Psychological skills and mindfulness training effects on the psychological wellbeing of undergraduate music students: An exploratory study

This study explored the efficacy of psychological skills and mindfulness training intervention on the psychological wellbeing of undergraduate music students. Participants were undergraduate music students (n = 36) from the Department of Music at a South African university, 21 of whom were elected to take the psychological skills and mindfulness training intervention. Data on their self-reported psychological wellbeing, psychological skills, mindfulness and performance anxiety levels were collected pre-and post-intervention. The analysis applied non-parametric procedures to determine changes in students’ psychological wellbeing after the seven-week intervention programme. Findings suggest improvements in psychological wellbeing, psychological skills, mindfulness and performance anxiety with training. Psychological skills and mindfulness training may have benefits to the psychological wellbeing of music students.     

Proactive yet reflective? Materializing proactive personality into creativity through job reflective learning and activated positive affective states

Studies linking proactive personality to creativity have primarily taken a future-oriented perspective, describing a process where individuals assess future opportunities and risks of creative endeavors. Complementing this approach, we draw on an attribution theory perspective to delineate how proactive personality relates to employee creativity through the serial mediating effects of job reflective learning—a backward-looking cognitive process—and activated positive affective states. Job reflective learning captures backward-looking self-assessments and the underlying internal causal attributions, and it is differentiated into two valences: job reflective learning from successes and from failures. Based on two separate multi-wave, multi-source field studies, our findings consistently show a serial mediation process linking proactive personality to creativity through both valences of job reflective learning and activated positive affective states. Job reflective learning from successes breeds joviality, whereas job reflective learning from failures arouses attentiveness. Joviality and attentiveness—both types of activated positive affective states—in turn promote creativity. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of how proactive employees manifest their proactivity trait into actual creativity through backward-looking cognitive and affective processes.     

Changes in Behaviour and Body Weight Following a Single or Double Social Defeat in Rats

In a series of experiments, the consequences of a single and double social conflict on various behaviours and body weight in rats were studied. Animals were subjected to social defeat by placing them into the territory of an aggressive male conspecific for one hour, either once, or twice at the same time on two consecutive days. To assess the consequences of social defeat, three experiments were performed with independent groups of rats. In the first experiment, an open field test was performed two days after the last conflict. Locomotor activity was strongly reduced after social defeat. There were no differences between the single and double defeat group. To assess the effects of social defeat on subsequent social behaviour, a second experiment was performed in which experimental animals were confronted with an unfamiliar non-aggressive rat two days after a single or double conflict. Social defeat resulted in a reduction of social contact with the unfamiliar conspecific. There was no difference between the single and double conflict group. In the third experiment, the effects of social conflict on food intake, body weight and saccharine preference were measured. Food intake was not affected after a single conflict, but in the double conflict group food intake was decreased for several days. Body weight gain was decreased after both single and double social defeat. The decrease was stronger in the double conflict group. Water intake and saccharine preference were not significantly affected. This study revealed that social defeat in rats causes pronounced changes in various behaviours and body weight. Different aspects of behaviour are differentially affected by defeat with respect to the magnitude and time course of the changes induced. Moreover, different behavioural parameters are differentially sensitive to repetition of the stressor.     

Potential job applicant reactions to employee drug testing: The effect of program characteristics and individual differences

An experiment varied two aspects of employee drug-testing programs: the purpose of the program (to rehabilitate or to punish) and the drug-testing selection method (for due cause or random and mandatory). Dependent variables were potential job applicants' attitudes toward, intention to apply to, and willingness to accept a job offer from the company. Although the manipulations had no effects, several individual difference variables (personal use of drugs, attitudes toward drugs and drug testing, and subjective norms toward drug testing) predicted the dependent variables.     

Dispositional Antecedents of Demonstration and Usefulness of Voice Behavior

Purpose  

To examine the relationship between Five-Factor Model (FFM) and non-FFM personality traits that are theoretically relevant to voice behavior and the demonstration and usefulness of voice behavior.