<p><span>This study aims to test the hypothesis that classroom engagement mediates the relationship between students’ internal locus of control and academic procrastination. As many as 302 students from a private university between 18 to 26 years of age were recruited to respond to Internal-External Locus of control Scale, Classroom Engagement Inventory, and Academic Procrastination scale. Bootstrapping analyses were conducted by utilizing PROCESS Macro model 4 in SPSS software, and the results showed that the mediator variable fully mediates the link between the predictor and outcome variables. In other words, the direct effect of internal locus of control on academic procrastination was no longer significant when controlling for classroom engagement. Further discussion, implications and suggestions were presented at the end of the article.</span></p>

The effect of maintaining mental wellbeing by conducting prosocial behavior has been established for quite some time and is supported by many theories. Nevertheless, prosocial behavior might not easily be done by individuals with negative feelings due to certain emotional burdens. The current study examined the mediating effect of appreciative joy in the relationship between nostalgia and prosocial behavior. There were 123 undergraduate students with an average age of 21.2 years old recruited from a Malaysian private university using the purposive sampling method. Employing an experimental single-factor independent design; the experiment was conducted online. Multiple regression analysis showed that only the relationship between appreciative joy and prosocial behavior is statistically significant in this study, without being mediated by appreciative joy. In conclusion, nostalgia did not significantly inflict any appreciative joy that eventually drove people to conduct any prosocial behavior. Further implications and suggestions are discussed.

IntroductionAlthough psychological distress is highly prevalent, palliative cancer patients are mostly too lethargic to undergo many sessions of the conventional psychotherapy.ObjectivesThe study aims to develop a brief, quick and easy to administer psychological intervention for rapid reduction of distress in palliative care patients.MethodsIn phase I, an expert panel of multidisciplinary team was formed. The theory of mindfulness-based intervention was simplified into a 5-minute mindful breathing technique that can be learnt and practiced by palliative care patients.In phase II, the efficacy of 5-minute mindful breathing was investigated in a pilot test that comprised of nine palliative cancer patients and eleven care takers.In Phase III, the efficacy of 5-minute mindful breathing was further examined in a non-blinded, randomized controlled trial (RCT) that included 60 cancer patients under palliative care. Apart from perceived distress, physiological measures were assessed.ResultsThe effect of 5-minute mindful breathing in rapidly reducing distress among palliative care patients was confirmed in both the pilot test (Tan et al., 2015) and RCT (Ng et al., 2016). The finding was further supported by the significant physiological changes associated with distress reduction such as decreased breathing rate, blood pressure, pulse rate, galvanic skin and increased skin surface temperature (Ng et al., 2016) with the 5-minute mindful breathing.ConclusionThe 5-minute mindful breathing is a quick and easy to administer intervention that is useful for reducing acute suffering or distress in palliative care patients.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.