Allan B. I. Bernardo

De La Salle University | DLSU · Department of Psychology

Learners’ metacognitive reading strategies support their attempts to draw meaning from texts and to overcome comprehension difficulties. For second language readers, such strategies may compensate for lack of language proficiency while reading. Taking a sample from a country that ranked last in the PISA 2018 reading assessment, this study aims to i...

This study explored people’s estimation of cooperative intention when paired with people with different types of relationships, and the mediating roles of trust and responsibility between guanxi perception and the estimation of cooperative intention. We recruited 398 university students from the Greater Bay Area of China to complete two public good...

Diversity in organizations is a recurring and increasing reality of vast importance. The diversity management literature describes different types of organizations based on their treatment and management of diversity, including plural and multicultural organizations. However, recent research suggests the added value of considering polycultural orga...

Filipino students’ performance in global assessments of science literacy has always been low, and this was confirmed again in the PISA 2018, where Filipino learners’ average science literacy scores ranked second to last among 78 countries. In this study, machine learning approaches were used to analyze PISA data from the student questionnaire to te...

Some public officials have expressed concern that policies mandating collective public health behaviors (e.g., national/regional "lockdown") may result in behavioral fatigue that ultimately renders such policies ineffective. Boredom, specifically, has been singled out as one potential risk factor for noncompliance. We examined whether there was emp...

The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) is a commonly used screener of mental health symptoms, and researchers continue to study the scale’s psychometric properties in different cultures and age groups. We tested the longitudinal measurement invariance of the DASS-21 across two time points on a sample of 312 Filipino adolescents. The c...

The positive education movement has called attention to the importance of student well-being and the role of positive constructs, such as hope, in the educational process. The external locus-of-hope dimensions, or positive cognitions about the role of external actors in the pursuit of important goals, positively predict student well-being, learning...

The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) is a self-report screening tool of psychological symptoms used in many countries and translated in different languages. The DASS-21 was translated into Ilokano, one of the major languages in the Philippines spoken by over 9 million people all over the world. The translation process involved independ...

Filipino students performed poorly in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) mathematics assessment, with more than 50% obtaining scores below the lowest proficiency level. Students from public schools also performed worse compared to their private school counterparts. We used machine learning approaches, specifically binary...

Research and publications on the psychology of well-being have steadily increased in recent decades, but research on the peoples of South Asian and Southeast Asian is quite underrepresented in the research literature. Even as people from the regions comprise one third of the current global population, studies on well-being of individuals and groups...

While the Philippines is still building its global citizenship curriculum, there are global citizenship competencies already articulated in existing curriculum guides. Using data from a nationally representative sample of Grade 5 students in the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) assessment, we explored Filipino learners’ current glo...

The mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will increase as the outbreak continues and persist even after the pandemic passes. We developed an 11-item Coronavirus Pandemic Anxiety Scale (CPAS-11) to measure symptoms of anxiety related to the COVID-19 pandemic to help identify individuals who might need mental health services. In developing t...

The growth mindset, or the belief that intelligence can be increased with effort, has been shown to be positively associated with improved learning outcomes. This association has been observed in a few studies that inquired into reading outcomes, and fewer studies that looked into reading in a second language. The current study used data from the P...

Materialistic values have been shown to have a negative effect on learning. As intrinsic life values such as self-acceptance are orthogonal to materialistic values, they may counteract the effects of materialism and benefit the learning process by encouraging a focus on the actual learning task itself, as opposed to emphasizing the rewards associat...

Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examination of behavioral consequences associated with the pandemic at a global level. Further, few s...

Heritage culture detachment occurs when migrants tend to distance themselves from their own cultural norms and values as they engage their host culture; research suggests that this approach to acculturation is often associated with psychological distress. We explore heritage culture detachment and well-being among Filipino migrant workers in Macau....

Recent research has shown the utility of the locus-of-hope model to explain variations in student coping, well-being, and achievement in schools. Two studies were conducted to explore the validity of a short form of the Locus-of-Hope Scale (LOHS-SF), which was created to provide a more convenient tool for assessing students' locus-of-hope dimension...

The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one’s community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey ( N = 3040), we test how infection risk perception, trust in the governmental response and communications about COVID-19...

Mangrove forests are one of the most ecologically valuable ecosystems in the world and provide a wide variety of ecosystem services to coastal communities, including cities. Macao, a highly urbanized coastal city located on the southern coast of China west of the Pearl River, is home to several species of mangroves with many associated flora and fa...

Before vaccines for COVID-19 became available, a set of infection prevention behaviors constituted the primary means to mitigate the virus spread. Our study aimed to identify important predictors of this set of behaviors. Whereas social and health psychological theories suggest a limited set of predictors, machine learning analyses can identify cor...

Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examination of behavioral consequences associated with the pandemic at a global level. Further, few s...

Purpose The therapeutic community (TC) is a widely used treatment approach for substance use disorders. Several psychological theories have been used to explain its processes but have put less emphasis on the specific contributions of the person’s cognitive resources. This paper aims to offer a theoretical conceptualization using the locus-of-hope...

A survey of 3,032 university students in the Philippines during the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown in the country (March to April 2020) revealed that 44.66% met the cutoff score for generalized anxiety symptoms (GAD-2) and 62.40% reported having very bad to bad sleep quality; these symptoms are also negatively correlated with measures of psycho...

Understanding the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine uptake is important to inform policy decisions and plan vaccination campaigns. The aims of this research were to: (1) explore the individual- and country-level determinants of intentions to be vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, and (2) examine worldwide variation in vaccination intentions. This cross-s...

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Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have negative consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, in increasing negative attitudes towards immigrants. We used participant-level data from...

Objective The study examined the role of fear of COVID-19 and of financial difficulties in the family on the positive (flourishing and satisfaction with life) and negative (depression, anxiety, and stress) dimensions of mental health among a Filipino university student sample during the COVID-19 crisis. Method Using a cross-sectional online survey...

Various adaptations of the Dispositional Hope Scale have been validated and used for specific research and applied purposes. The Locus-of-Hope Scale was developed as a cultural adaptation that measures internal and external aspects of agency related to goal-pursuit that are typical in collectivist cultures. The scale has been used to account for va...

During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. conservative politicians and the media downplayed the risk of both contracting COVID-19 and the effectiveness of recommended health behaviors. Health behavior theories suggest perceived vulnerability to a health threat and perceived effectiveness of recommended health-protective behaviors dete...

Filipino students ranked last in reading proficiency among all countries/territories in the PISA 2018, with only 19% meeting the minimum (Level 2) standard. It is imperative to understand the range of factors that contribute to low reading proficiency, specifically variables that can be the target of interventions to help students with poor reading...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused a global health crisis. Consequently, many countries have adopted restrictive measures that caused a substantial change in society. Within this framework, it is reasonable to suppose that a sentiment of societal discontent, defined as generalized concern about the precarious state of socie...

The intense desire to achieve happiness is linked to increased well-being in collectivist societies. However, research showed that the emotional payback of valuing happiness only applies to older adults but not to younger undergraduate students. Existing studies on how valuing happiness predicts well-being in different populations use cross-section...

Objective: Polyculturalism, a relatively new intergroup ideology conceptualises culture as dynamic by emphasising intergroup connections. Previous research has linked polyculturalism to less negative attitudes towards different racial and ethnic groups. However, the underpinnings of this relationship is not well understood. It was predicted that op...

As people’s concerns about wealth inequality have not grown even as warnings are raised about its negative impact on societies and individuals, research has inquired into factors that influence people’s tolerance towards wealth inequalities. Previous research has shown that higher social position and meritocracy beliefs tend to reduce concern for w...

This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 countries (N = 25,435). The main predictors were (1) perceived risk to contract coronavirus, (...

The present investigation explored Chinese people's attitudes toward the social practice of going "through the back door" or zouhoumen. Zouhoumen is an informal approach to achieve one's goal through personal connections (called guanxi). We propose that Chinese people distinguish between different acts of zouhoumen and propose at least two types th...

Some scholars view guanxi as having an important role in social transactions in Chinese societies, while others view guanxi as a problematic practice associated with unfairness and inequality. We propose that the belief in guanxi is a societal norm that is part of the social system in Chinese society, and that belief in guanxi as a social norm is a...

The present study examined the general hypothesis that social axioms (social cynicism, social complexity, religiosity, reward for application, and fate control) have main and interacting effects on domain-specific perceived academic control. Social axioms that assume personal control over life outcomes were hypothesised to be positively associated...

Growing efforts have been made to pool coronavirus data and control measures from countries and regions to compare the effectiveness of government policies. We examine whether these strategies can explain East Asia’s effective control of the COVID‐19 pandemic based on time‐series data with cross‐correlations between the Stringency Index and number...

Background: Meta-analytic studies show that the benefits of the growth mindset on academic achievement are heterogenous. Past studies have explored how individual characteristics and proximal environmental factors could explain these variations, but the role of the broader sociocultural environment has seldom been explored. Aims: We investigated...

This study investigated the buffering role of hope between perceived stress and health outcomes among front-line medical staff treating patients with suspected COVID-19 infection in Shenzhen, China. In the cross-sectional study with online questionnaires, medical staff's perceived stress, anxiety, depression, sleep quality, and hope were measured b...

The professional development of teachers is an important component of quality standards for any educational system, as teachers’ engagement in continuing professional development (CPD) activities are related with aspects of professional commitment and satisfaction. In this study, we explore how perceived demands of a national educational reform in...

