South African Journal of Psychology, Ahead of Print.
The COVID-19 pandemic had detrimental impacts on academic and professional training globally. There were demands to salvage the academic year, ensure maximum competencies under the circumstances and safeguard training psychologists. Given these demands, it is no surprise that training psychologists often experience burnout and threats to their mental well-being. We conducted seven semi-structured interviews with South African intern psychologists from the 2020 cohort about their internship experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed two predominant themes regarding the influence of supportive and unsupportive experiences. First, while some interns reported receiving support from their psychotherapy supervisors, most highlighted the general disconnect from them during COVID-19-imposed lockdowns. The latter mostly led to a rupture in the supervisory alliance, leaving the participants feeling a sense of loss. Despite this disconnect, many interns nonetheless expressed empathy for their supervisors, who also had to navigate the unchartered territory of online psychotherapeutic and supervisory work. In stark contrast to this disconnect from their supervisors, the second theme illuminates the strong connection between interns. Reportedly, the hardship of COVID-19 strengthened the connection between the interns and provided them with a safe space where they could get emotional and practical support. The research reiterates the role of support and the importance of a broader conceptualisation of competency that goes beyond abilities and skills towards a more integrated professional identity.

South African Journal of Psychology, Ahead of Print.
Driving behavior is a key factor in traffic accidents. Previous studies have shown a clear link between traffic violations and self-reported road accidents, with intention explaining a large part of the variation in violations. Drawing upon the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study aims to verify the mediating potential of behavioral, normative, and control beliefs on the relationships between personality traits and traffic violations. A sample of 236 drivers filled out several instruments measuring driving behavior, the Big Five personality traits, and the behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. The beliefs were measured for various behavioral situations conducive to traffic violations, constructed from the Theory of Planned Behavior. We performed a mediation analysis with composite values for the Theory of Planned Behavior constructs as mediator variables. The results showed a fully mediating effect of behavioral beliefs (attitude) and intention in the relationships between neuroticism, agreeableness, or conscientiousness and violations. Normative beliefs (subjective and descriptive) and intention had only a moderate mediating effect in the same relationship pattern. Agreeableness remained associated with violations, even after controlling for normative beliefs. Overall, our results highlight the mediating role of Theory of Planned Behavior constructs in the associations between personality traits and driving behavior. They also suggest that changing behavioral and normative beliefs may reduce the effect of personality traits on violations, which could help design more effective interventions to reduce traffic violations.