Objective
To understand how health, prosocial, and spiritual motivations correspond to changes in the virtues of self‐control, patience, and interpersonal generosity among adolescents and emerging ...adults.
Method
Participants included adolescent and emerging adult athletes (N = 396; 12–22 years, M = 18.42, SD = 2.03) on marathon training teams fundraising for a faith‐based charity. Participants completed self‐report questionnaires four times over six months. Participants were 63% female and identified as 61% Caucasian, 17% Latino/a, 10% African American, 6% Asian American, and 6% other.
Results
Bivariate latent growth curve models showed positive relations between baseline levels of transcendent motivations (spiritual, prosocial) and all three virtues (self‐control, patience, interpersonal generosity) as well as baseline health motivation and self‐control. Linear slopes in all three motivations were positively correlated with change in patience, and greater decreases in these motivations from wave 1 to wave 2 before recovering motivation in subsequent waves correlated with less change in patience. Only the linear slope in prosocial motivation positively correlated with change in generosity. None of the motivation slopes correlated with change in self‐control.
Conclusions
More than just sport participation is required to cultivate virtue in adolescents; instead, transcendent and non‐transcendent motivations are concurrently developing for athletes who increase in prosocial virtues.
A promising way to mitigate inequality is by addressing students' worries about belonging. But where and with whom is this social-belonging intervention effective? Here we report a team-science ...randomized controlled experiment with 26,911 students at 22 diverse institutions. Results showed that the social-belonging intervention, administered online before college (in under 30 minutes), increased the rate at which students completed the first year as full-time students, especially among students in groups that had historically progressed at lower rates. The college context also mattered: The intervention was effective only when students' groups were afforded opportunities to belong. This study develops methods for understanding how student identities and contexts interact with interventions. It also shows that a low-cost, scalable intervention generalizes its effects to 749 4-year institutions in the United States.
Spirituality is an important, but oft-overlooked, aspect of the self that may affect college students' wellbeing and belonging. Few studies have systematically examined closeness to God and spiritual ...struggles as predictors of college student wellbeing during early college, which is a critical window for identity development. Moreover, research exploring interactions between spiritual struggles and closeness to God in predicting wellbeing outcomes is scarce. We address these gaps in the literature with an analytic sample comprised of 839 first-year college participants who identify as religious. The results of correlational analyses and linear mixed effect models are presented. Closeness to God was associated with greater wellbeing and belonging, and spiritual struggles were associated with lower wellbeing and belonging. In exploratory analyses, a moderating effect of closeness to God on the relation between spiritual struggles and negative outcomes was observed. Implications for higher education and college student development are discussed.
This study investigates the effects of courage and patience interventions on interracial interactions. Majority group members are important actors when it comes to increasing positive interracial ...interactions in multicultural environments. Although research has demonstrated that psychological factors may hinder majority group members from greater engagement in interracial interactions (e.g., emotion dysregulation, threat), more psychological interventions targeting majority group member engagement in interracial interactions are needed. First, using a theory-based approach, this study examines whether virtues are associated with key interracial interaction variables. Next, this study examines the effects of virtue interventions targeting White students in a U.S. context on an interracial interaction behavioral measure and post-intervention affect, and the moderating effect of intervention condition on the association between pre-intervention threat levels and post-intervention affect. Last, this study tests whether distinct groups of White participants emerge based on their responses to threat-related measures. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.
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