Seniority in work groups: A right or an honor?

In the New Truck Problem, a role playing case, George, the senior man, receives the truck most often. What happens when he is absent? George received the new truck in 48.5% of 103 student groups who role-played the standard case, but in 73.2% of the 41 groups where he was absent (p difference     

Is risky sexual behavior continuous or categorical? A taxometric analysis of the Sexual Risk Survey.

Risky sexual behaviors are behaviors that involve the possibility of an adverse outcome, such as contracting a sexually transmitted infection or unwanted pregnancy. The question of whether risky sexual behavior exists as a discrete class (i.e., taxon) or as a dimensional construct has not previously been explored. The authors performed a set of taxometric analyses on 4 factor scales derived from the Sexual Risk Survey (Turchik & Garske, 2009) with data from 1,103 college students. The results provided consistent support for a dimensional latent structure in which variations in reported risky sexual behavior reflect differences in degree and not differences in kind. The implications of these findings for the assessment of risky sexual behavior are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Marital behavior, parenting behavior, and multiple reports of preschoolers' behavior problems: Mediation or moderation?

Associations among positive and conflictual marital behavior and multiple reports of child behavior problems were examined in a community sample of 78 families with 3-year-old children. Maternal and paternal parenting behaviors were tested as potential mediators and moderators. Parents reported on child behavior problems and were observed during parent-child interaction and couple discussion in the presence of the child. Observers and preschool teachers also reported on child behavior problems. Less positive marital engagement and greater conflict were associated with observers' reports, but not with parents' or teachers' reports, of more behavior problems. Associations between marital behavior and child behavior problems were not explained by maternal or paternal behavior; stronger support was found for moderating effects of parenting. Also, positive marital engagement was a slightly better predictor of child behavior problems than was marital conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Workaholic and work engaged employees: Dead ringers or worlds apart?

Building on Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory and Meijman and Mulder's Effort-Recovery Model, the present study examined the nature, antecedents, and consequences of working hard (i.e., workaholism and work engagement) in a Dutch convenience sample of 1,246 employees. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that workaholism and work engagement were two largely independent concepts. Crossing these two concepts yielded four types of workers: workaholic employees, engaged employees, engaged workaholics, and nonworkaholic/nonengaged employees. MANOVA and subsequent ANOVAs were used to compare these four groups regarding their motivation, working hours, and levels of burnout. As expected, study results revealed that workaholic employees were driven by controlled motivation, whereas engaged employees were driven by autonomous motivation. Engaged workaholics were driven by both controlled and autonomous motivation. In addition, the results revealed that engaged workaholics spent most time on working. Unlike workaholic employees, engaged workaholics did not experience the highest levels of burnout, suggesting that high engagement may buffer the adverse consequences of workaholism. The present study emphasizes the importance of differentiating among at least three categories of employees who work hard: workaholic employees, engaged employees, and—for the first time—engaged workaholics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring occupational differences in work–family interaction: Who is at risk?

The aim of this study was to explore occupational differences in work–family interaction (WFI), both regarding the direction of influence (work-to-family vs. family-to-work), and the type of effect (conflict vs. facilitation). A large sample of 8 occupational groups in Norway (lawyers, physicians, nurses, teachers, church ministers, bus drivers, and people working in advertising and information technology; N = 3,313) was used to examine which occupational groups are likely to be at risk for work–family conflict and which find WFI the most facilitating. Strong tests for factorial invariance supported the use of the WFI scale and found that it was comparable for the 8 occupational groups. Follow-up analysis demonstrated significant latent mean differences in the 4 dimensions of WFI among the 8 groups. In general, the analyses indicate that those experiencing the least conflict are also among those experiencing the least facilitation. Similarly, with few exceptions, those experiencing the most conflict are also among those experiencing the most facilitation. Subsequent analyses indicate that this applies for both men and women. These results empirically support the orthogonal nature of WFI and suggest that the interaction between work and family may be more permeable in some occupations than others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measurement artifacts in the assessment of counterproductive work behavior and organizational citizenship behavior: Do we know what we think we know?

An experiment investigated whether measurement features affected observed relationships between counterproductive work behavior (CWB) and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and their relationships with other variables. As expected, correlations between CWB and OCB were significantly higher with ratings of agreement rather than frequency of behavior, when OCB scale content overlapped with CWB than when it did not, and with supervisor rather than self-ratings. Relationships with job satisfaction and job stressors were inconsistent across conditions. We concluded that CWB and OCB are likely unrelated and not necessarily oppositely related to other variables. Researchers should avoid overlapping content in CWB and OCB scales and should use frequency formats to assess how often individuals engage in each form of behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The popularity contest at work: Who wins, why, and what do they receive?

