The changing world of organization change.

Characterizes the changing world of organization change (OC) in the following ways: from growth to decline to consolidation, from moderate to high speed, from complexity to even greater complexity, and from naive clients to sophisticated ones who can use the term culture change before the consultant does. Aspects of change regarding human behavior in organizations are stable (i.e., grounded in theory and research). Two conclusions about organization consulting today are identified: There is a set of standard tools that effectively addresses small to medium-size problems in organizations. Consultants are on the threshold of a paradigm for the effective management of large-scale OC. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nursing leadership: to thrive in a world of change

Change is becoming the norm in health care environments. Nurse executives in leadership positions are an essential part of an institution's ability to adapt successfully and flourish with change. It is important for the nurse executive to have a clear concept of leadership, the change process, and organizational cultures. This will allow the nurse executive to create an environment within the organization where change is seen in a positive manner and staff are empowered to meet the challenges of health care today.     

Personality trait structure as a human universal.

Patterns of covariation among personality traits in English-speaking populations can be summarized by the five-factor model (FFM). To assess the cross-cultural generalizability of the FFM, data from studies using 6 translations of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) were compared with the American factor structure. German, Portuguese, Hebrew, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese samples (N?=?7,134) showed similar structures after varimax rotation of 5 factors. When targeted rotations were used, the American factor structure was closely reproduced, even at the level of secondary loadings. Because the samples studied represented highly diverse cultures with languages from 5 distinct language families, these data strongly suggest that personality trait structure is universal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning as a change in world-view.

Argues that the hegemony of natural science conceptions of learning has led to a tendency to neglect the role of the human inner life in the learning process. Approaching learning as a change in world view is presented as an alternative to natural scientific orthodoxy. Some examples are given of the way learning as a change in world view emerges from common patterns of human existence. Some commonly observed correlates of a change in world view may be described as changes in attitude and patterns of behavior. Such a change could be described in terms of increased receptivity to new experiences. Mainstream Western psychology's relationship with broader perspectives on human learning, such as in gestalt psychology, cognitive psychology, systems theory, and behavioral ecology, is discussed. The interactive relation between perception and learning is considered, and a number of current psychological theories and ideas are presented as examples of how learning can be conceptualized as a change in world view. Such a perspective on learning is offered as a complement to other approaches to learning rather than a replacement. (French abstract) (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beauty as an emotion: The exhilarating prospect of mastering a challenging world.

Beauty has received sparse attention from emotion theorists, some of whom have argued that aesthetic pleasure is cognitive in nature and too disinterested to be emotional. This view is supported by research suggesting that aesthetic pleasure is based on processing fluency. The authors review recent findings in the psychology of aesthetics and present two arguments. First, processing fluency explains the mild pleasure associated with simple or familiar objects, but it cannot account for the more intense pleasure associated with complex or novel objects. Immediately recognizing an object tends to be mildly pleasant, whereas sensing the prospect of successfully representing a complex object can be exhilarating. Second, to explain how these forms of aesthetic pleasures differ, a theory must go beyond cognitive dynamics. The authors' affect-based model of emotion differentiates aesthetic pleasures in terms of epistemic goals. Pretty, fluently processed stimuli implicate prevention goals that maintain and protect knowledge. Beautiful, novel stimuli implicate promotion goals that reshape and expand knowledge. The emotional nature of interest and awe are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When change in the self is mistaken for change in the world.

The authors examined whether and when changes in the self lead to mistaken assessments that the world has changed. Survey data revealed that: personal changes in respondents (e.g., parenthood, financial change) were positively correlated with their assessments of various social changes (e.g., crime rates, freedom). Experimental data provided converging evidence. Experimentally induced change in knowledge influenced participants' perceptions of change in an author's writing style from one decade to the next (Study 3). Bringing self-change to participants' attention attenuated their judgments of change in the world when they had sufficient cognitive resources to consider how such self-changes might affect their perceptions (Studies 4-6). Discussion highlights how such misattributions of change contribute to the pervasive belief in societal decline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychologist as change agent.

