Joseph Ciarrochi

Australian Catholic University | ACU · Institute of Positive Psychology and Education

Purpose To develop effective and personalized interventions, it is essential to identify the most critical processes or psychological drivers that impact an individual’s well-being. Some processes may be universally beneficial to well-being across many contexts and people, while others may only be beneficial to certain individuals in specific conte...

Objective: We compare the efficacy of personalized psychological interventions to standardized ones for adolescents.Method: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials that compared personalized interventions with standardized interventions in adolescents Data were analyzed using Bayesian multilevel random eff...

Psychological flexibility plays a crucial role in how young adults adapt to their evolving cognitive and emotional landscapes. Our study investigated a core aspect of psychological flexibility in young adults: adaptive variability and maladaptive rigidity in the capacity for behavior change. We examined the interplay of these elements with cognitiv...

Despite the global nature of psychological issues, an overwhelming majority of research originates from a small segment of the world's population living in high-income countries (HICs). This disparity risks distorting our understanding of psychological phenomena by underrepresenting the cultural and contextual diversity of human experience. Researc...

Objectives Infertility is a prominent problem affecting millions of couples worldwide. Recently, there has been a hightened emphasis on elucidating the subtle linkages between infertility treatment leveraging assisted reproductive technology and the complex realm of psychological challenges, as well as efforts in implementation of psychological int...

Background Clinical data are usually analyzed with the assumption that knowledge gathered from group averages applies to the individual. Doing so potentially obscures patients with meaningfully different trajectories of therapeutic change. Needed are “idionomic” methods that first examine idiographic patterns before nomothetic generalizations are m...

Psychological flexibility plays a crucial role in how young adults adapt to their evolving cognitive and emotional landscapes. Our study investigated psychological flexibility in young adults, concentrating on adaptive variability and maladaptive rigidity. We examined the interplay of these elements with cognitive-affective processes within a dynam...

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a major health crisis associated with adverse mental health consequences. The present study evaluated the link between the perceived threat of COVID-19 pandemic and adjustment disorder (AjD) severity and assessed if self-compassion (SC) and experiential avoidance (EA), previously indicated as protective factors for ment...

Objectives Caregiver responses are important in shaping how children, and later adolescents, engage in their own self-compassionate responding and uncompassionate self-responding. However, longitudinal research exploring the relationship between parenting style and adolescent self-compassion is limited. We examined the degree to which psychological...

According to the psychological flexibility model, “we hurt where we care, and we care where we hurt.” This suggests that values-based living and hedonic well-being are not always positively correlated, such as when engaging in valued action in the presence of important but stressful situations, which may reduce joy or increase sadness. Despite this...

Emerging research has shown that boys and girls may relate to compassionate and uncompassionate components of self-compassion differently and have distinct gender based self-compassion profiles. This study extended upon recent research by investigating gender based adolescent self-compassion profiles and their relationship with psychological well-b...

Objectives This study examined the role of self-other harmony in the relations between self-compassion, other-compassion, and well-being. Past research has shown self- and other-compassion to be positively related. But we hypothesised that self-compassion can be perceived as incompatible with other-compassion, and that self-compassion and other-com...

The rapidly expanding self-compassion research is driven mainly by Neff's (2003a, 2003b, 2023) six-factor Self-Compassion Scale (SCS). Despite broad agreement on its six-first-order factor structure, there is much debate on SCS's global structure (one- vs. two-global factors). Neff et al. (2019) argue for an exploratory structural equation model (E...

School victimization issues remain largely unresolved due to over-reliance on unidimensional conceptions of victimization and data from a few developed OECD countries. Thus, support for cross-national generalizability over multiple victimization components (relational, verbal, and physical) is weak. Our substantive–methodological synergy tests the...

Rather than continuing the standardised “protocol-for-psychological disease” approach of the last few decades, process-based therapy (PBT) centres the client and the processes which are most helpful for their particular needs. Regardless of what type of therapy a practitioner uses, PBT focuses on personalising evidence-informed interventions. This...

Background: Clinical data are usually analyzed with the assumption that knowledge gathered from group averages applies to the individual. Doing so potentially obscures patients with meaningfully different trajectories of therapeutic change. Needed are “idionomic” methods that first examine idiographic patterns before nomothetic generalizations are...

Self-compassion and self-esteem are constructs that frequently attract attention in psychological research, yet little has been done to synthesize the literature. Self-compassion refers to a capacity to treat oneself with kindness and a desire to help rather than harm, and self-esteem refers to a sense of self-worth, often based on comparisons to o...

Past research and theory suggest that youth aggression is maladaptive, caused by factors such as cognitive bias, personal defect, or frustration. We sought to identify the extent and circumstances in which aggression is socially adaptive in the school context, by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of the links between youth aggression...

Behavior-focused interventions such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) aim to activate value-consistent behaviors. However, few measures comprehensively assess what these behaviors are and why individuals engage in them (i.e., motivation). Building on previous research on ACT and self-determination theory, a new behavior-focused measure of...

Background. Identifying the most important psychological drivers of well-being for a particular individual is critical to developing personalised interventions. Methods. We utilised three, intensive daily diary studies (within person measurement occasions N >50) across three data sets (n1=44; n2=37; n3=141) to examine within-person associations bet...

Compassion towards oneself and others is generally regarded as conducive for well-being. We hypothesized that self-compassion may conflict with compassion for others, at least in some people, which might weaken the link between self/other-compassion and well-being for those individuals. In an experience sampling study with transdiagnostic patients...

The last few decades have seen an explosion of self-compassion research, and yet the measurement of self-compassion remains fiercely debated. Rakhimov et al (2022) add fire to the debate by showing that a single factor mode, with six subfactors, fits Neff ‘s (2003) self-compassion scale (SCS) extremely well and arguing that a single total score can...

As the online world plays an increasing role in young peoples’ lives, research on compulsive internet use (CIU) is receiving growing attention. Given the social richness of the online world, there is a need to better understand how CIU influences adolescents’ social support and vice versa. Drawing on ecological systems theory, we examined the longi...

Social adjustment is critical to educational and occupational attainment. Yet little research has considered how the school's socioeconomic context is associated with social adjustment. In a longitudinal sample of Australian 4- to 8-year-olds (N = 9369; 51% boys) we tested the association between school average socioeconomic status and social skill...

Peer victimization at school is a worldwide problem with profound implications for victims, bullies, and whole-school communities. Yet the 50-year quest to solve the problem has produced mostly disappointing results. A critical examination of current research reveals both pivotal limitations and potential solutions. Solutions include introducing ps...

Individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) is an important marker of development and social progress. As psychological health issues often begin during adolescence, understanding the factors that enhance SWB among adolescents is critical to devising preventive interventions. However, little is known about how institutional contexts contribute to adol...

We all must confront existential crises such as sickness, death of loved ones, loss of job, mistreatment from others, and relationship breakdown. These crises can shatter our sense of meaning. How can we face that moment with honesty and courage, embrace the distress, and create new meaning? This chapter provides a theory of how language and self-a...

Objectives Although research in self-compassion has been rapidly growing, there is still substantial controversy about its meaning and measurement. The controversy centers on Neff’s popular Self- Compassion Scale (SCS) and the argument that compassionate self-responding (CSR) and uncompassionate self-responding (UCS) are a single dimension versus t...

The wide variety of “third wave” cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) methods (e.g., Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or “ACT”, Compassion Focused Therapy, Meta-Cognitive therapy, Functional Analytic Therapy, Dialectic Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) have left a mark on the field that appears to be growing. As ACT enters its 4...

Background Syndromal classification has failed to produce a progressive science of case conceptualization for mental and behavioral health issues. An idiographic application of processes of change can provide a viable empirical functional analytic alternative if it could be linked to an idionomic approach, modeling idiographic effects first, and re...

Internationally, there is a gap in high‐school completion rates for Indigenous and non‐Indigenous students. In Australia, gap estimates are commonly based on lag indicators, precluding examination of underlying mechanisms. Using two longitudinal representative samples of Australian youth, we explored differences in high‐school completion between Au...

Since 2000, research within positive psychology has exploded, as reflected in dozens of meta-analyses of different interventions and targeted processes, including strength spotting, positive affect, meaning in life, mindfulness, gratitude, hope, and passion. Frequently, researchers treat positive psychology processes of change as distinct from each...

