| 1. |
- Archer, Trevor, 1949, et al.
(författare)
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The Enigmatic Influence of Video-Internet Gaming: Liabilities and Assets over the Lifespan
- 2016
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Ingår i: Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Journal. ; 1:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Against an ever-increasing background of sedentary lifestyles and the over-indulgence of unsuitable food/drink intake, the advent of video/internet games may be viewed as commodity defined by opposing assets and liabilities. The latter emanate from the aggressiveness, violence, desensitization, criminality and loss of impulse control associated with violent action video games and may eventually culminate in the internet gaming disorder condition whereas the former are linked to educational opportunities and interventions to promote physical activity in the sedentary, improved visuomotor and cognitive skills in both healthy volunteers, young and aged, and those individuals diagnosed with neurologic disorders. Several brain regions have been found to be affected by video game-play in apparently beneficial and non-beneficial directions, sometimes hemisphere-specific, including regions of the frontal and parietal lobes, hippocampus, thalamus and hypothalamic-pituitary- adrenal axis, with accompanying alterations in functional connectivity. Nevertheless, despite the plethora of available for and against the utility of video/internet games across the lifespan, the net worth of the commodity seems yet to be assessed, and more essentially, properly understood.
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| 2. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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A will (Persistence) and a proper way (Self-Directedness) might lead to happiness
- 2012
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Ingår i: 6th European Conference on Positive Psychology.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Persistence is a temperament dimension that explains maintenance of behavior. Adolescents high in Persistence are expected to be hard-working, and stable despite frustration and fatigue. They are also expected to increase their efforts in response to anticipated reward. In other words, frustration and fatigue may be perceived as a personal challenge; they do not give up easily and are probably willing to make major sacrifices to be a success (e.g., good grades). Persistent pursuit of need-satisfying goals is suggested to lead to increased Subjective Well-Being (SWB; Sheldon et al., 2010). Nevertheless, adolescents who have difficulties disengaging from unattainable goals, display high levels of proteins that predict long-term risk for diabetes, heart disease, and other medical conditions. Perseveration might naturally lead to high levels of positive experience when goals are achieved. Nevertheless, high persistence may be an adaptive behaviour only when rewards are intermittent but the contingencies remain stable. It is important to point out that daily problems adolescents encounter seem to be an equally stressful experience as major life events. Hence, at least among adolescents, perseveration may become maladaptive and probably leads to low SWB. In this context, another important personality dimension in adolescence might be Self-Directedness. Adolescents that are self-directed develop good habits and automatically behave in accord with their long-term values and goals, probably as a consequence of self-discipline. For instance, Duckworth and Seligman (2005) showed that, among adolescents, self-discipline outdoes IQ when predicting academic performance. Aims: The present study aims to investigate the relationship between Persistence, Self-Directedness, and SWB. Method: In two studies 468 high school pupils reported Persistence, Self-Directedness, Positive and Negative Affect. Life Satisfaction was also measured in Study 2. The personality dimensions were measured by the Temperament and Character Inventory. The SWB constructs were measured using the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. We used mediation analysis procedures recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986) to investigate if Self-Directedness accounts for a significant amount of the shared variance between Persistence and SWB measures. Results: Self-Directedness emerged as being related to all measures of SWB used in the present set of studies. In both studies, mediation analysis show that Self-Directedness accounts for a significant amount of the shared variance between Persistence and Positive Affect. Specifically, the indirect and total effects of Self-Directedness in our model suggest a partial mediation of 24% in Study 1 and a partial mediation of 42% in Study 2. However, Self-Directedness did not mediate the relationship between Persistence and Negative Affect or Persistence and Life Satisfaction. Conclusions: Paraphrasing the most asserted conclusion from Sheldon and colleagues (2010) at least among adolescents Persistence (will) and Self-Directedness (proper way) might lead to happiness. We suggest that, although the meditational effect of Self-Directedness was only true for the relationship between Persistence and positive emotions, this specific finding is important. If the goal is to teach adolescents to direct attention and effort toward a challenging goal, this might be facilitated through the promotion of Self-Directedness.
