Florin Alin Sava

West University of Timişoara · Department of Psychology

BACKGROUND Discrimination can greatly impact both physical and mental health due to frequent stressors. Younger individuals, particularly those under 17 years old, are more adversely affected by victimization. Within the European Union, Romania exhibits poor rankings concerning LGBT+ inclusion. Notably, half of Romanian respondents aged 15-17 have...

Background Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people are at higher risk of mental health problems due to widespread hetero- and cisnormativity, including negative public attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community. In addition to combating social exclusion at the societal level, strengthening the coping abilities of young LGBTQ+ peop...

Plain Language Summary Although the common tools used to assess anxiety have proven to be quite effective, they come with some limitations due to the variability and complexity of human psychological processes. To explore beyond what self-report methods can reveal about one’s experience with anxiety, this study attempted to explain the participants...

BACKGROUND Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people are at higher risk of mental health problems due to widespread hetero- and cisnormativity, including negative public attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community. In addition to combating social exclusion at the societal level, strengthening the coping abilities of young LGBTQ+ peop...

Introduction The present research aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) intervention on in-service teachers. Methods A quasi-experimental 2-group (intervention vs. control) × 3-time (pre, post-test, follow-up) design was applied to explore to what extent the REBT interventions help teachers increase t...

Low frustration tolerance is one of the key concepts in rational emotional behavior therapy (REBT). The purpose of this study is to explore the factorial structure, reliability, and validity of the Romanian version of the Frustration Discomfort Scale (FDS), developed by Harrington (Clin Psychol Psychother 12(5):374–387, 2005b. https://doi.org/10.10...

Objective This study investigated performance validity in the understudied Romanian clinical population by exploring classification accuracies of the Dot Counting Test (DCT) and the first Romanian performance validity test (PVT) (Memory of Objects and Digits and Evaluation of Memory Malingering/MODEMM) in a heterogeneous clinical sample. Methods W...

BACKGROUND Stigmatization due to group membership, especially when occurring repeatedly over time, constitutes a recurrent stressor that has a negative impact on physical and mental health in the long run (Minority Stress Model). Among EU countries, Romania ranks low in terms of LGBT+ inclusion, with 45% of Romanian LGBT+ respondents in a recent st...

Background Repeated stigmatization due to group membership constitutes a recurrent stressor with negative impact on physical and mental health (minority stress model). Among European countries, Romania ranks low on LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The “+” represents individuals whose identities do not fit typical binary notion...

In this introduction to the special collection of papers on the relation between learning and personality research, we provide a functional-cognitive framework that can guide interactions between learning and personality researchers. It highlights that learning researchers can treat personality variables as potential (first or second order) moderat...

Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between neuroticism and negative biases. Although some studies suggest that people with high neuroticism give more weight to negative information, others suggest that they respond more strongly to both positive and negative information. We investigated whether neuroticism is related to the evaluation of con...

Purpose Network analysis has promised to inform clinical practice about what should be prioritised in treating different psychological disorders. However, the pure phenomenological approach adopted by network analysis did not help advance this goal considerably. We propose a theoretical approach based on the cognitive model of psychopathology. Met...

Evaluative conditioning is an effect consisting of a change in the valence of a neutral stimulus (Conditioned Stimulus, CS) that results from pairing it with a valenced stimulus (Unconditioned Stimulus, US). The present contribution examined whether and how this effect is moderated by Neuroticism, a personality trait articulated in facets and chara...

UNSTRUCTURED Network analysis has promised to inform clinical practice about what should be prioritised in the treatment of different psychological disorders. However, the pure phenomenological approach that network analysis has adopted didn’t help make considerable advancements towards this goal. We propose a theoretical approach based on the cogn...

People in economically advantaged nations tend to evaluate their life as more positive overall and report greater well-being than people in less advantaged nations. But how does positivity manifest in the daily life experiences of individuals around the world? The present study asked 15,244 college students from 62 nations, in 42 languages, to desc...

The network perspective on psychopathology suggests that mental disorders can be regarded as networks of elements that influence each other. In this study, we used network analysis to explore the temporal interactions of anxiety and depression symptoms at the level of day-to-day experiences and find potential explanatory pathways for their comorbid...

