Chen Shi

Finding meaning in our lives is a central tenet to the human experience and a core contributor to mental health. Individuals tend to actively seek the sources of meaning in their lives or consciously enact efforts to create or “craft” meaning in different life domains. These overall “Life Crafting” behaviors refer to the conscious efforts individuals exert to create meaning in their lives through cognitively framing how they view life, seeking social support systems to manage life challenges, and actively seeking challenges to facilitate personal growth. Specifically, these behaviors are actioned to better align life goals, personal needs, values, and capabilities. However, no psychological assessment instrument currently exists to measure overall life crafting. As such, the purpose of this paper was twofold: to conceptualize life crafting and to develop, validate and evaluate a robust measure of overall life crafting. A mixed-method, multi-study research design was employed. First, nine participants were interviewed to determine the methods or techniques used to craft meaningful life experiences. These methods/techniques were used as indicators to create an initial item pool which was then reviewed by a panel of experts to ensure face validity. Second, in Study 1, the factorial structure of the instrument was explored by gathering data from a convenience sample, with the results showing support for a three-factor structure of life crafting, consisting of cognitive crafting, seeking social support, and seeking challenges. Finally, in Study 2, the aim was to confirm the factorial structure of the Life Crafting scale and to determine its level of internal consistency, partial measurement invariance across genders, and criterion validity [meaning in life, mental health, work engagement, and job burnout ]. The results supported a second-order factorial model of Life Crafting, which comprised of three first-order factors. Therefore, the Life Crafting Scale can be used as a valid and reliable instrument to measure- and track the effectiveness of life crafting interventions.

To assist Chinese high school students in improving their career readiness and tackling career decision-making difficulties, we designed a synchronous online career intervention based on the Cognitive Information Processing theory during the Covid-19 pandemic. The online career intervention consisted of a series of career courses to develop high school students’ knowledge and skills in career planning, career assessments for exploring their vocational interests and academic self-concept, and a database providing basic information about university majors. To evaluate the intervention’s effectiveness, 957 10th grade students were recruited in the study, 601 participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group, and 356 participants were randomly assigned to the control group. All participants completed a pre- and post-intervention assessment of their career maturity, vocational identity and career decision-making difficulties. Results indicated that the online intervention significantly increased high school students’ career readiness and reduced their career decision-making difficulties. The practical implications of this research for online career interventions directed at Chinese high school students are also discussed.

Governments have adopted strict home quarantine measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. A monotonous, barren, and under-stimulating environment can cause state boredom, and people often deal with boredom via novelty-seeking behavior. Novelty-seeking behavior can be divided into “novelty input” and “novelty output.” The former refers to obtaining novel information such as browsing the Web; the latter refers to engaging in creative behavior such as literary creation. This study explores the relationship between two types of novelty-seeking behavior and individual state boredom during home quarantine, along with the moderation effect of trait creativity. The study sample consists of 582 Chinese college students who were quarantined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, the Williams Creativity Aptitude Test, and self-compiled questionnaires of novelty input and novelty output. The results show that there is no significant relationship between novelty input or novelty output and boredom during the COVID-19 quarantine. Trait creativity is found to negatively moderate the relationship between the two means of novelty seeking and boredom. Specifically, novelty output negatively predicts the state boredom of individuals with high creativity, while novelty input positively predicts the state boredom of individuals with low creativity. Our findings suggest that different novelty-seeking behaviors may have different effects on the boredom level of individuals with high versus low creativity during quarantine. During a quarantine period, individuals should avoid excessively engaging in novelty input behaviors aimed at escaping boring situations.

This essay considers the way Georges Bataille associates sovereignty with ecstasy through his peculiar emotive reactions to the photographic images of lingchi execution. Aside from the traditional views relating to political authority, I show how Bataille holds an idiosyncratic notion of sovereignty that is firmly connected with ecstasy, which is disclosed and best exemplified in his fascination with the lingchi photos with intolerable imagery of torture and cruelty. I argue that the reasons for Bataille to seek ecstatic experience is to overcome banality and servility derived from the instrumentalization of our culture, so as to allow sovereignty to come into being. Although cruelty is a persistent theme in Bataille’s writings, I point out that what makes the lingchi photos pivotal for him is that it is the mirror of somatic disintegration, extreme physical violence and cruelty that corresponds to the rupture of psychological integrity as the state of ecstatic loss of self in a metaphysical sense, reflecting thus the non-boundary of uncontained sovereign individual. Furthermore, in the experience of ecstatic self-loss, an empathic identity is built up between Bataille and the victim of the lingchi execution, which not only allows the conception of ecstatic sovereignty to be endowed with ethical implication but also makes it an alternative approach to the issue of intercultural communication.