Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

A variety of scales have been developed in the world to measure subjective well-being; nevertheless, some researchers have reported, as a limiting factor, the use of non-representative samples for different population groups from various geographic areas per country. Thus, we performed a study where the objective was to analyze the factorial structure, psychometric properties, and invariance of a subjective well-being scale for the Mexican population. We performed a probabilistic, tri-stage, stratified sampling used by the National Institute of Statistics and Information in Mexico (INEGI, for its initials in Spanish). The data based corresponding to the years 2013 to 2020 was recovered and the sample consisted of 54019 participants from an urban area of the 32 states of Mexico: 23279 (43,1%) males and 30740 (56,9%) females; 1334 (2,5%) adolescents; 42108 (78,0%) adults and 10577 (19,6%) older adults. The age of the participants ranged from 18 to 97 years old (M = 44,34, DE = 16,30). We analyzed the internal reliability with the omega coefficient and, to explore the factorial structure, we performed five confirmatory factorial analyses. We evaluated the invariance of the scale with a Multigroup Confirmatory Factorial Analysis (MCFA) by gender, developmental stages and region of residence in the country. The single factorial model and the three-factor model which were correlated had a poor fit of the data, reason for which we decided to modify the latter. The modified Three Correlated Factors Model (Satisfaction with Life, Positive Affects and Negative Affects) yielded a good fit with a value of 0,94 in the omega coefficient. The MCFA of the Scale of Subjective Well-being with a modified factorial structure of three correlated factors yielded values in the change of CFI, RMSEA and SRMS, which showed invariance in groups divided by sex, developmental stages and region of residence. The analysis of the structure of Subjective Well-being proposed by Diener et al., of three interrelated factors of Satisfaction with Life, Positive Affects and Negative Affects, yielded evidence of validity, internal consistency and configurational, metric and scalar invariance within the groups by gender, stages of development and region of residence for the Mexican population.

En el presente estudio se examinó la relación entre las medidas objetivas y subjetivas de metacognición, los rasgos de personalidad de los Cinco Grandes (extraversión, amabilidad, responsabilidad, neuroticismo y apertura) y el género. Una muestra de conveniencia de 352 estudiantes completó el Inventario de Conciencia Metacognitiva, el instrumento Adjetivos para Evaluar la Personalidad y completaron 3 pruebas de dominio específico (vocabulario, probabilidades, plegado de papel) junto con la confianza en los juicios de desempeño para cada reactivo en estas pruebas. A través de una combinación de estadísticas descriptivas, correlaciones bivariadas de orden cero, regresión múltiple simultánea y un análisis multivariante de covarianza, los hallazgos indican que las medidas objetivas y subjetivas de metacognición están débilmente relacionadas y que las medidas subjetivas de metacognición están más fuertemente relacionadas con los rasgos de personalidad. Además, la responsabilidad y la apertura fueron los únicos rasgos de personalidad que predijeron positivamente la metacognición. Finalmente, el género afectó las medidas subjetivas y objetivas de metacognición, incluso después de controlar por tipo de universidad (privada, pública) y percepciones del desempeño académico (alto, bajo) de tal manera que los hombres fueron más precisos y menos sesgados en su monitoreo que las mujeres solo en el razonamiento matemático y reportaron una mayor conciencia de su conocimiento y regulación de la cognición que sus contrapartes femeninas. Los hallazgos respaldan la necesidad de comprender mejor cómo los rasgos de personalidad y el género afectan las habilidades de aprendizaje autorregulado como la metacognición para mejorar la práctica educativa.

The COVID-19 pandemic has evolved complex challenges especially for families with children and adolescents. The impact of the pandemics' confinement on mental health has been described as devastating, limiting the resources available to families and increasing caregivers' stress levels and demands on their efforts. This study showed the results of an online survey of caregivers, mothers or fathers, with at least one child between 0 and 11 years old who lived the first weeks of confinement throughout Chile. The variables associated with physical symptoms, anxiety, mood, disruptive behavior, sleep problems, low frustration tolerance, attentional difficulties, hyperactivity and regressive behaviors that are related to the psychological impact that the measure of confinement has had on children from 0 to 11 years of age were studied through a questionnaire quantifying their frequency by age group, identifying how these effects are expressed in relation to the vital stages of child development. The results indicate that the younger the age of the children (0 to 3 years) the greater the presence of disruptive behaviors, while the older the age (9 to 11 years) the greater the presence of symptoms such as sadness, anxiety, listlessness and sleep problems. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of policies and strategies to address them, which should consider both the developmental stage of the children and the main caregivers, given the protective role they can play in stressful situations.

