Psychological Theory Research Articles

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF MEDIATION IN EDUCATION

This article explores the psychological aspects of mediation within educational settings, focusing on how psychological factors influence the effectiveness of conflict resolution. The study highlights the significance of emotions, cognitive biases, and interpersonal dynamics in the mediation process. It examines key psychological theories relevant to mediation, the role of emotional intelligence, and the impact of cognitive processes on conflict outcomes. The article also discusses practical strategies for enhancing mediation practices through psychological training and interventions, supported by case studies and real-life examples. The findings emphasize the importance of integrating psychological insights into mediation to improve outcomes in educational environments. Future research directions are proposed to further understand and optimize the psychological dimensions of educational mediation.

Relationship of professional identity and efficacy of Chinese public university lecturers under the appointment system in sustainable human resource management

For Chinese university lecturers, implementing sustainable human resource management (SHRM) is particularly critical. China's higher education is going through an essential stage of appointment system reform aiming to overturn the traditional civil service status of university lecturers and introduce a more flexible work and talent management mechanism to universities to international teaching standards; lecturers also raise concerns about their professional role, educational mission, balance of rights and interests, and the reshaping of the evaluation system. Based on the resource-based perspective and psychological contract theory, this study aimed to explore the relationship between sustainable human resource management (SHRM) and lecturers' professional identity in the context of China's appointment system, focusing on analyzing the moderating role of lecturers' self-efficacy. This study used a quantitative research approach to collect survey data from 610 lecturers at public colleges and universities in China. The data were analyzed with a structural equation model to test the hypothesized relationships. SHRM was directly and positively related to lecturers' self-efficacy and sense of professional identity and indirectly improved sense of professional identity by enhancing self-efficacy. The findings are consistent with existing literature, emphasize the importance of SHRM in promoting lecturers' career development, and provide empirical support for applying SHRM in the context of Chinese higher education. The study provides recommendations in three dimensions: Government, University, and Faculty. It provides guidance for strategic reform of human resource management in higher education, faculty career development, and improving education quality.

Behavioural strategies in simultaneous and alternating prisoner’s dilemma games with/without voluntary participation

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is one of the most classic formats for exploring the principle of direct reciprocity. Although numerous theoretical and experimental studies have been conducted, little attention has been paid to the divergence between theoretical predictions and actual human behaviour. In addition, there are two additional essential challenges of experimental research. First, most experimental approaches have focused on games in which two players decide their actions simultaneously, but little is known about alternating games. Another is that there are few experiments on voluntary participation. Here, we conducted experiments on simultaneous games, alternating games, and games with and without voluntary participation for a total of four game patterns and examined the deviation from theoretical predictions for each. The results showed that, contrary to theoretical predictions, humans chose cooperation even after being exploited. We also observed that, with or without voluntary participation, people tended to take the same action they had taken in the previous round. Our results indicate that to understand the mechanisms of human behaviour, we need to integrate findings from behavioural science, psychology, and game theory.

Population-Level Administrative Data: A Resource to Advance Psychological Science

Population-level administrative data—data on individuals’ interactions with administrative systems, such as health-care, social-welfare, criminal-justice, and education systems—are a fruitful resource for research into behavior, development, and well-being. However, administrative data are underutilized in psychological science. Here, we review advantages of population-level administrative data for psychological research and provide examples of advances in psychological theory arising from administrative data studies. We focus on advantages in three areas: the collection and recording of population-level administrative data, the data’s large scale, and unique data linkages. We also describe ethical issues as well as methodological considerations and limitations in population administrative data research and outline future directions to enable psychological scientists to more fully capitalize on administrative data resources.

Impact of Households’ Future Orientation and Values on Their Willingness to Install Solar Photovoltaic Systems

Solar energy is increasing in popularity as a renewable energy source, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Even though many governments promote solar energy by giving various incentives, its adoption rate in households is slow. Psychological factors have been relatively overlooked in solar adoption, despite the importance of social and economic factors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how psychological determinants impact households’ willingness to install solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. This study focusses on the future orientation and personal values (biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic values) of households’ and their willingness to install solar PV systems. The research draws from three environmental psychology theories: values orientation theory, value beliefs and norms theory, and the theory of planned behaviour to construct an integrative theoretical model. A survey involving 179 respondents in Australia was conducted and analysed applying the PLS-SEM technique. Findings revealed that future orientation and values are significant predictors of household willingness to install solar PV systems. Further, findings showed that attitude and perceived behavioural control play a significant role in installing solar. The findings will assist policymakers and solar companies in developing lucrative policies and marketing strategies to promote solar PV systems among households.

