Deleterious effects of Standardized Achievement Tests, such as those taken at Key Stage 2, on the emotional and physical wellbeing, educational experiences and outcomes of primary school pupils in England have recently been documented (e.g. Tymms & Merrell, 2007), yet there is a lack of empirical evidence supporting these claims. This paper reports on the outcomes of a mixed methods study, invo...

In light of its role in maintaining psychological equanimity, we proposed that nostalgia—a self-relevant, social, and predominantly positive emotion—regulates avoidance and approach motivation. We advanced a model in which (a) avoidance motivation triggers nostalgia and (b) nostalgia, in turn, increases approach motivation. As a result, nostalgia counteracts the negative impact of avoidance mot...

The Authentic/Hubristic (or, A/H) Model of Pride has been empirically supported by dozens of studies drawing on thousands of participants. The model involves four distinct components, most central of which is the finding that pride is not a unitary construct but rather is comprised of two distinct facets, referred to as authentic and hubristic pride. In the present article, we review the four c...

Effortful choice is costly, but so is accommodating to choices made by others. In five studies, participants who made a series of choices regarding consumer products, college courses, or course materials subsequently showed poorer self-regulation (measured in terms of task persistence, task performance, and pain tolerance), as compared to people who viewed or rated similar options without makin...

This paper examines the idea that web page design can change preferences by influencing attribute importance. An individual examining a web page can be primed by the background pictures or colors, which then affect attribute weights and ultimately product choice. A pilot study demonstrated that a web page background can manipulate salient features. Experiment 1 showed that these background stim...

Stress has widespread effects on cognitive processes such as memory and learning. Studies show that in response to stress, animals and humans often switch from hippocampal-based spatial learning strategies to striatal-based stimulus-response learning strategies. While there is evidence that performance on striatal-based tasks is not impaired by stress, and in fact, may be optimal under stress c...

What are the positive and negative work experiences reported by teachers, and how do these contribute to their quality of work life? This paper reports structural equation analyses conducted on questionnaire data obtained from 1,539 Victorian primary and secondary school teachers, as part of the evaluation of three organisational health programs. Drawing on Perceived Quality of Life research it...

Historically, nostalgia has been viewed as a disease of the brain or the mind. However, in recent years, nostalgia has received a conceptual rehabilitation due to a revival of scholarly interest accompanied by the use of contemporary empirical methods. Drawing upon this recent work, we propose that nostalgia is an important resource for psychological health and well-being. We begin by detailing...

Trained judges reliably apply a classification of “dismissing” to adults who appear to defensively distance themselves from the emotional content of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) by idealizing and/or downplaying the importance of their childhood relationships with parents. One way to confirm whether those who use such “deactivating” discourse strategies are actually avoiding discussion o...

Progress towards understanding human behavior has been hindered by discipline-bound theories, dividing our efforts. Fortunately, these separate endeavors are converging and can be effectively integrated. Focusing on the fundamental features of Picoeconomics, Expectancy, Cumulative Prospect Theory, and Need Theory, Temporal Motivational Theory (TMT) is constructed. TMT appears consistent with th...