A dynamic thurstonian item response theory of motive expression in the picture story exercise: solving the internal consistency paradox of the PSE

The measurement of implicit or unconscious motives using the picture story exercise (PSE) has long been a target of debate in the psychological literature. Most debates have centered on the apparent paradox that PSE measures of implicit motives typically show low internal consistency reliability on common indices like Cronbach's alpha but nevertheless predict behavioral outcomes. I describe a dynamic Thurstonian item response theory (IRT) model that builds on dynamic system theories of motivation, theorizing on the PSE response process, and recent advancements in Thurstonian IRT modeling of choice data. To assess the models' capability to explain the internal consistency paradox, I first fitted the model to archival data (Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1957) and then simulated data based on bias-corrected model estimates from the real data. Simulation results revealed that the average squared correlation reliability for the motives in the Thurstonian IRT model was .74 and that Cronbach's alpha values were similar to the real data

Priming competence diminishes the link between cognitive test anxiety and test performance: Implications for the interpretation of test scores

Researchers disagree whether the correlation between cognitive test anxiety and test performance is causal or explainable by skill deficits, which lead to both cognitive test anxiety and lower test performance. Most causal theories of test anxiety assume that individual differences in cognitive test anxiety originate from differences in self-perceived competence. Accordingly, in the present research, we sought to temporarily heighten perceptions of competence using a priming intervention. Two studies with secondary- and vocational-school students (Ns = 219 and 232, respectively) contrasted this intervention with a no-priming control condition. Priming competence diminished the association between cognitive test anxiety and test performance by heightening the performance of cognitively test-anxious students and by lowering the performance of students with low levels of cognitive test anxiety. The findings suggest that cognitively test-anxious persons have greater abilities than they commonly show. Competency priming may offer a way to improve the situation of people with cognitive test anxiety

Benefits of mindfulness at work : the role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job satisfaction

Mindfulness describes a state of consciousness in which individuals attend to ongoing events and experiences in a receptive and non-judgmental way. The present research investigated the idea that mindfulness reduces emotional exhaustion and improves job satisfaction. The authors further suggest that these associations are mediated by the emotion regulation strategy of surface acting. Study 1 was a 5-day diary study with 219 employees and revealed that mindfulness negatively related to emotional exhaustion and positively related to job satisfaction at both the within-and the between-person levels. Both relationships were mediated by surface acting at both levels of analysis. Study 2 was an experimental field study, in which participants (N = 64) were randomly assigned to a self-training mindfulness intervention group or a control group. Results revealed that participants in the mindfulness intervention group experienced significantly less emotional exhaustion and more job satisfaction than participants in the control group. The causal effect of mindfulness self-training on emotional exhaustion was mediated by surface acting. Implications for using mindfulness and mindfulness training interventions in organizational research and practice are discussed in conclusion

The emergence of resilience: Recovery trajectories in sleep functioning after a major stressor.

There is intuitive and practical appeal to the idea of emergent resilience, that is, sustaining healthy levels of functioning or recovering quickly after some degree of deterioration following exposure to heightened risk or vulnerability. Scholars typically utilize mean levels of functioning indices to identify qualitatively distinct latent subgroups of individuals who share similar patterns of change over time. We propose and showcase an alternative, yet complementary operationalization of emergent resilience via temporal changes in within-person variability. Twenty-nine male personnel (26.25 ± 2.67 years) from the Australian Army who passed a 3-week Special Forces Selection Course provided device-based assessments of sleep functioning for seven nights immediately following course completion. Participants also provided a hair sample for cortisol analysis prior to and immediately after the selection course as an index of accumulated stress, and self-reported their adaptability prior to the 7-day monitoring period. We combined latent growth modeling with an exponential variance function to capture fluctuations around latent means and their change over time. Consistent with our conceptualization of “bounce back” emergent resilience, within-person variability in sleep duration decreased each night by around 10%, which reflects a meaningful small mean decrease over time. We also revealed differential effects of the predictor variables; biological stress primarily influenced the total sleep duration on the first night of the 7-day monitoring period, whereas adaptability largely affected temporal changes in the within-person residual variances. These findings underscore the importance of synergizing concept, operationalization, and method for the science of human resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved