Gaining insights into elementary school students' experiences of soft skills at school.

Heterogeneous treatment effects of emotional arousal on aggressive driving among ride-hailing drivers under distraction and passenger presence.

Introduction: Sport is recognized as a favorable environment for the development of transferable psychosocial skills; however, scientific production involving amateur beach volleyball athletes remains limited. Objective: To compare the perception of the development of life skills in amateur beach volleyball athletes according to age group and years of practice. Methods: This cross-sectional, descriptive-analytical study included 238 amateur athletes, of whom 52.9% were male, with a median age of 28 years and a median of 10 years of sports experience. A sociodemographic questionnaire and the Life Skills in Sport Scale (P-LSSS), composed of 43 items, distributed across eight dimensions, were administered. Participants were stratified by median into two independent groups according to age (< 28 and ≥ 28 years) and time spent practicing the sport (< 10 and ≥ 10 years). Comparisons were performed using the Mann-Whitney U test, adopting a significance level of p<0.05. Results: Athletes aged 28 or older showed significantly higher scores in goal setting (p = 0.023; r = 0.15), problem-solving and decision-making (p = 0.014; r = 0.17), emotional skills (p = 0.004; r = 0.23), time management (p = 0.012; r = 0.18), and communication (p = 0.020; r = 0.16). Similarly, athletes with ≥ 10 years of practice also obtained higher scores in these dimensions (p ≤ 0.049; r = 0.12–0.22). Discussion: Age and sports experience showed consistent associations with self-regulatory skills. Conclusion: Older age and a longer practice time were associated with higher levels of life skills in the investigated context.

Population aging is associated with a rising number of people living with cognitive impairment (CI), straining traditional caregiving systems. More than 55 million individuals live with CI worldwide, while care delivery faces severe capacity constraints. China's rapid aging provides a context for examining the acceptance and use of digital assistive technologies (DATs) in CI care. Although DATs offer the potential to address this care gap, systematic evidence on acceptance and use remains limited. This study examined caregivers' acceptance and use of DATs in CI care, applying the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) framework to identify key facilitators and barriers shaping acceptance and effective technology integration in caregiving environments. This qualitative study used semistructured interviews and thematic analysis to examine the use of DATs and identify facilitators and barriers shaping caregivers' acceptance of DATs. Purposive sampling recruited 15 primary caregivers of people with CI across varying decline stages. The study focused on caregivers of people with CI aged 60 years and older. Caregivers were selected as participants because they serve as the primary decision-makers and technology facilitators in CI care. In CI care, DATs served 5 primary functional domains. Caregivers identified perceived usefulness and ease of use as primary acceptance facilitators. Factors shaping acceptance emerged across 3 dimensions: technological design factors, user psychological factors, and external environmental factors. The findings suggest that traditional TAM constructs may benefit from contextual adaptation. The acceptance of DATs is not merely an individual assessment of usefulness or ease of use but also a relational and socially mediated process shaped by emotional dependence, family attitudes, technology anxiety, and support systems. Technology may therefore need to evolve dynamically across different stages of cognitive decline, while human caregivers remain irreplaceable in providing emotional support, personalized judgment, and crisis management. Effective DAT integration requires coordinated efforts among relevant stakeholders.

Approximately 25% of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Philadelphia involve teens and birth rates among underserved youth is more than double the national average. Proud Teens of Philly (PTOP), a community-based youth-oriented sexual-health education program, aims to mitigate disparities among underserved youth, including Latino/Hispanic and Black youth. This study assessed the impact of PTOP on sexual-health education and behaviors among Philadelphia youth. Participants were recruited from schools, churches, and community-based organizations, to attend eight one-hour-long virtual synchronous sessions. Evidence-based sexual-health curricula, Positive Potential and Making Proud Choices, were administered to 650 Philadelphia students aged 12-18 during the 2021-2022 academic year. Pre- and post-surveys were administered electronically to collect data on demographics, sexual attitudes, HIV/STI knowledge, contraception knowledge and access, confidence in consent and condom use, and life skills. Paired t-tests comparing pre- and post-survey responses were conducted. Participants demonstrated significant improvement in knowledge (t = 10.48, p < 0.0001) regarding STI transmission, HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, and birth control. They felt more prepared to reject unprotected sex (t = 4.81, p < 0.0001) and better understood the efficacy of condoms. PTOP curricula increased exposure to alternative forms of contraception. In addition, students gained valuable skills in communication, goal setting, and emotion management. Engagement in a comprehensive sexual-health education program can significantly improve STI knowledge, sexual attitudes, and consent among underserved youth populations. Increased knowledge and emotion management empower teens to make safer choices, potentially limiting engagement in and adverse outcomes of risky sexual behaviors. Future studies should explore longitudinal impacts of youth-oriented sexual-health educational programs.

