This paper investigates whether philanthropic giving decisions and amount of charitable giving are related to firms’ political connections and ownership type. To this end, Chinese firms listed on either the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange between 2004 and 2011 are examined, where government interference in the business sector is prevalent, state ownership structure is dominant, and corporate political connections prevail. Our analyses show a significant and positive relationship between political connections and the likelihood and extent of firm contributions; a significant (...) and negative relationship between state ownership and extent of firm contributions; and a stronger relationship between political connections and corporate philanthropy in non-state-owned firms. These findings with regard to the relationship between corporate giving, political connections, and ownership type have important implications for understanding corporate giving behavior in China and in emerging markets in general. (shrink)

The principal–principal perspective suggests that controlling shareholders have excessive influence on corporate philanthropy and may direct corporate funds to charitable causes to support their personal interests. Analysis of a sample of Chinese private firms listed on the Shenzhen or Shanghai stock exchange between 2004 and 2011 shows that there is a significant and negative relationship between corporate giving and the share held by the largest shareholders, suggesting that controlling shareholders are opportunistic in directing corporate charitable contributions; there is a significant (...) and positive relationship between corporate giving and the political connections of the largest shareholders and their agents, suggesting compatibility between corporate contributions and the personal interests of the controlling shareholders; there is a stronger negative relationship between corporate giving and the share of the company held by the largest shareholders in politically connected firms, suggesting that political connections contribute to increased opportunistic corporate giving. Overall, our study provides important evidence for the “one dominant controlling shareholder” phenomenon by testing and extending the principal–principal framework and showing that the largest shareholders of Chinese firms appear to donate to charitable causes that ultimately serve their personal interests at the expense of minority shareholders. (shrink)

This study investigated Chinese university students’ technology-assisted self-regulated learning strategies and whether the technology-based SRL strategies mediated the associations between English language self-efficacy, English enjoyment, and learning outcomes. Data were collected from 525 undergraduate students in mainland China through three self-report questionnaires and the performance on an English language proficiency test. While students reported an overall moderate level of SRL strategies, they reported a high level of technology-based vocabulary learning strategies. A statistically significant positive relationship was noted between the use (...) of technology-based SRL strategies and students’ English learning outcomes. English language self-efficacy and English language enjoyment were both related to technology-based SRL strategies. Furthermore, SRL strategies fully mediated the relationship between English enjoyment and English learning outcomes, but the association between English enjoyment and SRL strategies was only partially mediated by English language self-efficacy. Pedagogically, findings of this study suggest that training and instruction aimed at promotion of modern educational technology among students need to give attention to developing their strategic awareness of motivation regulation in optimizing effectiveness of their technology use in learning the target language. (shrink)

BackgroundThe number of students enrolled in higher education in China accounts for more than one-fifth of the world, and universities, as a community of faculty, staff and scholars, currently do not have a scale that specifically assesses the well-being of the population in the environment of Chinese universities. However, the University of Pittsburgh has developed a comprehensive well-being scale, referred to as the Pitt Wellness Scale, specifically to measure people’s well-being in a university environment.AimsInvestigate the psychometric properties of the Pitt (...) Wellness Scale in Chinese university environmental samples.MethodsThe original scale was culturally adapted and modified through expert consultation, a random sample of 1870 current faculty, staff, and students were selected for the questionnaire survey. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to investigate the potential factor structure of the Chinese Revision of the Pitt Wellness Scale and to measure its reliability and validity. Finally, the factors that affect people’s well-being in the Chinese university environment were explored.ResultsThe Chinese Revision of the Pitt Wellness Scale retained 30 items, and the EFA supports a five-factor structure, which differed from the results of the original scale, and the CFA results showed that the model fitted well. The discriminant validity of the modified Chinese scale was excellent. The overall Omega coefficient of the scale was 0.958, and the reliability of the retest after 4 weeks was 0.821.ConclusionThe Chinese Revision of the Pitt Wellness Scale possesses satisfactory psychometric properties, and it can be considered an instrument for assessing personal well-being in Chinese university environment. (shrink)