Given the press of contemporary social problems, psychologists are confronted with opportunities to become agents for social change. The academic, research-oriented training of psychologists does not equip him with the relevant values, knowledge, or skills to become an effective change agent and predisposes: him to reject the role as unscientific or unprofessional. This is true for the clinical, educational, and industrial psychologist as well as for the experimental and comparative psychologist. Professionals are being trained in management schools and departments of applied behavioral science who possess the requisite values, interdisciplinary knowledge, and consultative skills to be effective change agents in large organizations. Their general strategy is to transmit their knowledge and skills to non-professionals in the organization who share their values. Psychologists have typically viewed this activity by non-psychologists as a threat and their response has been characterized more by a defence of the discipline than by a concern for solving problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion-focused coping as a mediator of maternal cocaine abuse and antisocial behavior.

A great deal of data implicate parental drug use as a potential risk factor for child abuse, however, theories for understanding the links between maternal drug use and antisocial behavior have yet to be examined empirically. This case-control study investigated correlates of adult antisocial behavior among 279 inner-city mothers in 3 comparison groups: drug abusers, (n = 112), depressed mothers (n = 73), and nonsubstance abusing controls (n = 94). Using hierarchical regression techniques and mediational analyses controlling for ethnicity, current depression, and family history of substance abuse, support was provided for an emotion-focused coping style as a link between addictive and antisocial behavior. These results highlight the importance of focusing on emotion regulation models in the prevention and treatment of violence in drug-abusing women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The place of facts in a world of values: Subject and object in a postmodern world.

The value-fact or subject-object split (S-0) recently defended by H. H. Kendler (1999) as necessary for a scientific psychology to establish facts, was rejected by Gestalt psychology as reducing the person to object status. The Gestalt solution correlating principles of perceptual organization with corresponding features of the object world (S/0) has however answered poorly to the vast cultural differences found in values. Communal/dialectical psychology in agreement with a postmodern worldview, treats facts as intrinsically value-laden social constructions mediated by a society's particular social relations (S?0). Examples of fact ambiguity are illustrated, and S?0 is recommended as ontologically preferable for psychology as social science and for turn-of-the-millenium psycho-ecology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-disclosure as a function of state and trait anxiety.

Examined the influence of state and trait anxiety on self-disclosure in 48 male college freshmen rated as debilitative or facilitative test-anxious on the Achievement Anxiety Test. Ss participated in a verbal learning experiment under high and low anxiety conditions; self-disclosure was elicited by a personal information questionnaire. The effectiveness of the manipulations was checked using scores on the Anxiety factor of the Mood Adjective Check List. Ss' responses to the questionnaire items were assessed for breadth or amount of self-disclosure, depth or intimacy of self-disclosure, and positive–negative self-evaluation by content analysis of their statements. Results confirm the hypothesis that individuals experiencing state anxiety disclose less than "normals." Findings are discussed in light of various conceptual approaches to anxiety. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The evidence for a neurobiological model of childhood antisocial behavior.

Children with persistent antisocial and aggressive behavior are diagnosed as having disruptive behavior disorder. The authors review evidence that antisocial children, and especially those who persist with this behavior as they grow older, have a range of neurobiological characteristics. It is argued that serotonergic functioning and stress-regulating mechanisms are important in explaining individual differences in antisocial behavior. Moreover, low fear of punishment and physiological underactivity may predispose antisocial individuals to seek out stimulation or take risks and may help to explain poor conditioning and socialization. The authors propose a theoretical model highlighting the interplay between neurobiological deficits and cognitive and emotional functioning as mediators of the link between early adversity and antisocial behavior problems in childhood. Implications for intervention programs are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

IQ as a protective factor for subjects at high risk for antisocial behavior.

The current project compared the characteristics of four groups of men from a Danish birth cohort: (a) those at high risk for serious criminal involvement (with severely criminal fathers) who nevertheless succeeded in avoiding criminal behavior; (b) those at high risk who evidenced serious criminal behavior; (c) those at low risk (with noncriminal fathers) who did not evidence criminal behavior; and (d) those at low risk who nevertheless evidenced serious criminal behavior. We examined the possible role of high IQ (as tested by an abbreviated version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) in protecting high-risk men from criminal involvement. As hypothesized, the first group evidenced a mean IQ score that was significantly higher than that of the other risk groups. The results are interpreted in terms of the reinforcing effect of success in the school system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nature–nurture integration: The example of antisocial behavior.

