Humor and coping with stress: A test under real-life conditions

The relationship between humor and coping with stress was investigated for trainees in a course for combat NCOs in the Israel Defense Forces. Measures of humor through self-report and peer-ratings were administered to 159 soldiers. Coping with stress was assessed through ratings by commanders and peers, and through final course grades. The findings showed that humor as rated by peers (but not by self-report) was positively related to performance under stress. This was especially true for active humor (self-produced as opposed to reactive humor). No differences were found between individuals characterized by self-directed humor and other-directed humor in performance under stress. The implications in terms of humor theories and further research are discussed.     

Convergence of Self-Report Scales and Rorschach Indexes of Psychological Distress: The Moderating Role of Self-Disclosure

This study constructed an instrument which identifies people who fear success (FOS) in academic areas and conducted a laboratory study which tested the instrument's predictive validity. The theoretical formulation of the FOS phenomenon leads to the expectation that individuals high in the fear of success would demonstrate the following characteristics: low self-esteem, a preoccupation with the evaluative aspects of situations, a competitive orientation, repudiation of competence, and self-sabotage at the approach or attainment of success. The fear of success questionnaire is an 83-item scale with a reliability of .90. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, subjects identified by the FOS questionnaire were given either Success or nonsuccess feedback after completing the first of two equivalent reading tests. The results of the laboratory experiment indicated that there is strong clear evidence of self-sabotage under conditions of success among subjects who scored high on the FOS questionnaire.     

The prevalence of despair in intractable conflicts: Direct messages of hope and despair affect leftists,but not rightists

In contexts of long-term conflict, it often seems easier to spread despair than to instill hope. The prevalence of despair, an emotion that promotes apathy, in contexts that so desperately need hope, an emotion that promotes conciliation, calls for further investigation. One possibility is that messages of hope and despair have different effects on people based on their political ideology. In the present research we examined the effect of direct despair- and hope-inducing messages (compared to a control condition involving a neutral message) on participants' experience of hope for peace, their sense of urgency to resolve the conflict, and subsequently their support for concession-making as a function of political orientation. Two samples of Jewish-Israelis were collected. Study 1 was collected using snowball methods, while Study 2 replicated and enhanced findings with a more representative sample of Jewish-Israeli society collected using an online survey platform. In both studies, messages of hope or despair yielded no influence on Rightists, whose baseline of hope is inherently low. However, for Leftists (experiencing higher levels of hope for peace) the despair manipulation significantly decreased support for concession-making through decreased hope for peace and sense of urgency to resolve the conflict, providing an explanation to the prevalence of despair over hope in conflict.     

Mothers' insightfulness regarding their infants' internal experience: relations with maternal sensitivity and infant attachment

This study examined the associations among mothers' insightfulness into their infants' internal experience, mothers' sensitivity to their infants' signals, and infants' security of attachment to their mothers. The insightfulness of 129 mothers of 12-month-old infants was assessed by showing mothers 3 videotaped segments of observations of their infants and themselves and interviewing them regarding their infants' and their own thoughts and feelings. Interviews were classified into 1 insightful and 3 noninsightful categories. Mothers' sensitivity was assessed during play sessions at home and at the laboratory, and infant-mother attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation. Mothers classified as positively insightful were rated as more sensitive and were more likely to have securely attached children than were mothers not classified as positively insightful. Insightfulness also accounted for variance in attachment beyond the variance explained by maternal sensitivity. These findings add an important dimension to research on caregiving, suggesting that mothers' seeking of explanations for the motives underlying their infants' behavior is related to both maternal sensitivity and infant attachment.     

