American psychology and the religious imagination

In just three generations, American psychology grew from a fledgling science to a culturally authoritative discipline. Standard accounts of psychology's meteoric rise typically omit what most needs to be illuminated: the resonance between psychological theory and the symbolic universe underlying America's popular religious imagination. This article sketches a cultural history of American psychology by examining how many of its core concepts invoke a metaphysical horizon associated with the nation's heritage of unchurched spirituality.     

Temporal dynamics of reflexive attention shifts: a dual-stream rapid serial visual presentation exploration

We combined a prototypical exogenous cuing procedure with rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) to provide a precise characterization of the temporal dynamics of reflexive attention shifts. The novel paradigm thus created has several useful properties, most notably that the physical presentation of the target is neither an onset nor a unique event and that temporal precision is provided without the requirement for a speeded response. A biphasic pattern was observed, with early benefits followed by later costs (inhibition of return) at the cued location relative to the uncued location. The finding of inhibition of return in this paradigm disproves the assertion that inhibition of return is merely a reluctance to respond in the target's direction. It may be partly that, but encoding mechanisms linked to attention must also be involved.     

A closer look at the relationship between justice perceptions and union participation.

In this study, a series of nested models was tested to assess the extent to which the relationship between process-related justice and union participation is mediated by perceived union support and union commitment. Members of a steelworkers' local (N = 615) participated in the study. Fit indices most strongly supported a fully mediated model. Unlike previous research, process-related justice was operationalized as 2 distinct variables: procedural and interactional justice. Interactional justice was found to have a substantially stronger relationship with support perceptions than procedural justice. Results also indicated union support accounted for a greater amount of unique variance in union commitment than perceived union instrumentality. The results are discussed in relation to trust theory and the generalization of organization science across different types of organizations.     

Identification of Genes Influencing a Spectrum of Externalizing Psychopathology

ABSTRACT— Alcohol dependence, drug dependence, childhood conduct disorder, and adult antisocial behavior commonly occur in combination. Data from multiple literatures, including twin/family studies and electrophysiological studies, suggest that the overlap of these disorders is largely due to a shared genetic liability that contributes to a spectrum of externalizing psychopathology. These findings suggest that some genes will not be specific to any one externalizing disorder but will predispose individuals broadly to a spectrum of externalizing psychopathology. Here we review evidence for specific, identified genes, GABRA2 and CHRM2 , that follow this pattern and confer risk for a spectrum of externalizing disorders. These findings confirm the etiological structure of psychopathology suggested by psychological research and suggest exciting new roles that psychologists can play in understanding the pathways underlying associations between genes and behavior.     

Gender and Leadership in Spain: a Systematic Review of Some Key Aspects

As Spain experienced rapid societal and gender equality changes after the end of the dictatorship in 1975, the development of gender equality in Spain has differed from other European countries and the United States. Therefore, the results of Spanish studies conducted on gender and leadership might differ from those conducted in countries with other historical backgrounds such as other European countries or the United States. We systematically reviewed the current theoretical and empirical literature on gender and leadership with a special emphasis on this comparison. Thereby, we focused on four essential aspects: (a) the underlying mechanism of gender inequality (e.g., traditional gender roles), (b) gender and leadership behavior, (c) the relation of female representation in top management and on boards with organizational performance, and d) female representation and non-performance-related organizational outcomes. Further, Spain is currently experiencing a severe economic crisis. On the one hand, such a crisis might provide a chance for gender equality development; on the other hand, it might trigger a regression toward traditional gender roles in society. Thus, in our discussion, we relate the results of our comparison to these two different but possible consequences of the crisis. To conclude, we outline directions for future research that we hope will provide answers to important questions in this area of research.     

Towards a Pan‐cultural Personality Structure: Input from 11 Psycholexical Studies

The purpose of the present study is to find the common kernel of different trait taxonomic studies and find out how the individual structures relate to this common kernel. Trait terms from 11 psycholexically based taxonomies were all translated into English. On the basis of the commonalities in English, the 11 matrices were merged into a joint matrix with 7104 subjects and 1993 trait terms. Untranslatable terms produced large areas with missing data. To arrive at the kernel structure of the joint matrix, a simultaneous component analysis was applied. In addition, the kernel structures were compared with the individual taxonomy trait structures, obtained via principal component analysis. The findings provide evidence of a structure consisting of three components to stand out as the core of the taxonomies included in this study; those components were named dynamism, affiliation, and order. Moreover, the relations between these three kernel components and those of a six‐component solution (completing the six‐factor model) are provided. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Organizational identification and “currencies of exchange”: integrating social identity and social exchange perspectives

We integrate social exchange and social identity perspectives to propose and test the prediction that depending on their level of organizational identification, people may reciprocate the received organizational support using different “currencies of exchange”—reducing turnover intentions or, instead, engaging in extra‐role behavior. Specifically, the relationship of perceived organizational support (POS) with turnover intentions is proposed to be stronger with lower identification, whereas POS is proposed to be more closely related to extra‐role behavior with higher organizational identification. These predictions were supported in a cross‐sectional survey of N = 1,000 employees of a financial services firm. These results speak to the added value of integrating the social exchange perspective with its roots in applied psychology and the social identity perspective with its roots in social psychology in understanding the employee‐organization relationship.