Does serving the community also serve the company? Using organizational identification and social exchange theories to understand employee responses to a volunteerism programme

Little is known about how employees might respond to their company's socially responsible business practices. Hypotheses derived from organizational identification and social exchange theories were tested to explain why employees (N=162) may respond positively to their company's volunteerism programme, a programme through which employees could spend time volunteering during their paid work hours. Support was found for mediated effects suggesting that employees' attitude towards the volunteerism programme ultimately predicted outcomes (e.g., intentions to stay) through its effect on organizational identification. Results also showed that exchange ideology moderated the effects of volunteer‐programme attitudes on supervisor‐reported organizational citizenship behaviour measured 6 months later, suggesting that some employees reciprocate the benefits they receive from a volunteerism programme. The implications of these findings are discussed for theory and research, and for leveraging volunteerism programmes and other socially responsible business practices to benefit companies and their employees.     

The impact of group leaders' behaviour on parents acquisition of key parenting skills during parent training

BackgroundParent training (PT) is identified as the most effective intervention for the treatment of conduct disorder (CD). Intervention observational outcomes are often reported as summarised composite scores, providing an overview of overall construct change.Methods and aimsParents of children aged 3–5 years identified ‘at risk’ of developing CD were randomly allocated to either PT intervention or waiting list control group. Parent and child behaviours were assessed before and after the intervention period. The current paper aims to establish which individual observed parenting categories change as a result of PT, and which specific observed leader categories predict these changes.ResultsControlling for baseline scores, ANCOVA demonstrated changes in parent praise and reflective behaviours as significant post-intervention. One-way ANOVAs demonstrated higher levels of leader praise and reflective behaviours resulted in greater change in parental praise and reflective behaviours respectively. Regression analyses indicated these leader behaviours predict positive change in parental praise and reflective behaviours for intervention families.ConclusionsComposite observational scores provide an account of behaviour constructs, whereas individual behaviour categories provide an insight into the core components of these constructs. The results suggest praise and reflection as key leader behaviours that influence the mechanisms of change in parenting behaviours as a result of PT.     

A survivor's account of sexual exploitation by a Jungian analyst

This essay explains the ramifications of sexual exploitation in the context of Jungian analysis. It argues that misuse of work specifically framed as Jungian can cause severe, deep, and long-lasting harm. It suggests that Jungian professionals strengthen and increase the scope of their actions to deter rogue colleagues from exploiting their analysands.     

Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space

Mediated exhibitionism is the phenomenon of amateur performers exposing their nude bodies on the Internet, and includes the exchange of nude images by email, text message, webcam, electronic bulletin board, and other means of digital communication. Although mediated exhibitionism has its foundation in live performance and traditional media forms, its potential as a means for broadening the aesthetics of the body and offering a form of resistance to social control is magnified by the interactive quality of the Internet. Conversely, new aesthetic ideals have been established and resistance to social control has been challenged by the very technology which made resistance possible. A series of websites catering to mediated exhibitionism were investigated.     

Why we still need a mark of the cognitive

What makes a process a cognitive process? I’m not just asking for a list of cognitive processes, but for what makes an item on that list a cognitive process. Why should it be on the list? This is a question that has been ignored far too long in the domain of research calling itself cognitive science. It is time to give an answer and that is what I propose in this paper. I contrast my answer with others that have been given and defend the need against some claims in the literature that a mark of the cognitive is not needed.     

A Pilot Study of a Brief Motivational Intervention to Enhance Parental Engagement: A Brief Report

Although research has shown that multi-systemic interventions (MSIs) improve youth psychosocial functioning, MSI dissemination has been hampered by low levels of parent participation. The current pilot project was designed to examine the effectiveness of a brief motivational interviewing (MI) protocol to increase parental engagement in an MSI for youth suspended from middle and high school. Preliminary findings suggest that parents who received brief MI were more likely to attend a parent-training workshop and reported greater satisfaction with the parenting workshops than parents who did not. Parents in the brief MI group also reported a relatively high level of satisfaction with the MI procedures. Implications for future research and MSIs are discussed.     

Evaluating the random representation assumption of lexical semantics in cognitive models

A common assumption implicit in cognitive models is that lexical semantics can be approximated by using randomly generated representations to stand in for word meaning. However, the use of random representations contains the hidden assumption that semantic similarity is symmetrically distributed across randomly selected words or between instances within a semantic category. We evaluated this assumption by computing similarity distributions for randomly selected words from a number of well-known semantic measures and comparing them with the distributions from random representations commonly used in cognitive models. The similarity distributions from all semantic measures were positively skewed compared with the symmetric normal distributions assumed by random representations. We discuss potential consequences that this false assumption may have for conclusions drawn from process models that use random representations.     

Adaptation to different mouth shapes influences visual perception of ambiguous lip speech

We investigated the effects of adaptation to mouth shapes associated with different spoken sounds (sustained /m/ or /u/) on visual perception of lip speech. Participants were significantly more likely to label ambiguous faces on an /m/-to-/u/ continuum as saying /u/ following adaptation to /m/ mouth shapes than they were in a preadaptation test. By contrast, participants were significantly less likely to label the ambiguous faces as saying /u/ following adaptation to /u/ mouth shapes than they were in a preadaptation test. The magnitude of these aftereffects was equivalent when the same individual was shown in the adaptation and test phases of the experiment and when different individuals were presented in the adaptation and test phases. These findings present novel evidence that adaptation to natural variations in facial appearance influences face perception, and they extend previous research on face aftereffects to visual perception of lip speech.     

Evidence for menstrual cycle shifts in women's preferences for masculinity

Over the last decade, a growing literature has shown that women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle demonstrate stronger preferences for men with masculine traits than they do when in the non-fertile phases of the cycle (see Gangestad and Thornhill, 2008 and Jones et al., 2008 for recent reviews). In a recent article, Harris (in press; Sex Roles) failed to replicate this increase in women's preferences for masculine faces when women are near ovulation. Harris represented her study as one of only three studies on the topic, and as the largest of the existing studies. There are, however, many more studies on menstrual cycle shifts in preferences for facial masculinity in the published literature, including one that is 2.5 times larger in size than the Harris study. In this article, we review the evidence for cyclic shifts in mate preferences and related behaviors and discuss weaknesses of Harris's methods. Considered as a whole, the evidence for menstrual cycle shifts in women's preferences and behaviors is compelling, despite the failure of replication reported by Harris.