The influence of type A behaviour and locus of control upon job satisfaction and occupational health

Results from this study show that in a sample of 332 German managers a Type A personality and an External locus of control are associated with greater perceived levels of stress (particularly in terms of inter-personal relationships), lower job satisfaction and a poorer physical and mental health than that of managers with a type B personality and an Internal locus of control. The magnitude of main effect size is substantially larger than the interaction terms (Type A×Locus of Control). There is no evidence to support a significant effect of a Type A×Locus of Control interaction on either of the health outcome measures (physical and psychological health), but there is some evidence of an interaction with work satisfaction outcomes (job satisfaction and organizational satisfaction). Those with an External locus showed significantly lower levels of work satisfaction, especially when this characteristic was combined with a Type A personality. It appears that negative health consequences may outweigh the superficial attractiveness of the type A personality in a managerial position, particularly when this trait is coupled with a more external locus of control.     

Assessing Perceptions of Sexual Harassment Behaviors in a Manufacturing Environment

This pilot study, conducted in a manufacturing plant, investigated employee perceptions of the behaviors of supervisors and co-workers that constitute quid pro quo and hostile work environment sexual harassment. Responses indicated that the majority of employees can accurately identify behaviors that are frequently associated with quid pro quo harassment, but cannot identify behaviors that are used to establish evidence of a hostile work environment. Comparisons of employees' scores demonstrated that male workers, relative to female workers, were more frequently accurate in identifying behaviors of both supervisors and co-workers that constitute sexual harassment. Perceptions of harassment varied according to job classification. Women in white-collar jobs were significantly more knowledgeable about what behaviors constitute sexual harassment than women in blue-collar jobs.     

Justification as Declaration and Deification

Theological accounts of the way God justifies sinners often struggle to combine forensic or declarative ideas about justification with transformationist ones. Luther seems to have especially steep problems here, not because he fails to think of justification as transformation – indeed deification – but because his forensic claims seem to take back what he says about transformation. Yet in the end Luther shows how forensic and transformationist ideas of even the boldest sort can cohere. At one level the concept of justifying faith as union with Christ extra nos combines the two, but their deeper unity is trinitarian: it lies in the Father's eternal verdict on the work of his incarnate Son, whose death and resurrection win for us the coming of the Spirit.     

On learned helplessness

“Learned helplessness” and its Pavlovian analog, learned irrelevance, are phenomena thought integral to understanding depression, PTSD, psychosomatic vulnerability, and a variety of diseases and immune disorders. The origin and development of research on learned helplessness is briefly overviewed with attention to the reasons for the controversy that surrounds the study of learned helplessness and derived physiological, psychological, and behavioral phenomena. The need to remedy past focus on American research and English language journals in this area is noted. The heuristic value as well as the wide ranging empirical value of the research domain is lauded. The meretricious emerging social and legal barriers to this research are noted to be unrealistic and unfortunate.     

Development of gaze aversion as disengagement from visual information

Older children, but not younger children, were found to look away more from the face of an interlocutor when answering difficult as opposed to easy questions. Similar results were found in earlier work with adults, who often avert their gaze during cognitively difficult tasks (A. M. Glenberg, J. L. Schroeder, & D. A. Robertson, 1998). Twenty-five 8-year-olds and 26 5-year-olds answered verbal reasoning and arithmetic questions of varying difficulty. The older children increased gaze aversion from the face of the adult questioner in response to both difficult verbal reasoning questions and difficult arithmetic questions. In contrast, younger children (5-year-olds) responded less consistently to cognitive difficulty. It is concluded that adultlike patterns of gaze aversion in response to cognitive difficulty are certainly acquired by 8 years of age. The implications of appropriate gaze aversion for children's management of cognitive processing resources are considered.     

Interpersonal workplace stressors and well-being: a multi-wave study of employees with and without arthritis

The within-person influence of interpersonal stressors on affective well-being and physical well-being was investigated for 109 women with and without arthritis. Participants were interviewed on a weekly basis for 12 consecutive weeks, and the prospective data were analyzed by using hierarchical linear modeling. Overall, interpersonal workplace stressors independently predicted both well-being outcomes. Interpersonal stressors outside the workplace were related to negative affect but not to arthritis symptoms. Compared with healthy controls, arthritis patients' ratings of negative affect were equally reactive to workplace stressors. Neuroticism did not moderate stressor reactivity for either dependent variable but did predict mean levels of negative affect. The data support the hypothesis that the psychosocial environment of the workplace contributes unique effects on well-being.