'With a Little Help from My Friends': Emotional Intelligence, Social Support, and Distress during the COVID-19 Outbreak.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a global existential social and health challenge, with individuals suffering mentally and psychologically. College and university students are young adults, typically away from their natural support systems; with pandemic-imposed measures such as isolation, they may have been at higher risk of experiencing negative psychological outcomes. The study tested a model in which social support mediated the association between emotional intelligence (EI) and a latent factor representing general mental distress at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in Poland. One hundred and fifty-nine young adults filled in measures of trait EI, psychological and instrumental social support, three distress measures (depression, anxiety, and stress), and demographics. The results supported a model in which psychological social support (but not instrumental social support) mediated the association between trait EI and a factor representing all three distress measures. The results shed light on how individual and social resources work together to help maintain psychological integrity in times of crisis. They add to recent results on the differential effects of psychological-emotional and instrumental social support on distress and well-being.

Can moral reasoning be modeled in an experiment?

A review of the literature on moral issues indicates that none of the empirical approaches to moral reasoning proposes an experimental approach which controls for such object-related experimental variables as: knowledge, motivation, acceptance of moral norms and consequences of human behavior in moral situations in a single research procedure. A unique element of the proposed experimental method is a multi-stage model determining morality indicators. In the two-phase design experiment, psychology students were asked to create model ethical stories and then conduct an overall assessment of each of these stories. As a result, a base of ethical stories was created with empirical moral indicators (positive, negative, neutral). The patterns in the moral evaluation of ethical stories were determined by identifying three processes (selection, differentiation and integration). The final result is a confirmed design of the experiment and a set of formulas that can be used in education and research on morality reasoning.

The health care aide position in nursing homes: A comparative survey of nurses' and aides' perceptions.

BACKGROUND: The health care aide position embodies one of the most basic paradoxes of long-term care for older adults: those who have the most contact and most intensive interaction with nursing-home residents are also those having the least training, authority, and status within the system. They therefore hold one of the keys to quality care in many settings, especially nursing homes. In the absence of agreement on the position's roles, responsibilities, and authority, it is important to examine how the position is perceived by the key members in the long-term-care framework. OBJECTIVES: The current study examined and compared health care aides' and nurses' perceptions of the position in nursing-home settings in Israel, using a standardized tool developed for this inquiry. The comparison accounted for potential intervening factors that may help better understand the job requirements and boundaries. DESIGN: A comparative survey design. SETTINGS: 30 nursing homes (of at least 20 beds) in northern Israel. PARTICIPANTS: We used convenience sampling to recruit 369 health care aides and 261 nurses (a total of 630 participants). METHODS: The main instrument of data collection was specially designed and validated for this study. It was based on a qualitative study that defined basic content units representing tasks importance, knowledge, and personal characteristics for the job. RESULTS: Participants found it difficult to prioritize the job components or to differentiate between core tasks and characteristics and the secondary aspects of their job. General care, profession-specific knowledge, and emotional abilities were endorsed the most by participants. Cleaning, communication, and safety were ranked lower (although rankings were still considerably high). However, previous experience as a health care aide undermined incumbents' perceptions of their own responsibilities and professionalism. Incumbent health care aides rated most factors higher than nurses did, with the exception of the importance of communication. CONCLUSION: Our results may help decision makers understand the complexity around the health care aide position, manage and develop it more effectively while setting standards (training and certification, performance appraisal, and more) for professionalization processes and better defining the division of nursing work between health care aides and nurses.