Introduction Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a prevalent emotional disorder associated with increased dysfunctionality, which has a lasting impact on the individual’s quality of life. Besides medication, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) represents the golden standard psychotherapeutic approach for GAD, integrating multilevel techniques and...

Today, performing automatic language analysis to extract meaning from natural language is one of the top-notch directions in social science research, but it can be challenging. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 (LIWC2015; Pennebaker et al. 2015) is one of the most versatile, yet easy to master instruments to transform any text into data, meeti...

Network analysis conceptualises psychopathology as systems of symptoms that interact and influence each other. It is hypothesised that network analysis can identify core symptoms relevant to the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder. We applied network analysis to avoidant personality disorder DSM-5 diagnostic criteria to identify such symptoms i...

People differ in their general tendency to endorse conspiracy theories (that is, conspiracy mentality). Previous research yielded inconsistent findings on the relationship between conspiracy mentality and political orientation, showing a greater conspiracy mentality either among the political right (a linear relation) or amongst both the left and r...

Objective: Two experimental studies were conducted to compare the ability of immediate and delayed recall indicators to discriminate between performances of simulators and full-effort clinical and nonclinical participants. Methods: Three groups of simulators (uncoached, symptom-coached, and testcoached), one group of community controls, and one gro...

Background: Internet-delivered psychotherapy represents an impactful large-scale solution for addressing psychological disorders. In spite of its flexibility and scalability, the fact that the ones in need have to initiate and sustain the curse of the treatment by themselves comes with considerable downsides in terms of treatment adherence. One sol...

Objective In this paper, we analyzed differences between uncoached, symptom-coached, and test-coached simulators regarding strategies of feigning mild head injuries. Method Healthy undergraduates (n = 67 in the first study; n = 48 in the second study), randomized into three simulator groups, were assessed with four experimental memory tests. In th...

Objective: This article investigates the accuracy of individual and combined indicators based on different strategies for detecting noncredible performance as part of a new test for the continuous assessment of short-term memory. Method: In two independent studies, we assessed three groups of simulators, cognitively impaired patients, and nonimpai...

Today, there is a range of computer-aided techniques to convert text into data. However, they convey not only strengths but also vulnerabilities compared to traditional content analysis. One of the challenges that have gained increasing attention is performing automatic language analysis to make sound inferences in a multilingual assessment setting...

Supervisor behavior can be easily interpreted in a positive or negative key; therefore subordinates’ perceptions regarding their supervisor behavior can be biased by numerous personal variables. In the present study we collected data from 20 supervisors and 402 subordinates, and we investigated the relationships between these two perspectives. The...

This review updates previous meta-analytical findings on validity indicators and provides new evidence on moderators of invalid performance, by investigating differences between noncredible and credible performances of clinical and non-clinical participants. Data from 133 studies (50 from previous meta-analyses and 83 new articles) were extracted a...

International migration has a powerful impact on both the sending and receiving countries, especially for adults migrating for better working conditions and leaving family members, including children, behind. Increasing numbers of left-behind children in Romania (Save the Children Romania, 2019) require attention and support through specific polici...

Teacher’s pupil control ideology is a central feature for the quality of the teacher-student relationship, which, in turn, impacts the teacher’s level of well-being. The pupil control ideology refers to a teacher’s belief system along a continuum from humanistic to custodial views. Teachers with humanistic orientation view students as responsible a...

In the context of adult labor migration in Europe, Romania is one of the leading work force sending countries, with 93 648 left behind children according to the ANPDCA (2017). The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the perceived difficulties and outcomes of young adults with a left behind background. The sample size was 193 adults (8...

Abstract What does it mean to be happy? The vast majority of cross-cultural studies on happiness have employed a Western-origin, or “WEIRD” measure of happiness that conceptualizes it as a self-centered (or “independent”), high-arousal emotion. However, research from East�ern cultures, particularly Japan, conceptualizes happiness as including an in...

