Relationship Between Self-Compassion and Compassion for Others: The Mediated Effect of Perceived Social Support and Psychological Resilience.

Studies from individualistic cultural contexts have shown there were no or negative significant correlation between self-compassion and compassion (for others). However, there may be a closer association between them in a collectivism and Buddhism culture. This study randomly selected 441 college students in China and used measures of self-compassion, trait compassion (compassion for others), psychological resilience, and perceiving social support to investigate this relationship. The results showed a moderately positive correlation between self-compassion and compassion. Further chain-mediation analyses revealed that self-compassion not only directly predicted compassion for others but also indirectly influenced it through the mediating effects of perceiving social support and psychological resilience. The results of this study suggest that the quality of compassion may be significantly influenced by culture.

The Influence of Actual Appraisals of Peers on the Self-Appraisals of Personality Traits for Chinese Late Adolescents: The Mediating Effect of Reflected Appraisals.

Reflected appraisals refer to the perceptions of individuals of how they are perceived by others. Numerous studies in cultural psychology have revealed that individuals in the Eastern collectivist culture show an interdependent self-construal, which depends much on the social culture. Hence, the research on reflected appraisals in the Eastern culture can improve the understanding of how the social environment shapes the self-perception of an individual. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationships among self-appraisals, reflected appraisals, and actual appraisals of peers of the Big Five personality for Chinese late adolescents. Participants were divided into 16 groups, with two to four people of each group who were familiar with each other. Each participant was told to fill out the questionnaires of reflected appraisals, actual appraisals of peers, and self-appraisals. Through analyzing 164 sets of data, the results showed the following: (a) The scores of reflected appraisals are significantly lower than that of the actual appraisals of peers. (b) The relationships among the reflected appraisals, actual appraisals of peers, and self-appraisals are distinct on different personalities. For extroversion, there are significant medium- to high-degree relationships among the three types of appraisals; while for the agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness, self-appraisals are highly correlated with reflected appraisals, and reflected appraisals show a low-degree correlation with the actual appraisals of peers. (c) Reflected appraisals play a mediating role between actual appraisals of peers and self-appraisals. Our study suggests that individuals in Chinese culture generally underestimate how their peers perceive them. Furthermore, actual appraisals of peers affect the self-concepts of individuals through reflected appraisals. This study revealed the unique personality feature of self-modesty under the background of Chinese culture and the importance of peers on the development of self-concepts for Chinese late adolescents. This study can shed new light on the understanding of the development of self-concepts for late adolescents under different cultural backgrounds.

Effects of Ethnicity and Spiritual Intelligence in the Relationship Between Awe and Life Satisfaction Among Chinese Primary School Teachers.

Based on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study explored the mediating effect of spiritual intelligence between awe and life satisfaction among Chinese primary school teachers and whether this effect was moderated by ethnicity. Participants comprised 569 teachers from 24 primary schools in southwestern China, where many of the ethnic minority groups of China reside. Awe and spiritual intelligence were found to positively predict life satisfaction among primary school teachers, while awe also indirectly influenced life satisfaction through the partial mediation of spiritual intelligence. Ethnicity was also found to moderate the relation between awe and life satisfaction, i.e., when compared with the Han teachers, there is a more significant and positive relation between awe and life satisfaction in ethnic minority teachers. These findings not only indicate the critical role of awe in promoting life satisfaction of primary school teachers but also especially show that awe embodied in the traditional cultural activities makes it easier to breed life satisfaction in ethnic minority teachers.

The neural network underlying individual differences in conflict adaptation effect.

Individuals must constantly adjust their behavior to adapt to the changing environment, and this dynamic adjustment ability has been studied through the conflict adaptation effect (CAE). We explored the resting state brain network underlying individual differences in CAE. The functional connection strength between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral insula or right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was negatively correlated with CAE, whereas the connection strength between DLPFC and left inferior parietal lobule was positively correlated with CAE. We speculated that, when faced with conflict, individuals with low CAE employ salience network to detect conflict, and then control is performed by DLPFC; in individuals with high CAEs who maintain a high level of control in all tasks, conflict is resolved mainly by the central executive network. In other words, in conflict tasks, individuals with high CAEs adopt proactive control strategies, but their counterparts with low CAEs employ reactive control strategies.

Young people with left-behind experiences in childhood have higher levels of psychological resilience.

This study investigated the development of psychological capital and its relationship with adult attachment in Chinese college students with left-behind experiences in childhood. The results show that the psychological capital of left-behind experiences in childhood was moderate, and their self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and overall psychological capital were significantly lower than those without left-behind experiences. However, their psychological resilience was remarkably higher than the latter. As for adult attachment, their attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were also remarkably higher. The findings suggest that left-behind experiences impaired the development of the emotional-motivation system of left-behind experiences in childhood, but facilitated the development of their survival-protection system.

