The development of the Meaning in Life Index (MILI) and its relationship with personality and religious behaviours and beliefs among UK undergraduate students

The scales available for assessing meaning in life appear to be confounded with several related constructs, including purpose in life, satisfaction with life, and goal-directed behaviour. The Meaning in Life Index (MILI), a new instrument devised as a specific measure of meaning in life, was developed from responses to a pool of 22 items rated by a sample of 501 undergraduate students in Wales. The nine-item scale demonstrated sufficient face validity, internal consistency, and scale reliability to commend the instrument for future use. With respect to personality, the MILI scores were most strongly predicted by neuroticism (negatively), and less strongly by extraversion (positively) and psychoticism (negatively). With respect to several religious behavioural variables, those who attended church at least weekly returned significantly higher MILI scores than those who attended church less frequently. Intrinsic religiosity was the only orientation to be significantly associated with the MILI scale scores, although the magnitude of the association was smaller than anticipated. These results suggest that meaning in life is associated more strongly with individual differences in personality than with specific religious behaviours and attitudes. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of individual's personal values and attitudes that might underlie their experience of a meaning in life

The relationship between maternal self-efficacy and parenting practices: Implications for parent training.

The present study examined the relationship between maternal self-efficacy, dysfunctional discipline practices and child conduct problems. Specifically, three levels of self-efficacy, global, domain and task-specific self-efficacy, were assessed in mothers of 2- to 8-year-old children with conduct problems (clinic group, n=45) and non-clinic mothers (non-clinic group, n=79). Measures of global, domain and task-specific self-efficacy were completed by mothers

Television exposure, consumer culture values, and lower well-being among preadolescent children: the mediating role of consumer-focused coping strategies

Previous research has linked materialism to lower well‐being in children, and recent findings suggest that this link is heightened among those exposed to high levels of advertising. One proposal is that children may be pursuing consumer culture ideals (CCIs) – orienting to material possessions and physical appearance – as a maladaptive coping strategy for dealing with underlying distress. The present work offers the first direct evaluation of this theoretically plausible hypothesis. In Study 1, higher scores on our measure of consumer‐focused coping (CFC) not only predicted lower well‐being in a sample of 109 9‐ to 11‐year‐olds, but also served as mediator in the indirect link between the number of hours spent watching television and lower well‐being. Study 2 tested our expanded model of these processes in a sample of 380 9‐ to 11‐year‐olds. Specifically, structural equation modelling revealed that frequency of watching commercial (advertising‐rich) television in particular predicted greater CFC. This, in turn, predicted greater endorsement of CCIs, which then predicted lower well‐being. Implications for theoretical models and educational interventions are discussed

Stress Responses of Neonates Related to Maternal Characteristics

∙ The authors have no financial conflicts of interest. Purpose: To investigate the pre- and post-heelstick stress response patterns of infants and to identify related maternal factors. Materials and Methods: Fifty-two mothers and their 57 infants were studied. Stress response patterns in neonates were collected by measurements of pulse rate, oxygen saturation, and salivary cortisol. Maternal demographic factors and awakening saliva were collected. Results: Median level of pulse rate of infant increased from 132.1 to 140.4 beats per minute and salivary cortisol was elevated from 0.41 µg/dL to 0.70 µg/dL during the periods of discomfort, while oxygen saturation decreased from 97 % to 95%. Infant’s pulse rate change was negatively correlated with gestational age (GA) (r =- 0.37, p < 0.05), whereas the change of infants ’ salivary cortisol was correlated positively with maternal age (r = 0.29, p < 0.05). GA was the only independently significant predictor of pulse rate responses (R 2 = 0.15, p < 0.05). Influence of maternal age on infants ’ salivary cortisol changes (R 2 = 0.09, p < 0.05) was observed in a stepwis

Parental attributions of control for child behaviour and their relation to discipline practices in parents of children with and without developmental delays

Children with developmental delays (DD) are at risk for developing behavior problems. Research suggests that parents’ causal attributions for child behavior are related to parenting. This study investigated this association in parents of children with DD compared to parents of typically developing (TD) children. It specifically focused on attributions of child control by separating these from attributions of responsibility, blame and intent, and from attributions of parent control and responsibility. Fifty-one parents of children with DD and 69 parents of TD children completed two questionnaires. The Written Analogue Questionnaire measured causal attributions. The Parenting Scale measured dysfunctional discipline practices. Parents of children with DD viewed the child’s role in problematic behavior more positively while also viewing misbehavior as more fixed than parents of TD children. Parents of TD children who viewed their child as more in control over misbehavior used less dysfunctional discipline, but this association was not found for parents of children with DD. The results advance understanding of how parents perceive behavior problems in children with DD and the important role these perceptions play in parental behavior management strategies. More importantly, these perceptions relate to discipline practices differently for parents of children with DD compared to parents of TD children, highlighting that parent interventions should be adapted to the specific needs of parents of children with DD

