I-Through-We: How Supportive Social Relationships Facilitate Personal Growth

Perceived Relational Support Is Associated With Everyday Positive, But Not Negative, Affectivity in a U.S. Sample

Research suggests that perceived social support bolsters emotional well-being. We tested whether perceived support from friends, family, and spouses/partners was associated with reduced negative and greater positive affectivity (i.e., everyday affective baseline), and whether perceived strain in these relationships had opposite effects, accounting for age and relevant covariates. Using data from the third waves of the Midlife in the United States survey and National Study of Daily Experience (n = 1,124), we found negative affectivity was not tied to relational support nor strain, but instead was associated positively with neuroticism and negatively with conscientiousness. In contrast, positive affectivity was related positively to support from friends and family, conscientiousness, and extroversion, and negatively to strain among partners and neuroticism. Exploratory analyses within second-wave Midlife in Japan data (n = 657) suggest patterns for future cross-cultural study. Some relationship dynamics may vary, but perceived support might enhance emotional well-being by bolstering positive, rather than mitigating negative, emotionality.

The skills that help employees adapt: Empirical validation of a four-category framework

Globalization, technological advances, economic and geopolitical shocks, pandemics, and any number of novel or unanticipated events have one thing in common: they represent change and require dynamic responses and adaptation from organizations, teams, and individuals. A critical resource for individuals to be adaptive are broad skills relevant to varied organizational conditions. These adaptive skills have been discussed in diverse venues but rarely in the organizational literature. Also, most, if not all, of extant conceptual frameworks related to adaptive skills remain unvalidated. The purpose of this research was to organize these skills, define and situate them in the relevant organizational and psychological literatures, and empirically test a proposed four-category framework. The experimental results supported the C+MAC framework, as skills were better categorized in terms of their theoretically related category. Additionally, the four-category framework proved a better fit to the skills compared to an influential, alternative model. The findings' implications are discussed, noting how an empirically validated framework can facilitate understanding of how individuals engage with organizational environments and organizations get their work done.

Impact of Leading by Example on Employees' Organizational and Job Psychological Ownership: A Moderated Mediation Study

This article studies the influence of leading by example on organizational psychological ownership and job psychological ownership. This article further introduces the mediating mechanism of organizational identification and the regulating mechanism of Leader-member Exchange (LMX). This study investigated 312 personnel from eight property management enterprises in East, Northwest, Northeast, and central China. This study adopts a quantitative research method, using survey data of project managers, team leaders, and managers of Property management projects in China. The data were collected by questionnaire survey. In terms of data analysis, AMOS 21.0 software was used to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM) using the maximum likelihood method to test direct and indirect effects. SPSS 25.0 software was used to test the moderating effect by multilevel regression analysis with the maximum variance method. Use these two methods to analyze the whole theoretical framework. The results established all assumed relationships. In this article, leading by example, one of the important dimensions of empowering leadership is studied as a new leadership style, and the predictive effect of leading by example on organizational psychological ownership and job psychological ownership is verified. This finding further verifies the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of empowering leadership in different dimensions. It is found that organizational identification has different mediating effects on leading by example and organizational psychological ownership and job psychological ownership. The moderating effect of LMX also further indicates that under the influence of Confucian pan-family culture, the leader's exemplary behavior with higher authority has a stronger influence on employees' organizational identification, organizational psychological ownership, and job psychological ownership. Their relationship is deeply influenced by the culture of China's unique organizational Circle Culture.

The Upside of Negative Emotions: How Do Older Adults From Different Cultures Challenge Their Self-Growth During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Background and Objective

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has raised increased challenges for older adults' personal growth in diverse cultural settings. The aim of this study was to analyze negative emotions and their role on older adults' self-growth in Mexico, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, a cross-national qualitative research was carried out.

Methods

Data were collected from 338 community-dwelling participants aged 65 years and older, using a semi-structured interview protocol. Older adults were asked about negative emotions that significantly contribute to their self-growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Content analysis was used to identify key themes.

Results

Seven main negative emotions (fear, sadness, anger, grief, boredom, loneliness, and shame) significantly contributed to seven themes of self-growth, across the samples: sharing difficult experiences with others, supportive partner, spiritual practices, engagement with life, generativity, volunteering activities, and intimacy and sexual satisfaction. Sharing difficult experiences with others was most pertinent to Mexican (13.9%) and to Italian (3.0%) participants, and a supportive partner to Portuguese (12.1%), and to Spanish participants (6.5%).

Conclusion

The findings of this study indicate that negative emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to their older adults' self-growth. This study highlighted the cultural diversity of experiences during the pandemics and underlined the upside of negative emotions and its relation to older adults' self-growth during this period.

Translation and Adaptation of the Social Connectedness Scale to Portuguese

Abstract The goal of the present study was to adapt the social connectedness scale (SCS) to Brazilian Portuguese and evaluate its psychometric properties. A survey was conducted with 222 participants. They answered the SCS, the positive and negative affective schedule (PANAS), the Duke University Religion Index (DUREL), two pictorial measures of social connectedness, and a socio-demographic questionnaire. The original one factor solution was supported by the data. The SCS-derived score was significantly associated with the other measures in the expected directions. The results described in the present study are favorable regarding the internal consistency and evidence of validity of SCS scores. The study offers three social connectedness measures that can be used to investigate the impacts of social connectedness on cognition, behavior and health of Brazilians.

Social Resources as Cognitive Structures: Thinking about a Dense Support Network Increases Perceived Support

Two experiments examined how the ways in which people mentally represent their personal networks affect perceptions of social support. Social support research often uses “name generators” in which individuals are asked to choose how many people they receive support from, resulting in cognitive networks that confound size and density. Taking a fixed size approach, Study 1 showed that the density of chronically activated networks predicted perceived support in both emotional and informational domains. Study 2 assigned participants to think of a dense or sparse personal network of equal size to test whether experimentally manipulated density can influence perceived support. Results indicated that thinking of a dense (vs. sparse) network led to higher perceived support, which in turn promoted more confidence in coping with life stressors. Collectively, these studies highlight how moment-to-moment changes in cognitive networks can influence social resources and explicate key psychological mechanisms tied to cognitive social structures.

Psychotherapy for personal growth? A multicultural and multitheoretical exploration

OBJECTIVE

This paper reports on a focus-group discussion of four expert psychotherapy researchers facilitated at an international conference from the Society of Psychotherapy Research. A discussion was facilitated to explore their perspectives on psychotherapy practices of personal growth (intentionally working towards a strengthened sense of autonomy, mastery, and self-acceptance) in different countries (United States, Canada, Argentina, and Chile) and different modalities (psychoanalysis, humanistic therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy).

METHODS

Following the conference, the audio recording of this discussion was transcribed and analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods.

RESULTS

Six domains were identified; definition of personal growth, mental health care systems, psychotherapy practice, psychotherapy research, client and therapist characteristics, and social stigma.

RESULTS

Six domains were identified; definition of personal growth, mental health care systems, psychotherapy practice, psychotherapy research, client and therapist characteristics, and social stigma.

CONCLUSION

Future research examining the cost-effectiveness and benefits of psychotherapy for personal growth is warranted. Building on the six domains, specific future research projects on the evidence-based practice of psychotherapy for personal growth are suggested.