PurposeTo study the changes in functional connections between the left and right hemispheres of patients with high myopia and healthy controls by resting functional magnetic resonance imaging based on voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity. To study the changes in resting-state functional connectivity between the left and right hemispheres of patients with HM and healthy controls at rest by using resting functional magnetic resonance imaging based on voxel-mirror homotopy connectivity.Patients and MethodsA total of 89 patients with HM and 59 HCs were collected and (...) matched according to gender, age, and education level. The VMHC method was used to evaluate the changes in rsFC between cerebral hemispheres, and a correlation analysis was carried out to understand the differences in brain functional activities between the patients with HM and the HCs.ResultsCompared with the HCs, the VMHC values of the putamen and fusiform in the HM group were significantly lower.ConclusionThis study preliminarily confirmed the destruction of interhemispheric functional connection in some brain regions of the patients with HM and provided effective information for clarifying the neural mechanism of patients with HM. (shrink)

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex plays a pivotal role in cognitive reappraisal. Previous studies suggested a functional asymmetry of the bilateral VLPFC, but the evidence is still insufficient during cognitive reappraisal. In this study, we conducted an online single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate the causal and distinct roles of the left and right VLPFC in reappraisal. Participants were instructed to reappraise or attend to pictures depicting social exclusion scenarios while the spTMS was applied over the left or right VLPFC of (...) the participants’ brains. The results showed that spTMS of either the left or the right VLPFC would increase reappraisal difficulty. Meanwhile, the outcome of reappraisal significantly deteriorated when the right VLPFC was temporally interrupted by spTMS, while the verbal fluency during oral reporting of the reappraisal strategy was significantly reduced when the left VLPFC was interrupted by spTMS. Taken together, these findings provide causal evidence for the involvement of left and right VLPFC with distinct roles: while the left VLPFC is responsible for the linguistic especially semantic process of generating and selecting appraisals according to the goal of emotion regulation, the right VLPFC plays a critical role in inhibiting inappropriate negative emotions and thoughts generated by the effective scenarios. These findings deepen our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanism of emotion regulation. (shrink)

Literature shows that psychological phenomena, including values, personality, and behaviors, are geographically clustered. The effects of temperature on interpersonal and intergroup aggression have been studied by many social psychologists. To date the interactions between temperature and other geographical factors have not been addressed. This study is aiming to examine the effects of thermal demands and the moderating effects of natural geographical factors on aggressive behavior at national level. Data for 156 societies was obtained from publicly available databases. Consistent with the (...) life-history theory, results of this study showed that aggressive behavior has a positive relationship with heat demands, and a negative relationship with cold demands. Aggressive behavior is also positively correlated with sunlight and altitude, and negatively correlated with coastline vicinity. Forest, coastline vicinity, and rainfall moderated the effect of thermal demands on aggressive behavior. In societies with more forests, with more rainfall, and closer to coastline, the negative effects of cold demands on aggressive behavior are stronger. (shrink)

PurposePrevious studies on cyberloafing focus on individual and organization factors, ignoring the situation of employes as the event observers. Drawing on affective events theory, the present study proposed a theoretical model for the relationships among peer abusive supervision, negative affectivity, cyberloafing, and hostile attribute bias, which aims to bridge the above research gap.MethodologyMultiwave data of 355 employes from 8 service-oriented companies in Southwest China supported our model. Time-lag method and critical incident techniques were introduced during the data collection stage. Ordinary (...) least squares regression and bootstrapping method were employed for hypothesis test.FindingsThe empirical results indicated that peer abusive supervision was positively related to third party’s cyberloafing, and the third party’s negative affectivity plays a mediating role among the above relationships. In addition, the third party’s hostile attribution bias moderated the mediating role of third party’s negative affectivity. Specifically, the effect of peer abusive supervision on third party’s negative affectivity and the mediating effect of this negative affectivity were stronger when the third party’s hostile attribution bias was higher.OriginalityDrawing on AET, the current study constructed a process model of third party’s cyberloafing reactions to peer abusive supervision, which helps explain the affective mechanism and the boundary conditions of the above “events-affectivity-behavior” path. Our model is a positive response to previous scholars’ calls for research of abusive supervision from multiple perspectives. Meanwhile, the current study explored the antecedent variable of cyberloafing from the perspective of event observers, which provides a theoretical basis for follow-up-related research. Thirdly, this study further expanded the theoretical boundaries of AET. (shrink)

