Lysann Zander

Antecedents, Consequences, and Mechanisms: On the Longitudinal Interplay Between Academic Self-Enhancement and Psychological Adjustment.

We investigated the reciprocal associations between academic self-enhancement and key indicators of intra- and interpersonal adjustment as well as the role of self-esteem as a mediator. This longitudinal study involved three assessments in a sample of 709 German children and adolescents (Mage  = 11.83; 54% female) over the course of one academic year. We assessed self-reported subjective well-being as an indicator of intrapersonal adjustment and peer-reported popularity as an indicator of interpersonal adjustment. We computed cross-lagged and longitudinal mediational analyses. Academic self-enhancement prospectively predicted high subsequent well-being and popularity. Vice versa, well-being and popularity prospectively predicted high subsequent levels of self-enhancement. High self-esteem mediated the longitudinal associations between self-enhancement and well-being in both directions, but not the links between self-enhancement and popularity. Self-enhancement and adjustment are bidirectionally linked: Self-enhancement entails intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits; at the same time, adjustment in both domains fosters self-enhancement. In terms of intrapersonal, but not interpersonal adjustment, self-esteem seems to serve as a linchpin, accounting for all longitudinal associations. Furthermore, we present evidence indicating that self-enhancement indicators that are based on difference scores (instead of residuals) are problematic and might have led to negatively biased results in the literature.

Better than me?! How adolescents with and without migration background perceive each others’ performance in German classrooms

A stress management program using cardiac coherence was implemented after an organizational downsizing. The study was conducted in nine voluntary workers in order to evaluate the efficiency of the program. A baseline evaluation was conducted on psychological variables (anxiety, perceived-stress, wellbeing and sleep), endocrine assessments (urinary cortisol excretion, alpha-amylase and salivary concentrations) and physiological recordings (sleep and heart rate variability). The low number of participants was due to the intrusive approach in collecting physiological and endocrine variables. The program consisted of ten sessions of cardiac coherence training during a 3-month follow-up period. At the end of the training sequence, subjects were once again exposed to the same evaluation battery. A decrease in perceived stress and a subsequent increase in well-being were observed. Sleep quality improved as suggested by the results of the subjective and objective measurements. For the entirety of the results, improvements were higher in subjects with high vs. low trait-anxiety scoring. The pattern of results for subjects prone to a high level of trait-anxiety suggested that stress and sleep are related to each other in a bidirectional way: increased anxiety is associated to poor sleep and stress reduction improves both anxiety and sleep. On the basis of these results, we suggest that trait-anxiety can be used as an indicator of which employees should be given priority for stress management intervention. We will also highlight the interest of operationally physiological recordings, used outside the laboratory, for measuring objective improvements due to this stress management intervention, as quality of sleep.

Geschlechtergerechtigkeit im Klassenzimmer

Geschlechtsabhangige Benachteiligungen in der Schule – beispielsweise sichtbar in fachspezifisch unterschiedlichen Defiziten von Madchen und Jungen – werfen die Frage auf, wie Schule gestaltet werden kann, damit sie einen moglichst geschlechtergerechten Lernort darstellt. Wir beleuchten drei Kontextmerkmale des Klassenzimmers hinsichtlich ihres potentiellen Beitrags zu Geschlechtergerechtigkeit im Klassenzimmer: