Scandinavian Journal of Psychology

Sexual violence among adolescents represents a significant problem in society. In this study, we aimed to examine risk factors for sexual violence perpetration in adolescent men and victimization in adolescent women among a community sample of Norwegian high school students. The participants (560 men and 751 women, aged between 16 and 21 years) responded to online questionnaires covering physical and non-physical forms of sexual harassment and possible risk factors identified in the literature. Last year's prevalence rate of physical sexual perpetration reported by adolescent men was 7%...

The COVID-19 pandemic had negative effects on many people's well-being and quality of life. In the present work, we focused on Norwegian mothers with elementary school children, and investigated whether their well-being, stress, and worries (and the relationships between them) changed across the early months of the pandemic. We collected data at two time points in 2020. In June 2020, 231 mothers (mean age = 40.09, SD = 6.22) responded to an online questionnaire in which they were asked to indicate their well-being, stress, and worries before the pandemic, during the lockdown (i...

The present study investigates the psychometric properties and cut-off scores of a Swedish version of the Negative Acts Questionnaire, the most frequently used instrument to measure exposure to workplace bullying. Based on a probability sample of the Swedish workforce (n = 1853), we investigate the validity of both the full version (NAQ-R) and the short version (SNAQ). We suggest optimal cut-offs for the NAQ-R and SNAQ, and for the subscales measuring work- and person-related bullying. Based on the cut-off scores we provide estimates of prevalence in a Swedish context...

BACKGROUND: Psychological research about meaningfulness is concerned with a subjective sense of meaning of one's own life, that is, meaning in life. Empirical research in this field is attracting interest, as meaning in life has wide-ranging positive implications for mental health and well-being. AIM: The aim of this article is to test the validity of the Finnish translation of the Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life (SoMe) questionnaire. In the article, meaningfulness and crisis of meaning are correlated with sources of meaning, and results are compared with other validation studies in Norway, Denmark, and Brazil as well as with the original German questionnaire...

Parental reflective functioning (PRF) is considered a key parental competence. Since most research on PRF has focused on infancy or the first years of life, there is a gap in our understanding of PRF among parents of older children. Therefore, we investigated PRF in mothers and fathers with preschool-aged children, examining associations between PRF, parent's romantic attachment, and observed parenting behavior. The sample comprised 50 mothers, 40 fathers, and their 5-year-old children. PRF was assessed using the parental reflective functioning questionnaire (PRFQ), parental romantic attachment was assessed using the experiences in close relationships scale-revised (ECR-R), and parenting behavior was assessed during a parent-child free-play interaction with the coding interactive behavior (CIB) coding system...

Resilience is a concept of growing interest because it can systematically inform prevention measures and psychosocial interventions for children and adolescents. The aim of this study was to explore resilience factors among young people who are victims of bullying and harassment (age 9 to 16 years old). In 2021 the burden of the pandemic lockdown became an additional adversity. The study used a repeated cross-sectional design. Two datasets with a total of 2,211 participants from 2017 (N = 972) and 2021 (N = 1,239) were included...

INTRODUCTION: Currently narcissism is considered one of the most widespread phenomenon. As a consequence, its different types (grandiose and vulnerable narcissism) have been investigated from several different perspectives. The present research attempts to explore the differences between the two types of narcissism and their links with different cognitive components that are connected to these personality traits. The primary aim of our study is to investigate the possible connections among maladaptive schemas (entitlement, vulnerability, emotional deprivation) and cognitive evaluation systems (self-esteem, systemizing-empathizing) and narcissism...

INTRODUCTION: Professional burnout in physicians is perceived as an inevitable occupational hazard inhibiting patient-focused care, the preferred approach of care, which enhances satisfaction of physicians with their work and improves clinical outcomes. Burnout jeopardizes the physical, mental, and emotional health of physicians, inhibiting high-quality care. Most individual-driven interventions and job-level interventions to reduce burnout proved inefficient or reduced burnout for only a short term...

OBJECTIVE: Onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID) pandemic has increased students' perceived burdens. The current study aimed to examine COVID-related changes and to identify potential factors that contribute to students' stress. METHOD: Adopting a cross-sectional cohort-study design, we examined perceived stress and depressive and anxiety symptoms with a specific focus on the role of study-related variables such as perceived study-related demands, study-related resources, academic procrastination, and stress-enhancing beliefs...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to investigate the longitudinal relationships between nurses' organizational climate of perceived organizational support (POS-climate) and their psychosocial working conditions and psychological contracts. METHODS: A two-wave longitudinal cohort questionnaire study was carried out among registered nurses employed within six hospitals in two regions in Sweden (n = 711). Two cross-lagged panel models were tested after ensuring scalar factorial invariance of the measurement models...