Research on interpersonal emotion regulation has illuminated how leaders can use four interpersonal emotion management (IEM) strategies-situation modification, cognitive change, attentional deployment, and modulating the emotional response-to help regulate subordinates' emotions and manage their work outcomes. However, this literature remains theoretically incomplete, because it has largely examined these strategies in isolation, overlooking the extent to which they coexist and interact in shaping subordinates' attributions and behaviors. To address this limitation, we adopt a person-centered approach to examine how leaders combine IEM strategies in distinct dyadic patterns (i.e., profiles) within leader-subordinate relationships. Drawing on the social role framework of interpersonal affect regulation and attribution theory, we further investigate the antecedents and outcomes of these patterns. Across four studies, we identify five stable dyadic IEM patterns-adaptive, moderate, inactive, pragmatic, and moderate-pragmatic-with the first four patterns emerging consistently across all four studies, and all five patterns emerging in three of the studies. We find these patterns are distinguished by dyadic-level leader IEM motives (i.e., coaching, compassion, and instrumentality motives) and are associated with distinct subordinate behavioral responses, such as organizational citizenship behavior and interaction avoidance toward the leader. Given the widely acknowledged prevalence and significance of emotions in the workplace, these findings have vital implications for theory and practice on IEM within organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This study aimed to explore the relationships and internal mechanisms among professional identity, organizational support, and emotional labor in emergency medical workers. Between March and April 2024, we surveyed a convenience sample of 643 emergency medical workers from 54 hospitals across 12 Chinese provinces using the Perceived Organizational Support Scale, Emotional Labor Strategy Scale, and Nursing Career Identity Scale. SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 21.0 software were used to statistically process the data. A structural equation model mediated by emotional labor was constructed. Significant gender differences were found in professional identity and emotional labor among emergency medical workers (t = 2.825, -2.115, P < 0.05). Professional identity also differed significantly by professional title (F = 2.749, P < 0.05). Organizational support, professional identity, and emotional labor showed statistically significant differences with years of work experience (F = 3.998, 4.023, 2.681, P < 0.05). There was a significant positive correlation between organizational support, professional identity, and emotional labor among emergency medical workers (r = 0.527, 0.326, and 0.346; P < 0.001). The associations among organizational support, emotional labor, and professional identity were examined in a sample of emergency medical workers. Specifically, deep acting (Estimate = 0.104, P = 0.012) and the expression of naturally felt emotions (Estimate = 0.102, P = 0.011) showed significant indirect associations in the relationship between organizational support and professional identity, while surface acting did not show a significant indirect association (Estimate = -0.001, P = 0.855). By examining the interrelationships between occupational identity, organizational support, and emotional labor, this study addresses a significant research gap concerning emergency medical workers. The findings offer valuable theoretical insights and practical implications for organizing and managing responses to public health events. The results highlight the importance of organizational support and emotional labor as factors associated with the emotional management skills of emergency medical workers, which may, in turn, be positively associated with their professional identities.

ABSTRACT Schools continue to face increasing pressure to create effective learning environments and maintain the well-being of both teachers and students. One program gaining increased interest is Covey’s The Leader in Me (LIM), a whole school framework that integrates character education, leadership development, and school culture change, derived from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Although it has been implemented in over 8,000 schools worldwide, including several Arab nations such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Qatar, and Jordan, empirical research in these countries remains limited. This study is a mixed-method case study that investigates the effects of LIM in Al-Islamic College School. Eighty-four LIM participants were surveyed. The findings demonstrate that LIM significantly enhances teachers’ emotional resiliency, stress management, and professional confidence. Respondents reported enhanced leadership capacity in terms of teamwork, decision-making, and communication. In addition, the findings suggest a two-way interrelation between teacher well-being and leadership capacity building, in that development in one tends to support development in the other. By offering thoughtful and practical insights from a Jordanian school context, this research contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding sustainable school improvement in crisis-impacted and developing education systems, particularly across the Arab world.