Process-based therapy (PBT) focuses on treatment elements that target biopsychosocial processes of relevance to individual treatment goals. This focus requires new, more integrative and idionomic models that identify key processes of change, using high temporal density measurement applied at the level of the person. Standard measurement validation...

The Oxford Handbook of the Positive Humanities is the foundational scientific reference for the new and rapidly growing field of the Positive Humanities, an emerging interdisciplinary domain of inquiry and practice focused on the arts and humanities in relation to human flourishing. This Handbook comprises 38 chapters authored by nearly 70 leading...

Most psychology researchers define emotion regulation as manipulating the quality, duration, of intensity of emotions. This definition often assumes that the goal of life is to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative ones (hedonism). To understand the limitations of this definition, and the possibility of other definitions of emotion regul...

Current victimization studies and meta-analyses are based mainly on a unidimensional perspective in a few developed OECD countries. This provides a weak basis for generalizability over multiple victimization (relational, verbal, physical) components and different countries. We test the cross-national generalizability (594,196 fifteen-year-olds; 77...

Mental health concerns among children and adolescents are a common and growing international concern. Working with youth requires a developmental lens in order to capture the range of changes and contexts that younger populations experience. This article reviews the rationale, implementation, and research on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)...

The “protocols for syndromes” approach to evidence-based psychological intervention has failed the test of scientific progressivity. Process-based therapy provides an alternative model that is focused on treatment elements that target biopsychosocial processes of relevance to individual treatment goals. That shift in focus requires new, more integr...

Using the dual process theoretical framework (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 2002), we examined whether the tendency to pursue goals tenaciously (TEN), in conjunction with the tendency to flexibly adjust one’s preferences (FLEX), would be beneficial or detrimental for high school students’ self-reported life satisfaction and achievement on tests of ac...

Executive Summary Throughout its history the strategy and tactics of contextual behavioral science (CBS) research have had distinctive features as compared to traditional behavioral science approaches. Continued progress in CBS research can be facilitated by greater clarity about how its strategy and tactics can be brought to bear on current challe...

The last five decades have seen a proliferation of psychological packages designed to treat psychiatric syndromes. Despite millions of dollars invested evaluating and comparing complex interventions, progress has been limited. Increasingly, research is shifting toward evaluating evidence-based processes of change instead of packages. There is also...

We conducted a person-centered analysis of the Aspiration Index to identify subgroups that differ in the levels of their specific (wealth, fame and image, personal growth, relationships, community giving, and health) and global intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. In a Hungarian (N = 3,370; 77% female; age: M = 23.57), an Australian (N = 1,632; 51%...

We conducted a person-centered analysis of the Aspiration Index to identify subgroups that differ in the levels of their specific (wealth, fame and image, personal growth, relationships, community giving, and health) and global intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. In a Hungarian (N=3370; 77% female; age: M = 23.57), an Australian (N=1632; 51% femal...

For half a century, the dominant paradigm in psychotherapy research has been to develop syndrome-specific treatment protocols for hypothesized but unproved latent disease entities, as defined by psychiatric nosological systems. While this approach provided a common language for mental health problems, it failed to achieve its ultimate goal of conce...

Objectives Nonattachment involves a flexible way of relating to ideas without clinging to them and is hypothesized to be beneficial to mental health. However, no longitudinal research has examined this hypothesis. We conducted a three-wave longitudinal study to examine the extent that nonattachment was an antecedent to improvements in mental health...

Internationally there is a gap in high school completion rates for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. In Australia, gap estimates are commonly based on lag indicators, precluding examination of underlying mechanisms. Using two longitudinal and representative samples of Australian youth, we explored differences in high school completion between...

To what extent does a psychosocial intervention (PSI) improve return-to-work rates for welfare-receiving jobseekers who differ in ethnicity, length of unemployment, physical location, gender, and readiness for change? Two large-scale studies (Study 1: 2,459 jobseekers, Study 2: 20,057 jobseekers) across a diverse Australian sample sought to assess...