In 2 studies, the authors investigated the popularity of employees at work. They tested a model that positioned personality in the form of core self-evaluations and situational position in the form of communication network centrality as antecedents of popularity and interpersonal citizenship and counterproductive work behaviors received from coworkers as outcomes of popularity. Data from 116 employees and 383 coworkers in Study 1 and 139 employees, their significant others, and 808 coworkers in Study 2 generally supported the model. Core self-evaluations and communication network centrality were positively related to popularity, and popular employees reported receiving more citizenship behaviors and fewer counterproductive work behaviors from their coworkers than less popular employees, even controlling for interpersonal liking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two-Dimensional Simulation of Subcritical Flow at a Combining Junction: Luxury or Necessity?

Classically, in open-channel networks, the flow is numerically approximated by the one-dimensional Saint Venant equations coupled with a junction model. In this study, a comparison between the one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) numerical simulations of subcritical flow in open-channel networks is presented and completely described allowing for a full comprehension of the modeling of water flow. For the 1D, the mathematical model used is the 1D Saint Venant equations to find the solution in branches. For junction, various models based on momentum or energy conservation have been developed to relate the flow variables at the junction. These models are of empirical nature due to certain parameters given by experimental results and moreover they often present a reduced field of validity. In contrast, for the 2D simulation, the junction is discretized into triangular cells and we simply apply the 2D Saint Venant equations, which are solved by a second-order finite-volume method. In order to give an answer to the question of luxury or necessity of the 2D approach, the 1D and 2D numerical results for steady flow are compared to existing experimental data.     

Loneliness: Paradox or artifact?

Comments on the article by R. Kraut et al (see record 1998-10886-001) regarding associations between Internet use and depression and social interaction. The author examines a methodological flaw in the data: the researchers inadvertently selected participants whose social contacts (high school students graduating, their parents, and people with very high levels of community involvement) were likely to decline during the course of the study, even without Internet access. Therefore, it is possible that the reported increases in loneliness and depression would have occurred even had no Internet access been provided. Furthermore, because those participants with the greatest loss of social contacts might fill their now empty hours with Internet usage, the observed negative correlation between social contact and Internet usage might indicate that isolation leads to Internet usage—a causal relationship opposite to that posited by the researchers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Questionnares: Use or Abuse?

The author opines that if the percentage of return on mail questionnaire studies using psychologists as subjects is declining, he should not be surprised. He states that although his position is not unique, he receives perhaps 10 requests per year. Out of wishes to advance science and help colleagues he usually complies with such requests for information, but finds that it has been rare, in his experience, to receive an acknowledgment for my efforts, and rarer still, to receive any feedback or report of findings of a study. He feels that such a practice on the part of researchers shows a decided lack of professional courtesy and will perhaps ultimately lead to scientific inquiries being ignored or dealt with perfunctorily and dismissed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arbiter: Psychologist or psychiatrist?

Presents the author's views on the tenor of the negotiations between the American Psychological Association's (APA's)Committee on Relations with Psychiatry and its opposite number from the American Psychiatric Association. His concern stems primarily from what is considered to be ambivalence on the part of the group as it is expressed in their negotiations with the psychiatrists, as well as the official position of the American Psychological Association. To be more specific: While we consider ourselves competent to handle our affairs as scientists and teachers, and would resent any intrusion in these areas, we appear to be less sure of ourselves in the area of practice, and much more explicitly, private practice. He points to the Ethical Standards of Psychologists (1953) that state, under Principle 2.51-4: The psychologist who engages in psychotherapy is obligated to assist his client, in obtaining professional help for all important aspects of his problem which fall outside the boundaries of the psychologist's competence. Most frequently this principle will require that adequate provision be made for the diagnosis and treatment of medical problems. As a commentary on this principle it is stated: To this end, psychologists doing psychotherapy may be expected to establish and maintain effective inter-communication with a psychologically-oriented physician. The usual and most desirable interpretation of this principle is that the clinical psychologist will establish an effective working relationship with a psychiatrist. He feels that while one can enthusiastically endorse the principle, it becomes changed in the commentary, so that the competence of the psychology practitioner is questioned. In effect the commentary acknowledges the psychiatrist's greater competence in the psychological, as well as the medical sphere. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do employees cope effectively with abusive supervision at work? An exploratory study.

