Relationship Between Peer Attachment and Adolescent Positive Well-Being with Gender as the Moderating Factor in Malaysia

Identifying protective factors that could influence the positive well-being of adolescents is important as positive development view emphasizes the possibility of adolescents developing positive traits based on their strengths, positive qualities, and supportive environments. This study examines the relationship between peer attachment with positive adolescent well-being and the role of gender as a moderator for links between peer attachment with positive adolescent well-being. A total of 400 7th Grade students from government schools in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur and state of Selangor were involved in this study. Adolescent positive well-being and peer attachment were measured using the Positive Youth Development Scale and Inventory of Peer and Parent Attachment. The results show that peer attachment was predictor of adolescent positive well-being. The study also found that gender moderated the relationship between peer attachment and adolescent positive well-being. This study provides information on factors that can help the positive development of adolescents. Identifying these factors will provide insight on events or experiences that will increase the occurrence of positive outcomes and reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes.

Kekuatan Karakter Mahasiswa di Tengah Pandemi Covid-19

The main challenge for educational institutions in the middle of the pandemic is fostering students to maintain character strengths in poor conditions. Various difficulties come quickly, such as changes in the online learning system, strict health protocols that apply to the threat of viruses that are scary all the time. Character strengths have a broad impact on life satisfaction, subjective well-being, friendly relationships, and academic success. This study aims to determine the condition of initial student character strengths, especially those who have just entered college, as positive traits used in dealing with changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and contribute to the development of character strengths theory. Peterson-Seligman. The research subjects were 145 students who filled out the 72-item VIA-IS scale online and analyzed using descriptive analysis. The results showed that most early students had high character strengths (68.3%) and responded to change by highlighting their signature strengths of kindness, humor, love, honesty, and gratitude. This research is expected to describe the strength of character as an effort to adapt to change in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic.

Cultural Consistency in Late-Life Declines in Positive Personality Traits

Personality has elements of both stability and change across the adult lifespan. There has also been evidence for terminal decline—late-life decreases in positive psychological characteristics. However, many of these studies have examined these patterns in primarily Western populations. The current study examined the consistency of age differences in positive personality traits (i.e., character strengths) across cultures. I examined 2,895,051 participants ranging in age from 13 to 100 (Mage = 34.31; 65.3% women) from 90 different countries. I reproduced patterns of terminal decline across cultures. In addition to mean differences between cultures (e.g., focusing on the present is associated with more positive traits [Mr = .45]), cultural characteristics often moderated the effects of age on positive personality traits. For example, terminal decline was more dramatic among people from collectivistic cultures and flatter among people from individualistic cultures. Results will be discussed in the context of cultural variation developmental processes.

Self-protecting motivation, indexed by self-threat, modifies retrieval-induced-forgetting and confidence in employment decision bias against out-group targets

Human memory is malleable by both social and motivational factors and holds information relevant to workplace decisions. Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) describes a phenomenon where retrieval practice impairs subsequent memory for related (unpracticed) information. We report two RIF experiments. Chinese participants received a mild self-threat manipulation (Experiment 2) or not (Experiment 1) before an ethnicity-RIF task that involved practicing negative traits of either in-group (Chinese) or an out-group (Japanese) target. After a subsequent memory test, participants selected their preferred applicant for employment. RIF scores correspond to forgetting of unpracticed positive traits of one target (Rp−) relative to the recall of practiced negative traits of the other target (Rp+). Enhanced forgetting of positive traits was found in both experiments for both targets. Across experiments, a significant target by threat interaction showed that target ethnicity modified RIF (an ethnicity-RIF effect). Inducing a self-protecting motivation enhanced RIF effects for the out-group (Japanese) target. In a subsequent employment decision, there was a strong bias to select the in-group target, with the confidence in these decisions being associated with RIF scores. This study suggests that rehearsing negative traits of minority applicants can affect metacognitive aspects of employment decisions, possibly by shaping the schemas available to the majority (in-group) employer. To disrupt systemic racism, recruitment practices should aim to offset a human motivation to protect one-self, when exposed to a relatively mild threat to self-esteem. Discussing the negative traits of minority applicants is a critical, and sensitive, aspect of decision-making that warrants careful practice. These data suggest that recruiting individuals should be reminded of their personal strengths in this context, not their vulnerabilities, to secure their decision-making for fairer recruitment practice.

Grafting vigour is associated with DNA de-methylation in eggplant

In horticulture, grafting is a popular technique used to combine positive traits from two different plants. This is achieved by joining the plant top part (scion) onto a rootstock which contains the stem and roots. Rootstocks can provide resistance to stress and increase plant production, but despite their wide use, the biological mechanisms driving rootstock-induced alterations of the scion phenotype remain largely unknown. Given that epigenetics plays a relevant role during distance signalling in plants, we studied the genome-wide DNA methylation changes induced in eggplant (Solanum melongena) scion using two interspecific rootstocks to increase vigour. We found that vigour was associated with a change in scion gene expression and a genome-wide hypomethylation in the CHH context. Interestingly, this hypomethylation correlated with the downregulation of younger and potentially more active long terminal repeat retrotransposable elements (LTR-TEs), suggesting that graft-induced epigenetic modifications are associated with both physiological and molecular phenotypes in grafted plants. Our results indicate that the enhanced vigour induced by heterografting in eggplant is associated with epigenetic modifications, as also observed in some heterotic hybrids.

