Linking Availability Expectations,Bidirectional Boundary Management Behavior and Preferences,and Employee Well-Being: an Integrative Study Approach

Information and communication technologies enable employees to be available anywhere and anytime, raising availability expectations of work and nonwork contacts. Building on the theory of planned behavior and the person-environment fit theory, the present study examines how others’ availability expectations predict employees’ management of work and nonwork boundaries, and how these bidirectional boundary management behaviors relate to well-being. Results of structural equation modeling with data from 401 employees collected in two waves show that availability expectations of both coworkers and nonwork contacts predict how employees manage the boundaries of work and nonwork domains. Thereby, availability expectations are negatively related to segmentation of the two domains and coworkers' expectations show an indirect effect on employee well-being. Further, our study shows that work-nonwork and nonwork-work segmentation behavior have divergent effects on employee well-being, indicating that asymmetric boundary management behavior with high work-nonwork segmentation and low nonwork-work segmentation may be beneficial. Besides, moderation analyses underline the importance of enabling individuals to align their boundary management preferences with their actual behavior, especially when individuals have high work-nonwork segmentation preferences. By integrating and unveiling distinct antecedents of work-nonwork and nonwork-work segmentation behavior and their divergent effects on well-being, the present study contributes to a comprehensive framework for investigating and understanding bidirectional boundary management in the face of technology-enabled availability.

     

Worlds,Capabilities and Well-Being

Critics suggest that without some “objective” account of well-being we cannot explain why satisfying some preferences is, as we believe, better than satisfying others, why satisfying some preferences may leave us on net worse off or why, in a range of cases, we should reject life-adjustment in favor of life-improvement. I defend a subjective welfarist understanding of well-being against such objections by reconstructing the Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a preferentist account of well-being. According to the proposed account preference satisfaction alone—possible as well as actual—is of value. States of affairs contribute to well-being because and to the extent that they satisfy actual or nearby possible preferences, and are fruitful, that is, compatible with a range states that satisfy further actual or nearby possible preferences. The proposed account solves the problem of adaptive preference. Individuals whose preferences are “deformed” are satisfied with fruitless states of affairs, which constrain their options so that they are incapable of satisfying a wide range of nearby possible preferences—preferences they “could easily have had.” Recognizing the value of capabilities as well as actual attainments allows us to explain why individuals who satisfy “deformed” or perverse preferences may not on net benefit from doing so. More fundamentally, it explains why some states are, as Sen suggests, bad, awful or gruesome while others are good, excellent or superb without appeal to any objective account of value.     

General and contextualized emotion goals and its link with well-being across late,middle, and young adulthood

Prior research with young adults has shown how emotion goals (i.e., cognitive representations of preferred emotional states) can be instrumental (positive or negative) depending on the context and how this context sensitivity is linked to higher well-being. However, this research has overlooked older adults. We argue it is important looking at this age group as there is mixed evidence given that on one hand they have been described as exhibiting a positivity bias (hedonic orientation; preference for positive emotion goals), and on the other hand, being capable of suppressing this when it is adaptive to do so. Importantly, this bias towards positive emotion goals has been linked to better emotion regulation and higher well-being in older adults. In order to understand whether older adults can also exhibit instrumental emotion goals and whether this is linked to well-being, we conducted an exploratory study with older (N = 43, M_age = 68.33), middle (N = 47, M_age = 43.83), and young adults (N = 47; M_age = 21.98) who reported about their general and contextual emotion goals (in collaboration and confrontation), their well-being, and their current positive and negative affect. Although older adults reported lower negative affect than young adults, there were no age differences for general and contextualized emotion goals. Across the three age groups, a higher preference for happiness in general and in collaboration was linked to higher well-being. The obtained results highlight the need to study emotion goals longitudinally to better understand their possible changes throughout the lifespan and their influence on well-being.     

The 3P Model: A General Theory of Subjective Well-Being

Empirical research focusing on the field of subjective well-being has resulted in a range of theories, components, and measures, yet only a modicum of work leans towards the establishment of a general theory of subjective well-being. I propose that a temporal model of subjective well-being, called the 3P Model, is a parsimonious, unifying theory, which accounts for, as well as unites, disparate theories and measurements. The 3P Model categorizes the components of subjective well-being under the temporal states of the Present, the Past, and the Prospect (Future). The model indicates how each state is important to a global evaluation of subjective well-being and how each state is distinct yet connected to the other states. Additionally, the model explains how measures of subjective well-being are affected by cognitive biases (e.g., peak-end rule, impact bias, retrospective bias), which factor into evaluations of the temporal states, and meta-biases (e.g., temporal perspectives), which factor into global evaluations of life satisfaction. Finally, future research is recommended to further support the model as well as create interventions that can be chosen based on an individual’s temporal preference or that can be designed to counteract certain biases.     

