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Existing research shows that high achievement boredom is correlated with a range of undesirable behavioral and personality variables and that the main antecedents of boredom are being over- or under-challenged. However, merely knowing that students are highly bored, without taking their achievement level into account, might be insufficient for drawing conclusions about students' behavior and personality. We, therefore, investigated if low- vs. high-achieving students who experience strong mathematics boredom show different behaviors and personality traits. The sample consisted of 1,404 German secondary school students (fifth to 10th grade, mean age 12.83 years, 52% female). We used self-report instruments to assess boredom in mathematics, behavioral (social and emotional problems, positive/negative affect, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression), and personality variables (neuroticism and conscientiousness). In comparing highly bored students (more than one SD above M, n = 258) who were low vs. high achievers (as indicated by the math grade, n = 125 / n = 119), results showed that there were no mean level differences across those groups for all variables. In conclusion, our results suggest that high boredom can occur in both low- and high-achieving students and that bored low- and high-achievers show similar behaviors and personality profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has established the health benefits of psychological factors, including the way individuals appraise outcomes. Although many studies confirm that appraising outcomes as controllable is adaptive for health, a paradoxical possibility is largely ignored: Perceived control may be detrimental under some conditions. Our premise was that appraising health as controllable but at the same time ascribing little value to it might signal a dysfunctional psychological mindset that fosters a mistaken sense of invincibility. During face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of older adults (age range = 72–99), we identified individuals with such a potentially maladaptive “invincible” mindset (high perceived control and low health value) and compared them to their counterparts on several outcomes. The findings were consistent with our hypotheses. The invincibles denied future risks, they lacked the activating emotion of fear, and they visited their physicians less often over a subsequent five-year period. Moreover, in contrast to their counterparts, the invincibles did not appear strategic in their approach to seeking care: Even poor health did not prompt them to seek the counsel of a physician. The recognition that psychological appraisals are modifiable highlights the promise of remedial methods to alter maladaptive mindsets, potentially improving quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers’ emotions are critically important for the quality of classroom instruction, and they are key components of teachers’ psychological well-being. Past research has focused on individual differences between teachers, whereas within-teacher variation across contexts has rarely been considered. As such, the present research addresses the long-standing yet unresolved person-situation debate pertaining to the emotional experiences of teachers. In two diary studies (N = 135, 70% female, and N = 85, 28% female), we examined the role of person, academic subject, and group of students for teacher emotions; focusing on three of the most salient emotions found in teachers: enjoyment, anger, and anxiety. Findings from multi-level analysis confirmed the person specificity of enjoyment, anger, and, in particular, anxiety. In addition, underscoring the existence of within-teacher variability, findings supported that teachers’ emotions considerably varied depending on the subject and group of students taught, particularly so for enjoyment and anger. Implications of the person and context specificity of teacher emotions are discussed in relation to assessments and intervention programs aiming to improve teachers’ emotional lives in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Selectively testing parts of learned materials can impair later memory for nontested materials. Research has shown that such retrieval-induced forgetting occurs for low-integrated materials but may be prevented for high-integrated materials. However, previous research has neglected one factor that is ubiquitous in real-life testing: affective state. Methodology/Principal Findings: We investigated whether affect influences the resistance of integrated materials to retrieval-induced forgetting by inducing neutral, positive, or negative affect immediately before selectively testing previously learned textbook passages containing interrelated facts and concepts. As negative affect is known to promote a detail-oriented local processing style, we hypothesized that experiencing negative affect during testing may decrease the protective effects of integration and lead to reoccurrence of forgetting. By contrast, as positive affect is known to promote a relation-oriented global processing style, we hypothesized that experiencing positive affect may support effects of integration and prevent forgetting. Our findings are consistent with these predictions. No subsequent forgetting occurred when testing memories for integrated text materials in affectively neutral and positive states, whereas forgetting occurred when testing in negative states. A correlation analysis showed that forgetting decreased with higher positive affect, with participants experiencing high positive affect even showing facilitation instead of forgetting. Conclusions/Significance: These findings indicate that affect can moderate the memory consequences of test taking and suggest that educators should use testing as a tool to improve memory with care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]