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K Boehnke

Publications and source records attributed to K Boehnke.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Worries and values.

Relations of individuals' value priorities to their worries are investigated in seven samples from four cultural groups (N = 1,441). A social-cognitive analysis suggests that value priorities influence worries by increasing attention to and perception of threats to valued goals. On this basis, we generate hypotheses relating two types of worries, micro (about self and its extensions) and macro (about society and world), to 10 types of values. As predicted, giving priority to self-transcendence values (universalism and benevolence) is associated with low micro and high macro worry, whereas giving priority to self-enhancement values (power, hedonism, and--to a lesser degree--achievement) is associated with high micro and low macro worry. Meaningful associations are also found for other values. Values account for substantially more variance in macro than in micro worries.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1998

The structure and dynamics of worry: theory, measurement, and cross-national replications.

This article presents a comprehensive conceptualization of the structure of worry and the relation of worry to mental health and well-being. It is assumed that worries have two facets, namely, the object of a worry (e.g., self, close others, society, the world) and the domain of a worry (the field of life with which it is concerned). The object of a worry is presumed to be more important than its domain in determining the impact of worries on mental health. Only worries concerned with self and close others (micro worries) are expected to be related to poor mental health, whereas worries about society or the entire world (macro worries) are expected to be positively related to mental health. An instrument is introduced to study worries in accordance with the proposed structure. Its validity is tested by two confirmatory techniques (similarity structure analysis and confirmatory factor analysis) in samples from Israel, West Germany, and (the former) East Germany. Worry scores are also related to five mental health indicators. Results show that across samples micro and macro worries can validly be distinguished. Micro worries are strongly related to poor mental health, whereas macro worries are unrelated to mental health or relate marginally to positive well-being.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1992

[Constraint and inclination for reducing complexity--social cognitive aspects of moral judgment in children].

When processing information about their reality human beings systematically reduce objective complexity. This is not only true in cognitive problem solving, but also in other every-day situations, e.g., when decisions in situations of moral relevance are required. From a developmental psychological point of view the adequate handling of such situations requires, on the one hand, an age-related differentiation of social cognitions, and, on the other hand, an increasingly effective structuring and integration of information. The latter developmental process, however, bears the danger that an adequate psychosocial development is substituted by a tendency toward complexity reduction in the sense of oversimplification due to the fact that such a tendency may suggest situation-specific alternative actions which are seemingly "easier to handle". In an empirical study with 176 students from Polytechnical High Schools in (East-)Berlin the hypothesis is tested if a tendency toward oversimplification in (fictitious) situations of moral relevance is systematically related to deviant behavior at school. Results show that indeed deviant students have a stronger tendency toward oversimplifying social cognitions than non-deviant students. Furthermore, it can be shown that this result is not moderated by possible sex, age or academic performance effects. As results with regard to moral judgement in the Kohlbergian sense differ substantially in their relation to academic performance and to behavioral deviance, it is assumed that the two judgement processes differ conceptually.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Macro-social stress in adolescence--results of a repeat-interview about war anxiety and anxiety of environmental destruction].

The article reports first results from a follow-up survey (N = 837) on existential anxieties with a sample of 8- to 20-year-olds from the Federal Republic of Germany who had been questioned first in 1985. The report focuses only on data gathered with the 'worry scale' by Goldenring und Doctor. Analyses based on a time-sequential-design show that (cross-sectionally as well as longitudinally) personal worries (concerned with everyday hassles, critical life-events, and micro-social stressors) decline with age. For politically based worries (concerned with so-called macro-social stressors), however, there is a strong gender difference: While in the cross-sectional analyses there is no mean difference between older and younger adolescents of both sexes, the longitudinal analyses show a possibly historical effect: Not only do girls express more personal als well as political worries (in whatever way this may be interpreted psychologically), their worries in the political field even increased at the end of the eighties whereas fears of boys in that domain remained constant. Consequences of the gulf war are briefly discussed.

Adaptation, Psychological↗