Do Envy and Compassion Pave the Way to Unhappiness? Social Preferences and Life Satisfaction in a Spanish City

Mounting evidence shows that people’s self-reported life satisfaction (LS) is negatively related to income inequality. Under the interpretation that the relationship between macro-level variables and LS reflects individuals’ social preferences, this finding indicates that most people display inequality-averse preferences. We explore the relationship between self-reports on inequality aversion and LS in a citywide representative survey/experiment conducted in Spain. If self-reported well-being can be used to infer people’s social preferences, LS should correlate negatively with both “envy” and “compassion” scores (i.e., how much one suffers from disadvantageous and advantageous inequality, respectively). We find that LS relates negatively to envy but positively to compassion, which would imply that suffering from observing poorer others, paradoxically, increases well-being. Using an incentivized Dictator Game as a measure of generous behavior, we reject the hypothesis that the positive link between compassion and LS is actually driven by generosity. We discuss how these findings could indicate that the way LS is used to assess social preferences in the population should be revised.     

Nozick's experience machine is dead,long live the experience machine!

Robert Nozick's experience machine thought experiment (Nozick's scenario) is widely used as the basis for a “knockdown” argument against all internalist mental state theories of well-being. Recently, however, it has been convincingly argued that Nozick's scenario should not be used in this way because it elicits judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. These arguments all include alternate experience machine thought experiments, but these scenarios also elicit judgments marred by status quo bias and other irrelevant factors. In this paper, several experiments are conducted in order to create and test a relatively bias-free experience machine scenario. It is argued that if an experience machine thought experiment is used to evaluate internalist mental state theories of well-being, then this relatively bias-free scenario should be used over any of the existing scenarios. Unlike the existing experience machine scenarios, when this new scenario is used to assess internalist mental state theories of well-being, it does not provide strong evidence to refute or endorse them.     

Relative visual saliency differences induce sizable bias in consumer choice

Consumers often need to make very rapid choices among multiple brands (e.g., at a supermarket shelf) that differ both in their reward value (e.g., taste) and in their visual properties (e.g., color and brightness of the packaging). Since the visual properties of stimuli are known to influence visual attention, and attention is known to influence choices, this gives rise to a potential visual saliency bias in choices. We utilize experimental design from visual neuroscience in three real food choice experiments to measure the size of the visual saliency bias and how it changes with decision speed and cognitive load. Our results show that at rapid decision speeds visual saliency influences choices more than preferences do, that the bias increases with cognitive load, and that it is particularly strong when individuals do not have strong preferences among the options.     

Subjective well-being,social buffering and hedonic editing in the quotidian

A previous study on the relationship between subjective well-being (SWB) and hedonic editing—the process of mentally integrating or segregating different events during decision-making—showed that happy individuals preferred the social-buffering strategy more than less happy individuals. The present study examined the relationship between SWB, social-buffering and hedonic outcomes in daily life. In Study 1, we used web-based diaries to measure the frequency with which individuals utilised social and non-social buffers as well as daily levels of happiness. Consistent with the previous finding, happy individuals utilised social buffers more frequently than less happy individuals. Interestingly, the utilisation of social buffers had a positive effect on daily happiness among all participants, regardless of individuals’ levels of SWB. In Study 2, we found that although the use of social buffers yielded similar effects across groups on online evaluations of events, happy individuals showed a positive bias in global evaluations of past events. This finding suggests that how one construes and remembers the outcomes of social buffering may shape the different hedonic editing preferences among happy and less happy individuals.     

Limited Experienced Happiness or Unlimited Expected Utility,What About the Differences?

Happiness and utility are two types of subjective well-being, but measured in different ways. Happiness is measured by asking people questions about their subjective appreciation of their life as a whole. Utility is measured by an assessment of their subjective priorities, as revealed in their actual behaviour. Both methods have specific pros and cons and additional value. These methodological issues are important in an epistemological way: how to obtain knowledge about subjective well-being. There are, however, also three important ontological differences between happiness and utility in the actual nature of these phenomena in reality. (1) Happiness depends on available market and non-market commodities and living-conditions; utility depends only on available market-commodities. (2) Happiness is about experienced well-being, utility is about expected well-being. (3) Happiness is limited because it is related to the fulfilment of a limited number of needs, utility is unlimited because behaviour always reveals preferences in terms of expected well-being. Economists and happiness-researchers tend to neglect the last two differences. Their analysis, the analysis of Carol Graham included, could gain strength if more attention would be paid to these last two differences.     

