Relationships among burnout, job involvement, and organizational citizenship behavior

R. Cropanzano, D. E. Rupp, and Z. S. Byrne (2003) found that emotional exhaustion (i.e., 1 dimension of burnout) negatively affects organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The authors extended this research by investigating relationships among 3 dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished personal accomplishment) and OCB. They also affirmed the mediating effect of job involvement on these relationships. Data were collected from 296 paired samples of service employees and their supervisors from 12 hotels and restaurants in Taiwan. Findings demonstrated that emotional exhaustion and diminished personal accomplishment were related negatively to OCB, whereas depersonalization had no independent effect on OCB. Job involvement mediated the relationships among emotional exhaustion, diminished personal accomplishment, and OCB.     

How informed is online informed consent?

We examined participants' reading and recall of informed consent documents presented via paper or computer. Within each presentation medium, we presented the document as a continuous or paginated document to simulate common computer and paper presentation formats. Participants took slightly longer to read paginated and computer informed consent documents and recalled slightly more information from the paginated documents. We concluded that obtaining informed consent online is not substantially different than obtaining it via paper presentation. We also provide suggestions for improving informed consent--in both face-to-face and online experiments.     

Adolescent computer use and academic achievement

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between adolescent computer use and academic achievement. Questionnaires and seven-day time logs were used to gather data from 101 tenth-grade students in southwestern Ohio. The adolescents both estimated and documented their computer use. The correlation between computer use and grade point average was not found to be significant. However, gender differences were found across grade point average and time spent doing homework on and off the computer. Estimates of time spent per week using the computer were correlated with the time recorded in logs.     

Predictive validity of a multidisciplinary model of reemployment success

The authors propose a multidisciplinary model of the predictors of reemployment and test its predictive validity for explaining reemployment success. Predictor variables from the fields of economics, sociology, and psychology are incorporated into the model. Reemployment success is conceptualized as a construct consisting of unemployment insurance exhaustion and reemployment speed, and for reemployed persons, job improvement, job-organization fit, and intention to leave the new job. Direct, mediated, and moderated relationships were hypothesized and tested, clarifying the role of the variables in the reemployment process and outcome. The authors' proposal and examination of a multidisciplinary model of reemployment success contributes to a literature that has not tended to adequately cross disciplinary boundaries.     

Holistic Versus Analytic Thinking Explains Collective Culpability Attribution

Classical attribution theories of behavioral responsibility attribution emphasize that individuals should not be blamed for their mere association with a wrongdoer. Nonetheless, perceivers sometimes blame the wrongdoer's associates for the wrongdoer's misdeed even when those associates are not causally connected to the wrongdoing. In an experiment conducted in Singapore, we found that collective culpability attributions result from holistic thinking—the tendency to attribute causal connectedness between discrete entities or events. Activating holistic thinking enhanced perceptions of causal impacts of distal events and facilitated collective culpability attributions. We discuss these results in terms of their implications for understanding the nature of collective culpability and research on holistic thinking.     

The effects of supervisory interruptions on therapists and clients

Abstract

The general acceptance of live supervision has not been without criticism, specifically that it is a disruptive intrusion into the therapeutic process. The present study attempted to determine what effect supervisory interruptions had on the participants in a therapy session. Using a within-subjects design, excerpts from a session were analyzed to determine differences between a no-interruption condition and conditions of supervisor-initiated, therapist-initiated, and telephone interruptions. While each of the participants were affected to varying degrees by the interruptions, there were no consistent effects. It was concluded that the act of interrupting a therapeutic session, in and of itself, is not sufficiently disruptive to negate it use. Implications for supervision and practice are discussed and recommendations are given for managing interruptions during supervision and daily clinical practice.     

Effects of Second Language Usage on Genetic Counseling Training and Supervision

We conducted an exploratory study of the experiences of genetic counselors who have either trained or supervised in a second language to assess the relevance of this issue to genetic counseling training and supervision. Two hundred-thirty NSGC members, CAGC members and genetic counseling students completed the online questionnaire. Many of the respondents reported that training and supervision differed when another language was involved. Supervisors reported difficulty in assessing students’ counseling skills and discomfort with an incomplete understanding of session content. Students described a greater focus on vocabulary at the expense of psychosocial dimensions. Despite this, most felt that using another language enhanced their training experience. As such, training programs might consider increasing support to these learners and supervisors by explicitly acknowledging the challenges they face, providing students with language tools to aid in their acquisition of basic skills and providing supervisors with new methods for assessing student counseling skills when using other languages.     

Kelly and the concept of developmental stages

Abstract

Although personal construct theory (PCT; Kelly, 1955) shares with developmental-stage theories an emphasis on process and qualitative change, the concept of developmental stages is incompatible with PCT in several ways. Building on biological analogies of maturation and evolution, developmental-stage theories posit an inevitability of content or structure in the occurrence of stages and a directionality of the developmental process toward extraspective (as opposed to introspective) definitions of psychological maturity. PCT, in contrast, lacks these features of inevitability and directionality. Kelly intended an introspective view of development based on personal choice, conceived in psychological rather than biological terms. Implications of the Choice, Fragmentation, Commonality, Dichotomy, Modulation, and Experience Corollaries for the concept of stages are discussed. Kelly's PCT is compared with the theories of Piaget, Kegan, and Erikson to illustrate these points.     

Hesitation in communication: Does minority status delay responses?

Past studies indicated that people in a minority (vs. majority) position are slower to express their public/political opinion, and the larger the difference between the size of the two positions, the slower the response. Bassili termed this the minority‐slowness effect (MSE). In the current study, two experiments were conducted to demonstrate that MSE extends to people's understanding of utterances and explored the cognitive basis for this. Participants were asked to judge if an utterance is a ‘direct’ or an ‘indirect’ expression. The results show that participants in the minority (vs. majority) took longer to respond, and the larger the difference between the size of majority and minority, the longer the response latency (Study 1a). Furthermore, participants were aware of their own minority position (Study 1b). In Study 2, when participants were deprived of cognitive resources, MSE disappeared, presumably because participants lack the cognitive resources required to conform to utterance interpretation as favoured by the majority.