Previous research has mostly focused on the link between the linguistic and behavioral footprints found on social media on the one hand and personality on the other. Despite the high amount of image-based contents posted and shared online and the valuable implicit information they might conceal about users' preferences and tendencies, the study of...

Objective The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world. Method Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean‐level differences in optimism were computed along with their r...

Lucrarea de față prezintă principalele caracteristici ale unui nou program statistic de calcul al indicatorilor mărimii efectului si puterii statistice: PowerStaTim 1.0 (Maricuțoiu & Sava, 2007). Prima parte a articolului prezintă argumentele care explica necesitatea calculării mărimii efectului si a puterii statistice în cercetarea psihologică. A...

Evaluative conditioning procedures change people’s evaluations of stimuli that are paired with pleasant or unpleasant items. To test whether influence awareness allows people to resist such persuasive attempts, we conducted three experiments. In the first two experiments featuring low levels of influence awareness (N1 = 96, N2 = 93) we manipulated...

The purpose of the present study was to validate the Romanian version of the 60-item COPE Questionnaire (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989), which includes 15 coping strategies. The adaptation of COPE was conducted on a non-probabilistic, non-clinic, convenience sample of 1009 participants. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the...

This paper investigates the relationships between personality traits and teamwork skills, which are often assumed to be linear. We use a theory driven approach to propose that extraversion and agreeableness (traits relevant for interpersonal team processes), and conscientiousness (a trait relevant for task engagement) have inverted U-shaped relatio...

Coaching industry has flourished spectacularly with services usage, revenue, number of certification programs and new career entries being on the rise. The greatest proportion of coaching clients are managers, executives and business owners/entrepreneurs. Given the nature of their work, these individuals are prone to face numerous difficulties that...

Background Research increasingly supports a transdiagnostic conceptualization of emotional disorders (ie applying the same underlying treatment principles across mental disorders, without tailoring the protocol to specific diagnoses), and many international researchers are currently investigating this issue. Objective The aim of this study was to...

We conducted a study to test the effectiveness of an executive cognitive-behavioral coaching program in enhancing managerial stress resilience and performance during the financial recession. Our sample consisted of 59 middle and top-managers from an Italian multinational banking group. Results suggest that the program was effective in helping manag...

Among the contemporary approaches of self-esteem, the dual-process model and the contingencies of self-worth model have been linked to similar phenomena like narcissism, perfectionism or negative emotions. The present studies aimed to investigate the way in which implicit self-esteem can moderate the relations between explicit self-esteem and parti...

Objective: Virtual reality-based assessment is a new paradigm for neuropsychological evaluation, that might provide an ecological assessment, compared to paper-and-pencil or computerized neuropsychological assessment. Previous research has focused on the use of virtual reality in neuropsychological assessment, but no meta-analysis focused on the s...

Dual-process theories can account for the difficulties smokers encounter in their attempt to cease or at least to decrease their smoking consumption. The aim of this study was to test the indirect effect of an evaluative conditioning intervention on reducing the smoking behavior through the serial mediation of implicit and explicit attitudes. Fifty...

Once we find a cause-effect relationship, the next question is related to the mechanisms of change. Mediators play a prominent role in establishing these mechanisms because they are variables that intervene between the cause (i.e., predictor/independent variable) and its effect (i.e., outcome/criterion/dependent variable). A wide range of designs c...

A new paradigm for neuropsychological assessment is virtual reality-based assessment which is considered to be an alternative for classical neuropsy-chological assessment. Fourteen studies met our inclusion criteria: included correlational analysis between classical or computerized measurement instruments and virtual reality assessment tools of the...

The aim of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of controlled interventions on reducing employees’ burnout. Peer‐reviewed published papers included in online databases, as well as papers identified in previous reviews, were considered for selection into the meta‐analysis. Keywords entered were burnout and intervention, exhaustion and intervent...

This study seeks to explore whether neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness moderate the influence of relationship conflict experienced in groups on changes in group members' evaluative cognitions related to teamwork quality (teamwork-related mental models). Data from 216 students, nested in 48 groups were analyzed using a multilevel mode...