幸福的体验效用与非理性决策行为的偏差机制

基于体验效用的幸福包括预期幸福、即时幸福和回忆幸福,这三者有极其重要的本质差异,导致决策偏差和非理性。本研究运用行为科学和认知神经科学相结合的研究方法,首次从行为层次—信息加工层次—脑神经层次三个层面,立体地开展幸福感的体验效用与非理性决策行为研究。研究计划分为三个部分:(1)预期幸福、即时幸福和回忆幸福的本质特点和行为规律;(2)三种体验效用产生偏差的认知心理机制;(3)体验效用与非理性决策偏差的脑神经机制。通过系列研究,拟解决三个关键问题:(1)在人类判断与决策过程中,预期、即时和回忆三种效用是如何影响人们的判断与决策?(2)三种体验效用出现偏差的信息加工特点和脑神经机制究竟是什么?(3)三种效用的偏差规律及对政府公共政策的启示。对这些问题的深入探讨,不仅对决策理论研究的发展是一个贡献;对政府管理制定有效的公共政策,避免"牺牲体验追求指标",解决"幸福悖论",同样有很强的实践指导意义。     

Cognitive factors in the development of sex-typed preferences

This study considered how children coordinate their understandings of gender identity and sex stereotypes to produce sex-typed preferences. Sex-typed preferences and gender constancy were assessed at ages 4 through 8 years on a cross section of urban black and white children (N=819). Findings verified that sex-stereotyped preferences are highly developed among young children prior to the period when gender constancy is fully developed. Additionally, by age 5, most children accurately attributed sex-stereotyped preferences to peers of the opposite sex. A distinction was made between a sex stereotype and a same-sex bias as a basis for a sex-typed preference. Gender constancy was shown to strengthen the same-sex bias as a determinant of a sex-typed preference, but this effect was context specific. Under certain conditions sex-stereotyped knowledge constrained the same-sex bias as a determinant of preferential choice.     

Optimising Employee Mental Health: The Relationship Between Intrinsic Need Satisfaction,Job Crafting,and Employee Well-Being

Organisations are frequently confronted with the issue of how to enhance employee mental health. Based on self-determination theory, a model is proposed that examines the relationships between job crafting, the satisfaction of the intrinsic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness at work, and employee well-being—defined here as both subjective well-being and psychological well-being. A sample of 253 working adults completed a battery of questionnaires including the Job Crafting Questionnaire, the Intrinsic Need Satisfaction Scale, and the Mental Health Continuum. Using structural equation modelling methods, it was determined that job crafting predicted intrinsic need satisfaction, which, in turn, predicted employee well-being. The results suggest that job crafting may be an important underpinning upon which to base an employee well-being intervention.     

Personality,coping, and school well-being: an investigation of high school students

With a growing interest in well-being as an outcome of schooling, there is an increased need for research on how to enable it in students’ academic lives. This study examined personality and coping strategies as predictors of students’ well-being outcomes at school using structural equation modelling. Students (N?=?328) completed measures of personality and coping strategies, and then approximately 6 months later reported on their satisfaction with school and subjective well-being. Results indicated that, along with personality and sociodemographics, productive coping strategies were associated with school satisfaction and subjective well-being 6 months later. The findings suggest that coping strategies used by adolescents to deal with the stresses of school have important consequences. Interventions to increase school students’ use of productive coping strategies may have meaningful impacts on their well-being.     

Future‐Bias: A (Qualified) Defense

The preferences of ordinary folks typically display a future‐bias. For instance, we care more about pains and pleasures in our future than pains and pleasures in our past. Indeed, this future‐bias is so pervasive, many have taken it for granted that the preferences of rational agents will, or at least can, display this future‐bias to some degree or other. However, the rationality of future‐biased preferences has recently come in for critique. However, in this article, I offer a defense of future‐biased preferences against three recent attempts – offered by David Brink, Preston Greene and Meghan Sullivan, and Tom Dougherty – to show such preferences irrational.     

