Job design,opportunities for skill utilization,and intrinsic job satisfaction

Arguably, job designs that provide for high levels of employee control also provide increased opportunities for the development and exercise of skill. Perceived skill utilization has consistently been found to be amongst the strongest predictors of job-related affective well-being, yet is frequently neglected in studies of work redesign. In this article, a theoretical framework linking the key job characteristics of perceived control and perceived cognitive demand to perceived skill utilization and intrinsic job satisfaction is presented. Results from one cross-sectional study and one longitudinal study are reported that support the mediational influence of perceived skill utilization on the perceived job control?–?job satisfaction relationship only. The relationship between perceived job demand and perceived skill utilization was mixed but no mediating effect was evident. It is argued that the level of both perceived demand and perceived control dictates the nature of the joint influence of both job characteristics on perceived skill utilization and work attitudes such as job satisfaction.     

‘See it doesn’t look pretty does it?’ Young adults’ airbrushed drinking practices on Facebook

A range of negative health outcomes are associated with young adults’ drinking practices. One key arena where images of, and interaction about, drinking practices occurs is social networking sites, particularly Facebook. This study investigated the ways in which young adults’ talked about and understood their uses of Facebook within their drinking practices. Face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven New Zealand young adults as they displayed, navigated and talked about their Facebook pages and drinking behaviours. Our social constructionist thematic analysis identified three major themes, namely ‘friendship group belonging’, ‘balanced self-display’ and ‘absences in positive photos’. Drinking photos reinforced friendship group relationships but time and effort was required to limit drunken photo displays to maintain an overall attractive online identity. Positive photos prompted discussion of negative drinking events which were not explicitly represented. Together these understandings of drinking photos function to delimit socially appropriate online drinking displays, effectively ‘airbrushing’ these visual depictions of young adults’ drinking as always pleasurable and without negative consequences. We consider the implications of these findings for ways alcohol health initiatives may intervene to reframe ‘airbrushed’ drinking representations on Facebook and provoke a deeper awareness among young people of drinking practices and their online displays.     

Uniquely human self‐control begins at school age

Human beings have remarkable skills of self‐control, but the evolutionary origins of these skills are unknown. Here we compare children at 3 and 6 years of age with one of humans’ two nearest relatives, chimpanzees, on a battery of reactivity and self‐control tasks. Three‐year‐old children and chimpanzees were very similar in their abilities to resist an impulse for immediate gratification, repeat a previously successful action, attend to a distracting noise, and quit in the face of repeated failure. Six‐year‐old children were more skillful than either 3‐year‐olds or chimpanzees at controlling their impulses. These results suggest that humans’ most fundamental skills of self‐control – as part of the overall decision‐making process – are a part of their general great ape heritage, and that their species‐unique skills of self‐control begin at around the age at which many children begin formal schooling.     

Individual Ambidexterity: Exploring and Exploiting in Dynamic Contexts

The objective of this study is to analyze the mediating role of intrinsic and extrinsic job satisfaction in the relationship between the 2 dimensions of work–family conflict—family interfering with work (FIW) and work interfering with family (WIF)—and general job satisfaction. Step-by-step hierarchical regression analyses were carried out on a sample of 151 men and women from a Spanish public organization. The results confirmed the mediating role of intrinsic job satisfaction in the case of FIW. This highlights the importance of taking into account the level of satisfaction with the intrinsic facets of one's job as a measure for understanding why FIW has a negative impact on general job satisfaction.     

Psychotherapy and neuroscience: Towards closer integration

The original aim of psychology was to study and understand the spirit—from the Latin spiritus, literally “breath.” The limitations of scientific methods in the past favoured psychology's aloofness in terms of studying the “intangible,” while medicine developed methods of examining the body (Latin corpus: essential part). Until 20 years ago, knowledge of the localization of brain functions was limited to inferences from clinical observation of brain‐lesioned patients or parallel studies of primate brains. Current neuroscience, with its integrative approach, is bringing together research from molecular through cognitive levels, and psychotherapy has benefited from these findings. Functional neuroimaging studies may make specific and more far‐reaching contributions in this respect, since cerebral dynamics may be observed in vivo and in controlled situations. Methods such as single photon emission tomography, positron emission tomography, and functional magnetic resonance imaging have been able to evaluate the neural correlates involved in psychotherapy for individuals with obsessive‐compulsive disorder, major depression, social phobia, specific phobia, and post‐traumatic disorder. Researchers have found that psychotherapy has the potential to modify dysfunctional neural circuits associated with these disorders. However, precautions are required in constructing feasible designs for neurofunctional investigations. This article reviews the 21 studies that have been published on the subject, and sets out the main advantages and limitations of the technologies used most frequently in protocols involving psychotherapies, and prerequisites for experimental designs. We also pose ways in which the findings from neuroimaging may produce knowledge to guide psychotherapeutic interventions by specifying what should be stimulated in these individuals in order to normalize deficient neural activities.     

