Does role stress predict burnout over time among health care professionals?

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to test the effects over time of three role stress variables (role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload) on the three burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment). Based on theoretical models on burnout and on meta-analytical research, it is hypothesized that the three role stress variables will predict changes over time in emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, but not in personal accomplishment. The results obtained by means of hierarchical regression analysis partially support the hypothesis. The three role stress variables predict emotional exhaustion over time. Role conflict and role overload predict depersonalization over time. Finally, contrary to expectations, role ambiguity predicts personal accomplishment over time.     

An Athenaeum Curiosity: De Morgan's Reviews of Boole and Jevons

In this note we reproduce the book reviews that De Morgan wrote on Boole's and Jevons's first logical works. The most notable property of these documents is the mere fact of their existence and the absence of any reference to them in the specialized literature.     

Event-related brain potentials reflect traces of echoic memory in humans

In sequences of identical auditory stimuli, infrequent deviant stimuli elicit an event-related brain potential component called mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN is presumed to reflect the existence of a memory trace of the frequent stimulus at the moment of presentation of the infrequent stimulus. This hypothesis was tested by applying the recognition-masking paradigm of cognitive psychology. In this paradigm, a masking sound presented shortly before or after a test stimulus diminishes the recognition memory of this stimulus, the more so the shorter the interval between the test and masking stimuli. This interval was varied in the present study. It was found that the MMN amplitude strongly correlated with the subject’s ability to discriminate between frequent and infrequent stimuli. This result strongly suggests that MMN providesa measure for a trace of sensory memory, and further, that with MMN, this memory can be studied without performance-related distortions.     

Being human,more or less

Robert G. Woodhouse Memorial Philosophy Lecture, Rockland Community College of the State University of New York, Tuesday, 1 December 1992.     

The society for community research and action on a path toward conocimiento: From silences and statements to solidarities in action in U.S. community psychology

A first-person narrative essay is presented through a critically reflexive auto-ethnography of a community psychologist's experiences as a member of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) and (as of this writing) co-chair of the Cultural, Ethnic and Racial Affairs council. Through this methodological orientation, an analysis of some of the discourses that circulated within the SCRA listserv in relation to the murder of Mr. George Floyd, and amidst an ensuing pandemic are analyzed and discussed in relation to Anzaldúa's seven stages of conocimiento. The intentions that guide and ground this first-person account are to animate deeper reflection, accountability, and solidarity-in-action, as well as an organizational shift in the culture of the SCRA. Guided by a set of questions—What accounts for the organizational silences within the SCRA? How did the SCRA respond or engage with the murder of Mr. Floyd, anti-Blackness, Black Lives Matter, and related racial justice efforts?—the purpose is to turn a critical social analysis gaze to the SCRA in order to align its purpose, values, and mission with liberation and a decolonial feminist praxis. Anzaldúa's seven-stage framework of conocimiento is utilized to describe the possibilities for an organizational cultural shift in the SCRA that aligns with racial justice and liberatory decolonial feminist praxes.     

Quantum logics and Lindenbaum property

This paper will take into account the Lindenbaum property in Orthomodular Quantum Logic (OQL) and Partial Classical Logic (PCL). The Lindenbaum property has an interest both from a logical and a physical point of view since it has to do with the problem of the completeness of quantum theory and with the possibility of extending any semantically non-contradictory set of formulas to a semantically non-contradictory complete set of formulas. The main purpose of this paper is to show that both OQL and PCL cannot satisfy the Lindenbaum property.I would like to thank Dr. P. L. Minari and Dr. G. Corsi for many enlightening and encouraging conversations. I am especially grateful to Prof. M. L. Dalla Chiara who sparked my interest in Quantum Logic and Philosophy of Physics.     

Response selection on the Rorschach Test

After discussion of some theoretical speculations concerning the nature of the Rorschach process, two experimental manipulations of the Rorschach task are presented. Three groups of normal (n = 6) and schizophrenic subjects (7 paranoid and 7 nonparanoid) participated. Their mean age was 30.7 yr. In the first experimental version of the Rorschach, simplified inkblots (sections of the standard cards) were used to verify the influence of stimulus complexity on response for the three groups. In the second, an experimental version of the Rorschach task was created to highlight the influence of the selection process among different associations to blots. To this end, a list including responses both of positive and negative form quality to each card, was provided each subject. Data are discussed, highlighting the minimal differences obtained by the experimental manipulations and relating these to theoretical speculations.     

Word-specific repetition effects revealed by MEG and the implications for lexical access

This magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated the early stages of lexical access in reading, with the goal of establishing when initial contact with lexical information takes place. We identified two candidate evoked responses that could reflect this processing stage: the occipitotemporal N170/M170 and the frontocentral P2. Using a repetition priming paradigm in which long and variable lags were used to reduce the predictability of each repetition, we found that (i) repetition of words, but not pseudowords, evoked a differential bilateral frontal response in the 150–250 ms window, (ii) a differential repetition N400m effect was observed between words and pseudowords. We argue that this frontal response, an MEG correlate of the P2 identified in ERP studies, reflects early access to long-term memory representations, which we tentatively characterize as being modality-specific.     

The Protestant Ethic in Hungary

While in the 16–17th centuries about two thirds of Hungarians belonged to the Reformed Church, the presence of the ‘spirit of capitalism’ and the ‘Protestant ethic’ is rather questionable. The Calvinists did not play a different or decisive role in the capitalization process of Hungary at the end of the 19th century. This study is a summary of a much longer analysis of the ‘Hungarian Protestant ethic’ of the 17th century. The historical analysis focuses on the Puritan doctrines which can be found in conduct-books as well as the practical religiosity of Hungarian Puritans and Reformed people in that age. The ‘Hungarian Protestant ethic’ differs from Weber's ideal-type in two respects: the Hungarian version is more pietistic, less activist; and it seems to have less practical influence in everyday life because of weak religiosity. The Hungarian case does not refute Weber's thesis, but it does call attention to two important parts of historical analysis: the reinterpreting, selecting procedure in social context, and the intensity of religiosity.     

Fibromyalgia in men and women: comparison of the main clinical symptoms

The prevalence of fibromyalgia (FM) in males is much lower than in women. Thus, current knowledge about the syndrome has been developed from research with women. The aim of the present study is to analyze whether FM manifestations differ as a function of sex. Two clinical groups with FM (21 males and 21 women) and a control group of healthy men (n= 21) participated in the study. Several aspects of pain, sleep, fatigue, psychopathology, emotional distress and functional impact of FM were evaluated with an algometer and questionnaires. The clinical groups showed a significantly greater impairment than the control group in all the self-report measures. However, the FM patients only showed significant differences in the sensibility threshold to the pain, which was lower in the women. In addition, the best predictor of the experience of pain in males was sleep quality, and in the women, catastrofying pain. Our results suggest that the most effective therapeutic strategies to control pain may be different for men and women.