Flexible Work Arrangements Availability and their Relationship with Work‐to‐Family Conflict,Job Satisfaction,and Turnover Intentions: A Comparison of Three Country Clusters

The present study explored the availability of flexible work arrangements (FWA) and their relationship with manager outcomes of job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and work‐to‐family conflict (WFC) across country clusters. We used individualism and collectivism to explain differences in FWA availability across Latin American, Anglo, and Asian clusters. Managers from the Anglo cluster were more likely to report working in organisations that offer FWA compared to managers from other clusters. For Anglo managers, flextime was the only FWA that had significant favorable relationships with the outcome variables. For Latin Americans, part‐time work negatively related with turnover intentions and strain‐based WFC. For Asians, flextime was unrelated to time‐based WFC, and telecommuting was positively associated with strain‐based WFC. The clusters did not moderate the compressed work week and outcome relationships. Implications for practitioners adopting FWA practices across cultures are discussed.     

Triggering Creative Self-Efficacy to Increase Employee Innovation Behavior in the Hospitality Workplace

This study investigated how creative personality, psychological empowerment, and job stress affect creative self-efficacy and innovative behavior in hospitality employees. A hypothesized moderating role of knowledge-sharing role in the relationship between creative self-efficacy and innovative behavior was also tested. Three hundred and thirty-nine employees and 89 supervisors employed by International Tourist Hotels in Taiwan participated in the study. A structural equation modeling analysis indicated that creative self-efficacy significantly mediates the effects of creative personality and psychological empowerment on innovative behavior in the hospitality industry. The positive effect of creative self-efficacy on innovative behavior was larger in high knowledge-sharing work environments than in low knowledge-sharing work environments. Theoretical and practical implications are further discussed.     

Ambivalent Attitudes in a Communication Process: An Integrated Model

In a communication process that involves a target subject (what is being communicated about) and a source, existing attitudes (positive or negative) toward the target or the source influence communication effects. People also may hold ambivalent attitudes (positive and negative) toward the target or the source, but the implications of such ambivalent attitudes on communication effects remain unclear in communication research. This study tries to fill that void by exploring ambivalent attitudes toward the target and source on communication effects and proposing an integrated model to demonstrate that ambivalent attitudes encourage systematic processing (Experiments 1 and 2) and that identification with the target or the source further encourages motivated processing among ambivalent people (Experiments 3 and 4).     

Measurement of activity in small animals using a microcomputer-controlled system

A computer-controlled system that detects spontaneous activity (locomotion and rearing) and diurnal activity rhythms in small animals is described. Automatic recording of subtotals during test periods provides data about habituation (nonassociative learning). The system is relatively inexpensive to construct. Fabricated from highly reliable circuit components, it provides replicable measures that enable comparisons between different experimental treatments to be made using parametric statistics.     

Constructing the exact significance level for a person fit statistic

This paper uses an extension of the network algorithm originally introduced by Mehta and Patel to construct exact tail probabilities for testing the general hypothesis that item responses are distributed according to the Rasch model. By assuming that item difficulties are known, the algorithm is applicable to the statistical tests either given the maximum likelihood ability estimate or conditioned on the total score. A simulation study indicates that the network algorithm is an efficient tool for computing the significance level of a person fit statistic based on test lengths of 30 items or less.     

人类意識的起源和发展

人类意識的起源和发展問題在現代科学中占有重要的地位,哲学的基本問題是意識对存在的关系問題,它如何解决,是唯物主义和唯心主义的根本分界綫。唯物主义者认为物貭是第一性的;意識是第二性的,是物貭长期发展的結果,是派生的。因此,研究人类意識的起源和发展,对馬克思主义哲学是有着重大意义的。 人类意識的起源和发展問題,是心理学的基本理論,它涉及到广泛的科学领域,只有在馬克思主义指导下,心理学联合人类学、考古学、語言学、历史学以及其它許多学科,进行綜合性的研究才能得到解决。现代科学对于这个問題已经积累了相当重要的資料和科学論据。     

The asymptotic posterior normality of the latent trait in an IRT model

It has long been part of the item response theory (IRT) folklore that under the usual empirical Bayes unidimensional IRT modeling approach, the posterior distribution of examinee ability given test response is approximately normal for a long test. Under very general and nonrestrictive nonparametric assumptions, we make this claim rigorous for a broad class of latent models.This research was partially supported by Office of Naval Research Cognitive and Neural Sciences Grant N0014-J-90-1940, 442-1548, National Science Foundation Mathematics Grant NSF-DMS-91-01436, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. We wish to thank Kumar Joag-dev and Zhiliang Ying for enlightening suggestions concerning the proof of the basic result.The authors wish to thank Kumar Joag-Dev, Brian Junker, Bert Green, Paul Holland, Robert Mislevy, and especially Zhiliang Ying for their useful comments and discussions.     

Form symbolism, analogy, and metaphor

Simple forms, such as a square and a circle, can be symbolic; for example, a square can be deemed to behard and a circle to besoft. The relation between form symbolism and the comprehension of metaphors and analogies was studied in three experiments. Subjects were asked to rate matches between terms such assoft andhard andcircle andsquare as symbols (Experiment 1), metaphors (Experiment 2), and analogies (Experiment 3). The results show that a highly rated symbolic relation could be a poorly rated metaphorical relation. Ratings of analogies were similar to ratings of symbols. We argue that apt metaphors, analogies, and symbolic forms claim that the vehicle and the topic of the comparisons have common features, but that metaphoric representation entails more common features than does either symbolism or analogy, because metaphor requires that the vehicle be an especially apt example of a superordinate class. Thus, metaphor is a particularly strong claim about common features shared by the topic and the vehicle.     

Can Planck's constant be measured with classical mechanics?

An interesting case of the complex interaction between theory and experiment can be found in many experiments in quantum physics employing classical reasoning. It is expected that this practice would lead to quantitative inaccuracy, unless the measurements’ results were averaged. Whether or not this inaccuracy is significant depends critically on the details of the particular experimental situation. The example of Millikan's photoelectric experiment, in which he obtained a precise value of Planck's constant, provides a good case for illustrating the process of estimating the inaccuracy resulting from the classical‐quantum discrepancy. In the case of Millikan's experiment, it seems that a significant inaccuracy was avoided because of fortunate coincidences. In general, in the absence of a careful analysis, it is impossible to say whether the use of classical reasoning interferes with the accuracy of a quantum‐physical experiment.