Abstract
The distinction in recent years between positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) is becoming increasingly important due to their relationship with depression and anxiety. This work is composed of two studies. The first study aimed to validate the brief version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children-Short Form (PANAS-C-SF) in a Spanish child sample. The second study sought to check the existence of four affective profiles: self-fulfilling (high PA and low NA), low affective (low PA and NA), high affective (high PA and NA), and self-destructive (low PA and high NA) and to relate them to optimism and pessimism. Samples for both studies were composed of 647 and 1,296 Spanish students (between 8 and 11 years), respectively. Through various multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MCA), the invariance of the PANAS-SF and the lack of significant gender differences in the latent means were verified. In addition, cluster analysis confirmed the existence of the appropriate profiles. In this case, the self-fulfilling profile correlated with high scores in optimism and low scores pessimism, whereas the self-destructive profile correlated in the opposite direction. These contributions represent an advance in the study of child affect.
Highlights
In contemporary society, everyone tries to be happy throughout their lives, so the pursuit of happiness is considered as one of the main goals of human existence
Firstly, restrictions were imposed on the factor loadings of Model 1 to Descriptive Statistics and the confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)-C-SF
The results proposed by the bivariate model can serve as the base model for the following analyses of factorial invariance
Summary
Everyone tries to be happy throughout their lives, so the pursuit of happiness is considered as one of the main goals of human existence. The relationship of affective profiles and levels of optimism has been investigated, confirming that subjects with self-fulfilling and high affective profiles scored higher on optimism than individuals with self-destructive and low affective profiles, respectively (Archer et al, 2008) In accordance with these results, Di Fabio and Bucci (2015) reaffirmed in a sample of Italian university students that the self-fulfilling profile obtained the highest scores in optimism compared to the other profiles. Among all the relationships of affect and personality elements, the relationship of the affective dimension with optimism and pessimism could be a breakthrough for contemporary scientific literature It could confirm whether Spanish children with self-fulfilling profiles tend to be more optimistic in their lives in general than the rest of the profiles, as has been reported in previous studies. On the basis of these goals, and taking into account the consulted literature, it is expected that: 3. Hypothesis 3: The latent mean differences will show statistically significant gender differences in the PA subscale of the PANAS-C-SF (Ortuño-Sierra et al, 2015)
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