Language and Color Perception: Evidence From Mongolian and Chinese Speakers.

The present research contributes to the debate in cognitive sentence on the relationship between language and perception by comparing Mongolian and Chinese speakers' color perception. In this study, featuring a free sorting task and a visual search task comparing Mongolian and Chinese performances, the results show that both universal and relativistic forces are at play. Chinese (Mandarin) and Mongolian color terms divide the blue spectrum differently but the green spectrum, similarly. In Mongolian, light blue ("qinker") and dark blue ("huhe") are strictly distinct, while both light green and dark green are described as one word, nogvgan. In Chinese, however, both light blue and dark blue are simply described by one word, lan, and both light green and dark green are described by a single word, lv. The current study used a free-sorting task and a visual search task to investigate whether this linguistic difference between Chinese and Mongolian speakers leads to a difference in color discrimination. In the free-sorting task, compared with Chinese speakers, Mongolian speakers exhibited different sorting in the blue region (by distinguishing light and dark blue) and the same sorting in the green region. Further results showed that Mongolian speakers discriminated visual search displays that fall into different linguistic categories in Mongolian (e.g., qinker or huhe) more quickly than visual search displays that belong to the same linguistic category (e.g., both qinker) in a visual search task. Moreover, this effect was disrupted in Mongolian participants who performed a secondary task engaging involving verbal working memory (but not a task engaging involving spatial working memory), suggested linguistic interference. Chinese (Mandarin) speakers performing the visual search task did not show such a category advantage under any of the conditions. The finding provides support for the Whorf hypothesis with evidence from an Altay language. Meanwhile, both Chinese and Mongolian speakers reacted faster to the green color than the blue color in the visual search task, suggesting that the variation in human color perception is constrained by certain universal forces. The difference in categorical effects between Chinese and Mongolian speakers in the blue region suggests a relativistic aspect of language and color perception, while the speed of visual search in blue and green suggests a universalistic aspect of language and color perception. Thus, our findings suggest that our perception is shaped by both relativistic and universal forces.

Analysis of energy drinks consumption and associated factors among college students / 中国学校卫生

Objective@#To investigate college students’ energy drink(ED) consumption and associated factors, and to provide a reference for maintaining college students’ mental and physical health.@*Methods@#Stratified cluster sampling was used to select 2 264 college students to complete questionnaires for the condition of energy drinking and associated influencing factors.@*Results@#Within a month, 51.0% college students had drunk ED, 46.8% students’ drinking frequency was ≤9 times, 4.2% students’ drinking frequency was ≥10 times; there were significant differences in different gender, major, grade, BMI, smoking, drinking, gambling and weight controlling behaviors students’ ED consumption frequency(χ2 were 168.91, 149.08, 92.92, 25.20, 83.42, 85.77, 11.50, 20.50 respectively, both P<0.01), the males’(65.6%) was higher than the females’ (38.2%), the sports majors’(74.1%) was higher than the arts’, sciences’ and painting majors’(45.6%, 44.6%, 42.2%), the freshmen and sophomores’(58.9%, 58.2%) were higher than the juniors’(37.4%), the normal and overweight-obesity BMIs’(53.5%, 54.4%) were higher than the too low BMIs’(40.5%), the smokers’(68.4%) was higher than the non-smokers’(45.7%), the drinkers’(63.5%) was higher than the non-drinkers’(43.4%), the gamblers’(62.1%) was higher than the non-gamblers’(49.8%), the dieters’(53.9%) was higher than the non-dieters’(43.2%); the gender, major, grade, smoking, drinking and weight controlling behaviors were associated factors on college students’ energy drink consumption, males‘consumption was more than female’s(OR=3.13), freshmen and sophomores’ consumption were more than juniors’ (OR=2.40, 2.23), the students’ consumption of sports majors was more than that of science and painting major(OR=0.28, 0.48), students with smoking, drinking and losing weight consumed more ED than students without these behaviors(OR=0.77, 0.80, 0.79).@*Conclusion@#More than half college students had drunk ED; society,school and home should pay attention to this phenomenon, and take measures to reduce ED consumption frequency, to maintain students’ physical and mental health.

The Psychological Capital of Left-Behind University Students: A Description and Intervention Study From China.