Abusive supervision is a major organizational stressor yet little is known about how employees cope with such stress. The purpose of the present study was twofold: (a) to develop a new scale assessing how employees cope with abusive supervision, and (b) to investigate the effectiveness of coping with abusive supervision in terms of negative and positive affective outcomes. The study was conducted in two parts: Two samples of 108 and 101 student employees completed the initial versions of the new coping with abusive supervision scale; and another sample of 225 employees completed the final, 25-item coping scale, which consisted of five subscales: ingratiation, direct communication, avoidance of contact, support-seeking, and reframing. Additional measures used were abusive supervision, influence tactics scale, abuse-related negative and positive affect scales, and social desirability. The internal and test–retest reliability levels of the subscales of the newly developed questionnaire were high and it was validated by its subscales associations with influence tactics subscales. High levels of abusive supervision were related to coping strategies of avoiding contact, support seeking, ingratiation, and reframing. The first two strategies were also related positively to negative affect and mediated the effects of abusive supervision on affect. The results suggest that most coping strategies are invoked in response to abusive supervision. They are, however, found to be mostly ineffective in regard to their relationship with employees' affective reactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Object substitution masking: When does mask preview work?

When a target is enclosed by a 4-dot mask that persists after the target disappears, target identification is worse than it is when the mask terminates with the target. This masking effect is attributed to object substitution masking (OSM). Previewing the mask, however, attenuates OSM. This study investigated specific conditions under which mask preview was, or was not, effective in attenuating masking. In Experiment 1, the interstimulus interval (ISI) between previewed mask offset and target presentation was manipulated. The basic preview effect was replicated; neither ISI nor preview duration influenced target identification performance. In Experiment 2, mask configurations were manipulated. When the mask configuration at preview matched that at target presentation, the preview effect was replicated. New evidence of ineffective mask preview was found: When the two configurations did not match, performance declined. Yet, when the ISI between previewed mask offset and target presentation was removed such that the mask underwent apparent motion, preview was effective despite the configuration mismatch. An interpretation based on object representations provides an excellent account of these data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning curves: Facts or artifacts?

"It is our purpose in this paper to show that the arbitrary choice of a cutoff point in the dichotomizing of continuous response distributions can impose significant constraints upon the shape of resulting learning curves, and that this can form the basis of misleading theoretical interpretations. We have chosen for illustration of this point the use of time-on-target scores as indicants of the level of skill attained in tracking tasks. However, we believe that the principles developed are quite general and apply to many learning situations." 18 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rhinotillexomania: psychiatric disorder or habit?

BACKGROUND: Conditions once considered bad habits are now recognized as psychiatric disorders (trichotillomania, onychopagia). We hypothesized that nose picking is another such "habit," a common benign practice in most adults but a time-consuming, socially compromising, or physically harmful condition (rhinotillexomania) in some. METHODS: We developed the Rhinotillexomania Questionnaire, mailed it to 1000 randomly selected adult residents of Dane County, Wisconsin, and requested anonymous responses. The returned questionnaires were analyzed according to age, sex, marital status, living arrangement, and educational level. Nose picking was characterized according to time involved, level of distress, location, attitudes toward self and others regarding the practice, technique, methods of disposal, reasons, complications, and associated habits and psychiatric disorders. RESULTS: Two hundred fifty-four subjects responded. Ninety-one percent were current nose pickers although only 75% felt "almost everyone does it"; 1.2% picked at least every hour. For 2 subjects (0.8%), nose picking caused moderate to marked interferences with daily functioning. Two subjects spent between 15 and 30 minutes and 1 over 2 hours a day picking their nose. For 2 others, perforation of the nasal septum was a complication. Associated "habits" included picking cuticles (25%), picking at skin (20%), biting fingernails (18%), and pulling out hair (6%). CONCLUSION: This first population survey of nose picking suggests that it is an almost universal practice in adults but one that should not be considered pathologic for most. For some, however, the condition may meet criteria for a disorder-rhinotillexomania.     

Dementia: Continuum or distinct entity?

The latent structure of dementia was examined in a group of 10,775 older adults with indicators derived from a neuropsychological test battery. The author conducted taxometric analysis of these data using mean above minus below a cut, maximum covariance, and latent mode factor analysis and found results more consistent with dementia as a dimensional (lying along a continuum) than categorical (representing a distinct entity) construct. A second study conducted with a group of 2,375 adults whose ages ranged from 21 to 64 years produced similar results. These findings denote that dementia, as measured by deficits in episodic memory, attention and concentration, executive function, and language, differs quantitatively rather than qualitatively from the cognitive status of adults without dementia. The implications of these results for classification, assessment, etiology, and prevention are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vascular dementia: dead or alive?

Allergic respiratory inflammation in target organs does not occur in any atopic (genetically susceptible) subject, since other not fully characterized factors can influence the subsequent development of overt clinical disease. Here are presented some recent developments in experimental animal and human research that can offer a new "non-classical" interpretation about the way by which allergens are recognized and allergic inflammation persists. These aspects of the immunopathogenesis of allergic diseases can now be viewed as organ-specific pathways, acting independently from other peripheral lymphoid organs. This is a consequence of new knowledge about the function of, and molecular interactions by, intraepithelial gammadelta T cells and CD1+ dendritic cells. The allergic subject, unlike the normal one, is equipped at the mucosal surface by particular T cell and antigen-presenting cell (APC) subsets that enable them to recognize undenatured proteic and non-proteic (glycolipidic) external structures of aerodispersed particles, presented in the context of CD1 molecules. Once initiated, the mucosal allergic reaction cannot be turned off in atopic individuals because CD4+ allergen-specific T cells lack surface Fas receptor. This defect, that impairs the so-called activation-induced programmed cell death (determined by Fas/FasL interaction), is caused by the local Th2-type cytokine milieu.     

The MMPI critical items: how well do they work?

Examined the theoretical foundation and empirical performance of 2 sets of "critical items" that are a common feature of most automated MMPI interpretations. These items purportedly alert the clinician to serious pathology and operate as a scale of general maladjustment. Critical items resulted in numerous misclassifications when used as a scale of adjustment with 43% of 1,023 male psychiatric patients and 95% of 1,045 normal male job applicants responding in the deviant direction on 5 or fewer items. The critical items consist mainly of F -scale items and duplicate the information communicated by this scale. The extremely deviant nature of the critical items makes them capable of only reflecting crises of psychotic proportions. When face-valid critical items were compared to clinical data, 70-76% resulted in empirically valid behavior samples. Invalid critical items are listed. It is concluded that MMPI critical items are inadequate for screening purposes. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tonal centers and expectancy: Facilitation or inhibition of chords at the top of the harmonic hierarchy?

Harmonic priming studies have shown that a musical context with its tonal center influences target chord processing. In comparison with targets following baseline contexts, which do not establish a specific tonal center, processing is facilitated for a strongly related target functioning as the tonic, but inhibited for unrelated (out-of-key) and less related (subdominant) targets. This study investigated cost and benefit patterns for the processing of the 3 most important chords of the harmonic hierarchy. Response time patterns reflected the chords' ranking: Processing was fastest for the tonic, followed by the dominant, and then the subdominant. The comparison with baseline contexts replicated the benefit of processing for tonic targets (Experiments 1 and 3) and the cost of processing for subdominant targets (Experiment 3), while dominant targets were situated at baseline level (Experiments 1 to 3). Findings indicate that listeners implicitly understand fine differences in tonal stabilities and confirm the special status of the tonic being the most expected and solely facilitated chord at the end of a tonal context. Findings are discussed with references to sensory and cognitive approaches of music perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Models for psychiatry: icons or effigies?

Toulmin notes that a good model takes us beyond the phenomena from which we began [67]. It also tempts us. Models demand that we attempt to represent the dynamic relationships between variables. When we use them, we risk insulating our findings from empirical disproof [68]. Self-certifying myths, like articles of faith, need to yield to the demands of science. Psychiatric theory and practice need to yield to the demands of experience. We need to move away from ethereal assumptions to tangible mastery of the understanding of behavior. Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams [69], writes, "Analogies of this kind are only intended to assist us in our attempt to make the complications of mental functioning intelligible. We are justified, in my view, in giving free rein to our speculations so long as we retain the coolness of our judgment and do not mistake the scaffolding for the building. We have been obliged to build. If we are not wholly in error, other lines of approach are bound to lead us into much the same region and the time may come when we shall find ourselves more at home in it!"