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Purpose: Media violence theorists made five methodological errors, which have muddled theory construction. As such, the validity of the claim that media violence must share blame for a rise in aggression in society is suspect.

Approach: Here, the authors explain those five errors: (1) Subclinical psychopathologies interact with media messages in detectable ways. Media violence researchers never paid attention to the composition of their participant samples. Consequently, they were never aware of the inherent vulnerabilities, or immunities, to media violence of their participants. (2) Media violence researchers used convenience samples when they should have used random samples to study media violence. The nature of the research questions they were asking required the use of random samples. But, with the use of convenience samples, those samples never matched the populations they were designed to examine. (3) Media violence researchers used expansive variable lists that probably triggered family-wise interaction effects, thus reporting interactions between independent and dependent variables that were meaningless. (4) Most media violence data are correlational. So, researchers used converged data from correlational studies to infer causation. But their convergence procedures were improperly executed, which led to incorrect interpretations. (5) Media violence researchers, from the outset of their work in the 1980s, pathologized media violence first, then set about trying to find out how it presumably harmed society. Those researchers should have considered the idea that media violence is nothing more than mere entertainment for most people.

Value: In addition to questioning the claims made by media violence researchers, these five errors serve as a cautionary tale to social media researchers. Scholars investigating the effects of social media use might consider the possibility that social media are nothing more than new modes of communication.

At the nexus of mindfulness and parenting lies the fusion of two influential yet contradictory epistemologies, the Eastern contemplative practices with the Western parenting research. Mindful parenting is a parenting style, which has grown in popularity in recent times to support parents during pregnancy, birth and beyond. The current study is the third stage of a mixed methods study on mindful parenting. The first stage of the study design conducted a systematic review of mindful parenting. The second stage summarized the change processes identified in the systematic review. The aim of this pilot study is to clarify four clinicians’ perceptions of cognitive change processes associated with mindful parenting, particularly how theory is translated to practice. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyze semi-structured interviews. The six higher-order change processes were conceptualized as an anchor. Cognitive processes included intention, attention, attitude, and reflective functioning. Given its methodological limitations, the next future work needs is to survey a large sample of both clinicians and parents to verify the model. This paper makes an important contribution to the development of a more comprehensive theoretical model of mindful parenting.

Research in industrial and organizational psychology demonstrates that the regulation of negative emotions in response to both organizational stressors and interpersonal workplace interactions can result in functional and dysfunctional outcomes (Côté, 2005; Diefendorff, Richard, & Yang, 2008). Research on the regulation of negative emotions has additionally been conducted in social psychology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, health psychology, and clinical psychology. A close reading of this broader literature, however, reveals that the conceptualization and use of the term “emotion regulation” varies within each research field as well as across these fields. The main focus of our chapter is to make sense of the term “emotion regulation” in the workplace by considering its use across a broad range of psychology disciplines. We then develop an overarching theoretical framework using disambiguating terminology to highlight what we argue are the important constructs involved in the process of intrapersonal emotion generation, emotional experience regulation, and emotional expression regulation in the workplace (e.g., emotional intelligence, emotion regulation strategies, emotion expression displays). We anticipate this chapter will enable researchers and industrial and organizational psychologists to identify the conditions under which functional regulation outcomes are more likely to occur and then build interventions around these findings.

This chapter explores the simultaneous effects of the independent variables of social cognition (social information processing) and of self-esteem/global self-worth on clinically and research-derived measures of problem behaviour in children aged 8–12 (dependent variables). The specific aims are to develop and test a school-based standardised model for better screening of SEBDs in Greece in children 8–12 years old and analyse in-depth the inferred patterns of mental processing of SEBD-screened children from the data collected in one-on-one interviews. The hypothesis is that groups of particular children will emerge that share similar characteristics in their social information processing styles and their proposed reactions to challenging social interactions. Evidently, these findings could lead to a suggestive discussion of school-based approaches to interventions.

The study presents evidence for this hypothesis, suggesting the existence of three separate groups in the sample. The sample included 240 children assigned in two groups, the experimental and the control, each containing 120 closely matched cases. The exploratory analysis of the outcomes reveals an identified mental processing bias in attributing causality and in behaviour response selection that is consistent enough to suggest the bias may be as organised in the brain as a ‘hard-wired’ function.

Children experience toxic stress if there is pronounced activation of their stress-response systems, in situations in which they do not have stable caregiving. Due to their exposure to multiple poverty-related risks, African American children may be more susceptible to exposure to toxic stress. Toxic stress affects young children’s brain and neurophysiologic functioning, which leads to a wide range of deleterious health, developmental, and mental health outcomes. Given the benefits of early care and education (ECE) for African American young children, ECE may represent a compensating experience for this group of children, and promote their positive development.

Existing research indicates that internationally adopted children exhibit elevated rate of emotional and behavioral difficulties. They are explained by the effects of early trauma, disturbed attachment, institutionalized behavior, and delays in cognitive development. Early interventions, therefore, focus on medical screening and cognitive testing, while adjustment aspect of early period for the entire family is neglected. The role of adoptive family is viewed as that of rehabilitation, its role as an active agent of change is ignored or underestimated.

