Social Job Stressors can Foster Employee Well-Being: Introducing the Concept of Social Challenge Stressors

Existing social stressor concepts disregard the variety of task-related situations at work that require skillful social behavior to maintain good social relationships while achieving certain task goals. In this article, we challenge the view that social stressors at work are solely dysfunctional aspects evoking employee ill health. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance stressor framework, we introduce the concept of social challenge stressors as a job characteristic and examine their relationships with individual well-and ill-being. In study 1, we developed a new scale for the measurement of social challenge stressors and tested the validity of the scale. Results from two independent samples indicated support for a single-factor structure and showed that social challenge stressors are distinct from related stressor concepts. Using two samples, one of which was already used to test the factor structure, we analyzed the unique contribution of social challenge stressors in predicting employee well- and ill-being. As expected, social challenge stressors were simultaneously related to psychological strain and well-being. Using time-lagged data, study 2 investigated mechanisms that may explain how social challenge stressors are linked to well-being and strain. In line with the stress-as-offense-to-self approach, we expected indirect relationships via self-esteem. Additionally, social support was expected to moderate the relationships between social stressors and self-esteem. Whereas the indirect relationships were mostly confirmed, we found no support for the buffering role of social support in the social hindrance stressors-self-esteem link. Although we found a moderation effect for social challenge stressors, results indicated a compensation model that conflicted with expectations.

     

Breaking Down the Bilingual Cost in Speech Production

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. This study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large‐scale picture‐naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance cost. In particular, we focused on the contributions of lexical frequency and phonological similarity across translations. The naming performance of Spanish‐Catalan bilinguals speaking in their dominant and non‐dominant language was compared to that of Spanish monolinguals. Single trial naming latencies were analyzed by means of linear mixed models accounting for individual effects at the participant and item level. While decreasing lexical frequency was shown to increase naming latencies in all groups, this variable by itself did not account for the bilingual cost. In turn, our results showed that the bilingual cost disappeared when naming words with high phonological similarity across translations. In short, our results show that frequency of use can play a role in the emergence of the bilingual cost, but that phonological similarity across translations should be regarded as one of the most important variables that determine the bilingual cost in speech production. Low phonological similarity across translations yields worse performance in bilinguals and promotes the bilingual cost in naming performance. The implications of our results for the effect of phonological similarity across translations within the bilingual speech production system are discussed.     

Development and Validation of a Brief Version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale: The DERS-16

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is a widely-used, theoretically-driven, and psychometrically-sound self-report measure of emotion regulation difficulties. However, at 36-items, the DERS may be challenging to administer in some situations or settings (e.g., in the course of patient care or large-scale epidemiological studies). Consequently, there is a need for a briefer version of the DERS. The goal of the present studies was to develop and evaluate a 16-item version of the DERS – the DERS-16. The reliability and validity of the DERS-16 were examined in a clinical sample (N = 96) and two large community samples (Ns = 102 and 482). The validity of the DERS-16 was evaluated comparing the relative strength of the association of the two versions of the DERS with measures of emotion regulation and related constructs, psychopathology, and clinically-relevant behaviors theorized to stem from emotion regulation deficits. Results demonstrate that the DERS-16 has retained excellent internal consistency, good test-retest reliability, and good convergent and discriminant validity. Further, the DERS-16 showed minimal differences in its convergent and discriminant validity with relevant measures when compared to the original DERS. In conclusion, the DERS-16 offers a valid and brief method for the assessment of overall emotion regulation difficulties.     

Job Characteristics and Life Satisfaction in the EU: a Domains-of-Life Approach

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Working life has come to permeate every domain of life. Characteristics once thought to affect only the job domain have become important determinants of how...     

Expert Testimony on Child Sexual Abuse:a Qualitative Study of the Swedish Approach toStatement Analysis

Statement analysis is an evaluation method occasionally used forassessing children's testimony in cases of alleged sexual abuse. InSweden, statement analytical evaluations can be presented as expertevidence in legal proceedings. The purpose of the present study was toexplore the Swedish application of statement analysis, developed by Dr.Arne Trankell. Ten written expert witness reports were subjected to acombination of qualitative and quantitative content analysis. Inaddition to exploring what information was considered in theevaluations, the study focused on the way experts integrated data, andhow they interpreted the results of their evaluations. Statementanalysis in Sweden is characterised by a case-related approach, ascompared to the way of using pre-defined criteria within the frameworkof Statement Validity Analysis. Experts used statement characteristicsin different ways and emphasised different aspects of cases in order toreach their conclusions. Most experts used alternative hypotheses inorder to evaluate their data. Although the use of hypothesis-testing hasstrong support in the literature, there appeared to be risks for logicalmistakes connected to the conveyance of tentative hypotheses intoconclusions. The results are discussed in relation to other applicationsof statement analysis.     

Exposure to negative emotional cues and alcohol cue reactivity with alcoholics: a preliminary investigation

Fifty-one male and female inpatient alcoholics received cue exposure treatment involving in vivo exposure to alcohol cues and imaginal exposure to individualized high-risk drinking situations involving negative emotional cues. At post-test, self-report measures of urge to drink alcohol and negative emotional states were obtained during an alcohol cue reactivity assessment. Contrary to our hypothesis, greater exposure to negative emotional cues during treatment was associated with greater urge and negative emotional responses at post-test. In addition, greater duration of exposure to negative emotional cues predicted greater attention to alcohol-related stimuli and thoughts about drinking during the post-test. Implications for future research in this area include extending the duration of exposure to negative emotional cues in order to establish the optimal exposure durations within which a majority of individuals achieve clinically significant reductions in their urge to drink alcohol.     

The psychology of hate: Moral concerns differentiate hate from dislike

We investigated whether any differences in the psychological conceptualization of hate and dislike were simply a matter of degree of negativity (i.e., hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or also morality (i.e., hate is imbued with distinct moral components that distinguish it from dislike). In three lab studies in Canada and the United States, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures revealed that hated attitude objects were more negative than disliked attitude objects and associated with moral beliefs and emotions, even after adjusting for differences in negativity. In Study 4, we analysed the rhetoric on real hate sites and complaint forums and found that the language used on prominent hate websites contained more words related to morality, but not negativity, relative to complaint forums.     

The go/no-go priming task: automatic evaluation and categorisation beyond response interference

The response-window version of a go/no-go (GNG) response priming task is introduced using both evaluative (Experiment 1) and animacy decision (Experiment 2). In each trial a cue indicates which target category should lead to a key-press. The target is preceded by either a congruent or incongruent prime. The standard priming task was added as well. Both tasks yielded robust priming effects. However, they differed regarding a signature of response activation paradigms, that is, the Gratton effect (i.e. smaller priming effects following incongruent trials compared to congruent trials), which is present in the standard task but absent in the GNG task. This indicates that effects found with the GNG task are caused by different processes compared to the standard task. Experiment 3 tested an alternative account to explain priming effects in the GNG task. By manipulating response biases, Experiment 3 provides evidence for this account.     

Revealing Ireland's “Proper” Heart: Apology,Shame, Nation

This article contributes to feminist expositions of emotion and “matters of the heart” by highlighting the gendered nature of the mobilization of shame. It focuses on the role shame plays in state apology and the desire to recover pride. Specifically, it analyzes the state apology offered to the survivors of Magdalen Laundries by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland. By drawing out how the state apology recreates the Irish nation, it traces the deployment of a potentially productive variety of the politics of shame, which comes to be subverted in the service of keeping the virtuous, feeling “heart” of Ireland—the nation's very core—intact across a temporal, moral continuum.