Line manager involvement in work-life balance and career development: can't manage,won't manage?

Line manager involvement in HRM is an increasing trend across Europe. With the numbers of employees taking advantage of work-life balance policies also on the increase, line manager responsibility for this specific policy area is likely to become more marked. In this paper, we argue that line managers have a critical role to play in the career development of reduced-hours employees, but that due to a number of cultural and institutional processes, the extent of this involvement is likely to be limited. Using qualitative data from interviews with police managers and police officers who have reduced their hours, we argue that gendered assumptions, deeply embedded in taken-for-granted organisational practices and structures, operate in ways that encourage line managers and reduced-hours workers to locate career barriers in the psyche of the latter. The implications of these processes for line manager involvement in the career development of reduced-hours professionals are explored and explicated.     

Social Identity and Social Exchange: Identification, Support, and Withdrawal From the Job

Integrating insights from the social exchange perspective and the social identity perspective, we propose that evaluations of support received from the organization and its representatives and organizational identification interact to predict withdrawal from the job. The relationship of support with withdrawal is proposed to be weaker the more strongly employees identify with the organization. This prediction was confirmed in 2 samples focusing on different operationalizations of support and withdrawal. Study 1 explored the interaction between organizational support and organizational identification in predicting turnover intention; Study 2 investigated the link between supervisor support and organizational identification and absenteeism. The present study thus yields evidence that may lay the groundwork for further integration of social exchange and social identity analyses of organizational behavior.     

Frequency, determinants, and consequences of different drivers’ emotions: An on-the-road study using self-reports, (observed) behaviour, and physiology

In the present study, the frequency, determinants and consequences of three relevant emotions in traffic were investigated. Based on appraisal theory, it was predicted that the combination of three appraisal components (goal congruence, blame and threat) affects the occurrence of anger, anxiety and happiness. Participants (n = 44) filled in a questionnaire containing background and personality variables, and performed a test drive in an instrumented car. During the drive, speed and heart rate were registered and the traffic environment was recorded on video. Participants verbally reported scores for emotions and perceived risk. The most frequently occurring emotion was anxiety, followed by anger and happiness. Emotions while driving were related to emotional traits. Emotions while driving were also related to traffic events: anger and anxiety were both associated with goal incongruent events, and happiness with goal congruent events. Anger was mostly associated with other-blame and anxiety with situation-blame. Anger was mostly associated with events affecting impeded progress, and anxiety with events affecting safety. Anxiety, but not anger or happiness, was associated with increased perceived risk and with increased heart rate. Participants who reported anger drove faster and exceeded the speed limit more often on a 100 km/road section than participants who did not report anger. These and other results are discussed in terms of appraisal theory and state-trait differences in emotion.     

Trait Anger and Axis I Disorders: Implications for REBT

Anger has a prominent role in basic theories of emotion. And while many psychiatric disorders can be conceived of as emotional disorders (e.g., depressive disorders, anxiety disorders), there are no disorders for which anger is the cardinal feature. We analyzed diagnostic data on 1,687 (as later) psychiatric outpatients and looked at the co-occurrence of high trait anger (as assessed by criterion 8 of Borderline Personality Disorder) and Axis I disorders, and Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorders. The purpose was to examine whether dysfunctional anger met criteria necessary to be considered a valid diagnostic category. Results showed that high trait anger was not fully accounted for by any particular Axis I diagnosis, or any set of Axis I diagnoses, or by the combination of Axis I diagnoses and Borderline and Antisocial PDs. Trait anger also accounted for significant amounts of unique variance in several indicators of psychiatric impairment and psychosocial functioning. We describe the anger disorder diagnoses of Eckhardt and Deffenbacher (Anger disorders: Definition, diagnosis and treatment. Taylor & Francis, Bristol, PA, 1995), and discuss the implications of those diagnoses for the practice of REBT and CBT.

Relation of Self-Efficacy to Reported Pain and Pain Medication Usage During Labor

We studied the relationship of self-efficacy to reported labor pain and pain medication usage among 43 women. Self-efficacy ratings were judgments of confidence regarding successful completion of tasks involved in labor and delivery (e.g., doing breathing exercises) and in overcoming barriers (e.g., nonsupportive partner). Multiple regression analyses revealed that self-efficacy significantly contributed to predicting labor pain beyond other relevant variables (e.g., age, amount of menstrual pain), with barrier self-efficacy the strongest predictor. Results are discussed in the context of increasing women's confidence in overcoming barriers by incorporating relevant interventions in childbirth education.     

Language deficits, localization, and grammar: evidence for a distributive model of language breakdown in aphasic patients and neurologically intact individuals.

Selective deficits in aphasic patients' grammatical production and comprehension are often cited as evidence that syntactic processing is modular and localizable in discrete areas of the brain (e.g., Y. Grodzinsky, 2000). The authors review a large body of experimental evidence suggesting that morpho-syntactic deficits can be observed in a number of aphasic and neurologically intact populations. They present new data showing that receptive agrammatism is found not only over a range of aphasic groups, but is also observed in neurologically intact individuals processing under stressful conditions. The authors suggest that these data are most compatible with a domain-general account of language, one that emphasizes the interaction of linguistic distributions with the properties of an associative processor working under normal or suboptimal conditions.