2015, Hui-Hua, Zhang, Schutte, Nicola

The present study examined relationships between the meta traits of stability (Alpha) and plasticity (Beta) with trait emotional intelligence (EI) and other-rated task performance. One hundred and eighty participants provided information regarding stability, plasticity, and emotional intelligence. Participants' task performance was rated by four peer observers. Both greater stability, composed of characteristics relating to emotional stability, agreeableness and conscientiousness, and greater plasticity, composed of characteristics relating to extraversion and openness, were associated with higher emotional intelligence and better other-rated task performance. Higher trait EI was associated with better task performance. EI was a significant mediating path between both stability and performance and between plasticity and performance. The findings support the utility of the EI construct. Additionally, these findings are congruent with a theoretical hierarchical structure of personality; in which meta traits provide a basis for the development of more differentiated traits, such as EI, which then impact behavior.

2018-06-12, Hopwood, Tanya, Schutte, Nicola, Loi, Natasha, Coventry, William

In recent years, the global community has suffered uncertainty and threats to safety due to a variety of events, including terrorist attacks, large-scale accidents, natural disasters, and international conflicts. Indirect engagement with these events is made possible through the media. Numerous studies have found negative psychological outcomes following indirect exposure to trauma, either via media coverage or through care of people directly impacted. If media has the potential to effect even small negative changes in psychological health, then cumulative or more intense exposure might lead to more substantive effects.
This thesis explored whether trauma-related media consumption and ensuing social discussions may trigger a unique form of distress, referred to as Anticipatory Traumatic Reaction (ATR). This construct is based on the dual scaffold of (1) the diagnostic criteria of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) considered sub-clinically and (2) emotions, cognitions, and behaviours that have been associated with secondary exposure to trauma. Specifically, ATR is conceptualised as involving people overestimating future risk (for themselves or significant others) of traumatic events presented in the media and experiencing distress relating to feared outcomes. Affected individuals might engage in thoughts or behaviours designed to reduce uncertainty or prepare for adverse events and experience disruptions in day-to-day functioning.
A total of six studies (reported in the format of five stand-alone articles) were conducted. Study 1 was a quantitative meta-analysis of experimental studies that evaluated the overall effect of threat-related media on psychological outcomes. This study confirmed the association between trauma-related media exposure and negative psychological outcomes and provided evidence to support a causal pathway. Studies 2 and 3 (reported in a single journal article) generated a new psychometric measure to assess the novel construct of ATR and found preliminary evidence of this form of distress in a general population of Australians. Study 2 used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to construct a scale with three latent variables (feelings, preparation, and disruptions relating to ATR) and correlational analyses found evidence of convergent and discriminant validity for the scale. Study 3 provided additional validation of the scale, examined links with conceptually related variables pertaining to media consumption, and provided evidence for ATR as a construct that, despite some overlap, is separate and distinct from PTSD. The results also indicated that higher levels of ATR are associated with a greater degree of engagement with threat-related media and social discussions. Further, the results suggested that younger people might be at greater risk of ATR than older people, and that this may be partially accounted for by a greater proportion of social media news-gathering by younger people.
Study 4 explored possible links between ATR and a reaction to another form of secondary exposure to trauma – compassion fatigue, which occurs as a consequence of providing a caring role for traumatised individuals. The results suggested that high levels of ATR may exacerbate levels of depression, anxiety, and stress, potentially putting care workers at greater risk of job burnout. Study 5, a meta-analytic review of the efficacy of mindfulness interventions for treating PTSD, indicated that, across studies, mindfulness was effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD. Given some symptomatic and conceptual similarities between PTSD and ATR, this finding pointed to mindfulness as a potentially useful technique for mitigating ATR. The final study, Study 6, assessed proposed risk factors for ATR and used an online experiment with random assignment to test a series of brief interventions to attenuate ATR. The findings suggested that risk factors for experiencing higher levels of ATR included being female, being younger, living with a mental illness, repetitive negative thinking, intolerance of uncertainty, personal distress empathy, fantasy empathy, and a concern about world politics. Both a cognitive intervention to address probability neglect and a mindfulness intervention showed promise in attenuating momentary ATR.
The current research provides preliminary evidence for ATR as a newly identified psychological condition that may occur for some people in response to media exposure and social discussions of disasters and large-scale threats. If, as suggested by the results of this research, people with existing mental illness are at greater risk for ATR and that ATR might exacerbate existing symptoms, it will be important to identify vulnerable subsets of this population so that clinicians can intervene to reduce ATR and limit distress. Because media exposure to traumatic events is a basis for ATR, the findings have implications for presentation of media content. This thesis adds to the body of knowledge in the fields of trauma, social psychology, and clinical practice.

