposed to a self-immersed) perspective, with self-distancing enabling individuals with higher HRV to overcome bias-promoting egocentric impulses and to reason wisely. However, higher HRV may not be associated with greater wisdom when adopting a self-immersed perspective. Participants were randomly assigned to reflect on societal issues from a self-distanced- or self-immersed perspective, with responses coded for reasoning quality. In a separate task, participants read about and evaluated a person performing morally ambiguous actions, with responses coded for dispositional vs. situational attributions. We simultaneously assessed resting cardiac recordings, obtaining six HRV indicators. As hypothesized, in the self-distanced condition, each HRV indicator was positively related to prevalence of wisdom-related reasoning (e.g., prevalence of recognition of limits of one's knowledge, recognition that the world is in flux/change, consideration of others' opinions and search for an integration of these opinions) and to balanced vs. biased attributions (recognition of situational and dispositional factors vs. focus on dispositional factors alone). In contrast, there was no relationship between these variables in the self-immersed condition. We discuss implications for research on psychophysiology, cognition, and wisdom.

Using Genetic Algorithms in a Large Nationally Representative American Sample to Abbreviate the Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire.

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are robust machine learning approaches for abbreviating a large set of variables into a shorter subset that maximally captures the variance in the original data. We employed a GA-based method to shorten the 62-item Multidimensional Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (MEAQ) by half without much loss of information. Experiential avoidance or the tendency to avoid negative internal experiences is a key target of many psychological interventions and its measurement is an important issue in psychology. The 62-item MEAQ has been shown to have good psychometric properties, but its length may limit its use in most practical settings. The recently validated 15-item brief version (BEAQ) is one short alternative, but it reduces the multidimensional scale to a single dimension. We sought to shorten the 62-item MEAQ by half while maintaining fidelity to its six dimensions. In a large nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 7884; 52% female; Age: M = 47.9, SD = 16), we employed a GA method of scale abbreviation implemented in the R package, GAabbreviate. The GA-derived short form, MEAQ-30 with five items per subscale, performed virtually identically to the original 62-item MEAQ in terms of inter-subscales correlations, factor structure, factor correlations, and zero-order correlations and unique latent associations of the six subscales with other measures of mental distress, wellbeing and personal strivings. The two measures also showed similar distributions of means across American census regions. The MEAQ-30 provides a multidimensional assessment of experiential avoidance whilst minimizing participant burden. The study adds to the emerging literature on the utility of machine learning methods in psychometrics.

High-Frequency Heart Rate Variability Linked to Affiliation with a New Group.

This study tests the hypothesis that high levels of high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) predisposes individuals to affiliate with new groups. Resting cardiac physiological recordings were taken before and after experimental sessions to measure trait high-frequency heart rate variability as an index of dispositional autonomic influence on heart rate. Following an experimental manipulation of priming of caring-related words, participants engaged in a minimal group paradigm, in which they imagined being a member of one of two arbitrary groups, allocated money to members of the two groups, and rated their affiliation with the groups. High levels of HF-HRV were associated with ingroup favouritism while allocating money, an effect largely attributable to a positive relationship between HF-HRV and allocation of money to the ingroup, and less due to a negative relationship between HF-HRV and money allocation to the outgroup. HF-HRV was also associated with increased self-reported affiliation feelings for the ingroup but was unrelated to feelings towards the outgroup. These effects remained substantial even after controlling for age, gender, BMI, mood, caffeine consumption, time of day of data collection, smoking and alcohol behaviour, and respiration rate. Further, the effects were observed regardless of whether participants were primed with caring-related words or not. This study is the first to bridge a long history of research on ingroup favouritism to the relatively recent body of research on cardiac vagal tone by uncovering a positive association between HF-HRV and affiliation with a novel group.