The Social Intervention Function of Chinese Pop Music Performance and Its Macro Sociological Analysis

Pop music is a product of human consciousness and widely exists in all known human cultures. Music is not a necessity for human survival, why is it so important to humans? For a long time, social connections have been considered an important function of music and a major factor influencing the evolution of human musicality. The recent hypothesis of music social connection provides a framework for understanding the biological and cultural evolution of music. It suggests that music can coordinate emotions, behaviors, and ideological perspectives among individuals, strengthen intimate relationships between individuals, and thus enhance social cohesion. Pro social behavior is a manifestation of human social connections, which refers to the beneficial behavior of individuals towards others, groups, and society, such as helping behavior. Although studies have shown that listening to prosocial songs and their associated prosocial emotions can promote individual prosocial behavior, it remains unclear whether the music itself and its corresponding emotional experiences are sufficient to influence prosocial behavior after excluding the influence of lyrics. In addition, although some studies suggest that prosocial behavior is related to factors such as individual psychological theory ability and cognitive ability, the mediating effect of music on prosocial behavior through psychological theory ability and cognitive ability has not been verified. Therefore, based on the classic two-dimensional emotional model, this study systematically examines whether music and its induced emotional experiences affect individual prosocial behavior decisions, and further explores the mediating role of psychological theory and cognitive ability.

Antecedents of Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) in the French Classroom

Antecedents of foreign language enjoyment (FLE) are important for practitioners and researchers to understand as FLE has been linked to important concepts like motivation and language achievement. The literature on antecedents is, however, rather scarce and overly dependent on top-down qualitative coding to fully understand this phenomenon. This report seeks to add to the knowledge of sources of FLE by investigating the antecedents of FLE in U.S. learners of French. The present study uses data collected from an open-ended survey and analyzed via an interpretive approach. The survey was sent out to students enrolled in undergraduate French courses at a large Southeastern university and a total of 50 participants responded to the questionnaire out of 183 directly solicited, for a response rate of 27%. The results revealed that content, teacher personality, and a sense of community were sources of FLE, with the sense of community taking the lion’s share of responses. This report argues that this sense of community, which was previously unattested in the literature, can be explained adequately within the second language and positive psychology (L2EPP) theory of emotions. Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.

Towards emotion-aware intelligent agents by utilizing knowledge graphs of experiences

Because of the increasing presence of intelligent agents in various aspects of human social life, social skills play a vital role in ensuring these systems exhibit acceptable and realistic behavior in social communication. The importance of emotional intelligence in social capabilities is noteworthy, so incorporating emotions into the behaviors of intelligent agents is essential. Therefore, some computational models of emotions have been presented to develop intelligent agents that exhibit emotional human-like behaviors. However, most current computational models of emotions neglect the dynamic learning of the affective meaning of events based on agents’ experiences. Such models evaluate the events in the environment according to emotional aspects without considering the context of the situations. Also, these models capture the emotional states of agents by using predefined rules determined according to psychological theories. Therefore, they disregard the data-driven methods that can obtain the relationships between appraisal variables and emotions based on natural human data with fewer assumptions on the nature of such relationships. To address these issues, we proposed a novel and unified affective-cognitive framework (EIAEC) to facilitate the development of emotion-aware intelligent agents. EIAEC uses appraisal theories to acquire the emotional states of the agent in various situations. This paper contains four main contributions: 1- We have designed an efficient episodic memory that uses events and their conditional contexts to store and retrieve knowledge and experiences. This memory facilitates emotional expressions and decision-making adapted to the situations of the agent. 2- A novel method has been proposed that learns context-dependent affective values associated with events by using the agent’s experiences in various contexts. Subsequently, we acquired appraisal variables using the elements and related meta-data in episodic memory. 3- We have proposed a new data-driven method that maps appraisal variables to emotional states. 4- Moreover, a method has been developed to update the activation values regarding actions by using the emotional states of the agent. This method models the influence of emotions on the agent’s decision-making. Finally, we simulate a driving scenarios in our proposed framework to manifest the generated emotions in different situations and conditions. Moreover, we show how the proposed method learns the affective meaning of events and actions used in appraisal computing.

