Attitudes toward children: Distinguishing affection and stress.

Background: Adults' views and behaviors toward children can vary from being supportive to shockingly abusive, and there are significant unanswered questions about the psychological factors underpinning this variability.

Objective: The present research examined the content of adults' attitudes toward children to address these questions.

Method: Ten studies (N = 4702) identified the factor structure of adults' descriptions of babies, toddlers, and school-age children and examined how the resulting factors related to a range of external variables.

Specific Pandemic-Related Worries Predict Higher Attention-Related Errors and Negative Affect Independent of Trait Anxiety in UK-Based Students.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many individuals experiencing increased symptoms of anxiety. We predict that this increase may be underpinned by pandemic-related worry (PRW), characterised by repetitive negative thinking about pandemic-specific outcomes; and that this relationship is mediated through reduced attentional capacity required to regulate negative affect.

Methods: We developed a novel scale to measure the contents of PRW in an initial sample of 255 participants, and explored its relationship with cognitive functioning and negative affect in a sample of 382 UK-based university students, whilst controlling for recalled pre-pandemic trait anxiety.

The Progressive Values Scale: Assessing the Ideological Schism on the Left.

Progressivism has increasingly challenged traditional liberalism as the dominant influence within left-wing ideology. Across four studies, we developed a measure-the Progressive Values Scale (PVS)-that characterizes distinctly progressive values within the left-wing. In Study 1, left-wing participants evaluated divisive issues, with four scale factors emerging.

What do people find most meaningful? How representations of the self and the world provide meaning in life.

Objective: Recent theories propose that global meaning in life (MIL) is based on feelings of coherence, purpose, and existential mattering. MIL has also been linked to mental representations-for example, beliefs, values, attitudes, and identities-that serve as "meaning frameworks" for interpreting the world and oneself. Combining these proposals, we predicted that beliefs, values, attitudes, and identities would foster a sense of MIL to the extent that they provide feelings of coherence, purpose, and existential mattering.