Serving highly vulnerable families in home-visitation programs

Home-visitation programs for families with young children are growing in popularity in the US. These programs typically seek to prevent child abuse and neglect and/or promote optimal development for infants, toddlers, and/or preschool-age children. This paper focuses on improving the capacity of home-visitation programs to meet the complex needs of highly vulnerable families with young children. Poverty, maternal depression and substance abuse, and domestic violence are noted as factors that place young children at risk for poor outcomes. The challenges of providing home-visitation services to families in which these risk factors are present are discussed. Family engagement, matching services to families’ needs, and staff capabilities are highlighted as areas in which improvements can be made to enhance home-visitation programs’ capacity to serve highly vulnerable families. Recommendations are given for improving the effectiveness of home-visitation programs in serving these families, as well for addressing policy and research issues related to the further development and evaluation of these programs.First author draf

Stigma and Social Power: Expecting to Interact with an Obese Person Activates Power in the Self-concept

People's sense of power is often a more crucial determinant of their behavior than their actual level of power. In this paper, we suggest that individuals may perceive themselves as more powerful when anticipating interaction with a member of a stigmatized out-group than with a member of a nonstigmatized group. Normal weight participants (N = 77) expected to have an interaction with a target randomly identified as obese or thin. Participants were quicker to endorse words describing themselves in terms of traits associated with power when the target was obese than thin. They were also likely to expect greater interpersonal power, to endorse more negative attitudes towards obese people and to form more negative impressions, if the target was obese rather than thin. These findings suggest that a perception of empowerment is spontaneously activated prior to interaction with an obese person.http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a907123882~frm=titlelinkSCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Predicting developmental changes in internalizing symptoms: Examining the interplay between parenting and neuroendocrine stress reactivity

In this study, we examined whether parenting and HPA‐axis reactivity during middle childhood predicted increases in internalizing symptoms during the transition to adolescence, and whether HPA‐axis reactivity mediated the impact of parenting on internalizing symptoms. The study included 65 children (35 boys) who were assessed at age 5, 7, and 11. Parenting behaviors were assessed via parent report at age 5 and 11. The child's HPA‐axis reactivity was measured at age 7 via a stress task. Internalizing symptoms were measured via teacher reports at age 5 and 11. High maternal warmth at age 5 predicted lower internalizing symptoms at age 11. Also, high reported maternal warmth and induction predicted lower HPA‐axis reactivity. Additionally, greater HPA‐axis reactivity at age 7 was associated with greater increases in internalizing symptoms from age 5 to 11. Finally, the association between age 5 maternal warmth and age 11 internalizing symptoms was partially mediated by lower cortisol in response to the stress task. Thus, parenting behaviors in early development may influence the physiological stress response system and therefore buffer the development of internalizing symptoms during preadolescence when risk for disorder onset is high. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 56: 908–923, 2014.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107358/1/dev21166.pd

Why a Universal Population-Level Approach to the Prevention of Child Abuse is Essential

This paper argues for the importance of adopting a population-level approach to promote more effective parenting and to reduce the risk of child maltreatment. Family-based interventions based on social learning principles have been shown to make a useful contribution in the treatment of child maltreatment. However, typically such programmes have been used to treat parents who have already become involved in the child protection system. We argue that the creation of community-wide support structures to support positive parenting is needed to reduce the prevalence of child maltreatment. Such an approach requires several criteria to be met. These include having knowledge about the prevalence rates for the targeted child outcomes sought, knowledge about the prevalence of various parenting and family risk factors, evidence that changing family risk factors reduces the prevalence of targeted problems, having culturally appropriate, cost-effective, evidence-based interventions available and making these widely accessible

Signal Detection on the Battlefield: Priming Self-Protection vs. Revenge-Mindedness Differentially Modulates the Detection of Enemies and Allies

Detecting signs that someone is a member of a hostile outgroup can depend on very subtle cues. How do ecology-relevant motivational states affect such detections? This research investigated the detection of briefly-presented enemy (versus friend) insignias after participants were primed to be self-protective or revenge-minded. Despite being told to ignore the objectively nondiagnostic cues of ethnicity (Arab vs. Western/European), gender, and facial expressions of the targets, both priming manipulations enhanced biases to see Arab males as enemies. They also reduced the ability to detect ingroup enemies, even when these faces displayed angry expressions. These motivations had very different effects on accuracy, however, with self-protection enhancing overall accuracy and revenge-mindedness reducing it. These methods demonstrate the importance of considering how signal detection tasks that occur in motivationally-charged environments depart from results obtained in conventionally motivationally-inert laboratory settings.National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (Grant MH64734)U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Grant W74V8H-05-K-0003)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant BCS-0642873