Antonio Contreras

Positivity, that is, the tendency to view oneself, one’s life, and one’s future with a favorable outlook, is a key psychological resource for mental and physical well-being. Self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism are its expressions, which share a common latent dimension. The present study examined whether positivity reflects qualitatively distinct configurations or a single underlying continuum. Using a person-centered approach, latent profile analysis was applied to a sample of 1346 adult university students in Spain (1375 recruited, of whom 29 were removed as outliers) through two complementary representations of the data. The first (level analysis) identified profiles based on participants’ overall levels of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism. The second (shape analysis) removed overall positivity to examine whether qualitatively distinct configurations of the three components existed. The level analysis identified four profiles ordered along a single positivity continuum; the profiles were weakly separated, and permitting within-class covariance favored a single class. The shape analysis recovered no well-separated structure. Higher positivity profiles were associated with better subsequent self-rated mental and physical health, yet the profiles explained no more variance than a continuous positivity score. The findings support a dimensional account of positivity, where individuals differ primarily in degree, through coordinated variation in self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism, rather than in qualitatively distinct subgroups.

Positivity, defined as the tendency to view life and experiences with a positive outlook, has recently received a great deal of interest for its significance in understanding human strengths and well-being, yet the temporal interplay among its three facets (self-esteem, life satisfaction, optimism) in relation to the construct of positivity itself is still unclear. A three-wave study of 1,375 Spanish university students investigated this interplay before, during, and after the first COVID-19 lockdown. A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model separated trait-like from state-like variance in each facet and extracted latent shared components, to explore the extent to which positivity subsumes or coexists with these dimensions of human strengths and their relationships across time. The trait-like positivity factor loaded strongly on the between-person components of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism, suggesting a pervasive influence on these facets at the between-person level. A state-like positivity factor accounted for their concurrent dynamic fluctuations, but did not fully account for the within-person variance of each facet, showing its distinctiveness from these constructs and the uniqueness of each. Moreover, both trait-like and state-like positivity and within-person residuals of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism were significantly associated with subjective mental health perception. These findings contribute to the understanding of positivity as a construct encompassing a stable trait-like disposition and state-like specific components arising from self-esteem, life satisfaction and optimism without subsuming them, highlighting its role as an expression of the self-system with an important function in well-being and adaptive functioning.

In this study, the associations between positivity and positive affect were examined at five time points between January 2020 and September 2021, a period of turmoil associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic. Data were collected from 1401 students (73.45% women) attending an online university in Spain, commencing at the outbreak of the pandemic and then at four different time points up to the time it was considered to have been controlled. The results of a cross‐lagged panel model revealed that participants who maintained higher general positivity were also those who reported more intense overall positive affect. At the same time, above‐average positive affect predicted higher‐than‐usual levels of positivity. By pointing to the reciprocal relationships between positivity and positive affect, the results corroborate and go beyond previous findings by highlighting a virtuous cycle in which positivity and positive affect reciprocally influence each other over time. These data are in accordance with a dynamic view of how self‐focused, positive evaluative dispositions and chronic positive affective states operate in concert to enhance adaptation and well‐being. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated confinement, imposed a novel personal and social context for university students; nevertheless, few studies have addressed the effects of this on distance university students. Indeed, defining the needs of these students under such unique circumstances will allow them to receive the support necessary to effectively reduce their perceived stress and improve their academic achievement. A predictive model was designed to examine the direct effects of the variables’ age and perceived study time on stress and academic achievement in students in an online learning context, as well as to assess the indirect effects through the mediating role of academic self-efficacy. Using path analysis, the model was tested on a sample of 1030 undergraduate students between 18 and 60 years old enrolled on a psychology degree course at the UNED (National Distance Learning University of Spain). The model provides a good fit to the data, confirming the mediating role of academic self-efficacy. Perceived study time is a factor negatively associated with stress and positively with academic achievement. However, it appeared that age was not related to academic achievement, indicating that academic self-efficacy had no mediating effect on these two variables. Academic self-efficacy is a mediator and protective factor in challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic. These results may contribute to the design of educational and clinical interventions for students at an online learning university over an extended age range.

El presente artículo describe una experiencia de formación universitaria a distancia, la cual se ha basado en los principios del diseño universal para el aprendizaje y la accesibilidad cognitiva para promover la inserción laboral de personas con discapacidad intelectual. El principal objetivo de esta experiencia formativa fue contribuir al desarrollo de competencias que ayudaran a estudiantes con discapacidad intelectual a avanzar en su actualización profesional para la inserción laboral en la Administración Pública española. Participaron 179 personas con discapacidad intelectual. Los resultados mostraron una tasa de éxito del 89 % y una tasa de abandono del 11 %. A través de un cuestionario ad hoc, se evaluó el grado de satisfacción de los diferentes elementos del diseño curricular de esta experiencia de aprendizaje a distancia. En particular, los participantes mostraron índices de satisfacción elevada con los contenidos seleccionados, los materiales y recursos multimedia disponibles en el aula virtual, así como con los posibles beneficios de la instrucción de estrategias de autorregulación emocional. Cabe concluir que el diseño curricular implementado ha sido muy satisfactorio y ha mejorado las habilidades para el empleo que propicien la inserción laboral de los estudiantes.

Postformal thought is the highest state of thinking in adults, extending beyond formal operations. Sinnott’s Complex Postformal Thought Questionnaire (PFTQ) is one of the most widely used measures of this construct and thus, the main aim of this study was to translate a Spanish version of the PFTQ and to validate it using a sample of 1093 subjects aged from 18 to 71 years. A cross-validation study was carried out and measurement invariance was analyzed by gender and across age groups: emerging adults, 18-29 years; established adults, 30-45 years; and middle-aged adults, 46-60 years. Furthermore, evidence of validity was assessed relative to cognitive and personality measures (i.e.: mindfulness, grit, resilience, intolerance of uncertainty, conscientiousness, metacognition and learning strategies), as was the developmental pattern of the PFTQ. In the cross-validation study, both the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated it was appropriate to consider a unidimensional structure. Likewise, the PFTQ exhibited good psychometric properties (α = .84; Ω = .83), and there was reasonable evidence of strict invariance by gender and across age groups. Moreover, the PFTQ was significantly and positively related to metacognition, learning strategies, mindfulness, conscientiousness, resilience and grit, whereas it was significantly and negatively related to intolerance of uncertainty, albeit to a lesser extent. Finally, a developmental progression of the PFTQ was observed during adulthood, with significant differences observed between the latent means of the three age groups, which was associated with moderate effect sizes between the emerging and the established or middle-age adult groups (d = 0.28 and d = 0.37, respectively). By contrast, a very small and practically negligible effect size was detected between the established and middle-aged adult groups (d = 0.09). Relativistic operations would appear to underlie psychosocial development in established adulthood, when they are most needed. Overall, the Spanish version of the PFTQ showed good psychometric properties and validity evidence of its utility to studying adult thinking.

Scientific literature indicates that theory of mind (ToM) is less strongly associated with peer acceptance (PA) in the case of boys and the case of negative nominations. This study hypothesizes that these two effects of ToM on PA could be an epiphenomenon of counterfactual reasoning (CFR). Fifty-three 3-5-year-olds participated in this study. The results confirmed the hypothesis. When the total sample nominated, ToM made a significant contribution to explaining positive nominations, but not negative nominations, beyond age, language, gender and CFR. When separately considering the gender of the nominators, ToM accounted for a significant variance in positive nominations only when girls, but not boys, nominated. Furthermore, CFR was a significant predictor of social rejection beyond age, language and gender when the total sample nominated, as well as when each gender nominated separately. This study could contribute to a better understanding of the socio-cognitive genesis of PA. Practical implications are discussed.

Introduction: Self-compassion (SC), disposition to treat oneself in a kind way, affects the teaching-learning processes in higher education. This study analyzes the relationship between SC and academic achievement in students of the Degree in Psychology. Method: A pretest-posttest study with both, experimental and control groups, was designed. The first one received a SC training program throughout the academic course. Two hypotheses were tested: 1st, the program would improve SC levels facing difficulties: a) in the study (SC-SD) and b) in the application of the curricular contents to the daily life (SC-ACDL); 2nd, a positive and significant relation between both constructs and academic achievement. Two scales were created in order to evaluate the specific commented facets of SC. Results: The intervention program yielded a significant improvement in SC-SD and SC- ACDL. The experimental group understood the concept and usefulness of the SC, so that positive and significant correlations between the intra-individual change in SC-ACDL and academic achievement were obtained. In the control group, on the contrary, several intra-individual improvement measures in SC reliably correlated to academic achievement, but in this case with negative sign. Discussion: Globally considered, the results lend significant support to the hypotheses proposed. Implications of the program developed are discussed and the need of considering SC as a potential key of educational innovation to take into account in the university in the context of the competences in the European Higher Education Area is suggested.

The relation between the prediction and explanation of the false belief task (FBT) with counterfactual reasoning (CFR) was explored. Fifty eight 3-5 year-olds received a prediction or an explanation FBT, a belief attribution task and some counterfactual questions of increasing difficulty. Linguistic comprehension was also controlled. CFR highly predicted FBT in the explanation version but not in the prediction one. Additionally, results in the explanation version indicate that CFR underlies achievements prior to the understanding of the representational mind and stimulates the explicitness of the mental domain. This study identifies the conditions under which CFR becomes a fundamental cognitive tool for social cognition. The results obtained contribute to the dialog between the two major theoretical approaches: theory-theory and simulation theory.