2015, Scott-Hamilton, John, Schutte, Nicola, Brown, Rhonda, Moyle, Gene

The positive psychological construct of flow - an optimal mental state where one is absorbed in a task to a level where a sense of unity between body and mind yields a sense of effortlessness and enjoyment - offers the potential of endowing present moment experience with value by fostering enjoyment and personal growth. Previous mindfulness - a present moment focus of attention and awareness that entails an accepting and nonjudgmental relationship with one's thoughts and feelings - in sport research literature suggests greater attentional self-regulation may hold the key to promoting an increase in experiencing flow states. The current thesis presents three studies that were designed and developed to examine the connection between mindfulness and flow.

2013, Schutte, Nicola, Malouff, John M, Thorsteinsson, Einar B

Emotional intelligence consists of adaptive emotional functioning involving inter-related competencies relating to perception, understanding, utilising and managing emotions in the self and others. Researchers in diverse fields have studied emotional intelligence and found the construct to be associated with a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal factors such as mental health, relationship satisfaction, and work performance. This article reviews research investigating the impact of training in emotional-intelligence skills. The results indicate that it is possible to increase emotional intelligence and that such training has the potential to lead to other positive outcomes. The paper offers suggestions about how future research, from diverse disciplines, can uncover what types of training most effectively increase emotional intelligence and produce related beneficial outcomes.

2017, Schutte, Nicola, Stilinovic, Emma

This research experimentally investigated whether virtual reality experience can prompt greater empathy and whether greater engagement with a virtual reality connects this virtual reality experience to empathy. Randomly assigned participants viewed a documentary featuring a young girl living in a refugee camp either in a virtual reality format or in a control two-dimensional format. Results indicated that the virtual reality experience resulted in greater engagement and a higher level of empathy for the refugee girl compared to the control condition. Greater engagement was a process connecting the virtual reality experience to empathy. Virtual reality has the potential to influence interpersonal emotions such as empathy.

2008, Kirk, Beverley Anne, Schutte, Nicola, Hine, Donald William

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.

2007, Schutte, Nicola, Malouff, John Michael

This study explored dimensions of adult reading motivation and collected reliability and validity information for a measure that assesses individual differences in adult reading motivation. Reading engagement theory provided the basis for an initial pool of items. A factor analysis showed that four dimensions, (a) reading as part of the self, (b) reading efficacy, (c) reading for recognition, and (d) reading to do well in other realms, accounted for a substantial amount of the variance in reading motivation. An overall reading motivation scale of 21 items with subscales representing the four dimensions was created using items with high factor loadings. The internal consistency of the total reading motivation scale was good and the internal consistencies of the subscales were reasonable. The total scale and subscales predicted reading enjoyment and time spent reading. A better understanding of adult reading motivation may aid those who support adult readers.

2003, Riley, Hannah, Schutte, Nicola

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.

2009, Kirk, Beverley, Schutte, Nicola, Hine, Donald W

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.

2014, Schutte, Nicola, Malouff, John M

Emotional intelligence consists of adaptive emotional functioning. The Dimensional Model of Emotional Intelligence presented in this monograph organizes the numerous promising categories of research findings on emotional intelligence into a dimensional framework that describes aspects of emotional intelligence, possible antecedents of emotional intelligence, and likely consequences of emotional intelligence. ... The Dimensional Model of Emotional Intelligence is intended to provide a framework for understanding discoveries already made regarding emotional intelligence as well as a guide for future research focusing on adaptive emotional functioning.