Localizing sensory processing sensitivity and its subdomains within its relevant trait space: a data-driven approach

Sensitivity arising from enhanced processing of external and internal stimuli or sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is known to be present in a sizable portion of the population. Yet a clear localization of SPS and its subdomains with respect to other relevant traits is currently lacking. Here, we used a data-driven approach including hierarchical clustering, t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) and graph learning to portrait SPS as measured by Highly Sensitive Person Scale (HSPS) in relation to the Big-Five Inventory (neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) as well as to shyness, alexithymia, autism quotient, anxiety, and depression (11 total traits) using data from more than 800 participants. Analysis revealed SPS subdomains to be divided between two trait clusters with questions related to aesthetic sensitivity (AES) falling within a cluster of mainly positive traits and neighbored by openness while questions addressing ease of excitation (EOE) and low sensory threshold (LST) to be mostly contained within a cluster of negative traits and neighbored by neuroticism. A similar spread across clusters was seen for questions addressing autism consistent with it being a spectrum disorder, in contrast, alexithymia subdomains were closely fit within the negative cluster. Together, our results support the view of SPS as a distinct yet non-unitary trait and provide insights for further refinements of the current SPS concept and scales.

Toponyms as a Gateway to Society

Abui is a Papuan language spoken in Alor Island, South-East Indonesia. Although there are rich studies on the Abui language and its structure, research on Abui toponymy, which aids the understanding of language, culture, and society, deserves greater attention. This paper analyzes features of Abui society through Abui toponyms collected using Field Linguistics and Language Documentation methods. It finds that, because place names communicate valuable information on peoples and territories, Abui toponyms reflect the agrarian lifestyle of Abui speakers and, more broadly, the close relationship that the people have with their landscape. Furthermore, Abui toponyms express positive traits in the Abui culture like kinship ties and bravery. Notwithstanding, like other pre-literate and indigenous societies, oral stories are commonly used to explain how places are named. This paper augments the existing Abui toponymic studies on the connection between names and the places they name and provides a deeper understanding of the Abui language, culture, and society.

The enduring relevance of philosophy in the education system. Part 1

The subject of this article are philosophical questions that arise in the process of philosophical reflection on some modern trends in education. At a number of points, these issues intersect with the problems of philosophy of education as a relatively independent philosophical discipline. The article analyzes the actualization of philosophy in modern higher and secondary education. The general reasons for this actualization are revealed (insufficient accuracy in dealing with philosophical concepts; low level of philosophical and methodological culture; the general cultural mission of philosophy is not yet properly understood), as well as some reasons related specifically to higher and secondary education. In both cases, this relevance is considered both by modern science and by reflection on it. Integration projects in education exacerbate the relevance in updating the modern system of secondary and higher education in Ukraine. First of all, it concerns the desire for a harmonious combination of knowledge and competence, the real integration of theoretical and practical components of learning. These positive traits become a serious factor that stimulates the cognitive activity of students and their motivation for research. In the united and contradictory process of knowledge development, integration is accompanied by differentiation, just as analytical activity in general is supplemented by synthetic in a single process of analytical-synthetic activity. At the same time, the underestimation of the analytical side of activity and excessive emphasis on its synthetic, integrative side is not a methodologically justified position, including because it is known from the history of scientific knowledge that a new object in the initial stages of its knowledge, first of all, try somehow dissect, analyze its parts, and only then make a complete picture of it, explain it and understand.

Reducing Prejudice By Enhancing the Other Rather than the Self

Some research suggests that self-enhancement is widespread and may exacerbate ingroup favoritism. What if, rather than engaging in self-enhancement, individuals focused on enhancing others? Could enhancing others produce less prejudice than self-enhancement? Three studies tested the effect of self-enhancement versus ‘other-enhancement’ on prejudice. In Study 1 (N=95), a repeated measures design showed that participants demonstrated less negative affect and less implicit bias after reflecting on another person’s positive traits relative to their own. In Study 2 (N=169), we extended this effect to outgroup enhancement. Participants who reflected on an outgroup strength showed less negative affect and less racism than those who reflected on an ingroup strength and those in a comparison condition. Study 3 (N=380) validated these experimental effects by showing that other-enhancement is negatively associated with racism and sexism, whereas self-enhancement is not. Study 3 also examined a theorized antecedent of other-enhancement – humility. We discuss the importance of enhancing others in reducing prejudice.

A Cognitive-Ecological Approach to Temporal Self-Appraisal

According to the evaluative information ecology model of social-comparison, people are more similar on their positive traits and tend to differ on their negative traits. This means that comparisons based on differences will naturally produce negative evaluations, whereas those based on similarities will produce positive evaluations. In this research we apply and extend this model to theorize about the outcomes of temporal self-comparisons. We predicted that one’s similarities across time would be evaluated positively, whereas one’s differences would be evaluated more negatively. However, because positive attributes are reinforced over time, we expected an asymmetry to emerge such that attributes unique to the past self (past differences) would be most negative. Evidence from a simulation study, 7 experiments (total \textit{N} = 1844), and an integrative data analysis, support the notion that temporal self-appraisals follow naturally from comparisons in a known information ecology. Several tests of the prevailing motivated-self-perception account did not bear fruit. We discuss the implications of these findings for temporal self-appraisal theory as well as other aspects of self and identity.