The growth mindset is the belief that one’s level of intelligence can be changed, and many education-reform advocates have pushed for growth mindset interventions in the belief it will improve achievement in schools. While researchers have debated the usefulness of mindset interventions in schools, current research has focused on investigating the...

The mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will increase as the outbreak continues and persist even after the pandemic passes. We developed a 11-item Coronavirus Pandemic Anxiety Scale (CPAS-11) to measure symptoms of anxiety related to the COVID-19 pandemic to help identify individuals who might need mental health services. In developing th...

Previous research has established the superiority of bilinguals" inhibitory control compared to monolinguals, but would trilinguals demonstrate even more superior inhibitory control? The study tests the hypothesis that there is no difference between bilinguals and trilinguals due to similar cognitive processes involved in suppressing information fr...

Some studies have shown that character strengths positively predicted optimal performance and wellbeing in WEIRD societies which may hold limited generalizability to individuals in non-WEIRD contexts. This prospective study examined the association of selected interpersonal character strengths (i.e., fairness, teamwork, leadership, forgiveness, and...

One category of educational interventions seeks to develop character strengths in students. These positive psychology interventions are part of a broader agenda of shifting the purpose of education so that students do not only focus on acquiring academic skills, but more importantly, the skills for happiness (Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, & Li...

[Open access article. May be viewed and downloaded at Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia website http://hubsasia.ui.ac.id/article/view/3797 ] The ability to function effectively in intercultural contexts is increasingly important in our globalized world. This ability has been conceptualized as cultural intelligence (or CQ), and many studies have...

In Indonesia, homonegativity still exists and acts of violence against homosexual groups still happen, but there has not been much research on aspects of this homonegativity beyond inquiring into general attitudes towards homosexuals. This study has several aims: to qualitatively explore dimensions of perceived threat, to develop a measure of perce...

For international students, adjusting to the culture of their host country is an essential and challenging task, and previous research has inquired into factors that relate to better adjustment of such students. The current study investigates the possible role of intergroup ideology of polyculturalism in international students’ cultural adjustment,...

The protean and boundaryless career attitudes are concepts that are increasingly relevant as the nature of work and careers are transformed by economic growth, globalization, and technology. These career attitudes that emphasize the individual’s identity and values in career management have not been studied in the Philippine context, even as the ec...

Attitudes toward increased cross-cultural contact associated with globalization vary depending on whether contact is perceived as a threat that disrupts psychological functions of one’s own culture. I tested the hypothesis that belief about the dynamic connectedness of cultures, that is, polyculturalism, would be associated with the effects of incr...

Polyculturalism is the lay belief that cultures are dynamically interconnected and mutually influencing each other historically and in contemporary times. Belief in polyculturalism is associated with various positive intergroup outcomes in intercultural social contexts, but it has never been studied in relation to intergroup attitudes in postcoloni...

The intergroup lay theories of polyculturalism and multiculturalism have been hypothesized to play an important role in facilitating better intergroup relations. In two studies, we investigate the consequences of polyculturalism and multiculturalism on participants’ cognitive empathy for actors in a hypothetical intercultural interaction. Study 1 i...

In our increasingly globalized world, we are more exposed to diverse people and cultures than ever before, making lay belief systems about cross-cultural influences as well as consequences of those beliefs for intercultural attitudes important to study. Over the past decade, there has been increasing immigration to Colombia, making it a particularl...

Studies on multiculturalism and polyculturalism are typically carried out in multicultural societies; studies on relatively homogeneous societies are rare. In this study, we use a mixed-method approach to explore how the two lay theories of culture are understood in a culturally homogeneous community (Wonosobo) in a multicultural country (Indonesia...

This special thematic section is the first in a series of special sections that the Asian Association of Social Psychology (AASP) is developing for the Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology . Over the last four years, the AASP has guest edited one special issue each year on applied social psychology research in the journal in an attempt to encourage As...

The relationship between well-being and the personal strength of hope has been elaborated by the identification of internal (self) and external (family, peers, spiritual) locus-of-hope dimensions. Du, Bernardo, and Yeung (2015) showed that self-esteem (personal and relational) mediates the relationship between locus-of-hope and life satisfaction. L...

Culturally Relevant Meanings of the Protestant Work Ethic and Attitudes towards Poor Persons – CORRIGENDUM - Volume 21 - Allan B. I. Bernardo, Sheri R. Levy, Ashley E. Lytle

The Protestant work ethic (PWE), or the belief that hard work leads to success, is a popular belief across cultures. Much work indicates that PWE contributes to negative evaluations of disadvantaged groups presumably through the notion that they deserve their disadvantage for not working hard enough (“PWE-Justifier”). But there is another dimension...