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| 3. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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Exercise Frequency, High Activation Positive Affect, and Psychological Well-Being: Beyond Age, Gender, and Occupation
- 2012
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Ingår i: Psychology. - : Scientific Research Publishing, Inc.. - 2152-7180 .- 2152-7199. ; 3:4, s. 328-336
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Regular physical exercise contributes to marked reductions in psychosocial stress, the enhancing of posi- tive affect and well-being. However, affect can be measured as high (e.g., engaged) or low (e.g., content) activation affect. To ascertain further these interactions, we examined the relationship between exercise frequency (i.e., how often an individual engages in physical activities) and affect and Psychological Well-Being (PWB). We investigate this relationship in the context of individuals’ gender, age, psycho- somatic symptoms (i.e., headaches, pain in shoulders, neck or other parts of the body), sleeping problems, smoking habits, and Body Mass Index (BMI). Moreover, we also investigate if the relationship between exercise frequency and affect differs depending on the dimension of affect (low or high activation). In Study 1 (N = 635), 2 (N = 311), and 3 (N = 135) high activation positive affect (PA) predicted frequently exercising, while high activation negative affect (NA) predicted being less physically active. Moreover, high activation PA was negatively related to smoking habits and to how often the participant had sleeping problems. Finally, the relationship between frequently exercising and high activation affect was still pre- sent when controlling for age, occupation and gender. Moreover, in Study 2, high activation PA remained strongly related to exercise frequency even when we controlled for BMI. In Study 3, frequent physical ac- tivity was also related to PWB. In Study 4, participants (N = 150) self-reported low activation affect. All findings in regard to exercise frequency were replicated, with the exception of the relationship to affect. Psychological resources (i.e., PWB), the frequent experience of PA, together with the infrequent experi- ence of NA may provide for the facilitation of an exercise regime and healthy behavior. Thus, regular physical exercise remains as a health-ensuring necessity over age, gender, and occupation. Nevertheless, high activation positive affect should be in focus.
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| 4. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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Exercise Frequency Predicts Performance among White-Collar Workers
- 2012
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Ingår i: 24rd Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Most call centers define performance as the percentage of the scheduled “time on the phone”, this specific type of work design might imply unfavourable working conditions for employees that might affect learning how to cope with the rapid external and internal changes in working life. For example, minimizing opportunities for employees to organize their own work and the opportunities given for making decisions and initiating action (i.e., Autonomy). Moreover, physical activity has been found related to performance on cognitive complex tasks, perhaps because frequent exercise reduces stress symptoms and improves mental states, and in the long term, enable arousal levels to be more appropriate adjusted for cognitive work and by increased stress resistance. These suggestions are investigated in the present study among white-collar workers at a call center. The aim was to investigate if exercise frequency and the perceived work climate predicted workers’ performance on the telephone. At the beginning of the Study, workers (N = 110) self-reported how often they engaged in physical activity and their perception of seven work climate variables: management, time to do the job, autonomy and responsibility, team style, opportunities to develop, guidelines to do the work, contentedness with the workplace (Learning Climate Questionnaire by Bartram el al., 1993). Each worker’s performance (average percent of time on the phone) was then assessed by the same system handling the calls each day over a five month period. To understand which factors contributed to performance over the five months period, we conducted structural equation-modeling analysis. The results showed that low contentedness and low autonomy predicted high performance at work. In other words, when workers perceived low control over how they organize their work and general low feelings of satisfaction with the workplace climate (i.e., complaints, moans, and negative attitudes from colleagues) they spent more time answering calls from customers. However, frequent exercise predicted high performance among workers. In conclusion, call centers might need to emphasize the connection between performance and important measures of work climate by encouraging workers to take responsibility for learning and being given the freedom to experiment and take risks (i.e., autonomy). It is plausible to suggest that such work climate might lead to lower performance, at least in a call center environment. Nonetheless, low Contentedness for example, might arise when colleagues do not get on well, when they tend to blame each other for the work they do and people are resistant to trying new ways of doing things. Such workplace climate might lead to low performance in the long run. More important, encouraging and creating opportunities to frequent physical activity might compensate the negative effects of high autonomy, for example, by boosting up workers’ performance.
