Weekly work engagement and flourishing: The role of hindrance and challenge job demands

Two studies were conducted to examine how home healthcare nurses stay engaged in their work and maintain their psychological well-being. In Study 1, we hypothesized that nurses would perceive work pressure more as a hindrance demand than as a challenge demand, and that the reverse would be true for emotional demands. We approached 120 home healthcare nurses who filled in a survey. Results of a series of paired sample t-tests supported our hypotheses. In Study 2, we used the JD-R model to hypothesize that weekly job demands can either facilitate or undermine the positive impact of personal resources on work engagement and flourishing, depending on the nature of the job demand (hindrance vs. challenge). A sample of 63 nurses filled in a questionnaire at the end of the working week during three consecutive weeks (N = 3 × 63 = 189 occasions). Results of hierarchical linear modeling showed that emotional job demands strengthened the effect of personal resources on weekly well-being, whereas work pressure undermined this effect. Taken together, the present findings challenge the idea that whether job demands act as hindrances or challenges is the same for all occupations and for all individuals.     

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WOMEN AND CONSERVATISM

Although one goal of the psychology of women has been to enhance the status of women through social change, this goal has seldom been realized. Theory and research in the psychology of women have focused on gender differences and the personality of women rather than the society that oppresses women. As a result, this research has tended to blame women for their position in society and helped maintain the status quo, which can inhibit the struggle for equality by the women's movement. This process is demonstrated with reference to research on women and achievement. The causes and consequences of the focus on gender differences are discussed and recommendations made for a psychology of women in the service of women.     

A Response to the Contributors

Abstract

In my “response to the contributors” I emphasize that I was moved to write my book in response to the question “Why are so many well-trained colleagues, young and old, having so much difficulty developing satisfying analytic practices?” To answer that question I proposed to explore my experience successfully developing and maintaining an analytic practice.

In attempting to answer the question I inadvertently stumbled upon a revolutionary (with a “small r”) answer to the problem. I discovered, in my attitudes and in my way of working in a consultation and the early phase of an analytic collaboration, a new “concrete puzzle solution” to the problem of how to help a prospective, often reluctant collaborator give analysis a “try.”

My book emphasizes my view that courses on “analyzability” and differential diagnosis are based on psychiatric rather than psychoanalytic diagnostic schema and may interfere with candidates' ability to learn how to create analytic patients.

Since I was a candidate, courses on analyzability have always seemed to me to resemble an exclusive club, deciding whom to exclude and whom to admit, rather than a procedure based on sound clinical experience. Analytic experience has demonstrated that it is not possible in a consultation to predict accurately the outcome of an analysis. To make matters worse, it is probable that an analyst whose mind is focused on the task of evaluating a prospective analysand contributes to creating an environment in which certain patients are experienced as sicker than they might otherwise be.

In spite of the fact that it is not possible in a consultation to predict accurately the outcome of an analysis, many experienced “senior” analysts believe an analyst can and should be evaluative and selective. In their discussions of the subject, they focus primarily on characteristics of the patient rather than the match.

In my book I emphasize that in a consultation there are advantages in focusing on the patient's responses to the idea of engaging in a trial of analysis. The issue of the match and the particular time in their lives are significant from my perspective. The analyst's gender, age, personality, and related state of mind may be as important in effecting the outcome of a trial as any feature of the patient's mind.

My book shifts the emphasis of the focus of inquiry in a consultation from the patient to the analytic couple. It offers a different way of teaching candidates to work with prospective collaborators.     

Job resources and flow at work: Modelling the relationship via latent growth curve and mixture model methodology

The aim of the present three‐wave follow‐up study (n = 335) among employees of an employment agency was to investigate the association between job resources and work‐related flow utilizing both variable‐ and person‐oriented approaches. In addition, emotional exhaustion was studied as a moderator of the job resources–flow relationship, and as a predictor of the development of job resources and flow. The variable‐oriented approach, based on latent growth curve analyses, revealed that the levels of job resources and flow at work, as well as changes in these variables, were positively associated with each other. The person‐oriented inspection with the growth mixture modelling identified four trajectories based on the mean levels of job resources and flow and on the changes of these mean levels over time: (a) moderate work‐related resources (n = 166), (b) declining work‐related resources (n = 87), (c) high work‐related resources (n = 46), and (d) low work‐related resources (n = 36). Exhaustion was found to be an important predictor of job resources and flow, but it did not moderate their mutual association. Specifically, a low level of exhaustion was found to predict high levels of job resources and flow. Overall, these results suggest the importance of a person‐oriented view of motivational processes at work. In addition, in order to fully understand positive motivational processes it seems important to investigate the role of negative well‐being states as well.     