Glycemic control in women with gestational diabetes mellitus(GDM) is largely dependent on effective self-management. The adequacy of health information provided plays a critical role in determining self-management success. While existing studies recognise the importance of addressing health information needs, the specific needs of women with GDM in China remain unclear. Sixteen women diagnosed with GDM were recruited using purposive sampling from a tertiary general hospital in Hefei, Anhui Province, China. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted individually. The verbatim transcripts were analyzed by employing hybrid deductive-inductive qualitative content analysis. Health information needs were extracted for 3 domains and 10 topics. These include health information needs related to existence (disease, treatment, examination, childbirth); relationships (social support); and growth (dietary management, exercise management, blood glucose management, emotional management, and postnatal management). Based on ERG theory, this study identified patient-centered health information needs among women with GDM. The findings call for structured, staged, and accessible information services, with healthcare providers playing a key role in individualized assessment and trust-building. Future research should explore information prioritization and evaluate targeted strategies to improve self-management, clinical outcomes, and long-term health literacy in diverse GDM populations.

Video game addiction (VGA) among children and adolescents is a growing public health concern, yet limited research has explored how addiction manifests across varying levels of severity. This study aimed to examine the multi-level characteristics of VGA by identifying behavioral, emotional, social, and family-related patterns associated with different addiction levels. A total of 1106 students from grades 3 to 12 in Shantou City, China, completed an anonymous questionnaire covering demographics, gaming behaviors, emotional responses, peer relationships, and family involvement. Association Rule Mining (ARM), using the Apriori algorithm, was employed to detect patterns in the data. Statistical tests were used to further validate significant associations and interactions. The analysis revealed distinct patterns for different levels of VGA. Moderate to severe VGA was associated with frequent gaming, emotional reliance on games, and parental restriction. Students with mild VGA also played frequently but showed healthier peer relationships, such as discussing personal problems rather than gaming. Those with no VGA had limited interest in gaming, shorter playtime, and more effective emotional regulation strategies. The findings underscore the importance of emotional regulation, peer influence, and family dynamics in understanding VGA severity. Interventions should emphasize emotional management, promote balanced gaming behaviors, encourage healthy peer interactions, and guide parents toward supportive rather than prohibitive involvement. These insights provide practical strategies for preventing and addressing video game addiction in youth.

Palliative care education may be insufficient, resulting in gaps in healthcare students' knowledge and emotional management skills when caring for palliative patients and their families. Training programs addressing personal and professional limitations while promoting self-awareness and growth could help close these gaps. This quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of the "Caring for Life in Death" Program on perceptions of death, communication skills, and emotional self-regulation in healthcare students. Two hundred nine nursing students from the School of Health Sciences, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança were allocatd to a training group (n = 115) or control group (n = 94). Students in their first and second years completed a twelve-session "Caring for Life in Death" program. Data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire and various scales, including the Abbreviated Death Fear Scale, Death Anxiety Questionnaire, and Brief Scales on Various Perspectives of Death. Participants in the training group demonstrated significant reductions in death-related fear and anxiety, alongside improved coping and reflective abilities, underscoring the importance of enhancing palliative care training to strengthen emotional resilience. The findings have significant implications for palliative care education and the well-being of healthcare students.