Little is known about how compulsive Internet use (CIU) relates developmentally to different aspects of emotion regulation. Do young people engage in CIU because they have difficulty regulating emotions (the "consequence" model), does CIU lead to emotion regulation problems (the "antecedent" model), or are there reciprocal influences? We examined t...

High reappraisal and low suppression are generally seen as desirable outcomes of therapy, but this combination may not benefit those who typically use reappraisal and suppression together. A daily diary study (N=187; Mage = 23.9; 71% females; 3,852 days; M=20.59 days/person) showed that the group-level correlation between reappraisal and suppressio...

Background. How are parents perceived by their children to develop during the high school years, and what are the consequences of this development for youth well-being? Methods. Each year from Grade 8 to 12, we administered measures of parenting style and well-being across 16 schools (Time 1 M age = 13.7, SD age = .45; N = 2043; 49.6% Male). Utiliz...

There is a growing literature on nonattachment, defined as a flexible, balanced way of relating to experiences without clinging to or suppressing them. We developed a 7-item Nonattachment Scale (NAS-7) by shortening a previously validated 30-item measure (NAS; Sahdra, Shaver & Brown, 2010). NAS-7 was found to display strong psychometric properties...

Objectives. Using an experimental design, we tested whether a short mindfulness intervention led to improvements in state mindfulness and golf putting performance.Design. This study was a registered, double-blind, randomised crossover design.Method. Experienced golfers (N = 116) were randomly allocated to receive either a mindfulness or attention-c...

To what extent does a psychosocial intervention (PSI) improve employment rates for welfare-receiving jobseekers who differ in ethnicity, length of unemployment, physical location, gender, and readiness for change? Two large-scale studies (Study 1: 2,459 jobseekers, Study 2: 20,057 jobseekers) across a diverse Australian sample sought to assess fact...

This study explored parenting styles and values internalization. Perceived parenting styles were measured in Grade 7 (n = 749) and Grade 12 (n = 468), and values were measured in Grade 12 (n = 271) and one year postschool (n = 291). We measured three aspects of valuing: priority (extrinsic, intrinsic importance); regulation (controlled, autonomous)...

We conducted a person-centered analysis of the Aspiration Index to identify subgroups that differ in the levels of their specific (wealth, fame and image, personal growth, relationships, health, and community giving) and global intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations. In a Hungarian (N=3370; 77% female; age: M = 23.57), an Australian (N=1632; 51% femal...

Mindfulness has been shown to have varied associations with different forms of motivation, leading to a lack of clarity as to how and when it may foster healthy motivational states. Grounded in self-determination theory, the present study proposes a theoretical model for how mindfulness supports different forms of human motivation, and then tests t...

Mindfulness has been shown to have varied associations with different forms of motivation, leading to a lack of clarity as to how and when it may foster healthy motivational states. Grounded in self-determination theory, the present study proposes a theoretical model for how mindfulness supports different forms of human motivation, and then tests t...

Contextual Behavioural Science (CBS) interventions focus on activating value-consistent behaviours, yet the outcomes measured in these interventions often focus on internal states. Building on past CBS work, personal strivings research, and self-determination theory, we developed a new behaviour-focused measure of valued action, the Six Ways to Wel...

Experiments suggest that people who believe their attributes are malleable should be more resilient in the face of failure. Does this mean that incremental theorists maintain higher self-esteem? We explore this question meta-analytically. We synthesised research from 34 studies to show that the relationship between self-esteem and incremental theor...

Background: Intervention-related research suggests that there are two ways to combat the negative consequences of low self-esteem: improving the level of self-esteem, or reducing the links between low self-esteem and negative outcomes (L. Hayes & Ciarrochi, 2015). Incremental theories tend to prevent low-self-esteem from occurring in response to fa...

Adolescents experience high rates of mental health problems but are reluctant to seek professional help. Parents play an integral role in the help seeking process for their adolescent children. Parental authoritativeness and support have been identified as contributing to better mental health outcomes and a reduction in help seeking barriers in the...

Objectives To demonstrate the use of machine-learning for reducing questionnaire response burden, we created multiple, shorter versions of the Mindfulness Inventory for Sport. We then tested the reliability and validity of scores derived from these shorter versions in athletic populations. Design We used genetic algorithms to shorten the measure,...