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| 5. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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Temporal Distance and Life Satisfaction in Different Cultures: El Salvador, Spain, Iran, and Sweden
- 2012
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Ingår i: 1st International Conference on Time Perspective.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- According to Construal Level Theory (CLT), one of the most prominent theories in social psychology, temporal distance influences events in the near-future to be construed as concrete, complex and contextualized, while distant-future events are construed as abstract, simple, and de-contextualized. Distant-future events receive a higher value compared to near-future events. However, LS is a compelling judgment based on previous life events and personality. We investigated the effect of temporal distance in the context of judgements of Life Satisfaction (LS) across four cultures: El Salvador, Spain, Iran, and Sweden. Participants (N = 533) were randomly assigned to three conditions: present, one week, and ten years. Present-LS was self-reported using the original Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). For the other two conditions, the SWLS was slightly manipulated by changing the temporal perspective. A temporal distance (present vs. near vs. distant) x gender x country (El Salvador vs. Spain vs. Iran vs. Sweden) between-subjects ANOVA showed that LS was evaluated higher in the present than in the near- and distant-future. In contrast to hypothetical questions that may or may not involve episodic memory, judgments that are based on memory of past events seem to not be influenced by the level of construal.
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| 6. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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The Happy Personality: A Tale of Two Philosophies
- 2013
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Ingår i: Psychology of Personality. E. F. Morris & M-A. Jackson (Eds.). - New York : Nova Science Publishers. - 9781622572885 ; , s. 41-59
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research on well-being has for the last two decades focused on the happy people. Some of the questions that positive psychologists try to answer are: What makes people happy and fully functional? Who are the happy people? Hedonism and Eudaimonism are the two perspectives that are most salient in the field of positive psychology. While Hedonism defines well-being as the experience of pleasure versus displeasure, Eudaimonism points out wellbeing as full engagement and optimal performance in existential challenges of life. This chapter reviews both perspectives underlying theories and research with respect to, adaptation, cultural worldview, and a person’s values and goals. We also highlight some limitations of current research and present an innovative new approach, although controversial, to the happy personality. This approach is based on emotional differences and is called The Affective Temperaments Model.
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| 7. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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The Happy Worker: Exercise and Thoughts about Performance leading to Positive Emotions
- 2012
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Ingår i: 6th European Conference on Positive Psychology, Moscow, Russia, June 26-28, 2012.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Most call centers define performance as the percentage of the scheduled “time on the phone”, this specific type of work design might imply unfavourable working conditions for employees that might affect learning how to cope with the rapid external and internal changes in working life. For this reason, the call center environment makes for a remarkable field in order to test if happier people are more productive. Although positive emotions foster productivity under many conditions (Fredrickson, 2001), this effect is probably not ever-present. Although, pleasant emotions might bias cognition and behavior in some ways, the relationship can be the other way around. Moreover, physical activity has been found related to performance on cognitive complex tasks, perhaps because frequent exercise reduces stress symptoms and improves mental states, and in the long term, enable arousal levels to be more appropriate adjusted for cognitive work and by increased stress resistance. These suggestions are investigated in two studies among workers at a call center. Aims: Study 1 aimed to investigate if happiness (i.e., Subjective Well-Being; SWB), Psychological Well-Being (PWB), and exercise frequency predicted workers’ performance. Study 2 aimed to test if priming thoughts of own performance lead to positive emotions. Method: In Study 1, workers (N = 107) self-reported how often they engaged in physical activity, SWB (Life Satisfaction, Positive and Negative Affect), and Psychological Well-Being. Each worker’s performance (average percent of time on the phone) was then assessed by the same system handling the calls each day over a five month period. To understand which factors contributed to performance over the five months period, we conducted structural equation-modeling analysis. In Study 2, workers (N = 104) were randomly assigned to two different conditions. In the “performance” condition participants were asked to report their own performance for the last five months, measured by the same system handling the calls, and then to report how often they had experienced different positive and negative emotions at work. In the “control” condition, participants were first asked for emotions at work and then for their own performance for the last five months. We conducted a condition (performance vs. control) x gender between-subjects ANOVA in order to test differences in positive and negative emotions at work. Results: In Study 1, high exercise frequency and high PWB predicted performance. Moreover, physical activity was also related to PWB. In Study 2, workers in the “performance” condition reported experiencing more positive emotions at work than workers in the “control” condition. Moreover, no differences in negative emotions were found between conditions. Conclusions: At least in regard to performance at call centers, the happy worker seems not to be the most productive worker. Instead, frequent exercise and characteristics such as environmental control and self-acceptance (i.e., PWB) seem to play an important role when organizations measure productivity of this type. More important, thinking about their own performance seems to boost positive emotions at call centers. In other words, the productive worker seems to be the happy worker.
