The Effects of Moral Emotional Traits on Workplace Bullying Perpetration

This study investigates the role of “moral” emotional traits—guilt proneness, shame proneness, empathic concern, and perspective taking—as predictors of workplace bullying perpetration. We also test and find support for a model derived from moral emotions literature and the sociometer theory of self-esteem in which the tendency to take reparative action following interpersonal transgressions mediates the buffering effect of guilt proneness on bullying. Data were obtained from working MBA students and advanced undergraduates during 2 survey sessions, 4 to 6 weeks apart. Findings indicate that moral emotional traits may be useful to consider in personnel selection as a means to reduce workplace bullying.     

“I believe…”: A qualitative study of older adults

Beliefs. Believing. Both are tested by different life experiences. This qualitative study of 15 older adults used a grounded theology methodology to develop a model of what influences the views of a range of Christian and agnostic subjects. The study identified two sources in life learning and spiritual learning that influence agnostic, more liberal, or conservative beliefs. This emergent model is contrasted with the approach of leading theologian Graham Ward.     

Effects of auditory context cues and training on performance of a point estimation sonification task

Research on auditory graph interpretation has investigated mappings, scalings, and polarities, as well as the addition of some contextual design features like clicks. However, little has been done to quantify the benefits of those or other design features, or to investigate training in specific sonification tasks such as point estimation. In Study 1, 160 undergraduates listened to auditory graphs and estimated exact dollar values at specific points in the graph. X‐axis context (clicks) improved performance by aiding time calibration. Y‐axis context (reference tones) that provided scaling cues improved performance. In Study 2, listeners performed similar tasks with continuous as opposed to discrete stimuli, and with or without training. X‐axis clicks did not help in this case. Training improved performance overall. When there was no training, y‐axis context improved performance to the level of trained listeners, suggesting the effects of training and y‐axis were comparable, but not additive. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A switch in task affects priming of pop-out: evidence for the role of episodes

Maljkovic and Nakayama (Memory & Cognition, 22(6), 655-678, 1994) demonstrated that response times decrease in a pop-out search task when target-defining features repeat from one trial to the next. This priming of pop-out (PoP) effect has been explained by some researchers as reflecting low-level modulations in attentional control settings Lee, Mozer, and Vecera (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 71(5), 1059-1071, 2009). The present experiments tested whether a shift in higher order task requirements from trial n - 1 to trial n alters PoP effects. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that a switch in task significantly modulated PoP effects when shape was the relevant pop-out dimension. Experiment 3 failed to show significant modulation of PoP as a function of task switch when the pop-out dimension was color, but the findings of Experiment 4 did show modulation of PoP for color when the relative salience of target and distractors was high. Together, the results strongly support the view that PoP effects can be sensitive to a switch in task, a result consistent with the view that PoP effects are modulated by trial-to-trial episodic integration processes.     

Mystical Experience Among Tibetan Buddhists: The Common Core Thesis Revisited

In the study of mysticism the debate has centered on whether a universal experiential core exists regardless of religious interpretation. The current investigation combines Jamesian empiricist and social constructivist perspectives to argue that stable experiential facets load variously on factors to construct local interpretations. Local interpretations reflect a family resemblance—a mystical common core experienced across cultures. Results of confirmatory factor analyses, based on data from 240 Tibetan Buddhist adults, suggest statistical model fit and superiority for the three‐factor model compared to the unidimensional model. Pure experience can be distinguished explicitly from its context‐specific hermeneutical construal.     

Zombie states: reconsidering the relationship between life and death instincts

Where the dialectical relation of life and death instincts has become dissociated, zombie states result-in which individuals inhabit deadness as if it were a full experience of aliveness. Bypassing reservations about the speculative nature of these instincts, this paper reconsiders their relation in order to highlight certain types of clinical phenomenology that could otherwise be lost to current ways of conceptualizing aliveness and deadness. A clinical vignette illustrates particular countertransference difficulties associated with dichotomizing issues of psychic aliveness and deadness, as well as the powerful contagion associated with what the author terms zombie states.     

Parent-offspring conflict theory: an evolutionary framework for understanding conflict within human families

Decades of research demonstrate that conflict shapes and permeates a broad range of family processes. In the current article, we argue that greater insight, integration of knowledge, and empirical achievement in the study of family conflict can be realized by utilizing a powerful theory from evolutionary biology that is barely known within psychology: parent-offspring conflict theory (POCT). In the current article, we articulate POCT for psychological scientists, extend its scope by connecting it to the broader framework of life history theory, and draw out its implications for understanding conflict within human families. We specifically apply POCT to 2 instances of early mother-offspring interaction (prenatal conflict and weaning conflict); discuss the effects of genetic relatedness on behavioral conflict between parents, children, and their siblings; review the emerging literature on parent-offspring conflict over the choice of mates and spouses; and examine parent-offspring conflict from the perspective of imprinted genes. This review demonstrates the utility of POCT, not only for explaining what is known about conflict within families but also for generating novel hypotheses, suggesting new lines of research, and moving us toward the "big picture" by integrating across biological and psychological domains of knowledge.     

An Ecological Process Model of Systems Change

In June 2007 the American Journal of Community Psychology published a special issue focused on theories, methods and interventions for systems change which included calls from the editors and authors for theoretical advancement in this field. We propose a conceptual model of systems change that integrates familiar and fundamental community psychology principles (succession, interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation) and accentuates a process orientation. To situate our framework we offer a definition of systems change and a brief review of the ecological perspective and principles. The Ecological Process Model of Systems Change is depicted, described and applied to a case example of policy driven systems level change in publicly funded social programs. We conclude by identifying salient implications for thinking and action which flow from the Model.