Objectives. To demonstrate the use of machine-learning for reducing questionnaireresponse burden, we created multiple, shorter versions of the Mindfulness Inventory for Sport. We then tested the reliability and validity of scores derived from these shorter versions in athletic populations.Design. We used genetic algorithms to shorten the measure, a...

Objective: Recent technological advances have led to the proliferation of ambulatory devices for non-invasively assessing cardiac activity. While these devices have exciting implications for conducting research outside the laboratory, it is critical that this increased mobility does not compromise data quality. As a test case, we assess the efficac...

Objectives: To what extent is the frame of reference of overlapping friendship communities important for young people’s feelings of discrimination and subjective well-being? That is, do youth feel better or worse to the extent that they feel less or more discrimination than their friends? Method: Participants (N = 898; Mage = 14.13; SDage = 3.37; 4...

Both self‐compassion and empathy have been theorized to promote prosociality in youth, but there is little longitudinal data examining this possibility. We assessed self‐compassion, empathy, and peer‐rated prosociality yearly, in a cohort of 2,078 youth across 17 schools (M age at T1 = 14.65 years; 49.2% female), as they progressed from Grade 9–12....

This study i⁠nvestigated if an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) intervention (ACT-Adjust) can facilitate psychological adjustment and reduce psychological distress following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The study design comprised a single centre, two-armed, Phase II pilot randomized controlled trial. Nineteen individuals with severe...

Resource control theory (RCT) posits that both antisocial and prosocial behaviors combine in unique ways to control resources such as friendships. We assessed students (N = 2,803; 49.7% male) yearly from junior (grades 8–10) to senior high school (11–12) on antisocial (A) and prosocial (P) behavior, peer nominated friendship, and well-being. Non-pa...

Objective Compulsive internet use (CIU) has been linked to decrements in mental health and well‐being. However relatively little is known about how CIU relates to evaluations of the self, and in particular, whether CIU is antecedent to or is a consequence of negative evaluations of one's social worth (self‐esteem) and general efficacy (hope). To ex...

For decades the development of evidence-based therapy has been based on experimental tests of protocols designed to impact psychiatric syndromes. As this paradigm weakens, a more process-based therapy approach is rising in its place, focused on how to best target and change core biopsychosocial processes in specific situations for given goals with...

Mindfulness‐based meditation practices have received substantial scientific attention in recent years. Mindfulness has been shown to bring many psychological benefits to the individual, but much less is known about whether these benefits extend to others. This meta‐analysis reviewed the link between mindfulness – as both a personality variable and...

There is a plethora of research showing that empathy promotes prosocial behavior among young people. We examined a relatively new construct in the mindfulness literature, nonattachment, defined as a flexible way of relating to one’s experiences without clinging to or suppressing them. We tested whether nonattachment could predict prosociality above...

Background Psychological practitioners often seek to directly change the form or frequency of clients’ maladaptive perfectionist thoughts, because such thoughts predict future depression. Indirect strategies, such as self-compassion interventions, that seek to change clients’ relationships to difficult thoughts, rather than trying to change the tho...

Study 1 Adolescent de-identified data set. (SAV)

Study 2 Adult de-identified data set. (SAV)

Output record of the primary moderation analyses controlling for covariates. (DOCX)

Background: Mindfulness and experiential acceptance approaches have been suggested as a method of promoting athletic performance by optimally managing the interplay among attention, cognition, and emotion. Our aim was to systematically review the evidence for these approaches in the sporting domain. Method: Studies of any design exploring mindfulne...

This study examines the development of self-esteem in a sample of 138 Australian adolescents (90 males; 48 females) with cognitive abilities in the lowest 15% (L-CA) and a matched sample of 556 Australian adolescents (312 males; 244 females) with average to high levels of cognitive abilities (A/H-CA). These participants were measured annually (Grad...

Body image concerns are typically linked with negative outcomes such as disordered eating and diminished wellbeing, but some people can exhibit psychological flexibility and remain committed to their valued goals despite being dissatisfied about their bodies. Such flexibility is most frequently measured by the Body Image-Acceptance and Action Quest...