Married Women’s Situational Use of Last Names: An Empirical Study

Situational last name use was examined in a sample of 600 married women who responded to a mail survey. The sample was selected from the faculty and staff of a state university in the Midwest with over-sampling of women whose last name differed from their husband’s last name. Overall, 12% of married women reported situational last name use. Women from all last name choices (e.g., changed to husband’s, kept birth surname) reported situational surname use, but the most common occurrence of this practice was among hyphenators. Situational users were most likely to use their husband’s last name in family situations and their birth surname in professional situations. Factors that increase situational last name use included full-time employment, higher levels of educational attainment, and an older age at marriage. Situational last name use by married women can be seen as a manifestation of ambiguity over identity with family and non-family roles.     

CULTIVATING LOVING KINDNESS: A TWO‐STAGE MODEL OF THE EFFECTS OF MEDITATION ON EMPATHY,COMPASSION, AND ALTRUISM

Abstract. We explore the role of meditative practice in cultivating experiences of compassion, empathy, and altruism and address an apparent paradox: Meditation often is associated with solitary retreat, if not preoccupation with one's own concerns. How, then, does such a practice promote compassion for others? We propose a two‐stage model. The first stage involves disengagement from usual preoccupation with self‐reinforcing, self‐defeating, or self‐indulgent behaviors and reactions; the second involves a focused engagement with a universal human capacity for altruistic experience, love, and compassion. Reference is made to the limited research literature and to clinical applications of loving kindness (metta) meditation in cultivating these processes.     

The Impact of Having Children on the Lives of Women: The Effects of Children Questionnaire

The current study uses a newly developed questionnaire, the Effects of Children Questionnaire, to examine the impact of having children on women's lives. Participants were lower- and lower-middle-class women. The questionnaire assessed women's perceptions of their own change and other women's experiences of change as a result of having children in a number of life domains. Exploratory analyses, repeated-measures analyses, factor analyses, and regression analyses were used to test hypotheses. Results suggested that women do compare themselves with other women, that there are two primary factors underlying perceptions of change, and that there are significant changes from having children in various life domains. Results are discussed in terms of the costs and benefits of having children.     

The Relationship Between Facial Contact With a Pillow and Mood

Three studies examined the relationship between facial contact with a pillow and mood. In the first, 414 undergraduates described their face and body positions when sleeping and upon awakening, and their moods upon awakening. Results indicated that more negative moods were associated with increased facial contact with pillows. Then, 2 experiments manipulated participants' face and body positions while they lay down and listened to affectively neutral prose passages and musical selections. Participants evaluated the passages and music. Results of both experiments showed that increased facial contact with a pillow led to more negative evaluations. It is argued that these findings reflect effects of facial contact on mood, and are consistent with the facial feedback hypothesis. Possible alternative explanations are considered.     

Nonparametric Estimation of Item and Respondent Locations from Unfolding-type Items

Unlike their monotone counterparts, nonparametric unfolding response models, which assume the item response function is unimodal, have seen little attention in the psychometric literature. This paper studies the nonparametric behavior of unfolding models by building on the work of Post (1992). The paper provides rigorous justification for a class of nonparametric estimators of respondents’ latent attitudes by proving that the estimators consistently rank order the respondents. The paper also suggests an algorithm for the rank ordering of items along the attitudes scale. Finally, the methods are evaluated using simulated data. This research was supported in part by an Educational Testing Service Gulliksen Fellowship, and by the National Science Foundation, Grant DMS-97.05032. The author would like to thank Brian Junker for his help and support on this paper and Paul Holland, Steve Fienberg, and Jay Kadane for their helpful comments.     

After-School Supervision, Psychosocial Impact, and Adolescent Smoking and Alcohol Use in China

We examined effects of self-care after school hours and psychosocial factors on cigarette smoking and alcohol use among adolescents in China. Survey data were obtained from 4734 7th and 11th grade students from seven cities across China. Students were queried about the frequency and quantity of unsupervised self-care after school in an average week. Tobacco and alcohol usage were also obtained. Odds ratios were calculated to determine the strength of association between unsupervised self-care after school and substance use. Results indicated that the amount of self-care after-school (how many days and how many hours per week) was significantly associated with increased risk for smoking and alcohol use among Chinese adolescents. These associations remained significant even after controlling for anxiety, depressive symptoms, and peer influence. The interaction between unsupervised self-care after school and peer influence indicated that unsupervised self-care after school is a stronger risk factor for smoking among adolescents with pro-smoking friends. The findings suggest that substance use prevention programs for youth in China should try to enhance parental monitoring. As it may not be feasible for families to revert to a lifestyle that includes supervision by relatives, other approaches such as organized after-school care are worthy of consideration.     

Employees’ mood, perceptions of fairness, and organizational citizenship behavior

Previous research findings concerning employees’ perceptions of fairness and positive mood as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) have been equivocal. Explanations for this inconsistency may be related to the varying types of manipulation techniques adopted and samples tested. To address these issues, the present study adopted the mood and fairness manipulation techniques of Bachrach and Jex (2000, Journal of Applied Psychology, 30(3), 641–663) to investigate their effect on OCB amongst a sample of 138 employees from five large service organizations. The findings revealed that employees’ perceptions of fairness affected their likelihood to perform organizational citizenship behaviors. One implication of this finding is that employees’ perceptions of fairness may have a more enduring effect, in comparison to their mood, on increasing their extra role work behaviors. However, a close evaluation of the mood manipulation technique suggests that further research is needed before any firm conclusions can be made on the relative effect of empolyees’ perceived fairness and positive mood on OCB.     

When organizational justice and the self-concept meet: Consequences for the organization and its members

In two studies, we examined the joint effects of employed participants’ self-concept levels and perceptions of fairness on organizational attitudes and citizenship behavior intentions. We examined the effects of chronic self-concept activation in Study 1, whereas we primed the working self-concept in Study 2. Combining the results of both studies, we found support for our hypotheses that particular self-concept levels and organizational justice dimensions interact to predict various work-related outcomes. Specifically, we observed interactions between the relational self-concept and interactional justice, and between the collective self-concept and procedural justice, such that the justice–outcome relationships were stronger for those experiencing higher activation on the relevant self-concept level. Thus, as hypothesized, justice information is weighted differently depending on the particular level of self-concept that is active. In addition, interesting direct effects of employees’ self-concepts were also observed. We discuss the implications of these findings and the importance of considering the self-concept in conjunction with organizational justice.     

The composition of R. G. Collingwood's The New Leviathan

Collingwood's The New Leviathan is a difficult text. It comprises philosophy, political theory, political opinion and history in what is sometimes an uneasy amalgam. Despite its being the culmination of thirty years of work in ethics and political theory, the final text was clearly affected by the adverse circumstances under which it was written, these largely being Collingwood's illness which increasingly affected his ability to work as the writing of The New Leviathan progressed. This paper seeks to disentangle the composition of the book thereby shedding light on its distinctive character as the last substantial piece of philosophical work published in Collingwood's lifetime.     

The Self‐Administered Witness Interview Tool (SAW‐IT): Enhancing witness recall of workplace incidents

Given the often crucial role of witness evidence in occupational health and safety investigation, statements should be obtained as soon as possible after an incident using best practice methods. The present research systematically tested the efficacy of a novel Self‐Administered Witness Interview Tool (SAW‐IT), an adapted version of the Self‐Administered Interview designed to elicit comprehensive information from witnesses to industrial events. The present study also examined the effect of schematic processing on witness recall. Results indicate that the SAW‐IT elicited significantly more correct details, as well as more precise information than a traditional incident report form. Contextual information about a worker's safety history biased the reports of participant witnesses, confirming that witnesses should be shielded from extraneous post‐event information prior to reporting. Importantly, these results demonstrate that the SAW‐IT can enhance the quality of witness reports.