Personal vulnerability and work‐home interaction: The effect of job performance‐based self‐esteem on work/home conflict and facilitation

Innstrand, S. T., Langballe, E. M., Espnes, G. A., Aasland, O. G. & Falkum, E. (2010). Personal vulnerability and work‐home interaction: The effect of job performance‐based self‐esteem on work/home conflict and facilitation. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51, 480–487. The aim of the present study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between job performance‐based self‐esteem (JPB‐SE) and work‐home interaction (WHI) in terms of the direction of the interaction (work‐to‐home vs. home‐to‐work) and the effect (conflict vs. facilitation). A sample of 3,475 respondents from eight different occupational groups (lawyers, physicians, nurses, teachers, church ministers, bus drivers, and people working in advertising and information technology) supplied data at two points of time with a two‐year time interval. The two‐wave, cross‐lagged structural equations modeling (SEM) analysis demonstrated reciprocal relationships between these variables, i.e., job performance‐based self‐esteem may act as a precursor as well as an outcome of work‐home interaction. The strongest association was between job performance‐based self‐esteem and work‐to‐home conflict. Previous research on work‐home interaction has mainly focused on situational factors. This longitudinal study expands the work‐home literature by demonstrating how individual vulnerability (job performance‐based self‐esteem) contributes to the explanation of work‐home interactions.     

Goal Commitment and Performance: An Empirical Study Incorporating Role‐Stress Literature to Reveal Functional and Dysfunctional Influences

This study integrates the goal‐commitment and role‐stress literatures in a model to reveal functional and dysfunctional influences of goal commitment on role performance. In a sample of headmasters, we found empirical support for a role‐clarifying process suggesting that high commitment reduces role ambiguity and is ultimately positive for role performance. Our model also supports the dysfunctional effect of commitment through a role‐complicating process in which commitment drives role overload, which is negative for role performance. By including self‐efficacy in our model, we were better able to understand the positive and negative experiences of highly committed individuals. Contributing to the existing literature on role stressors, this study's results indicate that self‐efficacy mediates the influences of role stressors on role performance.     

"I would do anything for my child, even quit tobacco": Bonus effects from an intervention that targets adolescent tobacco use

This paper aims to assess program bonus effects on adult tobacco use from a long-term intervention that targeted adolescent tobacco use. The school-based community intervention started in Västerbotten County in Sweden in 1993 and adults were invited to support adolescents to stay tobacco-free. It was combined with repeated cross-sectional surveys in schools annually 1994–99 among grades 7–9 and after 1999 every second year. Participating schools were randomly selected before the first survey representing both rural and urban settings. Out of 4,055 students, 1,008 (24.8%) reported that their supporting adult had been a tobacco user who quit tobacco in order to be allowed to participate. Out of these, 13.2% used tobacco daily before joining. The remaining 2,997 students' adult partners were not tobacco users. Engaging tobacco using adults as partners in interventions targeting adolescent tobacco use seem to have a considerable tobacco-reducing bonus effect in the adults.     

The usefulness of assessing suggestibility and compliance in prisoners with unidentified intellectual disabilities

Søndenaa, E., Rasmussen, K., Palmstierna, T. & Nøttestad, J. A. (2010). The usefulness of assessing suggestibility and compliance in prisoners with unidentified intellectual disabilities. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 434–438. This present study explored the relationship of interrogative suggestibility (n = 133) and compliance (n = 118) to intellectual functioning among prison inmates. The Norwegian versions of the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS) and the Gudjonsson Compliance Scale (GCS) were used. The results supported previous findings of a negative correlation between the Gudjonsson scales and IQ, and the scales were found useful throughout the IQ range. The impact of a memory artifact was discussed in the light of recent studies and criticism of the scales.     

Accommodation to What? Univocity of Being,Pure Nature,and the Anthropology of St Irenaeus

Abstract: This article, the author's inaugural lecture for the J.I. Packer chair at Regent College, Vancouver, takes as its starting‐point Karl Barth's penetrating question, ‘Accommodation to what?’ Suggesting that recent evangelical theologies have been too ready to accommodate to the immanentism inherent in postmodern culture, the article traces the roots of that immanentism to Scotus's teaching concerning the univocity of being, and suggests that in St Irenaeus's christologically shaped account of the nature and destiny of human life there is a theologically satisfying preservation of a proper account of transcendence.     

Relationships between perceptual defence reactions and subjective tendencies in the phenomenal representation of facial displays of affect

The present study examines if non-veridical reports of a stimulus-motif presented below the threshold for correct recognition are related to subjective tendencies in the ordinary perception of thermatically related stimuli. Sixty-four subjects were tested with the standard picture of Kragh's Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) which reflects a theme of aggression and threat. Stimulus-inadequate report of the picture-motif were related to the subject's phenomenal representation of video-recorded facial displays of anger, fear, sadness, and joy. The results demonstrate a correspondence between the individual's perceptual distortions, eliminations, or additions to the threatening subliminal stimulus and his or her phenomenal representation of the supraliminal affective stimuli.     

Infant responses and the physical environment

A longitudinal study of infants ( n =23) from 6 to 13 months was made to explore infants' responses to objects high on complexity and responsiveness compared to low-scored ones, and whether the high-scored objects were preferred. Further, it was explored to what extent individual differences of the infants represent a source of variation. The results showed that more than 50% of the total variance was accounted for by differences in object qualities, and about 25% by individual differences. High-scored objects were significantly more often preferred compared to low-scored ones irrespective of age.