Two large studies (combined n = 5,878) set out to construct and validate a scale for assessing critical social justice attitudes. Studies assessed the reliability, factor structure, model fit, and both convergent and divergent validity of the scale. Studies also examined the prevalence of critical social justice attitudes in different populations and the scale's correlations with other variables of interest, including well-being variables: anxiety, depression, and happiness. Participants for Study 1 (n = 848) were university faculty and students, as well as non-academic adults, from Finland...

INTRODUCTION: The inclusion of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) in the fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) by the American Psychiatric Association and Gaming Disorder in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) by the World Health Organization requires consistent psychological measures for reliable estimates. The current study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of the Gaming Disorder Test (GDT), the Ten-Item Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT-10), and the Five-Item Gaming Disorder Test (GDT-5) and to compare the WHO and the APA frameworks of gaming disorder symptoms in terms of psychopathological symptoms, life satisfaction, and personality traits...

Quality of life may be understood as a multidimensional evaluation of life circumstances in relation to values, expectations, and perceived well-being. Quality of life is thus dependent on the subjective perception of the current life situation, not only objective circumstances. According to metacognitive theory, metacognition guides the appraisal of inner experiences (i.e., thoughts and feelings) and influences how one relates to external stressors. Hence, dysfunctional metacognitive beliefs and the cognitive attentional syndrome (CAS), which includes perseverative thinking, threat monitoring and ineffective coping strategies, may negatively influence subjective quality of life...

Measurement of human flourishing represents a salutogenic approach to epidemiological and behavioral research emphasizing factors contributing to "good lives" rather than pathology. The objective of this study was to translate and psychometrically test the 10-item Flourish Index (FI) and 12-item Secure Flourish Index (SFI) in a convenience sample of Danish adults. A total of 325 participants completed a cross-sectional survey, with 148 of those participants completing the survey a second time (retest). Confirmatory factor analysis in a structural equation modelling framework was used to establish structural validity by comparing four different pre-specified models of the indexes...

The need for more people to register as organ donors is a pressing concern. This preregistered experiment examined whether portraying a patient in need of an organ transplant as leading a healthy lifestyle (an "innocent victim") can serve to increase people's intentions to register as post-mortem organ donors. Participants not previously registered as organ donors (N = 348) were randomly assigned to an innocent identified victim, non-innocent identified victim, or statistical victims condition...

The Alabama parenting questionnaire (APQ) is a commonly used instrument for assessing parenting practices and evaluating treatment outcomes of parent-training interventions targeting child conduct problems. In the present study we translated and developed a Swedish version of the APQ parent version and tested it on a community sample of 799 parents of children between 6 and 15 years with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Data were collected through an online survey distributed through school newsletters and social media...

Resilience, the ability to bounce back from difficult events, is critical for an individual to negotiate stressors and adversity. Despite being widely studied, little is known about the processes involved in the development of resilience. The goal of the studies are to investigate the relationship between motivation orientation, emotional intelligence, cognitive appraisals, and psychological resilience. Two studies, using self-report questionnaires were conducted with employed young adults also enrolled in post-secondary studies (pre- and during the pandemic) to test the tenability of our proposed models...

Previous research shows that being in a situation of economic scarcity promotes a more concrete mindset that motivates behavioral decisions based on action difficulty and their short-term outcomes, which frequently entails negative consequences. However, a concrete mindset can be counteracted by inducing an abstract mindset to help people focus on final broad goals. We explored how focusing on transcendent motives (vs. self-oriented) promotes a more abstract mindset facilitating prosocial behavioral intentions...

The aim of this study is to gain insight into how and why certain personality traits are related to experiencing burnout complaints. Drawing on insights from a stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model of personality and affect and conservation of resources (COR) theory, we specifically focus on the role of five proactive behaviors to prevent burnout (PBPBs) at work. Two research questions are addressed: (1) How are the HEXACO personality traits related to burnout complaints, and (2) to what extent do the PBPBs aimed at increasing resources act as mediators between the engagement dimensions of personality and burnout complaints...

Dirzyte, A., Patapas, A. and Zidoniene, D. (2022), Employees' personality traits and needs' frustration predicts stress overload during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scand J Psychol, 63: 513-521. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12825. The above article published online on 1 May 2022 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the Editor, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, the authors, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. The retraction has been agreed following concerns raised by a third party regarding the peer review process...