Previous studies show that adults and children evaluate the act of leaving a choice for others as prosocial, and have termed such actions as socially mindful actions. The current study investigates how the desirability of the available options (i.e., whether the available options are desirable or not) may influence adults’ and children's evaluation of socially mindful actions. Children (N = 120, 4- to 6-year-olds) and adults (N = 124) were asked to evaluate characters selecting items for themselves from a set (...) of three items—two identical items and one unique item—in a way that either leaves a choice (two diverse items) or leaves no choice (two identical items) for the next person (i.e., the beneficiary). We manipulated whether the available options were either desirable or undesirable (i.e., damaged). We found that adults’ and 6-year-olds’ evaluation of socially mindful actions is moderated by the desirability of the options. Although they evaluate the act of leaving a choice for others as nicer than the act of leaving no choice both when the choosing options are desirable and when they are undesirable, the discrepancy in the evaluation becomes significantly smaller when the choosing options are undesirable. We also found that inference of the beneficiary's feeling underlies social evaluation of the actor leaving a choice (or not). These findings suggest that children consider both the diversity of options left and the desirability of the available options in understanding and evaluating socially mindful acts. (shrink)

Based on social cognitive theory, we studied the relationship between coaches’ paternalistic leadership and youth athletes’ organizational citizenship behavior and the mediation effect of athletes’ trust in coaches, in China. This age-specific research was conducted among more than 2,000 Chinese youth soccer players. Overall, 758 youth soccer players, aged 13–18 years, completed a self-report questionnaire. The results showed that the three dimensions of the coaches’ PL have different relationships with OCB, and the differences were due to differences in athletes’ ages. (...) Additionally, we verified the mediation role of trust. Our research conclusions are of great significance to the study of Chinese youth soccer as in-depth research can provide a deeper and more precise understanding of the relationship between PL and the OCB of Chinese youth soccer players. This study expands the literature on social cognitive theory and sheds light on the relationship between coach leadership and athlete OCB by providing extensive evidence. (shrink)

Teachers have an important social role, and their mental health literacy is very important to their own abilities as educators and to the growth and development of those they educate. This study explored the mechanism underlying the influence of social support on teachers’ mental health literacy by conducting a questionnaire survey of 573 teachers. The results showed that social support can influence teachers’ mental health literacy not only through the separate effects of life satisfaction and coping tendency but also through (...) the chain mediation effect of life satisfaction and coping tendency; however, the direct effect of social support on the teachers’ mental health literacy is not significant. This study is conducive to understanding the internal mechanism underlying the relationship between social support and mental health literacy. It reminded us that when formulating mental health literacy promotion programs for teachers, we should not only provide adequate social support to improve but also should pay attention to improvements in their coping tendencies and life satisfaction. (shrink)

Patients increasingly share online health information with their physicians. However, few studies have investigated factors that may facilitate or inhibit such sharing and subsequent impact on physician-patient relationship. This study conducted a cross-sectional survey among 818 Chinese patients to examine if two patient characteristics -communication apprehension and eHealth literacy- influence their ways of sharing online health information with physicians and subsequently impact physician-patient relationship. The results showed that a majority of surveyed participants searched health information online, and about half of (...) them used such information during their doctor visits. Less apprehensive patients tend to share the information with their physicians more directly, which can positively affect perceived physician reactions and patient satisfaction. eHealth literacy, however, is not found to be associated with patients’ sharing of online information with physicians. This study underscores the importance of identifying patient characteristic’s role in patient-physician interaction. (shrink)