Aims:To explore students’ experiences of taking part in a Death Café and whether they consider the Death Café as being a useful educational tool.Background:Talking about death remains a taboo for both nursing professionals and students. Recognizing the importance of open dialogue, Death Cafés were established to provide safe spaces for individuals to share thoughts and feelings on this topic.Design:A qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study employing a descriptive analytical approach.Methods:This study was conducted between April 2025 and July 2025 at a public university in Catalonia. The Death Café was a mandatory activity within the palliative care course for all third-year bachelor/undergraduate nursing students. After the course, students were invited to participate in a questionnaire containing 12 open-ended questions, and all 39 students agreed to participate. Data were analyzed using Sandelowski’s qualitative descriptive approach.Results:Following questionnaire analysis, 24 units of meaning, categorized into 7 subcategories and 2 categories emerged: (1) death without fear: normalizing dialogue and communication. The Death Café fostered speaking about death freely and without prejudices; (2) emotional management and group support in the learning process. Students reported a sense of emotional relief when speaking about death and considered it a tool that can enhance their capacity to support patients and families.Conclusion:Most participants regarded the Death Café as a comfortable and enriching experience that provided a respectful environment for open conversation about death. The activity reduced perceived fears and taboos, promoted emotional reflection, and encouraged the sharing of diverse perspectives.

BackgroundThis study explored the optimal design of workplace emotional skills training, focusing on emotional blackmail, emotional intelligence, and emotional contagion. Emotional management is crucial to individual performance and organizational operations, particularly in high-stress or uncertain environments.ObjectiveTo identify key workplace emotional indicators, evaluate their importance, and provide practical recommendations for course design to improve employee well-being and organizational effectiveness in the high-tech industry.MethodsA modified Delphi method was employed to establish workplace emotional indicators, and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was then used to determine the indicators' relative weights. This study's expert panel included human resource managers, management personnel, and employees with substantial experience in the high-tech sector.Results"Cultivating emotional intelligence" (0.468) was the most crucial dimension, with "self-motivation" (0.320) and "interpersonal relationships" (0.209) being the key indicators. In the "recognizing emotional blackmail" dimension, the key indicators were "work stress management," "blackmailer characteristics," and "blackmail victim characteristics." The main focus of the "managing emotional contagion" dimension was "positive emotion cultivation," which supports team performance.ConclusionsEmotional intelligence is central to managing emotional blackmail and remaining resilient in high-stress environments. The present findings highlight the value of long-term emotional training programs, focusing on self-motivation and emotional regulation at the individual level and the cultivation of positive emotions at the organizational level. Employee turnover may serve as a contextual, long-term outcome, but short-term measures such as engagement and conflict reduction are more appropriate indicators of a program's effectiveness.

Human-in-the-loop AI for policy communication: improving responsible gambling emails while mitigating illusion of control and emotional reactance

This case study describes and analyzes the psychodynamic experiences of an adult hospitalized after an acute cardiac event. Pierre, a 46-year-old Brazilian man with a high level of education, sought medical care for chest pain and was diagnosed with acute myocardial infarction. He was immediately admitted to a hospital coronary care unit, where, after clinical stabilization, he agreed to undergo psychological assessment using self-report instruments and projective methods. While Pierre did not show clinical indicators of psychological distress on the self-report scales, his responses on the projective methods revealed signs of conflict in interpersonal relationships, with strong repression of affective experiences, suggesting difficulties in emotional management and a potential link to his physical illness. This case study, using a multimethod design, enriched the understanding of his psychological functioning and supported the identification of resources for coping with cardiac illness.

Background Transgender women in China face high rates of depression due to minority stress, family rejection, and limited access to gender-affirming care. AI chat tools are increasingly used for emotional support, yet their role in AI-mediated psychological self-rescue remains underexplored. Methods We employed a qualitatively driven mixed-methods design, conducting semi-structured interviews with 39 transgender women in China experiencing severe depression and using AI chat tools for emotional support. The analysis integrated human-led qualitative coding with quantitative indicators derived from recurrent experiences, applying conservative overlap analysis for benefit-harm coexistence and a bounded GPT-4o API-assisted memoing step after human coding had been completed. Results AI use was frequent, with 24/39 participants (61.5%) using it daily, mostly late at night. Four key functions emerged: relational holding, identity mirroring, crisis scaffolding, and self-governance. Benefits included reduced loneliness (33/39, 84.6%), learning coping strategies (29/39, 74.4%), and support during suicidal crises (28/39, 71.8%). However, challenges like privacy and data-security concerns (27/39, 69.2%) and misgendering (22/39, 56.4%) persisted. A conservative overlap analysis revealed that benefits and harms coexisted in a significant portion of the sample. Conclusion AI chat tools served as critical psychological lifelines for transgender women, offering emotional support, recognition, and crisis management in the absence of reliable human care. While valuable, they also presented risks of over-reliance, privacy concerns, and algorithmic harm. The study emphasizes the need for trans-affirming design, localized crisis support, and integration with community-based human resources.