Refining and expanding applications of Moral Foundations Theory in consumer psychology

AbstractWe set forth an agenda for Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) research in consumer psychology, focusing in particular on four pathways: (1) factoring in multiple identities, including moral identities, to account for contextual elevation or suppression of moral foundations in predicting which decisions consumers moralize and when; (2) broadening the methodological usage of MFT to include more targeted causal research as well as expanding the utility of correlational research; (3) increasing discriminant validity between MFT and other constructs by studying moral foundations as individually manipulable and focusing on their incremental predictive validity over and above demographics and related constructs; and (4) recognizing that researcher biases regarding morality can leak into the publication process, necessitating clear distinctions between prescriptive versus descriptive research. These pathways facilitate more precise and stronger predictive validity for applying MFT in consumer psychology, yielding greater theoretical and practical utility across researcher perspectives.

Predicting Acute Stress with Life Satisfaction and Psychological Resilience Scales during COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece

Background theories in positive psychology and mental health support that ‘Psychological Resilience’ (PR) and ‘Satisfaction with Life’ (SwL) are protective factors of psychological distress. On the other hand, ‘Acute Stress Disorder’ (ASD) is a condition related to the adaptation of sympathetic adaptation after a stressful stimulus in a period of less than a month. Regarding the stressful evident of COVID-19, little evidence is provided on the question of whether PR and SwL can predict ASD. To investigate, the present study received answers to three self-reported scales regarding ASD (Acute-Stress Disorder Scales [ASDS]; M= 38.67, SD= 15.51), PR (Nicholson-McBride Resilience Questionnaire [NMRQ]; M= 41.83, SD= 7.63) and SwL (Satisfaction-with-Life Scale [SWLS]; M= 23.3, SD= 6.31) from a sample of 1,158 Greeks from the general population during the spread of COVID-19 in the country. The results show that ASD is significantly negatively correlated to both PR [r= -.420, p< .001] and SwL [r= -.311, p< .001], while the predictive model (NMRQ and SWLS) predicted significantly ASDS [F(2, 1157) = 1155.06, p< .001, Adjusted R2 = .21]. The results of the study are overall confirmatory to previous studies although relevant literature may be limit as emphasis has been put on PTSD. Future studies may test the same research question in non-COVID conditions to the Greek or other populations. Keywords: Acute Stress Disorder; Psychological Resilience; Satisfaction with Life; COVID-19; Greece

Clustering methods: To optimize or to not optimize?

Many clustering problems are associated with a particular objective criterion that is sought to be optimized. There are often several methods that can be used to tackle the optimization problem, and one or more of them might guarantee a globally optimal solution. However, it is quite possible that, relative to one or more suboptimal solutions, a globally optimal solution might be less interpretable from the standpoint of psychological theory or be less in accordance with some known (i.e., true) cluster structure. For example, in simulation experiments, it has sometimes been observed that there is not a perfect correspondence between the optimized clustering criterion and recovery of the underlying known cluster structure. This can lead to the misconception that clustering methods with a tendency to produce suboptimal solutions might, in some instances, be preferable to superior methods that provide globally optimal (or at least better locally optimal) solutions. In this article, we present results from simulation studies in the context of K-median clustering where departure from global optimality was carefully controlled. Although the results showed that suboptimal solutions sometimes produced marginally better recovery for experimental cells where the known cluster structure was less well-defined, capriciously accepting inferior solutions is an unwise practice. However, there are instances in which some sacrifice in the optimization criterion value to meet certain desirable constraints or to improve the value of one or more other relevant criteria is principled. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How Can Deep Neural Networks Inform Theory in Psychological Science?

Over the last decade, deep neural networks (DNNs) have transformed the state of the art in artificial intelligence. In domains such as language production and reasoning, long considered uniquely human abilities, contemporary models have proven capable of strikingly human-like performance. However, in contrast to classical symbolic models, neural networks can be inscrutable even to their designers, making it unclear what significance, if any, they have for theories of human cognition. Two extreme reactions are common. Neural network enthusiasts argue that, because the inner workings of DNNs do not seem to resemble any of the traditional constructs of psychological or linguistic theory, their success renders these theories obsolete and motivates a radical paradigm shift. Neural network skeptics instead take this inability to interpret DNNs in psychological terms to mean that their success is irrelevant to psychological science. In this article, we review recent work that suggests that the internal mechanisms of DNNs can, in fact, be interpreted in the functional terms characteristic of psychological explanations. We argue that this undermines the shared assumption of both extremes and opens the door for DNNs to inform theories of cognition and its development.

