Safety in work vehicles: a multilevel study linking safety values and individual predictors to work-related driving crashes

Although work-related driving is associated with high accident rates, limited research has investigated the factors influencing driving crashes in the work setting. This study explored multilevel influences on self-reported crashes in the workplace by surveying a sample of work-related drivers (n = 380), their workgroup supervisors (n = 88), and fleet managers (n = 47). At the driver level of analysis, safety motivation predicted self-reported crashes. In turn, drivers' perceptions of their fleet managers' safety values (but not drivers' perceptions of their supervisors' safety values), their own attitudes, and their own efficacy beliefs predicted motivation to drive safely. Furthermore, the influence of supervisors and fleet managers interacted such that drivers were more motivated to drive safely if they perceived both their supervisor and fleet manager to value safety. This study also explored the cross-level relationships between supervisors' and fleet managers' perceptions of organizational safety values and drivers' perceptions of managerial safety values and found a relationship between fleet managers' perceptions of organizational safety values and drivers' perceptions of fleet managers' safety values. These results illustrate that perceptions of workplace safety values are transmitted across levels of the organization.     

Exploring the cold-to-hot empathy gap in smokers

Many decisions related to cigarette smoking require people in an affectively neutral, or "cold," state to predict how they will feel or behave when in a craving, or "hot," state. Research in other domains has revealed that individuals in cold states often underestimate the impact of being in a hot state on their own future behavior. In a study testing whether this is true of cigarette craving, 98 smokers were assigned to one of three conditions: hot (during a high-craving first session, they made predictions about a high-craving state in a second session), cold (during a low-craving first session, they made predictions about a high-craving state in a second session), and comparison (they experienced a high-craving session only). As predicted, in contrast to smokers in the hot group, smokers in the cold group underpredicted the value they would place on smoking during the second session. Results support the existence of a cold-to-hot empathy gap in smokers and help to explain diverse aspects of tobacco addiction.     

Speaker overestimation of communication effectiveness and fear of negative evaluation: Being realistic is unrealistic

Speakers systematically overestimate their communication effectiveness (Keysar & Henly, 2002). We argue that doing so is adaptive, reducing the risk of social anxiety and withdrawal from social situations. This hypothesis was tested by having speakers who scored low and high for fear of negative evaluation (FNE), a hallmark of social phobia, attempt to convey a specific meaning of ambiguous statements to a listener and then estimate their communication effectiveness. Low-FNE speakers consistently overestimated their effectiveness, expecting the listener to understand their intended meaning more often than listeners actually did. In contrast, high-FNE speakers’ estimates of communication effectiveness were consistent with the listener’s actual understanding. Signal detection analysis revealed that low- and high-FNE speakers were equally able to discriminate communication success from failure, but low-FNE speakers exhibited a stronger positive response bias. In conclusion, overestimating one’s communication effectiveness is adaptive, and accurate estimation is associated with dysfunction.     

Spatial memory in rats after 25 hours

We investigated the time course of spatial-memory decay in rats using an eight-arm radial maze. It is well established that performance remains high with retention intervals as long as 4 h, but declines to chance with a 24-h retention interval (Beatty, W. W., & Shavalia, D. A. (1980b). Spatial memory in rats: time course of working memory and effect of anesthetics. Behavioral & Neural Biology, 28, 454-462). It is possible that 24 h reflects a genuine retention limitation of rat spatial memory. Alternatively, it may be possible to identify factors that might support memory performance even after very long delays. The current experiment was conducted to test the above two hypotheses. We evaluated performance using two intertrial intervals (24 and 48 h) and two retention intervals (1 and 25 h). Increasing the intertrial interval produced an approximately constant increase in performance for both retention intervals. This improvement is consistent with a trial-spacing effect (i.e., the superiority of spaced over massed trials). Rat spatial memory apparently lasts at least 25 h.     

Impact of mother interactive style on infant affect among babies exposed to alcohol in utero

This study examined the ability of infants prenatally exposed to alcohol to regulate their affect during and after a stressor. Specifically, the Still‐Face Paradigm (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, ' Brazelton, 1978) was used as a stress induction paradigm to assess both mother‐infant interaction and infant self‐regulation. In addition to the mothers' interactive style, the effect of mothers' drinking during and after pregnancy on the infant was explored. Participants were 76 six‐month‐old infants and their mothers. Infant affect and maternal interaction style was coded second‐by‐second for the 6 min of the Still‐Face Paradigm. Results indicated that infants whose mothers made fewer attempts at engaging them during the play portion of the still‐face (e.g., either watched their infant or paid minimal attention to their infant) showed greater negative affect in contrast to infants whose mothers played in an interactive manner. A gender effect was found among female infants. That is, female infants whose mothers drank more during pregnancy showed greater negative affect. The study demonstrates the possibility of early identification of negativity in infants with prenatal alcohol exposure. The impact of mother‐child relationship on emotional regulation of infants prenatally alcohol exposed may be a target of future intervention and further study.     

The Validity of Verifiable and Non‐verifiable Biodata Items: An Examination Across Applicants and Incumbents

This study examines the influence of item verifiability (non‐verifiable vs. verifiable), context (applicant vs. incumbent), and keying procedure on biodata mean test scores and validity. Concurrent and predictive validation studies were conducted using a sample of 425 call center incumbents and a sample of 410 call center applicants. Although applicants did not obtain significantly higher mean biodata scores, results provide support for the hypothesis that the non‐verifiable biodata composite would be less valid in the applicant context, while the verifiable biodata composite would be equally valid across both the applicant and incumbent contexts. The same pattern of results was obtained using both item‐ and option‐keying procedures. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

全球帝国主义与重构的后现代主义

现代文化和政治已经导致了全球帝国主义,即一种通过一个国家来创建一个无所不包的帝国的尝试。为了战胜这种全球帝国主义,需要从现代世界秩序转向一种后现代世界秩序,其中,以主权为基础的民族国家的无政府秩序将被全球民主所取代。怀特海式的重构的后现代主义为后现代政治的双重任务(抵抗全球帝国主义和建立全球民主)提供了各种文化资源。     

Conspicuous donation behaviour: scale development and validation

• This paper builds on the concept of conspicuous donation behaviour (CDB) through further conceptualisation and operationalisation of this construct. The paper reports on developing the CDB scale via a three‐stage process, which includes five data collections using a total of 1311 respondents. The data analysis indicates that the resulting eight‐item (two factor) CDB scale has face, content, convergent, discriminant and predictive validity and the CDB scale is reliable across samples. The CDB scale has the potential for significant usage in the development and testing of theory, as well as in practical applications.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What Do Happiness Studies Study?

What do, or should, happiness studies study? Everything to which we refer with the word ‘‘happiness’’ is worth some study. But the study of subjective states covers only part of the ground covered by the word ‘‘happiness’’ and by no means all the ground central to understanding happiness. On the central use of ‘‘happiness,’’ to be happy is to be glad or satisfied or content, which suggests subjectivity, with having a good measure of what is important in life, which suggests objectivity. We find the same suggestion of both subjectivity and objectivity in the list of what enhances the quality of life. There are strong arguments in favour both of the subjectivity of what enhances life and of its objectivity. I argue that neither is right, that the story is more complicated. The conclusion of the story is that there is a list of several non-reducible features that contribute to the quality of a characteristic human life, and that anything that contributes to the quality of any human life will be one or other of these features. But there is a problem. When we speak of the quality of a human life, there may be no one thing we have in mind. Perhaps some of us are not disagreeing with one another over the nature of a ‘‘happy’’ life but speaking of different things.