Audience design affects acoustic reduction via production facilitation

In this article, we examine the hypothesis that acoustic variation (e.g., reduced vs. prominent forms) results from audience design. Bard et al. (Journal of Memory and Language 42:1-22, 2000) have argued that acoustic prominence is unaffected by the speaker's estimate of addressee knowledge, using paradigms that contrast speaker and addressee knowledge. This question was tested in a novel paradigm, focusing on the effects of addressees' feedback about their understanding of the speaker's intended message. Speakers gave instructions to addressees about where to place objects (e.g., the teapot goes on red). The addressee either anticipated the object, by picking it up before the instruction, or waited for the instruction. For anticipating addressees, speakers began speaking more quickly and pronounced the word the with shorter duration, demonstrating effects of audience design. However, no effects appeared on the head noun (e.g., teapot), as measured by duration, amplitude, and perceived intelligibility. These results are consistent with a mechanism in which evidence about addressee understanding facilitates production processes, as opposed to triggering particular acoustic forms.     

Social dominance orientation: revisiting the structure and function of a variable predicting social and political attitudes

Social dominance orientation (SDO) is one of the most powerful predictors of intergroup attitudes and behavior. Although SDO works well as a unitary construct, some analyses suggest it might consist of two complementary dimensions--SDO-Dominance (SDO-D), or the preference for some groups to dominate others, and SDO-Egalitarianism (SDO-E), a preference for nonegalitarian intergroup relations. Using seven samples from the United States and Israel, the authors confirm factor-analytic evidence and show predictive validity for both dimensions. In the United States, SDO-D was theorized and found to be more related to old-fashioned racism, zero-sum competition, and aggressive intergroup phenomena than SDO-E; SDO-E better predicted more subtle legitimizing ideologies, conservatism, and opposition to redistributive social policies. In a contentious hierarchical intergroup context (the Israeli-Palestinian context), SDO-D better predicted both conservatism and aggressive intergroup attitudes. Fundamentally, these analyses begin to establish the existence of complementary psychological orientations underlying the preference for group-based dominance and inequality.     

Neural substrates of individual differences in human fear learning: Evidence from concurrent fMRI, fear-potentiated startle, and US-expectancy data

To provide insight into individual differences in fear learning, we examined the emotional and cognitive expressions of discriminative fear conditioning in direct relation to its neural substrates. Contrary to previous behavioral-neural (fMRI) research on fear learning--in which the emotional expression of fear was generally indexed by skin conductance--we used fear-potentiated startle, a more reliable and specific index of fear. While we obtained concurrent fear-potentiated startle, neuroimaging (fMRI), and US-expectancy data, healthy participants underwent a fear-conditioning paradigm in which one of two conditioned stimuli (CS(+) but not CS(-)) was paired with a shock (unconditioned stimulus [US]). Fear learning was evident from the differential expressions of fear (CS(+) > CS(-)) at both the behavioral level (startle potentiation and US expectancy) and the neural level (in amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus, and insula). We examined individual differences in discriminative fear conditioning by classifying participants (as conditionable vs. unconditionable) according to whether they showed successful differential startle potentiation. This revealed that the individual differences in the emotional expression of discriminative fear learning (startle potentiation) were reflected in differential amygdala activation, regardless of the cognitive expression of fear learning (CS-US contingency or hippocampal activation). Our study provides the first evidence for the potential of examining startle potentiation in concurrent fMRI research on fear learning.     

Left-view sequences of faces are superior to right-view ones for view generalization

Faces learned from multiple viewpoints are recognized better with left than right three-quarter views. This left-view superiority could be explained by perceptual experience, facial asymmetry, or hemispheric specialization. In the present study, we investigated whether left-view sequences are also more effective in recognizing same and novel views of a face. In a sequential matching task, a view sequence showing a face rotating around a left (?30°) or a right (+30°) angle, with an amplitude of 30°, was followed by a static test view with the same viewpoint as the sequence (?30° or +30°) or with a novel one (0°, +30°, or ?30°). We found a superiority of left-view sequences independently of the test viewpoint, but no superiority of left over right test views. These results do not seem compatible with the perceptual experience hypothesis, which predicts superiority only for left-side test views (?30°). Also, a facial asymmetry judgement task showed no correlation between the asymmetry of individual faces and the left-view sequence superiority. A superiority of left-view sequences for novel as well as same test views argues in favour of an explanation by hemispheric specialization, because of the possible role of the right hemisphere in extracting facial identity information.