How do job characteristics contribute to burnout? Exploring the distinct mediating roles of perceived autonomy,competence, and relatedness

This study aimed to better understand the psychological mechanisms, referred to in the job demands–resources model as the energetic and motivational processes, that can explain relationships between job demands (role overload and ambiguity), job resources (job control and social support), and burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment). Drawing on self-determination theory, we examined whether psychological resources (perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness) act as specific mediators between particular job demands and burnout as well as between job resources and burnout. Participants were 356 school board employees. Results of the structural equation analyses provide support for our hypothesized model, which proposes that certain job demands and resources are involved in both the energetic and motivational processes—given their relationships with psychological resources—and that they distinctively predict burnout components. Implications for burnout research and management practices are discussed.     

The world turns at 33 and 45: Defining simple cutoff scores for the Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised in a representative sample

Workplace bullying is a serious hazard in every day working life that needs to be assessed carefully. In order to achieve such a goal, both victims of severe bullying as well as targets of less intensive bullying need to be identified, the latter in order to prevent further escalation into severe bullying. Previous research has mainly offered simple and crude measures of who is and who is not a victim of bullying. In this article we show how cutoff scores for the scale Negative Acts Questionnaire–Revised (NAQ-R) can be calculated. Based on a representative sample of the Norwegian workforce, we formulated 2 cutoff points or thresholds for the NAQ-R with a Receiver Operation Characteristic curve. Employees with a score lower than 33 are not bullied, employees with a score between 33 and 45 may be considered as being bullied occasionally, and employees who score above 45 can be considered to be victims of workplace bullying. As the NAQ-R is used in more than 300 research projects worldwide, we hope to inspire other scholars to define similar cutoff points. In addition, we hope that clear cutoff scores may be of assistance to practitioners for designing interventions regarding workplace bullying in line with the identified problems.     

Umgang mit gefährlichen Straftätern in England und Wales

Forensic psychiatric institutions exist in all western European countries. Their organisation depends on a number of factors including the legal framework and societal attitudes towards mentally disordered offenders. This article describes and critically comments on the forensic psychiatric system in England and Wales, its legal framework and approaches to dealing with dangerous offenders. England and Wales have a long forensic psychiatric tradition with the first high security hospital, Broadmoor hospital, having been established in 1863. Evidence-based treatment approaches in forensic hospitals as well as in prisons, training of forensic psychiatrists and research in the field of forensic psychiatry have gained international recognition. However, there are some worrying aspects in the system of forensic psychiatric care and the criminal justice system more generally, in particular the high and still increasing number of prisoners in comparison with other European countries, the low age of criminal responsibility, long sentences, increasing length of stay in forensic care and the increasingly risk averse culture. A number of differences to the German system can be found; one such difference relates to the role of criminal responsibility which is irrelevant for decisions regarding commitment in England and Wales. Only the mental state and need for treatment at the time of trial (or later assessment in prison) determine whether an offender is admitted to psychiatric care or receives a prison sentence. A number of new initiatives have been launched in recent years resulting in an increasing number of individuals being detained in forensic psychiatric and criminal justice institutions, in particular the initiative for the detention and treatment of individuals with so-called dangerous and severe personality disorders, the sexual offenders register and the new sentence of indeterminate imprisonment for public protection. These initiatives have been the subject of a number of complaints to the European Court of Human Rights. Nevertheless, the trend towards a more and more risk averse culture continues.     

The influence of parafoveal typographical errors on eye movements in reading

Three experiments are reported, examining the effects of a typographical error in parafoveal vision on aspects of foveal inspection time and saccade targeting. All the experiments involved reading for comprehension. A contingent presentation procedure ensured that typographical errors were restored to their correct form before they were viewed in foveal vision: They were never available for foveal processing. In Experiment 1, the error was formed by replacing the first letter of the target word with a second occurrence of its second letter, producing an illegal nonword. This manipulation had no significant effect on foveal inspection time, but lowered the probability that a short word (“de” or “du”) prior to the target would be skipped. In Experiment 2 the familiarity of the target's initial letters was maintained constant across conditions. This manipulation removed the target 1 skipping effect, suggesting that the outcome of Experiment 1 was due to orthographic rather than lexical illegality, but revealed shorter foveal inspection times as a function of the presence of the error. Experiment 3 manipulated lexical and sublexical properties of the parafoveal typing error. Properties of the parafoveal error again influenced prior foveal inspection times. The pattern of results suggested that the determining properties were sublexical rather than lexical. The results as a whole are incompatible with a view of information processing in reading in which foveal processing remains immune from concurrent parafoveal influences.     

Training propositional reasoning

Two experiments compared the effects of four training conditions on propositional reasoning. A syntactic training demonstrated formal derivations, in an abstract semantic training the standard truth-table definitions of logical connectives were explained, and a domain-specific semantic training provided thematic contexts for the premises of the reasoning task. In a control training, an inductive reasoning task was practised. In line with the account by mental models, both kinds of semantic training were significantly more effective than the control and the syntactic training, whereas there were no significant differences between the control and the syntactic training, nor between the two kinds of semantic training. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern of effects using a different set of syntactic and domain-specific training conditions.     

Psychoneuroendocrine effects of resource-activating stress management training.

OBJECTIVE: The stress-induced release of cortisol has been linked to detrimental health outcomes. Therefore, strategies to attenuate cortisol stress responses are of interest for prevention and treatment of stress-related symptoms and problems. Previous studies have found protective effects of cognitive-behavioral stress management training--which focuses on the modification of stress-inducing cognitions--on cortisol stress responses; however, the effects of resource-oriented interventions on cortisol stress responses are unknown. DESIGN: The longitudinal effects of resource-oriented stress management training (Zurich resource model training) on cortisol stress responses and cognitive appraisal of a standardized psychosocial stress test were evaluated in 54 healthy male participants assigned randomly to treatment and control groups. The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; C. Kirschbaum, Wust, & Strasburger, 1992) was administered to all participants 3 months after the treatment group underwent stress management training. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Saliva cortisol samples were taken before, during, and after the TSST, and cognitive stress appraisal was assessed before the test. RESULTS: The treatment group had significantly attenuated cortisol responses and stress appraisals in comparison to the control group. The endocrine differences were mediated by differences in cognitive appraisals. DISCUSSION: These results indicate that resource-oriented stress management training effectively reduces endocrine stress responses to stress in healthy adults.     

What studying genetically-based disorders can tell us about ourselves

Bridging cognition, brain and genes: evidence from genetically-based syndromes, Fifth Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, 5-7 April 1998, San Francisco, CA, USA.