Exploring the relations between traits and emotions

The relationships among traits and among emotions have been well researched and are well known, but few experimental probes of the relationships between traits and emotions have been undertaken. The present investigation sought to describe the relations that exist between traits and emotions. The Comrey Personality Scale (a trait inventory) and the Profile of Mood States (an emotion inventory) were administered to 140 students and the subscales were correlated using canonical procedures. The resulting canonical correlations may be specified in bipolar summary form as follows: Neurotic-Stable was found to be correlated with Depressed-Hopeful; Introverted-Extraverted was found to be correlated with Quiescent-Vigorous; and Empathic-Egocentrical was found to be correlated with Content-Confused. Furthermore, the predictive strength between the trait set and the emotion set was reasonably good, although substantially better when traits rather than emotions served as the predictors.     

Preference or ability: Exploring the relations between risk preference,personality, and cognitive abilities

Key issues in the behavioral sciences are if there exist stable risk preferences that generalize across domains and if these are best measured by revealed risk preference (RRP) in behavioral decision tasks or by surveys eliciting stated risk preference (SRP). We applied network analysis to data from a representative Swedish sample to investigate the relations between RRP, SRP, personality characteristics, and cognitive abilities, using in total over 70 measurements. The results showed that different measures of RRP were poorly intercorrelated and formed a community together with measures of numerical and cognitive abilities. Measures of SRP were weakly correlated with measures of RRP and identified in a distinctly separate community, along with personality characteristics and gender. The ensuing analyses provided support for a model suggesting that RRPs are contaminated by demands on numerical and cognitive abilities. RRPs may thus suffer from poor construct validity, whereas SRPs may better capture people's everyday risk preferences because they are related to more stable traits.     

Exploring relations between teacher emotions,coping strategies,and intentions to quit: A longitudinal analysis

Although previous research has indicated that emotions have a substantial impact on teacher well-being, research is lacking concerning the relationships between teachers' emotions, coping strategies, and quitting intentions. This current five-month, two-wave longitudinal study investigated the relations between these variables in a sample of 1086 Canadian teachers (female: 81.3%; M_age = 42). Results from cross-lagged analyses revealed that teachers' trait emotions corresponded with coping strategies and that trait emotions and coping strategies both corresponded with intentions to quit the teaching profession. Mediational latent change analyses further showed that baseline levels of teachers' anxiety corresponded with greater emotion-focused disengagement coping that, in turn, led to stronger intentions to quit the teaching profession. Finally, decreases in teachers' anxiety over time additionally corresponded with decreases in disengagement coping. Limitations and practical implications concerning the importance of providing meaningful support to teachers for reducing anxiety, improving coping, and reducing quitting intentions are discussed.     

Exploring relations between task conflict and informational conflict in the Stroop task

In this study, we tested the proposal that the Stroop task involves two conflicts—task conflict and informational conflict. Task conflict was defined as the latency difference between color words and non-letter neutrals, and manipulated by varying the proportion of color words versus non-letter neutrals. Informational conflict was defined as the latency difference between incongruent and congruent trials and manipulated by varying the congruent-to-incongruent trial ratio. We replicated previous findings showing that increasing the ratio of incongruent-to-congruent trials reduces the latency difference between the incongruent and congruent condition (i.e., informational conflict), as does increasing the proportion of color words (i.e., task conflict). A significant under-additive interaction between the two proportion manipulations (congruent vs. incongruent and color words vs. neutrals) indicated that the effects of task conflict and informational conflict were not additive. By assessing task conflict as the contrast between color words and neutrals, we found that task conflict existed in all of our experimental conditions. Under specific conditions, when task conflict dominated behavior by explaining most of the variability between congruency conditions, we also found negative facilitation, thus demonstrating that this effect is a special case of task conflict.     

A preliminary typology of organisational response to allegations of workplace bullying: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

Organisational representative response is an important factor to consider when counselling employees who have experienced bullying and are considering approaching their organisation for assistance. The author argues that not all responses are supportive and that some responses can further harm an employee. The author presents a review of representative responses, developed from bullying cases the author saw as a counsellor or trainer. The author reviews three organisational representative responses to allegations of bulling: (1) the behaviour is acceptable; (2) the behaviour is inappropriately equally attributed to both parties as a personality conflict; and (3) the behaviour is harmful and inappropriate. The author concludes that counsellors must review potential organisational representative responses with employees and recommends mandatory training for organisational representatives.     

Actions,their effects and preventable evil

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion -