The Test of Emotional Intelligence (TIE) is a new ability scale based on a theoretical model that defines emotional intelligence as a set of skills responsible for the processing of emotion-relevant ...information. Participants are provided with descriptions of emotional problems, and asked to indicate which emotion is most probable in a given situation, or to suggest the most appropriate action. Scoring is based on the judgments of experts: professional psychotherapists, trainers, and HR specialists. The validation study showed that the TIE is a reliable and valid test, suitable for both scientific research and individual assessment. Its internal consistency measures were as high as .88. In line with theoretical model of emotional intelligence, the results of the TIE shared about 10% of common variance with a general intelligence test, and were independent of major personality dimensions.
The associations between morningness-eveningness, conscientiousness, and religiosity have not been investigated to date. The aim of the present research was to provide evidence for the relationships ...between these dimensions. Moreover, we tested whether the well-established link between morningness and life satisfaction could be explained by elevated religiosity of morning-oriented individuals and whether this relationship may be mediated by conscientiousness. The investigation was conducted on two independent samples of Polish adults (N = 500 and N = 728). Our results corroborated earlier findings that morningness was positively associated with both conscientiousness and satisfaction with life. We also found evidence for a significant positive association between morningness and religiosity. Moreover, controlling for age and gender, we obtained significant mediation effects showing that the association between morningness-eveningness and satisfaction with life might stem, at least in part, from the higher religiosity among morning-oriented individuals, also when conscientiousness was included in the model. It means that more morning-oriented individuals may benefit from higher psychological well-being thanks to both personality characteristics and attitudes towards religion.
Chapman's Love Languages hypothesis claims that (1) people vary in the ways they prefer to receive and express affection and (2) romantic partners who communicate their feelings congruent with their ...partner's preferences experience greater relationship quality. The author proposes five distinct preferences and tendencies for expressing love, including: Acts of Service, Physical Touch, Words of Affirmation, Quality Time and Gifts. In the present study partners (N = 100 heterosexual couples) completed measures assessing their preferences and behavioral tendencies for a) expressions of love and b) reception of signs of affection, for each of the five proposed "love languages". Relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and empathy were also assessed. The degree of the within-couple mismatch was calculated separately for each individual based on the discrepancies between the person's felt (preferred) and their partner's expressed love language. The joint mismatch indicator was a sum of discrepancies across the five love languages. Matching on love languages was associated with both relationship and sexual satisfaction. In particular, people who expressed their affection in the way their partners preferred to receive it, experienced greater satisfaction with their relationships and were more sexually satisfied compared to those who met their partner's needs to lesser extent. Empathy was expected to be a critical factor for better understanding of and responding to the partner's needs. Results provided some support for this hypothesis among male but not female participants.
Time perspective (TP) is a central aspect of human daily psychological functioning, with a pronounced impact on human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The particular TP dimensions are strongly ...associated with a range of various mental well-being indicators and were shown to predict as much as 40% of their variance. However, the relationship between TPs and specific mechanisms that enhance mental well-being still requires further exploration. In the present article, we conceptually analyze a potential interplay of TPs and three well-confirmed well-being "boosters" (WBBs)-gratitude, savoring the moment, and prioritizing positivity-which may prove responsible for the vital effects of TP on mental well-being. Each of the "boosters" has a clear temporal anchoring: gratitude stems from the appreciation of the past, savoring the moment refers mainly to the experience of the present, and prioritizing positivity engages planning behaviors that require future focus. We propose four theoretical models to be verified in further experimental research. The first model, the trait-behavior model, proposes that trait TPs increase the tendency to use particular WBBs in order to increase mental well-being. The second model, referred to as the accumulation model, offers that TPs mediate between WBBs and mental well-being; and finally, a regular practice of a specific WBB develops a specific TP (e.g., exercising a gratitude intervention enhances past-positive TP). The third model, the feedback loop, suggests that WBBs and TPs strengthen one another and contribute to higher mental well-being. The last model, which can be called the match-mismatch model, presents the influence of WBBs on mental well-being, where a particular TP plays a role of a moderator (e.g., present-hedonistic TP moderates the relationship between savoring and well-being). Implications of potential confirmation of each of the models for theory and practice are also discussed.
A relationship between individualism and happiness has been observed in many studies, with collectivist cultures having lower indices of happiness. It is often argued that this effect arises because ...people in individualist countries have greater independence and more freedom to pursue personal goals. It appears, however, that the association is much more complex than this as many collectivist countries suffer from more basic problems, such as social conflicts, discrimination, and prejudice. We hypothesized that global differences in happiness could be the result of ingroup bias and its consequences, rather than of collectivism itself. To test our hypotheses, we applied a country-level design, where a country is considered a unit of analysis. We found that individualism predicted various aspects of a country’s aggregated level of happiness, but was only a marginal predictor of happiness when ingroup favoritism and group-focused enmity were controlled for. We discuss the implications of these findings from evolutionary and social psychological perspectives.
Associations between certain personality traits and individual differences in diurnal preferences, referred to as morningness-eveningness, are well established from cross-sectional studies. However, ...it is unclear whether personality affects diurnal preference, diurnal preference affects personality, or some third factor influences both. The current study assessed the Big Five personality traits and morningness-eveningness in a one-year, two-wave longitudinal design, in a sample of 169 Polish high school students (59% females), aged 16-17 years (M = 16.80, SD = 0.39) during the first wave of measurement. During the second wave the participants were respectively 1 year older. Cross lagged panel analyses were run to determine wave 1 predictors of wave 2 variables. Cross-sectional analyses replicated the association between morningness and conscientiousness that has been reliably found in previous studies, but the cross-lagged paths between these variables were nonsignificant. These two traits appear to be intrinsically linked to one another by adolescence, possibly as a consequence of genetic influences that shape temperament earlier in childhood. In contrast, emotional stability and morningness were not significantly correlated in wave 1 cross-sectional data, but a significant relationship was found in the cross-lagged panel analysis. Wave 1 emotional stability predicted wave 2 morningness, although wave 1 morningness did not predict personality. We tentatively suggest that there may be a causal effect of personality on diurnal preference, associated with avoidance strategies for coping with academic stress as the high school years approach their end. More neurotic individuals may cope with their aversion to classes by distracting themselves with evening pursuits, such as use of the internet. Further work might examine in more depth how contextual stressors interact with personality to affect daily activities at different times of the day.
The goals of this study were to determine the relations between having a balanced time perspective (BTP) with various measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and to test how various ...operationalizations of a BTP might impact the relation between having a BTP and SWB. We operationalized a balanced time perspective using: (a) Drake et al.’s Time Soc 17(1):47–61, (
2008
) cut-off-point method, (b) Boniwell et al.’s J Posit Psychol 5(1):24–40, (
2010
) suggestion of using a hierarchical cluster analysis, and (c) a deviation from a balanced time perspective (DBTP; Stolarski et al. Time Soc,
2011
). The results demonstrated that having a BTP is related to increased satisfaction with life, happiness, positive affect, psychological need satisfaction, self-determination, vitality, and gratitude as well as decreased negative affect. Also, the DBTP was the best predictor of SWB. We discuss why individuals with a BTP are likely to be happier in life.
Previous research has provided strong evidence for a pronounced role of time perspective (TP) in various areas of human functioning, including cognitive processes, mental and physical health, ...environmental behaviors, and relationship quality. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of individual differences in TP in work-related attitudes and behaviors. In a sample of 200 office workers, we administered a set of questionnaires measuring TPs, job satisfaction, work engagement, Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) and Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB). Additionally, we controlled for the Big Five personality traits which may be related to the work-related outcomes of interest. Analyses of the data revealed that Future-Positive TP predicted more desired work-related outcomes, i.e., higher job satisfaction, work engagement, and OCB, and lower CWB. An opposite pattern of associations was observed for Present-Fatalistic, Deviation from Balanced Time Perspective, and (partially) for Future-Negative TPs. The vast majority of these effects were still significant after controlling for personality traits. Using path modelling we also demonstrated that the effects of TPs on work behaviors (OCB and CWB) are mostly mediated by job satisfaction and engagement. The present results suggest that TP theory may prove to be a useful tool in organizational psychology for understanding individual differences in work behaviors.
Balanced time perspective (BTP) describes a tendency to focus on past, present and future time horizons that fosters well-being and positive life outcomes. Deviation from the balanced time ...perspective is a widespread method to measure the balance, but it makes assumptions regarding levels of time perspectives constituting BTP. In the present research we aimed to test the assumptions regarding levels of time perspectives constituting BTP by testing associations between time perspectives and domains of well-being in four independent samples (
N
= 1150). The results showed that higher well-being was fostered by greater past positive (PP) and future (F) and lower past negative (PN) and present fatalistic (PF) time perspectives in a linear manner. As for the present hedonistic (PH) perspective, the results were inconsistent indicating that this time orientation can be unrelated to well-being or related in an inverse U-shape manner. In the light of our results the optimal values for the deviation from the balanced time perspective, as measured with the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, should be revisited and changed into PN 1, PP 5, PF 1, PH 3.4, F 5, with careful consideration whether or not to incorporate PH into the formula for the deviation from the balanced time perspective at all. We also showed that the deviation from the balanced time perspective using the above values better predicts well-being than the one using previously assumed levels.
The concept of sport engagement, emerging from the application of major ideas of positive psychology in sport science, has become a valuable conceptual and practical addition to understanding athlete ...burnout. The present article reports the major results of an attempt to develop a Polish version of the Sport Engagement Scale, a brief metric created to measure athletes’ engagement for both research and practical purposes. Study 1, conducted on a sample of Polish athletes (
N
= 214) supports the original three-factor structure of engagement comprising the dimensions of Vigor, Dedication, and Absorption. A single-factor model also fit the data well, suggesting that calculating a general engagement factor is also justifiable. The internal consistency of the scale, as well as its associations with athletic burnout, competition anxiety, personality traits, declared sport level, and number of hours spent in training, provide evidence for sufficient concurrent criterion validity and the reliability of the scale for both research and applied purposes. Study 2, conducted on a sample of athletes taking part in a half marathon run (
N
= 135), provides evidence for the scale’s predictive criterion validity with respect to objective performance: greater engagement, particularly scores in the Vigor subscale, predicted significantly better running performance. In the discussion, we summarize the present findings, commenting on their limitations and highlighting future research paths for the phenomenon of sport engagement.