Konstantinos Kafetsios

Attachment, social support and well-being in young and older adults

The present study examined the link between attachment, social support and well-being in young and older adults. The results from multi-group path analyses showed significant between-group differences in the links between attachment, perceived support and well-being. Anxious attachment and well-being were inversely associated and this was stronger for the younger group than it was for the older group. Avoidant attachment was negatively related to perceived support satisfaction in the older age group only, and perceived support mediated the effects of avoidant attachment on mental health and loneliness in the older group. Generally, perceived satisfaction with support was more strongly related with well-being in older adults. The results point to differential links of insecure attachment styles with perceived support in different life-stages and to related cognitive, emotional and social processes.

Factor Structure, Validity and Reliability of the Cambridge Worry Scale in a Pregnant Population

This article presents the Cambridge Worry Scale (CWS), a content-based measure for assessing worries, and discusses its psychometric properties based on a longitudinal study of 1207 pregnant women. Principal components analysis revealed a four-factor structure of women’s concerns during pregnancy: socio-medical, own health, socio-economic and relational. The measure demonstrated good reliability and validity. Total CWS scores were strongly associated with state and trait anxiety (convergent validity) but also had significant and unique predictive value for mood outcomes (discriminant validity). The CWS discriminated better between women with different reproductive histories than measures of state and trait anxiety. We conclude that the CWS is a reliable and valid tool for assessing the extent and content of worries in specific situations.

Exposure to Political Violence and Psychological Well-being in Bosnian Adolescents: A Mixed Method Approach

Previous research on political violence has shown an inverse relationship between overall exposure and psychological well-being. The aim of this study was to examine this relationship in more detail by exploring the impact of specific types of war-related events upon psychological well-being, as well as the role of social and political context in moderating these outcomes. The psychological well-being of 337 Bosnian adolescents living in two towns on opposite sides of the war was assessed using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 (HSCL-25) and the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ). Based on the combined symptom scores, and in-depth interviews regarding life history, war experiences, and subjective experience of psychological well-being a gender-matched sub-sample of 40 adolescents was selected and completed a 45-item trauma event scale. Results from the quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that the relationship between exposure, displacement and well-being varied significantly depending on the community in which the adolescents lived. Specific meanings given to different types of war events were important in moderating their effect. Living in a neglected, isolated and depressed community, worry about school performance, missing friends and family breakdown could have as significant an effect on well-being as exposure to war-related events. The findings demonstrate the need to take social context and meaning of events into account when examining the impact of war exposure on psychological well-being.

Reliability and Validity of the Greek Version of the Revised Experiences in Close Relationships Measure of Adult Attachment

The present article examined the psychometric properties (factor structure, internal and test-retest reliability, convergent and criterion validity) of the Greek version of the Revised Experiences in Close Relationships (G-ECR-R) self-report inventory. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the G-ECR-R is characterized by a clear two-factor structure consistent with adult attachment research and theory developed mainly in English-speaking countries. The results showed that the scale has adequate classical psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The G-ECR-R anxiety and avoidance dimensions showed convergent validity with the widely used Relationship Questionnaire (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) as well as with theoretically relevant variables such as self-esteem and trait anxiety. The results also demonstrated criterion validity on measures of relationship satisfaction. The importance of using culturally validated dimensional measures of ...

Emotions in Everyday Social Encounters Correspondence Between Culture and Self-Construal

Relationships between self-construal and emotion experiences in social interactions were examined in two countries. Participants in Greece (a more collectivist culture) and the United Kingdom (a more individualist culture) described the social interactions they had each day for 7 days using a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record. For UK participants, independent self-construal was positively related to positive affect, whereas for Greek participants, independent self-construal was negatively related to positive affect. There were few relationships between interdependent self-construal and affect in either study. The results point to the interplay of cultural values and individual differences in self-construal and their relationships to peoples affective experiences.

A comparative evaluation of the effects of trait Emotional Intelligence and emotion regulation on affect at work and job satisfaction

The study examined the associations of trait Emotional Intelligence (EI) and emotional regulation with affect and satisfaction at work. Participants were 475 educators who completed the Bar-On EQ-i, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and measures of affect at work and job satisfaction. Analyses were conducted separately in two age-groups. Among the EI branches only general mood had consistent predictive value for affect at work. Emotion regulation had unique predictive power for affect and job satisfaction for the younger age group. There was minimal evidence for emotion regulation being a mediator between EI and affect at work in either age group. These findings suggest that trait EI and emotion regulation may refer to distinct processes and have implications for evaluating the ever increasing research on EI in organisations.

Emotional Intelligence Abilities and Traits in Different Career Paths.

Two studies tested hypotheses about differences in emotional intelligence (EI) abilities and traits between followers of different career paths. Compared to their social science peers, science students had higher scores in adaptability and general mood traits measured with the Emotion Quotient Inventory, but lower scores in strategic EI abilities using the emotional intelligence test MSCEIT, as well as neuroticism, and openness. Neuroticism mediated relationships between career path and EI traits but not EI strategic abilities. In the second study participants in science and business career paths had higher scores in positive affect and in several work-related EI traits and lower scores in work-related EI abilities than their science counterparts. The results raise questions about the mechanisms that may sustain the observed differences in self-perceptions and about the validity of some EI measures. They also have implications for EI skills assessment and training in Higher Education graduates and career starters.

Emotional aware clustering on micro-blogging sources

Microblogging services have nowadays become a very popular communication tool among Internet users. Since millions of users share opinions on different aspects of life everyday, microblogging websites are considered as a credible source for exploring both factual and subjective information. This fact has inspired research in the area of automatic sentiment analysis. In this paper we propose an emotional aware clustering approach which performs sentiment analysis of users tweets on the basis of an emotional dictionary and groups tweets according to the degree they express a specific set of emotions. Experimental evaluations on datasets derived from Twitter prove the efficiency of the proposed approach.

Emotion and support perceptions in everyday social interaction: Testing the “less is more” hypothesis in two cultures:

The study examined emotional experience and perceived social support during naturally occurring social interactions in Greece and Britain. Multilevel analyses found that people in Greece (a more interdependent culture) perceived less support and experienced less positive and more negative affect in social interactions than those in the UK (a more independent culture). Positive relationships between positive affect and perceptions of support were stronger in Greece than in the UK. Global perceptions of social support did not differ between the two samples, and global perceptions were weakly related to perceived support in interaction. The results support the “less is more” hypothesis (Oishi, S., Diener, E., Choi, D. W., Kim-Prieto, C., & Choi, I. (2007). The dynamics of daily events and well-being across cultures: When less is more. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 685-698) concerning cultural differences in social support and distal and proximal antecedents of interaction-level relational processes.

Health-related Information Processing and Recent Health Problems: Evidence from a Modified Stroop Task

Our purpose was to assess the relationship between health status and health-related information processing. We expected that persons who report a recent health problem would show greater bias towards relevant stimuli. Participants comprised two groups: the experimental with 25 students who recently had to interrupt usual activities because of their health, and a comparison group of 25 healthy students matched for demographics, health habits and current health. Using an emotional Stroop task, the experimental group demonstrated enhanced interference effects for illness and health-related versus general threat and neutral words. Satisfaction with life impacted the processing of health and illness-related stimuli.