Journal of personality and social psychology
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Recent experimental work demonstrates that temporal distancing from negative experiences reduces distress. Yet two central questions remain: (a) do people differ in the habitual tendency to temporally distance from negative experiences, and if so (b) what implications does this tendency have for well-being? Seven studies explored these questions. Study 1 describes the construction and reliability of the Temporal Distancing Questionnaire, a new measure of individual differences in the tendency to place negative experiences into a broader future time perspective. ⋯ Finally, Studies 5a-5c explore a key way in which temporal distancing may support psychological well-being-by facilitating more adaptive responses to negative experiences. Our results demonstrate that the tendency to temporally distance from negative experiences predicts a more positive profile of affective experiences and stress-reactivity that may support immediate and longer-term well-being. Moreover, many of these findings remained significant when controlling for general reappraisal tendencies. (PsycINFO Database Record
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We investigated class-based differences in the propensity to seek positions of power. We first proposed that people's lay theories suggest that acquiring power requires playing politics-manipulating one's way through the social world, relying on a pragmatic and Machiavellian approach to impression management and social relationships to get ahead. Then, drawing on empirical work portraying individuals with relatively low social class as more strongly focused on others and less focused on themselves, we hypothesized that these individuals would show less interest in seeking positions of power than their high-class counterparts, because they feel less comfortable engaging in political behavior. ⋯ Consistent with our theorizing, we also found that individuals with relatively low social class intend to seek positions of power as much as their high-class counterparts when they can acquire it through prosocial means (Study 2), and when they reconstrue power as serving a superordinate goal of helping others (Study 4). Moreover, we checked the robustness of our findings by measuring social class in a number of ways within each study, and examined whether our results held across each measure. Together, our findings suggest that the common belief that political behavior is required for advancement may help explain why class inequalities persist and why creating class-based diversity in upper-level positions poses a serious challenge. (PsycINFO Database Record