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between participation and mental health of children and adolescents according to the perceptions of professionals working in the protection system in Chile. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 psychologists and 7 social workers (10 women and 5 men between 27 and 55 years old) belonging to the regions of Valparaíso, Metropolitana, Araucanía and Magallanes. A thematic analysis was carried out through an interpretative process of the data by constructing categories of analysis. It was found that among the professionals there is a low consensus regarding the concept of participation; that a contextual view of mental health prevails; and that they share the idea that the relationship between participation and mental health of children and adolescents is mainly given by the influence of participation on their mental health. Based on this, there is a need to generate new training and/or instances of reflection for professionals in the protection area where the idea of the reciprocal impact between participation and mental health of children and adolescents is strengthened. The need to include specific mechanisms to facilitate child participation in the technical guidelines of the programs is also proposed. As a projection for future research, it is necessary to explore the effective implementation of participation practices in future studies.

Humor in psychology has generated abundant literature, highlighting its potential benefit in mental health. However, in Chile there is little theoretical-empirical research on this phenomenon in psychotherapeutic practice. This investigation is framed in the study of the use of humor by cognitive constructivist therapists, whose objective was to identify, describe and analyze the functions of humor and its effects in the psychotherapeutic process with adult patients. A descriptive qualitative methodology was used. The information was collected through semi-structured interviews with 12 therapists, seven women and five men, between eight and thirty-nine years of clinical experience in psychotherapy. Grounded Theory was used for the analysis, through open and axial coding. The results indicate that there is no single way of understanding humor in psychotherapy, that there are essential conditions for the use of humor in therapy, that there are specific purposes for its use and that its presence would generate effects in the therapist, the patient and the therapeutic relationship. A comprehensive proposal of the processes and relationships between the different elements resulting from this research is formulated, from the point of view of the cognitive constructivist therapist. Humor is considered as a constitutive part of human beings and, under certain conditions, it can be incorporated in psychotherapy as a mechanism of change in the systems of meaning of the subject’s experience, which allows contributing to the progress of the discipline.

In Chile, as in many countries in the world, there are manifestations of gender inequality in education, which undermines everyone’s learning and development. In addition to structural factors, there are psychosocial ones such as gender stereotypes and sexist pedagogical practices that are reproduced in education and contribute to maintaining gaps in attitudes towards learning and achievement. Two studies were carried out to explore whether university students (Study 1) and teachers (Study 2) present gender stereotypes and sexist pedagogical practices. In addition, differences between groups were explored, as well as the effect of stereotypes on students’ attitudes and teaching practices. Self-report questionnaires were used to measure motivation and academic self-concept regarding career, causal attributions, explicit gender stereotypes, and sexist pedagogical practices. 297 students and 85 teachers from a Chilean public university participated. The analysis reveals gender stereotypes in students and teachers, especially in men and in students who attribute greater importance to being masculine. In addition, women and students who attach more importance to being feminine value more effort and academic achievement. The results also reveal that for women—but not for met—the importance attributed to being feminine is a positive predictor of academic self-concept. Finally, that teachers’ gender stereotypes predict their sexist pedagogical practices. The findings are discussed regarding the implications for the teaching-learning processes in higher education and for initiatives that seek greater gender equity.

Why do people justify intergroup violence between police and protesters in social protests? This article examines attitudes towards violence perpetrated by police officers against protesters and violence carried out by protesters against police officers in the context of the post-social outbreak of October 18, 2019 in Chile. We evaluate the role played by the perception of injustice in procedures and treatment of police officers towards protesters, the evaluation of the legitimacy of police officers and group identification with protesters and police officers in predicting the justification of violence towards the police and towards protesters. We present the results of an online non-probabilistic survey on legitimacy and police violence carried out among adults in Chile during January 2021 (n = 2,594). Through a path analysis, we found that the perception of injustice in the procedures through which the police treat protesters is a key factor in predicting the perception of legitimacy of the police. Furthermore, by reducing the legitimacy of the police, the perception of injustice in the procedures and the treatment translates into lower levels of justification of police violence and to greater levels of justification of protestors’ violence. The article finishes by highlighting the importance of considering the perceptions of injustice in procedures and treatment of police officers in order to reduce the conflict between police officers and protesters in Chile.

