Group versus individual data in a dynamic systems approach to development

Un día en la vida de niños y niñas del Suroccidente Colombiano con experiencias de violencia sociopolítica

La investigación desarrollista sobre la violencia socio-política se ha centrado principalmente en explicar sus efectos psicológicos a mediano y largo plazo en la niñez y ha generalizado a partir de grandes muestras. Pocos estudios se han centrado en explorar momento a momento las experiencias de la vida cotidiana de niños y niñas que sufrieron episodios de ese tipo de violencia. En esta investigación se usó un diseño basado en la observación de un día en la vida de dos niñas y dos niños del Suroccidente Colombiano para describir el contexto en que se desarrollan, cómo se ven a sí mismos y cómo resignifican experiencias de violencia política que vivieron en su primera infancia. Se usaron relatos autobiográficos, entrevistas y un análisis de temas emergentes. Se identificaron identidades y experiencias estrechamente ligadas a la construcción de relaciones basadas en el respeto a los demás, la valoración positiva de sí mismos, el reconocimiento de la familia como organizadora de sus experiencias, la construcción de saberes para desarrollar habilidades y la resignificación de las experiencias dolorosas. La discusión se centró en las implicaciones de adoptar una concepción del proceso de desarrollo en términos de trayectorias de desarrollo no siempre previsibles, ni orientadas a un estado final; así como el papel que tiene el método seleccionado en esa indagación. Se concluye que las experiencias actuales no necesariamente se derivan de trayectorias lineales, pues son afectadas por factores situacionales inherentes a la ecología social en las que viven las personas.  

Resilience in sports: a multidisciplinary, dynamic, and personalized perspective

Athletes are exposed to various psychological and physiological stressors, such as losing matches and high training loads. Understanding and improving the resilience of athletes is therefore crucial to prevent performance decrements and psychological or physical problems. In this review, resilience is conceptualized as a dynamic process of bouncing back to normal functioning following stressors. This process has been of wide interest in psychology, but also in the physiology and sports science literature (e.g. load and recovery). To improve our understanding of the process of resilience, we argue for a collaborative synthesis of knowledge from the domains of psychology, physiology, sports science, and data science. Accordingly, we propose a multidisciplinary, dynamic, and personalized research agenda on resilience. We explain how new technologies and data science applications are important future trends (1) to detect warning signals for resilience losses in (combinations of) psychological and physiological changes, and (2) to provide athletes and their coaches with personalized feedback about athletes' resilience.

Explaining the “How” of Self-Esteem Development: The Self-Organizing Self-Esteem Model

The current article proposes a theoretical model of self-esteem called the Self-Organizing Self-Esteem (SOSE) model. The model provides an integrative framework for conceptualizing and understanding the intrinsic dynamics of self-esteem and the role of the context across 3 levels of development: The macro level, which is the level of trait self-esteem, the meso level, on which we find state self-esteem, and the micro level, which is the level of discrete self experiences. The model applies principles from the complex dynamics systems perspective to self-esteem, and can thus uniquely describe the underlying mechanism of self-esteem development based on self-organizational processes and interacting time scales. We compare the proposed SOSE model with a formalized account of the traditional approach to self-esteem, showing that the SOSE model is especially conducive to the understanding of self-esteem development in a way that the traditional approach is not—namely, in its ability to explain and predict the underlying dynamics of trait and state self-esteem, the meaning of variability, and the role of the context.

Micro-level processes of identity development: Intra-individual relations between commitment and exploration

We investigate intra-individual processes of identity at the micro level. With an intensive longitudinal design in the general context of higher education, we explore associations between changes in pivotal identity concepts: commitment and exploration and elaborate on how we conceptualize these concepts on a micro level. With our within-individual empirical approach, we revealed a large amount of variation between individuals with respect to the associations between exploration and commitment processes. At the same time, similarities were found amongst individuals, which help extend and clarify existing findings regarding identity development. Our findings highlight the necessity to, firstly, distinguish between micro- and macro-level identity processes. Secondly, and in the same vein, our findings emphasize the heterogeneous nature of micro-level identity processes, and the necessity to use a within individual approach to study these processes.