Impact of virtual reality on fear and pain in pediatric patients undergoing preoperative preparation: A randomized controlled study.

BackgroundReturning migrants face a variety of challenges that limit their ability to integrate and adapt to Mexico. This represents a break in their life trajectory, with effects on family dynamics, mid- and long-term projects, and uncertainty about short-term plans.ObjectiveThis study describes the coproduction approach used to design and develop a WhatsApp-based psychoeducational program entitled “Here Again: Coping With Return,” which aims to promote the adoption of self-care behaviors to reduce the risk of mental health and substance use problems among returning migrants.MethodsThe process included four phases: (1) a situational diagnosis of the needs of migrants in preventing mental health problems and reducing the risks associated with alcohol use, (2) the design and development of content, (3) evaluation by a group of experts in mental health and substance use, and (4) pilot testing.ResultsThe study identified 4 intervention pillars: emotional risk factors, coping strategies, barriers to care, and technological feasibility. Eighty WhatsApp messages were developed, focusing on mental health (n=52, 65%) and alcohol use (n=20, 25%) through a sequence of motivation, instruction, and reinforcement. Following an expert evaluation that simplified technical language, a pilot study with 14 migrants showed a 78.6% completion rate. Participants reported the successful application of emotional management tools and a preference for text-based messages over audiovisual content to conserve mobile data.ConclusionsThis study describes the development of a psychoeducational program for returning migrants based on coproduction, integrating user needs and expert experience. The intervention addresses emotional management, self-care, and substance use prevention, using WhatsApp for its accessibility and low cost. The pilot results demonstrated high acceptability and a 78.6% retention rate over 16 weeks, highlighting that the culturally sensitive approach and accessible language enabled participants to apply mental health tools autonomously and effectively.

Virtual breastfeeding peer counseling services have the potential to increase access to breastfeeding support and reduce breastfeeding inequities. However, little is known about how well these services can be implemented virtually. We conducted an implementation research study to evaluate virtual delivery of the Breastfeeding Heritage and Pride™ (BHP) program, which offers evidence-based, person-centered breastfeeding peer counseling for women with low incomes in the United States. This paper aims to explore women's experiences and perspectives on virtual counseling provided by trained BHP community health workers. We conducted in-depth interviews in English and Spanish with 28 women participating in BHP. We used rapid qualitative analysis to identify themes, and then organized themes according to two implementation outcomes specified in the Implementation Outcomes Framework by Proctor and colleagues: acceptability, defined as the perception that virtual counseling is agreeable, palatable, or satisfactory; and appropriateness, defined as the perceived fit, relevance, or compatibility of virtual counseling for participants. Themes related to acceptability included: (1) life fit, highlighting how the convenience of virtual counseling promoted engagement amidst competing demands; and (2) comfort with being seen on video. Themes capturing the appropriateness of virtual counseling were: (3) building relationships with peer counselors, which some women felt was best supported in person; (4) evolving needs across the breastfeeding journey, reflecting how perceptions of the suitability of virtual counseling varied by the stage of their breastfeeding journey and types of breastfeeding challenges encountered; and (5) fit between mode of communication and individual needs and preferences, capturing how different communication modes were more or less useful depending on women's needs, such as informational, emotional, or lactation management support. A cross-cutting theme was (6) access to technology, which influenced women's ability to engage with virtual counseling. Women described benefits and limitations of virtual counseling. These findings indicate a need to work with women to co-design hybrid models that integrate telehealth with in-person counseling and can be tailored to meet diverse individual needs and preferences as breastfeeding support needs change dynamically over time. Such hybrid models should be evaluated for effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and equity to guide future implementation. Not applicable.

From emotional dysregulation to violence: Psychological pathways associated with aggressive behavior.