Extending speech emotion recognition systems to non-prototypical emotions using mixed-emotion model

In the conventional approach to speech emotion recognition (SER), the classifier is usually trained on acted emotional speech data to predict individual basic emotions. In this work, we extend the SER systems with the realistic assumption of the coexistence of multiple basic emotions in an utterance. We utilize the MSP-Podcast database for developing the SER system, which contains spontaneous speech utterances. From the primary and secondary emotion annotations of this database, we organize six prototypical and seven non-prototypical emotions. We then propose the mixed-emotion model and express the non-prototypical emotions as a linear combination of prototypical emotions. The combination weights of the mixed-emotion model are computed using a normalized dominance scale based algorithm inspired by the integration of basic emotion theory and dimensional emotion theory in human psychology. We first train a prototypical SER model using the ECAPA-TDNN architecture. The softmax predictions from this model serve as emotion profile inputs to the mixed-emotion model, which then predicts the non-prototypical emotions. Assuming the coexistence of multiple emotions, we only apply the utterances with uniform emotion profiles to the mixed-emotion model. The developed system continues with the conventional SER model if the emotion profile tends to delta function owing to the probable occurrence of a single prototypical emotion. We develop the proposed mixed-emotion model based SER framework using MFCC and wav2vec 2.0 extracted features. Further, we show that due to human perception variations, there exist prominent annotation variations in the non-prototypical emotion ground truths. To address that, we extend the supervised evaluation protocols in four different formulations that capture the subjective variability at different levels. The proposed system shows a best-case performance improvement of 7.10% and 8.39% over the conventional prototypical SER model for the MFCC and wav2vec 2.0 features, respectively.

Using Psychological Reactance and Bandwagon Cues to Explain High School Sports Coaches’ Resistance to Concussion Communication Policies

Sport-related concussions (SRC) are a significant health risk for athletes amalgamated by issues with underreporting. Coaches play a pivotal role in promoting safety and health, but coach-player SRC communication efforts have been insufficient at improving players’ reporting behaviors. This study considers coaches’ responses to a proposed mandate to engage in SRC communication with athletes via psychological reactance theory (PRT), with bandwagoning cues positioned as a form of social proof that heightens or mitigates persuasion. Two hundred five coaches from 20 distinct sports were exposed to one of four messages addressing a proposed SRC management policy mandating biweekly coach-player communication about SRCs. The message variations incorporated different bandwagon cues (positive, negative, absent, mixed), manipulated through user comments and emoji reactions on a simulated social media environment. Results demonstrate direct and mediated relationships between exposure to negative bandwagon cues, bandwagon perceptions, freedom threat, reactance, and opposition intentions. Our findings provide valuable insights into the dynamics of coaches’ attitudes towards SRC communication in a social media context, bridging gaps in the literature and introducing PRT to the SRC domain.

Harnessing the therapeutic effects of nature for chronic Pain: A role for immersive virtual reality? A narrative review.

There is a growing interest in the relationship between nature and pain relief. Evidence from environmental psychology, neuroscience and physiology-based studies point towards analgesic effects of nature being mediated through various cognitive, affective and/or autonomic factors. Being able to harness these therapeutic effects using immersive virtual reality (VR) could help to optimize and improve accessibility of nature-based environments as part of chronic pain management plans. In this narrative review, we present evidence supporting a new theoretical framework for nature-based analgesia and suggest ways for applying this through immersive VR. We provide an overview of the evidence on (1) the therapeutic effects of nature on pain, (2) environmental psychology theory that underpins the health benefits of nature, (3) key mechanistic evidence from nature neuroimaging and physiology-based studies, (4) previous studies that have used VR-based nature in pain research and (5) how to design effective VR interventions that can be used to integrate nature into immersive 360 environments. We have demonstrated how environmental psychology, neuroscience and physiology-based research can be used to form a novel theoretical framework for nature-based analgesia. Using this framework, we identify how key aspects of nature can act as analgesic and how this can be harnessed using immersive VR. Through developing this theoretical framework, we have provided a foundation on which to guide future experimental and clinical studies as well as helping to improve the accessibility of nature for chronic pain patients through immersive VR technologies. This review article summarizes key multidisciplinary evidence to help understand how nature exerts beneficial effects on pain processing. The use of this theoretical framework alongside advances in immersive VR technologies provides a springboard for future research and can be used to help develop new nature-based therapeutics using VR.

Zooming in and out of semantics: proximal-distal construal levels and prominence hierarchies.

