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Background: The concept self-compassion (SC), a special way of being compassionate with oneself while dealing with stressful life circumstances, has attracted increasing attention in research over the past two decades. Research has already shown that SC has beneficial effects on affective well-being and other mental health outcomes. However, little is known in which ways SC might facilitate our affective well-being in stressful situations. Hence, a central concern of this dissertation was to focus on the question which underlying processes might influence the link between SC and affective well-being. Two established components in stress processing, which might also play an important role in this context, could be the amount of experienced stress and the way of coping with a stressor. Thus, using a multi-method approach, this dissertation aimed at finding to which extent SC might help to alleviate the experienced stress and promotes the use of more salutary coping, while dealing with stressful circumstances. These processes might ultimately help improve one’s affective well-being. Derived from that, it was hypothesized that more SC is linked to less perceived stress and intensified use of salutary coping responses. Additionally, it was suggested that perceived stress and coping mediate the relation between SC and affective well-being.
Method: The research questions were targeted in three single studies and one meta-study. To test my assumptions about the relations of SC and coping in particular, a systematic literature search was conducted resulting in k = 136 samples with an overall sample size of N = 38,913. To integrate the z-transformed Pearson correlation coefficients, random-effects models were calculated. All hypotheses were tested with a three-wave cross-lagged design in two short-term longitudinal online studies assessing SC, perceived stress and coping responses in all waves. The first study explored the assumptions in a student sample (N = 684) with a mean age of 27.91 years over a six-week period, whereas the measurements were implemented in the GESIS Panel (N = 2934) with a mean age of 52.76 years analyzing the hypotheses in a populationbased sample across eight weeks. Finally, an ambulatory assessment study was designed to expand the findings of the longitudinal studies to the intraindividual level. Thus, a sample of 213 participants completed questionnaires of momentary SC, perceived stress, engagement and disengagement coping, and affective well-being on their smartphones three times per day over seven consecutive days. The data was processed using 1-1-1 multilevel mediation analyses.
Results: Results of the meta-analysis indicated that higher SC is significantly associated with more use of engagement coping and less use of disengagement coping. Considering the relations between SC and stress processing variables in all three single studies, cross-lagged paths from the longitudinal data, as well as multilevel modeling paths from the ambulatory assessment data indicated a notable relation between all relevant stress variables. As expected, results showed a significant negative relation between SC and perceived stress and disengagement coping, as well as a positive connection with engagement coping responses at the dispositional and intra-individual level. However, considering the mediational hypothesis, the most promising pathway in the link between SC and affective well-being turned out to be perceived stress in all three studies, while effects of the mediational pathways through coping responses were less robust.
Conclusion: Thus, a more self-compassionate attitude and higher momentary SC, when needed in specific situations, can help to engage in effective stress processing. Considering the underlying mechanisms in the link between SC and affective well-being, stress perception in particular seemed to be the most promising candidate for enhancing affective well-being at the dispositional and at the intraindividual level. Future research should explore the pathways between SC and affective well-being in specific contexts and samples, and also take into account additional influential factors.
This research focuses on empowering leadership, a leadership style that shares autonomy and responsibilities with the followers. Empowering leadership enhances the meaningfulness of work by fostering participation in decision-making, expressing confidence in high performance, and providing autonomy in target setting (Cheong, 2016). I examine how empowering leadership affects followers’ reflection. I used data from 528 individuals across 172 teams and found a positive relationship between empowering leadership and followers’ reflection. Followers’ reflection, in turn, is negatively associated with followers’ withdrawal, which mediates the beneficial effect of empowering leadership on leaders’ emotional exhaustion. As for the leaders, I propose that empowering leadership is negatively related also to leaders’ emotional exhaustion. This research broadens our understanding of empowering leadership's effects on both followers and leaders. Moreover, it integrates empowering leadership, leader emotional exhaustion, and burnout literature. Overall, empowering leadership strengthens members’ reflective attitudes and behaviors, which result in reduced withdrawal (and increased presence and contribution) in teams. Because the members contribute to team effort more, the leaders experience less emotional exhaustion. Hence, my work not only identifies new ways through which empowering leadership positively affects followers but also shows how these positive effects on followers benefit the leaders’ well-being.
