When a student paper states that performance anxiety can lead to sexual impudence, we might laugh. When a dissertation uses the expression 'It is argued' more times than we can count, we might cry. High-quality written communication is important at all levels of psychology education and in most fields of employment related to psychology. Accordingly, the APA's Task Force on Undergraduate Major Competencies (2002) named effective writing skills one of the top goals for undergraduate psychology education. Despite the importance of written communication, the quality of student writing in psychology courses, even at the graduate level, is often so low as to make academics despair. Although writing skills are not usually the focus of psychology courses, we believe that instructor efforts to improve student writing can be beneficial regardless of the course topic. We provide below a list of strategies we use to help our psychology students improve their writing skills. The strategies are based on psycho-educational principles such as instruction, prompting, modeling, and reinforcement. In addition to actually improving writing skills, these strategies aim to increase motivation for writing improvement. We see enhancing motivation as the key to helping students because students themselves can find ways to improve their writing if they try. Also, with high intrinsic motivation, students will continue to strive to improve their writing after they finish any particular course. We also help students learn specific writing rules. We believe that helping a student learn just one writing rule (e.g., noun-pronoun agreement in number) can lead to a lifetime of improved writing.

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to quantify the relationship between the Five-Factor Model of personality and alcohol involvement and to identify moderators of the relationship. The meta-analysis included 20 studies, 119 effect sizes, and 7,886 participants. Possible moderators examined included: five-factor rating type (self vs. other); study time-frame (cross sectional vs. longitudinal); sample type (treatment vs. non-treatment); type of alcohol involvement measure used; gender of the participants; and age of the participants. The meta-analysis showed alcohol involvement was associated with low conscientiousness, low agreeableness, and high neuroticism, a personality profile that: a) fits on the low end of a superordinate personality dimension that has been called self-control; and b) makes treatment difficult. Several significant moderators of effect size were found, including the following: studies of individuals in treatment for alcohol problems showed a more negative pattern of personality traits than did other studies; crosssectional studies, but not longitudinal studies, showed a significant effect for agreeableness, perhaps suggesting that low agreeableness may have a different causal link to alcohol involvement from the other factors; mixed-sex samples tended to have lower effect sizes than single-sex samples, suggesting that mixing sexes in data analysis may obscure effects.

As teachers, we want to motivate our students to learn during a unit and to continue learning about the topic after the unit ends. This article describes about a hundred methods we use to help motivate students to learn. The methods form 12 categories: (1) making content relevant to student values and goals, (2) helping students achieve their goals through learning, (3) providing potent models of learning, (4) prompting and persuading students to learn, (5) establishing a positive relationship with students. (6) rewarding student achievement and learning efforts, (7) not de-motivating students, (8) enhancing student learning self-efficacy, (9) using engaging teaching methods, (10) using an appealing teaching style, (11) giving motivational feedback, and (12) monitoring student motivation levels and adjusting motivation methods as needed. Teachers at any level of the educational system may be able to increase their motivational impact by using the methods that suit their personality, their topic, their students, and their setting.

This study explored the relationship between low emotional intelligence and substance-use problems in adults. One hundred and forty-one participants completed the Self-Administered Alcoholism Screening Test [1, 2], the Drug Abuse Screening Test [3], an emotional intelligence scale [4], and a measure of psychosocial coping [5]. Low emotional intelligence was a significant predictor of both alcohol-related problems and drug-related problems. Poorer coping predicted drug-related problems, but not alcohol-related problems. Coping was not found to be a significant mediator between emotional intelligence and substance-use problems. Possible implications for intervention and treatment efforts are discussed.

A meta-analysis of the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in treating chronic fatigue included 15 effect sizes for between-group outcome comparisons. Across analyses, which included a total of 1371 participants, there was a significant difference, d = 0.48, in post-treatment fatigue between participants receiving CBT and those in control conditions. Results indicate that CBT for chronic fatigue syndrome tends to be moderately efficacious. Dropout rates in CBT varied from 0–42%, with a mean of 16%. In the five studies that reported the number of CBT clients who were no longer in the clinical range with regard to fatigue at the latest follow-up, the percentage varied from 33% to 73% of those assigned to CBT, with a mean of 50%. Moderator results suggest directions for future investigations.

Building on research in the areas of emotional intelligence and self-efficacy, a measure of emotional self-efficacy was developed and validated. Two hundred and seven participants rated their self-efficacy for adaptive emotional functioning as operationalized by the facets of (Mayer and Salovey, 1997) and (Mayer et al., 2004) model of emotional intelligence and completed measures of constructs expected to be related to emotional self-efficacy. Items grouped into a one-component solution, and the internal consistency of the scale based on this solution was .96. Two week test–retest reliability was .85. High emotional self-efficacy was associated with greater dispositional emotional intelligence, greater performance emotional intelligence, higher positive mood and lower negative mood. Emotional self-efficacy showed evidence of incremental predictive validity in that it remained associated with positive and negative mood after dispositional emotional intelligence was controlled and with positive mood after performance emotional intelligence was controlled.

The links between emotional self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, positive and negative affect, workplace incivility (from the target and perpetrator perspective), and job satisfaction were explored in a model of workplace functioning. Two hundred and seven adults participated in the study. As expected, emotional self-efficacy significantly predicted trait or dispositional emotional intelligence, which in turn was a significant predictor of participants' negative and positive affect. The relationship between low emotional intelligence and high negative affect was especially strong. Also as expected, individuals with higher levels of negative affect were more likely to be perpetrators of workplace incivility than individuals with lower level of negative affect. Individuals who engaged in higher levels of incivility perpetration were more likely to be victims of incivility than individuals who were never or rarely engaged in uncivil behavior. Being a victim of incivility was associated with higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of job satisfaction. Counter to the original predictions, positive affect was unrelated to either incivility perpetration or victimization.

Research evidence supports the efficacy of vicarious reinforcement in increasing client completion of between-session assignments. The use of vicarious reinforcement involves presenting, usually in an anecdote, the example of a real-life person who performed a task similar to the one about to be assigned to a client and benefitted. The vicarious-reinforcement effect on the target behaviour of assignment completion can likely be enhanced by using multiple models, and by using models who are likeable, high in prestige, and similar to the client. In some cases, the therapist can provide a personal anecdote to increase the chances the client will complete an assignment.

The heritability of human behavior can be estimated through studies comparing MZ and DZ twins and through adoption studies. Meta-analyses have estimated the heritability of intelligence, mental chronometric performance, language ability, anxiety disorders, major depression, antisocial behavior, problem drinking, and smoking. This article presents the aggregation and analysis of these meta-analyses, which included a total of over four hundred samples. The results of the aggregation suggest that about 41% of human behavior is genetically influenced, a percentage that may have evolutionary value. Some significant moderators were found in more than one meta-analysis, including greater heritability (a) in more disordered levels of a behavior for performance on a language-ability test, antisocial behavior, and smoking and (b) in females for antisocial behavior and smoking initiation. The moderator findings raise questions about what might explain the identified differences in level of heritability.

About 20 percent of individuals with tinnitus experience substantial distress because of their condition. Some of these individuals go to a psychologist. Some try self-help books. There is evidence that cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy can help individuals cope with tinnitus and evidence that self-help guides, together with a therapist’s support, are beneficial. However, there is no published evidence that self-help books on their own can help reduce distress.