Distractibility after frontal lobe lesions: behavioral and event-related brain potential evidence

The authors used a semantic priming paradigm to investigate the distractibility phenomenon of patients with frontal lobe lesions (FLPs). They tested two distractibility categories: an inhibition category requiring inhibition of an automatic response and a distraction category caused by irrelevant, unexpected stimuli. Fifteen FLPs were compared with 2 matched control groups: 14 posterior-lesion patients and 15 normal controls. Both behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures were used. The results suggest that, although there were differences in performance between the FLP group and the control groups, there was no evidence that the FLPs had difficulty specifically with the inhibition category. The most consistent ERP result was that the FLP group had longer N100 latencies than either control group. On the basis of these results, the authors hypothesize that FLPs have difficulty focusing on and starting to process a new stimulus. The authors also discuss the unique contribution ERP evidence has made to cognitive studies.     

The role of personal resources in work–family conflict: Implications for young mothers' well-being

The purpose of the current study was to examine the role that personal resources (person–environment [PE] congruence and personality types associated with resilience) and work–family conflict (WFC) play in the sense of well-being (as reflected by burnout and life-satisfaction) of mothers of young children. A sample of 146 mothers holding demanding careers completed six questionnaires. Based on Baron and Kenny (1986), several regression analyses were conducted. The results indicated that PE congruence was not related to life satisfaction but was negatively related to burnout, a relationship fully mediated by both work-interferes-family (WIF) and family-interferes-work (FIW) conflict dimensions. Personality type was related to burnout and life-satisfaction (Resilients exhibited higher levels of well-being than both Undercontrollers and Overcontrollers), a relationship which was only partially mediated by WIF and FIW. Implications for career planning and counseling, particularly for women, are discussed.     

Thinking groups: Rhetorical enactment of collective identity in three Israeli Kibbutzim

The present paper reports a case study about public deliberations in three Israeli kibbutzim regarding a disputed school issue: whether to maintain a traditional in-kibbutz high school despite a heavy financial burden or to close it and send kibbutz youths to a public regional school The results served as a demonstration of a 'thinking group' (i.e. of how the collective aims of a group are achieved by the coordinated rhetorical behaviour of individuals according to the formal rules of the collective deliberations). First, video-recordings of six general assembly meetings in which the issue was discussed was analyzed as to their argumentative content. Second, the extracted arguments were presented to a sample of 342 kibbutz members to capture the distribution of opinions in the population. It is proposed that most kibbutz members were willing to preserve their collective living and saw the closure of their in-kibbutz school as a threat to their traditional collective identity. We observed a distinct form of public rhetoric during the deliberations in the general meetings which provides a podium for the disputed opinions, preserves the kibbutz shared identity representation and avoids social friction.     

Convergence of self-report scales and Rorschach indexes of psychological distress: the moderating role of self-disclosure

In this study, we addressed the weak associations found in research between self-report measures and the Rorschach test (Exner, 1978, 1991), from the perspective of Bornstein's (2002) "process dissociation framework." Specifically, in the study, we focused on the associations between self-report measures of psychological distress and their corresponding Rorschach indexes while inspecting the moderating role of self-disclosure. A total of 59, nonpatient Israeli adults participated in a 2-session study. In the first session, they completed self-report scales measuring self-disclosure and psychological distress (suicidality, depression, and loneliness). In the second session, the Rorschach test was administered and coded. The participants were divided into high and low self-disclosure groups. A convergence between self-report and Rorschach measures of psychological distress was found only among high self-disclosers. In the discussion, we address the theoretical and clinical implications of these findings.     

On-the-job embeddedness as a mediator between conscientiousness and school teachers' contextual performance

The recently introduced concept of job embeddedness has been shown to predict various organizational outcomes. In prediction models, its usual role is that of an antecedent explaining variance beyond commonly used attitudinal measures. Using social information processing theory as a framework, the present study examines on-the-job embeddedness (ONJE) as a potential mediator in predicting performance within an educational framework. Analysis of a multisource evaluation scheme applied to 115 school teachers supported the expectation that conscientiousness and ONJE are predictors of task and contextual performance. Moreover, ONJE was found to serve as a mediator by providing a partial explanation for the link between conscientiousness and contextual performance. Future research with other attitudinal and personality measures is suggested to broaden the role that ONJE plays in predicting performance.