Nature and nurture do not operate independently of each other, and, to an important degree, genetic effects on behavior come about because they either influence the extent to which the individual is likely to be exposed to individual differences in environmental risk or they affect how susceptible the individual is to environmental adversities. The time has come for an explicit research focus on the forms of interplay between genes and environment and on how this interplay is involved in the causal mechanisms for the origins of antisocial behavior and for its persistence or desistance over time. Molecular genetics has an even greater potential than quantitative genetics for understanding environmental risk mechanisms and the interplay between nature and nurture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The referents of trait inferences: The impact of trait concepts versus actor–trait links on subsequent judgments.

The authors investigated the hypothesis that when trait inferences refer to abstract behavior labels they act as a general interpretation frame and lead to assimilation in subsequent judgments of an ambiguous target, whereas when they refer to a specific actor–trait link they will be used as a scale anchor and lead to contrast. Similar to G. B. Moskowitz and R. J. Roman's (see record 1992-31124-001) study, participants who were instructed to memorize trait-implying sentences showed assimilation, and participants who were instructed to form an impression of the actors in these sentences showed contrast. However, exposure to trait-implying sentences that described actors with real names and were accompanied with photos of the actors resulted in contrast under both memorization and impression instructions (Experiment 1). Furthermore, contrast ensued when trait-implying sentences were accompanied with information that suggested a person attribution, whereas assimilation ensued when that information suggested a situation attribution, independent of processing goals (Experiment 2). These findings are interpreted as support for referent-based explanations of the consequences of trait inferences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

State anxiety as a function of trait anxiety and sex in a quasi-clinical situation.

Undergraduates who scored high, medium, or low on a scale of trait (predispositional) anxiety (n = 7 males and 7 females in each group) differed reliably in level of state (situational) anxiety when tested before and after 2 standardized interviews. This relationship held for both male and female Ss, although males manifested consistently higher levels of state anxiety than females. Moreover, first an increase and then a general decline in degree of state anxiety were noted over occasions of testing. Despite these temporary fluctuations in situational anxiety, however, the basic form of the state-trait relationship remained largely unchanged. Findings are interpreted as substantive confirmation of state-trait anxiety theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-dissatisfaction as a determinent of change in police values.

Pretested experimental and control groups of 384 police officers on the Rokeach Value Survey and for their tolerance ratings on S. A. Stouffer's Nonconformist Tolerance Scale. The experimental group compared their personal ratings with others (both police and nonpolice), were exposed to concepts of equality before the law, and then were asked to indicate the degree of satisfaction-dissatisfaction they felt over their rating of the value equality . Changes in Ss' values resulted from exposure to the inconsistencies between the low priority of equality vs Ss' concept of themselves as just, fair, and tolerant. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Orderly oriented wire mesh: a novel porous coating

As an alternative to commercially available porous beads and fiber metal mesh, a new porous coating, orderly oriented wire mesh (OOWM), was developed. Rectangular plugs, 10 x 5 x 5 mm with porous-coated beads, and four different OOWM configurations were inserted into bilateral femoral condyles of adult beagles. Dogs were sacrificed immediately after implantation, and at 4 weeks, 8 weeks, and 12 weeks postimplantation. Mechanical pullout strength of plugs revealed that porous beads are equivalent to the simplest OOWM at 12 weeks postimplantation. Of the four OOWMs tested, the 25 x 25 single layer was significantly more stable than others at 4 weeks postimplantation. These results indicate that in an in vivo unloaded model, OOWM is just as effective as the porous beads in achieving early bone ingrowth and stability.     

Continuity and change in the development of psychology around the world.

A survey conducted in 1998 by the International Union of Psychological Science showed that psychology is continuing to grow and expand around the world. At the same time, psychology faces severe challenges, including these: (a) responding to increased demands for accountability, (b) developing research that will be applicable to such problems as resolving and alleviating ethnic conflicts, (c) gaining an appropriate classification for psychology among the disciplines, and (d) helping to meet the needs of the knowledge society. Taking stock of psychology's present resources and state of development should be a helpful exercise in planning for further development. Some proposals are suggested and more are welcomed to deal with the challenges to be faced in the international development of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)