We argue that the "Prominence Hierarchy" within linguistics can be subsumed under the "Construal Level Theory" within psychology and that a wide spectrum of grammatical phenomena, ranging from case assignment to number, definiteness, verbal agreement, voice, direct/inverse morphology, and syntactic word-order respond to Prominence Hierarchies (PH), or semantic scales. In fact, the field of prominence hierarchies, as expressed through the languages of the world, continues to be riddled with riddles. We identify a set of conundrums: (A) vantage point and animacy, (B) individuation and narrow reference phenomena, (C) fronting mechanisms, (D) abstraction, and (E) cultural variance and flexibility. We here propose an account for the existence of these hierarchies and their pervasive effects on grammar by relying on psychological Construal Level Theory (CLT). We suggest that both PH and CLT structure the external world according to proximity or distance from the "Me, Here and Now" (MHN) perspective. In language, MHN has the effect of structuring grammars; in cognition, it structures our lives, our preferences, and choices.

Explaining the penetrating role of technology in online foreign language learning achievement

AbstractThis study aims to integrate the technology acceptance model, classroom environment theory, and positive psychology theory to explore the relationships among learners' technology acceptance (TA), perceived online classroom environment (POCE), emotional states (enjoyment, anxiety, boredom, and burnout), and academic achievement in online classes. Six hundred and sixty‐two university students learning Chinese as a foreign language participated in the survey and completed the reading test. The results of partial least square‐structural equation modeling reveal that TA influences reading achievement directly and indirectly through anxiety (with the reversed mediating effect) and enjoyment, and the online classroom environment mediated the relationship between TA and learning emotions (except anxiety). These findings suggest that technology factors may shape the affordance of online classrooms and penetrate environmental and emotional variables to impact FL learning outcomes. Multigroup analysis with different self‐online learning time underscores that enjoyment and anxiety differ in two different effect paths (POCE‐enjoyment) and (TA‐anxiety), implying enjoyment may be more environment‐related while anxiety may be more technology‐related in the online foreign language classroom. This study provides both theoretical and pedagogical implications.

Генезис и современное состояние содержания совместной деятельности в условиях образования

<p>In the article we carried out a historical and psychological analysis of psychological and pedagogical research of joint activities (its genesis) from the 60s of the XX century to the present time. Research reference points have been identified/ The first one is the beginning of the 60s of the XX century with a primary study of the genesis of the subject of joint activity in groups of children of preschool and primary school age. The secon is the end of the 80s of the XX, early XXI centuries within the framework of the development of the theory of developmental education (V.V. Davydov, V.V. Rubtsov, D.B. Elkonin, etc.) based on the positions of cultural-historical psychology L.S. Vygotsky, who emphasizes joint activity as the most important sociocultural mechanism of development. The third point takes place in the second decade - the beginning of the third decade of the XXI century, it’s the study of the issues of promoting the ideas of sociogenesis in the traditions of cultural-historical psychology and activity theory, and an attempt to look differently at the key problems of joint activities in a modern school environment. The space of possibilities for modern children is analyzed. Current research shows that educational organizations today form and develop not only the abilities of students, but also their activities (from joint games, educational activities, to role-playing experimentation and project activities).</p>

The role of previous experience in the analysis of the psychological contract and its outcomes during the socialization process: a signalling theory perspective

Psychological contract theory has largely neglected the role of previous experience. In this study, we examine how previous work experience influences outcomes of communication with organizational insiders during organizational socialization among healthcare staff. We develop a model based on signalling theory, within which information acquisition during socialization is associated with psychological contract fulfilment, which is in turn is related to better health, happiness, and social relationships. Moderated mediation analysis based on data collected at entry and three months later confirms indirect effects between three types of information acquisition and three employee outcomes via the mediating role of psychological contract fulfilment. Importantly, these indirect effects are present only for inexperienced newcomers. Our findings build on signalling theory and add to knowledge about how the psychological contract forms during early socialization. They also suggest that organizations should pay particular attention to inducting inexperienced newcomers.

People have different expectations for their own versus others' use of AI-mediated communication tools.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance human communication, for example, by improving the quality of our writing, voice or appearance. However, AI mediated communication also has risks-it may increase deception, compromise authenticity or yield widespread mistrust. As a result, both policymakers and technology firms are developing approaches to prevent and reduce potentially unacceptable uses of AI communication technologies. However, we do not yet know what people believe is acceptable or what their expectations are regarding usage. Drawing on normative psychology theories, we examine people's judgements of the acceptability of open and secret AI use, as well as people's expectations of their own and others' use. In two studies with representative samples (Study 1: N = 477; Study 2: N = 765), we find that people are less accepting of secret than open AI use in communication, but only when directly compared. Our results also suggest that people believe others will use AI communication tools more than they would themselves and that people do not expect others' use to align with their expectations of what is acceptable. While much attention has been focused on transparency measures, our results suggest that self-other differences are a central factor for understanding people's attitudes and expectations for AI-mediated communication.