Editor-in-Chief
Christmas is approaching and Nordic Psychology has five wonderful Christmas presents: Five high-quality articles about workplace bullying, in-group behavior and personality, Nondirective meditation used in stress management, and validation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Recovery Experience Questionnaire.
“Workplace Bullying: How Do Bystanders’ Emotions and the Type of Bullying Influence their Willingness to Help?” by Pascale Desrumaux, Christine Jeoffrion, Naouelle Bouterfas, Sabine DeBosscher, and Méthode Claudien Boundenghan is the first article in this issue. In their article, they researched how various bullying acts, re-victimization, and the victim’s own behaviors influence witnesses’ judgments of the bullying and their inclination to help the victim. Based on questionnaires and vignettes submitted to 145 participants, the results showed that the situation was judged less equitable by witnesses, and their willingness to help was increased when the perpetrator’s acts were serious and, when the bullied victim’s behavior was pro-social, not antisocial. The more serious the bullying acts, the more the witness felt sympathy and empathic emotions such as fear and sadness toward the victim, while feeling anger and disgust toward the perpetrator. “Belonging for violence: Personality, football fandom and spectator aggression” by Holly Knapton, Lisa Espinosa, Henk Meier, Emma Bäck, and Hanna Bäck is the second article in this issue. The article outlines different models explaining why individuals participate in sports fandom and associated behaviors. In this article, it is argued that outgroup violence among football supporters may be used as a marker of in-group loyalty and attachment. A survey of 350 male Swedish football supporters was conducted to assess their levels of need to belong, rejection sensitivity, and willingness to engage in violence. The results showed that individuals with a high need to belong and who are sensitive to rejection are more willing to engage in violence against an opposing team. The article extends upon existing theory by adding a social personality perspective to show the importance of individual differences in belongingness needs as a driver for participation in spectator violence. In the third of article of this issue, “Nondirective meditation used in stress management” Bjørn Lau, Anne Grete Hersoug, and Morten Waersted researched the difference between practicing a nondirective relaxation technique for stress relief and merely learning about stress and stress management in a population of active, working professionals. The results showed that there were significant improvements in the intervention group on all outcome variables comprising mental distress, worries and nervousness, sleep problems, and musculoskeletal pain while there in the control group were no changes. It is concluded that a nondirective meditation technique promoted specific bodily and psychological benefits for active working professionals. “A Finnish adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-16)” by Minia Westerlund and Pekka Santtila is the fourth article of this issue. In this article, The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and a short form of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS-16) were psychometrically evaluated in a Finnish, population-based sample. It is concluded in the article that both scales are psychometrically adequate for use in the Finnish population. “The reliability and factorial validity of the Swedish version of the Recovery Experience Questionnaire” by Niclas Almén, Hanna Lundberg, Örjan Sundin, and Billy Jansson is the fifth and final article of this issue. It is the main purpose of the article to empirically evaluate and seeking support for the hypothesized four-factor model of the Swedish version of Recovery Experience Questionnaire (REQ). The results supported the proposed four-factor structure of the scale for both males and females. Additionally, apart from high reliability estimates, this instrument proved to have good convergent and discriminant validity for all four factors.
Editor-in-Chief
Department of Psychology, Aarhus University
Email: [email protected]