You'll change more than I will: Adults’ predictions about their own and others’ future preferences

It has been argued that adults underestimate the extent to which their preferences will change over time. We sought to determine whether such mispredictions are the result of a difficulty imagining that one's own current and future preferences may differ or whether it also characterizes our predictions about the future preferences of others. We used a perspective-taking task in which we asked young people how much they liked stereotypically young-person items (e.g., Top 40 music, adventure vacations) and stereotypically old-person items (e.g., jazz, playing bridge) now, and how much they would like them in the distant future (i.e., when they are 70 years old). Participants also made these same predictions for a generic same-age, same-sex peer. In a third condition, participants predicted how much a generic older (i.e., age 70) same-sex adult would like items from both categories today. Participants predicted less change between their own current and future preferences than between the current and future preferences of a peer. However, participants estimated that, compared to a current older adult today, their peer would like stereotypically young items more in the future and stereotypically old items less. The fact that peers’ distant-future estimated preferences were different from the ones they made for “current” older adults suggests that even though underestimation of change of preferences over time is attenuated when thinking about others, a bias still exists.     

Ignoring Easterlin: Why Easterlin’s Correlation Findings Need Not Matter to Public Policy

Many believe that the lack of correlation between happiness and income, first discovered by Richard Easterlin in 1974, entails the conclusion that well-being policies should be made based on happiness measures, rather than income measures. I argue that distinguishing between how well-being is characterized and how that characterization is measured introduces ways of denying the conclusion that policies should be made based on happiness measures. It is possible to avoid the conclusion either by denying that well-being hedonism is true or by denying that happiness measures are a better way of operationalizing hedonism than income measures are. By making these possibilities explicit, we find that less hinges on whether income and happiness are correlated than is often thought.     

Structuring Ends

There is disagreement among contemporary theorists regarding human well-being. On one hand there are “substantive good” views, according to which the most important elements of a person’s well-being result from her nature as a human, rational, and/or sentient being. On the other hand there are “agent-constituted” views, which contend that a person’s well-being is constituted by her particular aims, desires, and/or preferences. Each approach captures important features of human well-being, but neither can provide a complete account: agent-constituted theories have difficulty accounting for the normativity of their claims, and substantive good theories have difficulty accounting for how a person’s actually adopted aims shape what is good for her and hence what she has reason to do. I articulate and defend a hybrid view that equals these approaches in systematicity and completeness of explanation yet seeks to surpass them in coherence with our ordinary judgments about what human well-being consists in. This hybrid view maintains, with agent-constituted theories, that a person’s well-being is (1) significantly constituted by her actually adopted aims; (2) deeply contingent; (3) agent-relative; (4) significantly dependent on spatially and temporally remote events; and (5) significantly independent of her experiences. The hybrid view also maintains, with substantive good theories, that a person’s well-being is (6) in part determined by facts independent of her aims, desires, and preferences; (7) such that all her aims are subject to critical evaluation and revision; and (8) constituted by her aims only if these aims are choiceworthy.     

Internalization and moral demands

How should we assess the burden of moral demands? A predominant assessment is provided by what Murphy calls the baseline of factual status-quo (FSQ): A moral theory is demanding if the level of agents’ well-being is reduced from the time they begin to comply perfectly with the theory. The aims of my paper are threefold. I will first discuss the limits of the FSQ baseline. Second, I suggest a different assessment, which examines moral demands from a whole-life perspective. My view is that even if agents’ compliance with a moral theory will not cause a substantial reduction to their existing level of well-being, the total quality of life that they may obtain from complying with this theory may still be lower than what they could have obtained by following some other moral theories. The third aim of this paper is that, through this investigation, I hope to explicate the relation between agents’ acceptance of a moral theory and the burden of demands that is created by it. I believe that we can achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of moral demands by paying attention to the psychological development of agents as they accept and internalize a moral theory.     

Wishful Thinking about the Future: Does Desire Impact Optimism?

The notion that desire for an outcome inflates optimism about that outcome has been dubbed the desirability bias or wishful thinking. In this paper, we discuss the importance of distinguishing wishful thinking from the more general concept of motivated reasoning, and we explain why documenting overoptimism or correlations between preferences and optimism is not sufficient to infer a desirability bias. Then, we discuss results from a review and meta-analysis of the experimental literature on wishful thinking. These findings, in conjunction with more recent work, not only highlight important moderators and mediators of the desirability bias but also point out limitations of the empirical research on the bias. These results also reveal an important difference between how likelihood judgments and discrete outcome predictions respond to desirability of outcomes. We conclude by presenting avenues for future research useful for understanding wishful thinking's manifestation in everyday environments and its integration with related phenomena.