Introduction The proposed concept of secure/insecure lifeattachment reflects the experience of the world and life as a good (or insecure/threatening) place to be. The present article describes the theoretical foundation, development, and validation of a revised measure that captures the phenomenon of secure/insecure life attachment. The revised scale consists of seven dimensions: (1) Coexistence, (2) Reliability, (3) Safetiness, (4) Integration, (5) Inclusion, (6) Participation, and (7) Deliberation. Methods In th…

An increasingly large number of Western youth suffer from impaired general well-being and mental health. This is not least compounded by inappropriate use of psychological concepts and methods. They are trying to get a grip on life by, first of all, using psychology in a psychologizing way, which – contrary to the intention – creates an impaired image of one’s self and life, and which is nonpractical, because it is difficult to operationalize and does not point towards what actually can be done to get a good enoug…

The present study investigated the interplay among deficient life skills, moral disengagement, and extremist attitude across two national contexts. Using a sample of young students in high school or college ( N = 686), the present study found significant indirect effects between deficient life skills (agency and structure) and various aspects of an extremist mindset through moral disengagement. These findings suggest that these two psychological concepts of life skills and moral disengagement are relevant for unde…

Life psychology has emerged as an integrative framework theory that has been applied in interventions preventing and countering radicalization processes. Central to this theory is the experience of living in a safe and secure sociocultural context, designated as life attachment and conceptualized as a root cause of radicalization. Furthermore, the theory emphasizes the interplay between generic life tasks (e.g., participating in community activities) and skills (e.g., taking one's own and others' perspectives into…

We set up an on-the-job learning model to explain how spare-time on-the-job training affects life skills formation of adolescents. We obtain causal estimates by exploiting variation between employed twins and estimation of a value-added model using full population Danish administrative data. We find that spare-time work experience has no effect on school absenteeism, reduces crime, increases school grades and the speed of enrollment into upper secondary education. We interpret our findings as evidence that the pos…