The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) is an assessment tool that has been translated into various languages for use with school-aged children in different cultures. The English form is used in the Philippines, but there is no published evidence on the CBCL’s structural validity when used with Filipino-English bilingual respondents. The study examined...

The social cognitive perspective on socioeconomic status (SES) or social class assumes that SES is associated with people’s perception of social events. The study extends this assumption to SES differences in problem attributions. We hypothesized that compared to lower-class individuals, upper-class individuals will be inclined to attribute the cau...

Cultural intelligence or CQ is an important construct that is associated with effective functioning in culturally diverse contexts. More recently, research has attempted to identify factors that might relate to the strengthening or development of CQ. In this study, we examine cognitive flexibility as a possible psychological process that relates to...

Children left behind by parents who are overseas Filipino workers (OFW) benefit from parental migration because their financial status improves. However, OFW families might emphasize the economic benefits to compensate for their separation, which might lead to materialism among children left behind. Previous research indicates that materialism is a...

Philippine discourse on school improvement has often focused on matters related to inputs to the educational process, which reflects the struggles associated with the adoption of outcomes-based approaches. However, in most parts of the world, school improvement is focused on the concern about improving student learning. One of the key factors in sc...

Abusive supervision in the workplace has been shown to have important direct consequence in work and work relationship, and also indirect consequences to workers’ well-being and relationships outside work. Consequences of abusive supervision have not been studied among migrant workers whose status in the host country of work is dependent on maintai...

Intervention programs to strengthen hope in students have been developed and implemented in schools. The programs are based on Snyder's theory that defines hope as thoughts regarding personal capacities and pathways for goal attainment. Hope theory was recently extended to include external loci‐of‐hope, which derive from conjoint models of agency e...

Objective Household theory of labour migration assumes that the decision to work in another country is a family's strategy to improve prospects of socio‐economic mobility. We inquired into the social cognitive processes associated with this goal by applying model of pathways to socio‐economic mobility, but extending the types of causal conceptions...

As the final paper within this special issue on Internationalization in School and Educational Psychology, this paper documents broad perspectives about internationalization from multiple school and educational psychologists who have worked in various contexts (e.g., in different professional roles and geographic locations). Based upon three core q...

One of the core principles of positive psychology is that character strengths buffer the effects of adverse experiences on well-being. This study investigated whether external locus-of-hope (LOH) moderates the effects of financial stress on Filipino students' well-being. Students from various universities answered questionnaires that included scale...

The negative impact of cyberbullying on the psychological wellbeing of victims has been well documented, but not all victims suffer these negative consequences. The victims’ coping strategies are important psychological factors that may buffer the negative effects of victimization. We used the Collectivist Coping Style Inventory to inquire into how...

The final thematic special issue in the series ‘The Social Psychology of Social Change: Science and Practice in Asia’ features 10 empirical studies that apply diverse social psychological theories and approaches to understand and to address a wide range of social concerns in Asian societies. The articles in the special issue align more to mainstrea...

Several studies have observed a bilingual advantage in non-linguistic cognitive tasks. Even as the replicability of these findings is debated, there is much evidence to suggest that the bilinguals’ constant exertion to manage information from two active linguistic systems enhances the basic inhibitory control functions in bilinguals compared to mon...

An exploratory study was conducted to study political values of Filipinos. An etic approach was adopted using as starting point the theory of core political values (Schwartz, Caprara, & Vecchione, 2010) to explore the political values of a sample of 699 Filipinos who participated in an online survey. The results of exploratory and confirmatory fact...

Zou hou men (ZHM) (literally, through the back door) is a prevalent practice in China that is sometimes associated with corruption. We hypothesize that acceptance of ZHM in illegal transactions negatively relates to its perceived harmfulness. Moreover, personality orientations (social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism) influence ha...

The study inquired into characteristics associated with the subjective well-being of Filipino women who had experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). Using a person-centered analysis, three groups of Filipino women who had experienced IPV were identified in terms of their reported levels of subjective well-being (high, moderate, low). The three...

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is a construct associated with effective functioning in intercultural contexts. We propose that polyculturalism – the belief that cultures are connected and mutually influencing each other – is an individual-difference factor that can explain individual- and country-level differences in CQ. Regression analysis showed that...

Cross-cultural psychology research suggests possible cultural differences in predictors of life satisfaction and well-being. Research has identified coping styles and positivity or hope cog-nitions as factors associated with differences in well-being across cultures. Some scholars proposed collectivist coping styles and relational-based hope cognit...

Correlates of help-seeking intentions of a sample of Filipino women victims of intimate partner violence were explored in this study, with a focus on the influence of locus-of-hope dimensions. Results indicated that self-esteem, most demographic and relationship factors were not systematically related to help-seeking intentions, but more educated b...