There is a growing body of research on how spirituality and religiosity affect people's lives. There are models to examine this in people with cancer, depression or anorexia, its modeling being less frequent in the general or healthy population, and particularly in older adults (OA). The goal here is to identify whether spirituality and religiosity predict the happiness of OA. The sample was non-probabilistic, by convenience and availability, using the snowball method. The sample is 206 participants (170 women, 36 men) from Ñuble, a region of south-central Chile, over 60 years of age (M = 70 years, SD = 6.86), who answered a questionnaire that included socio-demographic data, the Colombian version of Parsian and Dunning's Spirituality Questionnaire, the Spanish version of Allport and Ross "Age Universal" Scale of Religious Orientation IE-12, and the Happiness Scale for Adults (EFPA) (Moyano-Díaz et al., 2018). It is observed that OA present medium levels of religiosity, high in spirituality and significant correlations between these. Three models are tested through linear regression with mediation to explain happiness, using religiosity as a predictor variable and spirituality as a mediator. It is concluded that spirituality and religiosity predict happiness in OA, among other results.

The socioconstructivist literature on sociocognitive peer interaction is dominated by a structural or cross-sectional microanalytic approach. Here we propose to incorporate a micro-sequential perspective to analyze the socio-cognitive interaction between peers, occurring in a context of asymmetrical competence. This perspective focuses on the trajectory of transformations and changes occurring event by event. The aim is to identify regular microtransitions between the cognitive units contributed by peer in dyads with asymmetry of competence of sixth and seventh graders who solved task if comprehension of a cross-frequency table. Forty-three dyads (86 subjects, age: X=12.29; SD=0.64), from official schools of Rosario and its surrounding area (Argentina). The interaction was coded from three groups of categories according to its function in the task: directed to its resolution, to its organization or indirectly linked. An analysis of transition probability was performed among all codes. The transitions identified were organized according to whether they were: common between both subjects or specific from one to the other; intrasubjective or intersubjective; activated or inhibited. The results indicate a strong activation of transitions of intersubjective character when the codes refer to statements aimed at solving the task, and this is equally observed from one subject to the other, beyond the asymmetry of competence between them. Asymmetry-dependent transitions were also identified, generally activated, or inhibited by intervention of the more competent subject. The work allows us to conclude about the relevance of a (micro) sequential approach of socio-cognitive interaction, as the results reported here could not have been obtained from a classical structural perspective.

The ability to regulate emotions is relevant to well-being, whereas the inability to adjust physiological systems in response to environmental demands is associated with the development and maintenance of psychopathology. Numerous studies demonstrate that Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a psychophysiological marker of vagal regulation, which is reflected in psychological functioning indices. We recruited 201 volunteers: male and female undergraduate students (aged 18-29 years). Emotional regulation difficulties were measured with the Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale (DERS-E); psychological functioning, with the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-30.2), and depressive symptomatology, with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-I). In addition, HRV was measured during a 5-min rest period with a built-in ambulatory electrocardiogram system as a valid psychophysiological measure of somatic processes underlying emotional processing. The aim was to demonstrate that: a) emotional regulation partially mediates the relationship between HRV and psychological functioning, and between HRV and depressive symptomatology; b) HRV is negatively associated with emotional regulation difficulties, impairments in psychological functioning, and depressive symptomatology; and c) emotional regulation difficulties are positively associated with impairments in psychological functioning, and depressive symptomatology. Results showed that the lower the HRV the higher the persons’ impairment in psychological functioning, when controlling for emotional regulation difficulties. However, HRV was not significantly related to participants' perception of emotional regulation difficulties nor with depressive symptomatology. Results are discussed and suggestions for future research are outlined.