This study extended the research on the relationship between youth elite athletes’ satisfaction and coaches’ paternalistic leadership by identifying athletes’ resilience as a moderator. A total of 221 youth elite football players aged 13–19 years old who are students of a Chinese professional football boarding school participated in a questionnaire survey. The study found no correlation between the three dimensions of coaches’ paternalistic leadership and the youth athletes’ satisfaction. The results also showed that the interaction of resilience and moral leadership (...) affects the youth elite athletes’ satisfaction, whereas resilience does not play a moderating role in the relationship between authoritative leadership or benevolent leadership and satisfaction. As the results of the study are different from those of other scholars, they may reveal the uniqueness of youth elite football players in boarding schools. This study further analyzed the possible reasons for this result and prospected the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. Based on the conclusion, the study recommended that youth elite football schools should pay attention to the results of scientific research in leadership styles and apply them to practice in the future. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic severely hit small and micro-businesses. In the face of the impact of the pandemic, how to help entrepreneurs, especially small- and micro-businesses that are more sensitive to the impact of the pandemic, make decisions to reduce losses has become an issue worth paying attention to. From the perspective of personality approach, this article studied openness, which is the strongest predictor of entrepreneurial performance among the big five personality traits, and explored the impact of entrepreneurs’ openness on entrepreneurial (...) performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the inconsistent mediating role of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance. An online questionnaire survey was conducted among 238 entrepreneurs of small- and micro-businesses when China was recovering from the pandemic and starting to resume work and production. Entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic was measured by comparing the business conditions before and after the pandemic. The results showed that entrepreneurs’ openness positively impacted strategic decision comprehensiveness and entrepreneurial performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the two competing hypotheses proposed by summarizing previous research, the results supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness negatively affected entrepreneurial performance. It indicated that entrepreneurs who tend to collect and analyze information extensively and then make decisions during the pandemic could not seize opportunities and improve their entrepreneurial performance. The results further supported that strategic decision comprehensiveness was an inconsistent mediator between openness and entrepreneurial performance, showing that entrepreneurs with low openness can also reduce the loss of entrepreneurial performance during the pandemic by making incomplete but rapid strategic decisions. This study found that the openness of entrepreneurs had a positive impact on strategic decision comprehensiveness for the first time and provided more empirical evidence for the negative effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness on entrepreneurial performance in the context of information uncertainty and unanalyzable situations. The inconsistent mediating effect of strategic decision comprehensiveness revealed in this study also has practical significance for helping entrepreneurs make correct decisions to reduce the losses caused by the pandemic. (shrink)

An experiment examined goal understanding and how perceivers’ suspiciousness was associated with the accuracy, valence, and certainty of their inferences about a pursuer’s goal. In initial interactions, one dyad member was randomly assigned as the pursuer, and the other was the perceiver. The congruency of the perceiver’s and the pursuer’s conversation goals and the perceiver’s cognitive busyness were manipulated. Results confirmed that accuracy decreased as perceivers’ suspiciousness increased only for not-busy perceivers in the goal-discord condition because perceivers’ inferences were negatively (...) valenced. Results also supported the hypotheses that certainty decreased as perceivers’ suspiciousness increased only for not-busy perceivers in the goal-discord condition and that certainty increased as perceivers’ suspiciousness increased both for not-busy perceivers in the identical-goal condition and for busy perceivers in the goal-discord condition. (shrink)

Prospect theory predicts a four-fold risk attitude, which means that people are risk seeking for low-probability gain and high-probability loss and risk averse for low-probability loss and high-probability gain because they overweight probability when it is low. The four-fold pattern of risk attitude has been supported by several former studies with mainstream industrialized populations but has never previously been tested in a non-industrialized society. In this work, we examined the robustness of the four-fold risk attitude in the DuLong minority ethnicity (...) in China, which is a small society with only 4,000 members that is isolated from modern civilization. We used simple lotteries for gain and loss with different probabilities to elicit the risk attitude of 37 DuLong villagers. Our results support prospect theory predictions in that DuLong people are risk seeking for low-probability gain and risk averse for low-probability loss. However, although they showed a tendency to decrease their degree of risk seeking for gain, their risk attitude did not reverse when the probability of the prospect increased to 50%. In summary, our results suggest a right-shifted weighting function in this non-industrialized small society. The deviation might be caused by the particular living situation of the DuLong people, their sensitivity to monetary payoffs, and the elicitation procedure. (shrink)

BackgroundThe Chinese government implemented a lockdown to contain the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic during the Chinese Lunar New Year when people have the tradition to visit families and friends. Previous research suggested that heuristic processing increased risky behavioral willingness and that people’s tendency to use heuristic processing varied across different adulthood stages. This study thus investigated the relationships among age, heuristic processing of COVID-19-related information, and the willingness to have social gatherings during the lockdown.MethodsA sample of 1,651 participants was recruited (...) from an online crowdsourcing platform between January 31 and February 04 in 2020, with a mean age of 30.69, 47.9% being women. Participants completed an online questionnaire about heuristic processing of COVID-19-related information, willingness to engage in social gatherings during the lockdown, age, and other demographic information.ResultsAge was found to have a U-shaped curvilinear relationship with heuristic processing, and heuristic processing was positively correlated with the willingness to have social gatherings. Further analyses showed that heuristic processing curvilinearly mediated the relationship between age and the willingness to have social gatherings.ConclusionCompared with young adults, emerging and older adults are more likely to engage in heuristic processing, which in turn, increases the willingness to have social gatherings. Heuristic processing serves as an underlying mechanism to explain the relationship between age and risky behavioral willingness. (shrink)