In this paper, we examine the role of Conscientiousness and Extraversion at implicit and explicit level, in the context of personnel selection. Personality was assessed using the NEO-FFI, for the explicit level (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and the Semantic Misattribution Procedure (Sava et al. 2012), for the implicit level, as part of the selection pr...

The purpose of the present study was to validate the Romanian version of the 60- item COPE Questionnaire (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989), which includes 15 coping strategies. The adaptation of COPE was conducted on a nonprobabilistic, non-clinic, convenience sample of 1009 participants. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the...

While counterproductive work behaviors (CWB) are considered to be associated with both personal and situational antecedents, the relationship between these two factors is not entirely understood. Toward a better understanding of this issue, the present study examined the moderating effects of personality traits on the relationship between a specifi...

Executive coaching has become a usual practice in organizations as a means for enhancing motivation, self-understanding, positive affect, self-efficacy for change, and specific goal achievement. Prescriptive Executive Coaching (PEC) is based on the cognitive-behavioral approach to coaching. This study aims to develop and validate the Freeman-Gavita...

The present research analyses relations between explicit, implicit and peer-assessment of two personality variables: Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Students (N = 43) were evaluated by their peers on 32 adjectives relevant for the two personality dimensions. In addition, they completed the IPIP-50 personality questionnaire and the Semantic Misa...

Misattributions people make about their own reaction to ambiguous stimuli can be used to measure personality self-concepts implicitly. On the basis of a semantic misattribution priming paradigm [semantic misattribution procedure (SMP)], we assessed the implicit personality self-concept related to three dimensions included in the Big-Five model: con...

Purpose – This study is based on the JD‐R model and aims at understanding the role of work engagement (WE) as a mediator between job resources (i.e. perceived organizational support) and positive extra‐role behaviors (i.e. organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB)), between job demands (i.e. interpersonal conflicts at work) and negative extra‐role...

International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) is a project aiming to develop measures of individual differences as part of the public domain. This project emerged as an alternative to personality assessment instruments, which are protected by copyright. IPIP-50 is an instrument developed through the IPIP project, which measures the five dimensions of...

Individuals' self-esteem is not affected by all positive or negative outcomes, but only by the results in a specific domain that they consider important. According to the Contingencies Self-Worth Model (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001), one will invest effort in obtaining positive results only in areas that one considers relevant for self-evaluation. The pre...

The relationship between irrational beliefs and explicit and implicit self-esteem was examined in two consecutive studies (N1 = 117; N2 = 102) conducted on undergraduate university students. Two robust findings were the negative correlation between explicit self-esteem and self-downing, a particular type of irrational belief and the absence of a co...

This paper reports two independent studies investigating personality types using cluster analysis based on the five-factor personality model. In the first study, we focused on identifying the most appropriate cluster number by checking the replicability of two to eight clusters across two random halves of a nationally representative Romanian sample...

This paper examined the relationship between the Five-Factor model of personality and some maladaptive schemas and irrational beliefs as suggested by the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) framework. Data were gathered from 154 undergraduate students who completed four measures: DECAS Personality Inventory (a Romanian validated instrument for the F...

Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of cognitive therapy (CT), rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), and fluoxetine (Prozac) for major depressive disorder (MDD) were compared in a randomized clinical trial with a Romanian sample of 170 clients. Each intervention was offered for 14 weeks, plus three booster sessions. Beck Depression Inventory...

The “BIS/BAS” Scales (Carver & White, 1994) and the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire (SPSRQ; Torrubia, Avila, Molto, & Caseras, 2001) are two self-report instruments used for the assessment of Gray’s concepts of impulsivity and anxiety. In this paper, we examined both instruments in terms of their factorial structur...

A model explaining several causes and consequences of negative teacher–pupil relationships was developed. Data from 109 teachers and 946 high school pupils was analyzed using path analysis. The results suggest that teachers who prefer a custodial approach of controlling pupils, who have lower morale due to school climate conditions and who are less...

This paper points out the inconsistencies in defining Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and presents the strategies that facilitate school inclusion for children with ADHD. Its purpose is to emphasize the ADHD weaknesses revealed by a series of inconsistencies and review the strategies dealing with ADHD in the ordinary classroom, as t...