The Role of Interoceptive Sensibility and Emotional Conceptualization for the Experience of Emotions
(2021)
The theory of constructed emotions suggests that different psychological components, including core affect (mental and neural representations of bodily changes), and conceptualization (meaning-making based on prior experiences and semantic knowledge), are involved in the formation of emotions. However, little is known about their role in experiencing emotions. In the current study, we investigated how individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization (as potential correlates of these components) interact to moderate three important aspects of emotional experiences: emotional intensity (strength of emotion felt), arousal (degree of activation), and granularity (ability to differentiate emotions with precision). To this end, participants completed a series of questionnaires assessing interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization and underwent two emotion experience tasks, which included standardized material (emotion differentiation task; ED task) and self-experienced episodes (day reconstruction method; DRM). Correlational analysis showed that individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization were related to each other. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) revealed two independent factors that were referred to as sensibility and monitoring. The Sensibility factor, interpreted as beliefs about the accuracy of an individual in detecting internal physiological and emotional states, predicted higher granularity for negative words. The Monitoring factor, interpreted as the tendency to focus on the internal states of an individual, was negatively related to emotional granularity and intensity. Additionally, Sensibility scores were more strongly associated with greater well-being and adaptability measures than Monitoring scores. Our results indicate that independent processes underlying individual differences in interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization contribute to emotion experiencing.
An der individuellen und gesellschaftlichen Relevanz von Arbeit für das Leben wird nicht gezweifelt, demnach liegt die Erforschung deren Relation im Interesse der Wissenschaft. Diese Arbeit untersucht ein Prozessmodell des Zusammenhangs von bedürfnisbefriedigenden Arbeitsmerkmalen und psychologischem Wohlbefinden (Eudämonie) vermittelt über die Erlebnisvariablen Empowerment, affektives Commitment, Entfremdung und proaktives Verhalten. Dabei baut dieses auf einem Modell der Self-Determination Theory bei der Arbeit auf. An einer Gelegenheitsstichprobe von 172 Erwerbstätigen aus dem westlichen Kulturkreis wurden Querschnittsdaten online erhoben und anhand hierarchischer Regressionen und dem PROCESS Makro ausgewertet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen einen signifikanten, positiven Einfluss der Arbeitsmerkmale Autonomie und Ganzheitlichkeit auf psychologisches Wohlbefinden. Darüber hinaus wurden die Annahmen über die Mediation dieser Einflüsse überwiegend gestützt. Hypothesenkonform wurde der Einfluss von Autonomie und Ganzheitlichkeit auf psychologisches Wohlbefinden seriell mediiert über folgende Pfade: (1) Autonomie und Ganzheitlichkeit führten zu mehr Empowerment, nachfolgend zu weniger Entfremdung und schließlich zu höherem psychologischem Wohlbefinden und (2) Autonomie und Ganzheitlichkeit führten zu mehr Empowerment, nachfolgend zu mehr proaktivem Verhalten und schließlich zu höherem psychologischem Wohlbefinden. Die ad-hoc Hypothese über die mediierende Rolle von affektivem Commitment wurde nicht bestätigt. Post-hoc Testungen von 3fach seriellen Mediationen wiesen jedoch auf einen schwachen indirekten Effekt von Autonomie und Ganzheitlichkeit auf psychologisches Wohlbefinden über Entfremdung, affektives Commitment und nachfolgend Entfremdung oder stattdessen proaktives Verhalten hin. Die Arbeit leistet einen Beitrag zur Klärung der Rolle der Self-Determination Theory als arbeitspsychologisches Modell der Entstehungsprozesse von Wohlbefinden durch Arbeit und erweitert das Wissen um Antezedenzien und Konsequenzen der Konzepte Empowerment, affektives Commitment, Entfremdung und proaktives Verhalten sowie sie deren Erklärbarkeit durch die Self-Determination Theory unterstreicht. Schließlich werden aus den Ergebnissen ableitend verschiedene theoretische Implikationen diskutiert und Empfehlungen für die Gestaltung von Arbeit mit dem Ziel einer besseren, humanistischeren Gesellschaft formuliert.