The approach grounded in family system theory and focused on the family process is effective for resolution of child's difficulties. This chapter demonstrates that early intervention centered on mutual adjustment of the family and the child prevents escalation of child's emotional tension, defiant behavior, and formation of rigid patterns of family interactions and psychopathology in children. It leads to behavioral improvements, and builds a foundation for lasting relationship. Therapy for American families and their school-age adopted children from Russia was simultaneously conducted in two languages by a bilingual psychologist, a native Russian speaker. Principles of such intervention are formulated: (1) The form of intervention is a dialogue between all family members. It facilitates safe self-expression and eases overwhelming emotions. (2) Child's behavior is understood within a framework of adjustment to a transition, associated with experience of novelty and loss. To prevent complications of unresolved grief, the child's loss is identified and acknowledged. (3) Changes that effect existing family system (such as adoptive siblings) and cause tensions are addressed. (4) Certain problematic behaviors and their former adaptive function are reframed and thus normalized within a context of child's culture. (5) In the process, history of child's life unfolds, integrating the past and the present, facilitating continuity of memory, and preventing disruption of identity.

In this chapter, I investigated how challenges (life events) are negotiated within families according to gender roles and their effect on marriage quality, life satisfaction, and psychological resilience in a nonclinical sample of heterosexual couples (N=159), age 23–78 (M=45.4, SD=11.2), with children (n=127) or childfree (n=32). Specifically, I accounted for the individual’s ability to share “hurt feelings” and foster intimacy within the couple, thus strengthening resilience and improving life satisfaction and hypothesized that the impact of negative life events on both relationship quality and life satisfaction could depend on the resilience levels of each partner and their ratio according to gender roles. Results confirmed the hypothesis and showed significant gender differences in the impact of negative life events on relationship quality, life satisfaction, ability to share hurt feelings, fear of intimacy, and resilience levels. Moreover, the ratio of the partner’s individual resilience affected the dependent variables differently by gender, its level interacted with the age of the couple’s first child (range: 2–54, mean: 21.4, SD: 10.4) and strongly depended on the occupation of the parents.

In this study, we aimed at examining the unique and interactive effects of peer violence in cyberspace on adolescents’ emotion regulation and socioemotional adjustment, as well as the mediational role of resilience in the link between adolescent’s pathogenic relational experiences and behavioral outcomes. Specifically, we intended to explore emotion differentiation and regulation in reaction to bullying perpetration and victimization and in terms of positive (proud, confident, good) and negative (ashamed, excited, guilty), Passive (sad, embarrassed, humiliated) and Reactive (angry, scared) emotions and how it impacted and predicted positive and negative outcomes.

A stratified convenient sample of 494 Italian students aged 13–19 years (M = 15.27, SD = 1.23) was selected to represent all different school types in Italy and the students were administered a self-report questionnaire on school bullying involvement. General Linear Models, ANOVA, and T-tests were employed to explore gender differences, the relationships between variables, and their contribution to the predictive model. A two-step Cluster analysis was used to profile adolescents based on patterns of resilience, health outcomes, and cyberbullying involvement.

Results showed significant gender differences, with females using internet and Facebook more than males and being more resilient, positive, and prosocial, but also responding to victimization with higher levels of alienation, anger, humiliation, and psychosomatic and emotional symptoms. Males perpetrated peer violence more than females, were less likely to be victimized, and were generally less emotionally impacted by it. Victimization rates (63.7%, n = 296) were higher than perpetration rates (51.7%, n = 233) and bully-victimization was prevalent (47.1%). Victims prevalently experienced passive emotions (sadness, humiliation, embarrassment) while perpetrators experienced negative ones (guilt and shame). Cluster analysis evidenced different pathways and trajectories of resilience and cyberbullying involvement: Resilient victims (RV), Healthy uninvolved (HU), Healthy Bullies (HB), Alienated Bully-Victims (ABV), and Resilient Bully-Victims (RBV). RV, HU, and HB resulted all well-adjusted, despite the different involvement in cyberbullying, and also RBV and despite the double involvement in cyberbullying, ABV were the only maladjusted and at-risk group in our sample characterized by very low Positivity, very low Resilience, and extremely high Alienation.

This study proposes a comprehensive, developmental, ecological, relational, and self-regulatory resilience approach to cyberbullying, which represents an innovative and advanced contribution to the literature with significant implication for research and practice. Fully understanding and measuring the emotional impact of cyber peer violence and resilience following cyberbullying victimization and perpetration can help in developing targeted interventions for both victims and bullies. This study highlighted the need for a self-regulatory model of resilience for modulating emotions, arousal, and behaviors across contexts, relationships, and difficulties. It also evidenced that moderate levels of resilience and positivity are sufficient to buffer youth from involvement in cyberbullying and to predict healthy adjustment and less pathological outcomes.

By profiling adolescents based on resilience levels, health outcomes, and cyberbullying involvement, we evidenced five distinct trajectories of risk evaluation for cyberbullying beyond participating roles. Our results confirmed the fundamental importance of assessing resilience and emotion regulatory resources together with peer violence involvement in identifying and targeting adolescents at risk.

In this chapter, we present the results of a study designed to investigate: (a) the family relations of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), (b) the sources of stress parents in families of children with this disorder experience and (c) the possible modulating role that ADHD subtype and comorbid oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) have on parenting stress level. One hundred and sixty seven families, divided into two groups, an ADHD group (N=114) and a control group (N=53), participated in the study. Parents of both groups completed a Semi-Structured Interview that gathered information on socio-demographics, family structure and the presence of oppositional behaviour symptoms, as well as the Parenting Stress Index Questionnaire (Abidin, 1990) to evaluate parent stress. The results showed that the relations of children with ADHD with their parents and siblings were significantly more tense than those of children without this disorder with their families. Parenting stress was higher in parents with ADHD children than in parents of non-ADHD children in most scales relating to parent personal variables, with even more sharp differences in measures of parenting stress that are triggered by the child's behaviour. Finally, our results evidenced how the ADHD subtype and ODD comorbidity influence the level of stress in parents. The results of the study suggest that interventions focused only on the behaviour of ADHD children are not likely to improve the developmental course of the disorder in the long run.