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| 8. |
- Garcia, Danilo, 1973, et al.
(författare)
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Waiting in Vain: Managing Time and Customer Satisfaction at Call Centers
- 2012
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Ingår i: Psychology. - : Scientific Research Publishing, Inc.. - 2152-7180 .- 2152-7199. ; 3:2, s. 213-216
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim was to investigate customers’ satisfaction with telephone waiting time using data collected among 3013 customers who were asked for their waiting time satisfaction, information satisfaction, and service satisfaction. The actual queue time was also measured and played a significant but small role on time satisfaction. In order to keep customers satisfied with waiting time, a successful model is an infor- mative satisfactory answer and top of the line service, even when queue times are large. Nevertheless, the model was less useful to predict non satisfied customers. This specific information needs to be integrated when organizations assess customers’ time satisfaction.
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| 9. |
- Jimmefors, Alexander, et al.
(författare)
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Self-regulation Dimensions and Psychological Well-Being as a Function of Affective Profiles
- 2015
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Ingår i: 27th Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention. New York, New York, USA.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We studied differences in self-regulatory mode between individuals and its relation to psychological well-being. The backdrop of the study was the affective profiles model. The influence of psychological well-being on self- regulatory dimensions was moderated by the individual’s affective profile.
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| 10. |
- Moradi, Saleh, 1985, et al.
(författare)
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Exercise, character strenghts, well-being, and learning climate in the prediction of performance over a 6-month period at a call center
- 2014
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 5:497
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Performance monitoring might have an adverse influence on call center agents well-being. We investigate how performance, over a 6-month period, is related to agents perceptions of their learning climate, characterstrengths, well-being(subjectiveandpsychological), and physical activity. Method: Agents (N = 135) self-reported perception of the learning climate (Learning Climate Questionnaire), character strengths (Values In Action Inventory Short Version), well-being (Positive Affect, Negative Affect Schedule, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scales Short Version), and how often/intensively they engaged in physical activity. Performance," timeonthephone," was monitored for 6 consecutive months by the same system handling the calls. Results: Performance was positively related to having opportunities to develop, the character strengths clusters of Wisdom and Knowledge (e.g., curiosity for learning, perspective) and Temperance (e.g., having self-control, being prudent, humble, andmodest), and exercise frequency. Performance was negatively related to the sense of autonomy and responsibility, contentedness, the character strengths clusters of Humanity and Love (e. g., helping others, cooperation) and Justice (e g., affiliation, fairness, leadership), positive affect, life satisfaction and exercise intensity. Conclusion: Call centers may need to create opportunities to develop to increase agents performance and focus on individual differences in the recruitment and selection of agents to prevent future shortcomings or worker dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, performance measurement in call centers may need to include other aspects that are more attuned with different character strengths. After all, allowing individuals to put their strengths at work should empower the individual and at the end the organization itself. Finally, physical activity enhancement programes might considered positive work outcomes.
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