The migrant worker phenomenon in China has negatively impacted the psychological development of these workers' children, whom researchers have termed "left-behind children" (LC) or university students with left-behind experience (USWL). Since USWL are the best among the LC in some sense, we decided to perform two investigations to determine if they might possess unique positive psychological capital factors. Study 1 aimed to explore the development of the psychological capital of USWL, and Study 2 utilized a group intervention design to improve USWL psychological capital. A questionnaire was administered to 281 USWL and 284 control university students in study 1. The results showed that the psychological capital of USWL was moderate, and their self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and overall psychological capital were significantly lower than those with no left-behind experience. However, their psychological resilience was remarkably higher than those who were not left behind. It also suggested that some demographic factors such as gender, grade, only child status, student leadership experience, reunion frequency with parents, and relationship with guardians significantly influence the psychological capital of USWL. In Study 2, a single-factor interventional experimental design based on the psychological capital intervention theory (PCI) was conducted in 73 USWL (38 in the experimental group, 35 in the control group). There were significant post-test differences between groups. Both the pre- and post-test results differed greatly in the experimental and control groups. Overall, our findings indicate that although the left-behind experience in childhood moderately impairs psychological capital development, it also fosters resilience. The psychological intervention based on PCI is an effective "remedy scheme" to improve their psychological capital qualities.

The Mindful Self: A Mindfulness-Enlightened Self-view.

This paper analyzes studies of mindfulness and the self, with the aim of deepening our understanding of the potential benefits of mindfulness and meditation for mental health and well-being. Our review of empirical research reveals that positive changes in attitudes toward the self and others as a result of mindfulness-enabled practices can play an important role in modulating many mental and physical health problems. Accordingly, we introduce a new concept-the "mindful self"-and compare it with related psychological constructs to describe the positive changes in self-attitude associated with mindfulness meditation practices or interventions. The mindful self is conceptualized as a mindfulness-enlightened self-view and attitude developed by internalizing and integrating the essence of Buddhist psychology into one's self-system. We further posit that the mindful self will be an important intermediary between mindfulness intervention and mental health problems, and an important moderator in promoting well-being. More generally, we suggest that the mindful self may also be an applicable concept with which to describe and predict the higher level of self-development of those who grow up in the culture of Buddhism or regularly engage in meditation over a long period of time.

Moral Judgments on Short-Term Sexual Behaviors among Chinese College Students: Exploring the Roles of Gender and Physical Attractiveness.

This study primarily investigated the effects of gender and physical attractiveness on moral judgments on three typical kinds of short-term sexual behaviors (short-term fling, one-night stand, and hookup) in the Chinese culture context. A total of 120 university student subjects were presented with a series of stereotypically physically attractive (versus physically unattractive) photos before they rated the extent to which each of the three short-term sexual behaviors are morally acceptable. The results showed that male students judged all three behaviors to be more morally acceptable than female students did. Further analyses showed that this gender difference was moderated by the level of physical attractiveness. Under the high attractiveness condition, short-term flings and hookups were judged more morally acceptable by male students than by female students, but this gender difference was not significant under the low attractiveness condition. However, with regard to one-night stands, the data showed that male students judged this type of behavior to be more morally acceptable than did female students under the low attractiveness condition, while this gender difference was not significant under the high attractiveness condition. Thus, these findings further our understanding of how Chinese young people view different types of short-term sexual behaviors, and provide novel evidence regarding how physical attractiveness influences people's moral judgments on short-term sexual behaviors.

Re-examining the relationship between mortality salience and prosocial behavior in Chinese context.

Given the mixed findings regarding the relationship between mortality salience (MS) and prosocial behavior, the present research retested how MS influences prosocial behaviors in Chinese culture. Results showed that although participants have different levels of death thought accessibility between an organ donation scenario and a general charity scenario, their willingness for prosocial behaviors were not significantly different between the two scenarios, indicating that under the influence of Chinese culture MS did not decrease prosocial behaviors. The findings point to the importance of uncovering the role of Chinese philosophy about death and life in shaping people's positive death reflection.

Experiencing Physical Pain Leads to More Sympathetic Moral Judgments.

Previous studies have shown that observing another's pain can evoke other-oriented emotions, which instigate empathic concern for another's needs. It is not clear whether experiencing first-hand physical pain may also evoke other-oriented emotion and thus influence people's moral judgment. Based on the embodied simulation literature and neuroimaging evidence, the present research tested the idea that participants who experienced physical pain would be more sympathetic in their moral judgments. Study 1 showed that ice-induced physical pain facilitated higher self-assessments of empathy, which motivated participants to be more sympathetic in their moral judgments. Study 2 confirmed findings in study 1 and also showed that State Perspective Taking subscale of the State Empathy Scale mediated the effects of physical pain on moral judgment. These results provide support for embodied view of morality and for the view that pain can serve a positive psychosocial function.