Cannabis use and the risk behavior syndrome in Italian university students: are they related to suicide risk?

The aim of this study was to examine the association of cannabis use with risky behaviors and suicide risk in university students. A convenience sample of 246 students was recruited from four universities in Rome during the 2004 academic year. Participants completed the Zung scales for anxiety and depression, the Suicide Score Scale, and an ad hoc questionnaire assessing risky behaviors. The findings indicated a widespread use of cannabis among students and its association with risky behaviors, anxiety and depression, and suicide risk. A regression tree analysis resulted in 3 splits indicating that the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale is a good predictor of suicide risk, discriminating individuals at lower risk from those at higher risk. Individuals at higher risk for suicide could also be discriminated by self-reported lifetime drug use. Limitations of the study are related to the small sample size and use of a convenience sample.     

Validation of a job expectancy questionnaire with secondary students

This study presents the validity and reliability analysis of a questionnaire that assesses the importance of some general job features, for the diagnosis of youths' expectations and priorities concerning a future job. The results show an 8-factor structure with a very good fit to the theoretical structure of the questionnaire, and reliability for the entire questionnaire and for the factor sub-scales is also quite satisfactory. The analysis of the sub-scale scores reveals that youths' most important factor is Self-actualization, whereas the Manual dimension is the least important one.     

Unbroken mirrors: challenging a theory of Autism

The 'broken mirror' theory of autism has received considerable attention far beyond the scientific community. This theory proposes that the varied social-cognitive difficulties characteristic of autism could be explained by dysfunction of the mirror neuron system, thought to play a role in imitation. We examine this theory and argue that explaining typical imitation behavior, and the failure to imitate in autism, requires much more than the mirror neuron system. Furthermore, evidence for the role of the mirror neuron system in autism is weak. We suggest the broken mirror theory of autism is premature and that better cognitive models of social behavior within and beyond the mirror neuron system are required to understand the causes of poor social interaction in autism.     

Phenomenological Metaphysics as a Speculative Realism

The debate between speculative realism and phenomenology has become quite heated over the past years. The matter of contention is the possibility of a metaphysics that can provide knowledge of reality as it is in itself. The speculative realists accuse phenomenology of denying this possibility, confining knowledge to the sphere of subjectivity. What has been overlooked in this debate is the similarity between the speculative project of Quentin Meillassoux and a Husserlian metaphysics. This article looks at these positions from a reconciliatory point of view. After outlining the debate, conceding the problematic nature of realism for phenomenology to the speculative realists, it will be shown that there is a place for a realist metaphysics within phenomenology. After showing the similarities between Meillassoux’s philosophy and a phenomenological metaphysics, and the legitimacy of qualifying the latter as a speculative realism, the conclusion will reflect on the modal notions at play in them.     

Normative data for idiomatic expressions

Idiomatic expressions such as kick the bucket or go down a storm can differ on a number of internal features, such as familiarity, meaning, literality, and decomposability, and these types of features have been the focus of a number of normative studies. In this article, we provide normative data for a set of Bulgarian idioms and their English translations, and by doing so replicate in a Slavic language the relationships between the ratings previously found in Romance and Germanic languages. Additionally, we compared whether collecting these types of ratings in between-subjects or within-subjects designs affects the data and the conclusions drawn, and found no evidence that design type affects the final outcome. Finally, we present the results of a meta-analysis that summarizes the relationships found across the literature. As in many previous individual studies, we found that familiarity correlates with a number of other features; however, such studies have shown conflicting results concerning literality and decomposability ratings. The meta-analysis revealed reliable relationships of decomposability with a number of other measures, such as familiarity, meaning, and predictability. Conversely, literality was shown to have little to no relationship with any of the other subjective ratings. The implications for these relationships in the context of the wider experimental literature are discussed, with a particular focus on the importance of attaining familiarity ratings for each sample of participants in experimental work.