Self-Validation Theory: Confidence can Increase but also Decrease Performance in Applied Settings.

This article presents (SVT) as a framework predicting when mental contents guide performance. First, we illustrate how confidence can validate people's thoughts (goals, beliefs, identity) increasing and decreasing performance, depending on what thoughts are validated. This first section reviews examples of validation processes in guiding intellectual performance in academic settings, sport performance in athletes, as well as performance on diverse social tasks.

Are Positive Interventions Always Beneficial?

Can people improve their lives by smiling more, trying to have a better posture, and by thinking about good memories? Can individuals become more successful by deliberatively engaging in positive actions and thoughts? Do people feel better by following recommendations from naïve psychology? In the present article we discuss these questions, noting that although some popular interventions thought to be universally beneficial (e.g., inductions of happiness, self-affirmation, empowerment, self-distancing) can sometimes yield positive outcomes, at other times the outcomes can also be negative.

Promoting healthy eating by enhancing the correspondence between attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Background: Healthy eating campaigns are not always successful in changing food-related attitudes. Even when interventions produce the desired outcomes in attitudes, it is often challenging to translate those psychological changes into subsequent behaviors. Previous research has shown that elaboration (amount of thinking) is a critical construct for understanding the ability of attitudes to guide behavior.

Trait aggressiveness predicting aggressive behavior: The moderating role of meta-cognitive certainty.

Research on aggression has benefitted from using individual-difference measures to predict aggressive behavior. Research on meta-cognition has recently identified that the predictive utility of individual-difference inventories can be improved by considering the certainty with which people hold their self-views. Merging these two frameworks, the present research examines whether assessing certainty in trait aggressiveness improves its ability to predict aggressive outcomes.

Post-traumatic cognitions and quality of life in terrorism victims: the role of well-being in indirect versus direct exposure.

Background: The effect of indirect (versus direct) exposure to a traumatic event on the quality of life of terrorist attack victims has received considerable attention in the literature. However, more research is required to examine whether the symptoms and underlying processes caused by both types of exposure are equivalent. Our main hypothesis is that well-being plays a different role depending on indirect vs.

Validity and Reliability of the Spanish Version of the Revised Self-Monitoring Scale.

Self-Monitoring (SM) is a concept that refers to individual differences in this orientation toward regulation of social behavior. The goal of the present research was to provide a Spanish adaptation of Snyder and Gangestad's (1986) Revised SM Scale. After conducting an initial pilot study, results showed that the Spanish version of the scale had good internal reliability and adequate factor structure.

The eudaimonic component of satisfaction with life and psychological well-being in Spanish cultures.

Background: In the study of well-being there are two partially overlapping traditions that have been developed in parallel. Subjective well-being (SWB) has been associated with the hedonistic approach of well-being, and psychological well-being (PWB) with the eudaimonistic one. However, satisfaction with life, the most common SWB indicator, is not strictly a hedonic concept and contains many eudaimonic components.

[Spanish adaptation of the Need for Closure Scale].

The Need for Cognitive Closure (NCC) refers to the motivation to seek and maintain a definitive answer to a given problem. This mental closure allows people to avoid confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty. The NCC plays a critical role in a variety of processes of diverse nature, including intra-personal (e.

[Need to evaluate: an assessment proposal in Spanish].

Everybody evaluates objects in terms of good and bad. Besides this general tendency, some individuals are more motivated than others to make evaluative judgments. Individual differences in this need to evaluate can be reliably assessed with the Need to Evaluate (NE) Scale development by Jarvis and Petty.