On The Exchange of Hostility With Supervisors: An Examination of Self‐Enhancing and Self‐Defeating Perspectives

We invoke competing theoretical perspectives to examine the consequences for subordinates of involvement in relationships that vary in terms of downward hostility (i.e., hostility enacted by supervisors against direct reports) and upward hostility (i.e., hostility enacted by subordinates against immediate supervisors). Consistent with the perspective that targets of downward hostility are less likely to see themselves as victims when they perform acts of upward hostility, analysis of 2‐wave data from a sample of supervised employees suggested that upward hostility weakens the deleterious effects of downward hostility on subordinates’ job satisfaction, affective commitment, and psychological distress. Study 2 directly examined the presumed mechanism that underlies the effects observed in Study 1. In a 3‐wave sample, support was found for a moderated‐indirect effect framework in which the indirect effects of downward hostility on subordinates’ attitudes and psychological distress (through victim identity) were weaker when upward hostility was higher. Study 2 results also suggested that the enhancing effect of upward hostility generalizes to subjective indicators of career satisfaction and future career expectations.     

Co-Rumination in the Workplace: Adjustment Trade-offs for Men and Women Who Engage in Excessive Discussions of Workplace Problems

Purpose  

Developmental psychology research finds that when children and adolescents engage in excessive discussion of problems with friends, a phenomenon termed “co-rumination,” they experience trade-offs between negative adjustment outcomes (e.g., depression), but better friendship quality. This study examines the possibility that adults in the workplace engage in co-rumination about workplace problems, and that co-rumination, gender, and the presence of abusive supervision influence both positive and negative individual outcomes.     

What are self-generated actions?

The concept of self-generated action is controversial, despite extensive study of its neural basis. Why is this concept so troublesome? We analyse the concept of self-generated action as employed by [Passingham et al., 2010a] and [Passingham et al., 2010b] . There are two definitions of self-generated action; as operant action and as underdetermined action. The latter draws on subjective experience. Experiments on action awareness suggest that experience may not be a good guide for defining self-generated action. Nevertheless, we agree with Passingham and colleagues that self-generated actions exist distinct from operant actions. But defining ‘self-generated’ by the degree of involvement of an endogenous process risks regress. We sketch an alternative account of self-generated action that tries to avoid these problems to make self-generated actions accessible to experimental science.     

Body image distortions in healthy adults

Distortions of body image have often been investigated in clinical disorders. Much of this literature implicitly assumes healthy adults maintain an accurate body image. We recently developed a novel, implicit, and quantitative measure of body image — the Body Image Task (BIT). Here, we report a large-scale analysis of performance on this task by healthy adults. In both an in-person and an online version of the BIT, participants were presented with an image of a head as an anchoring stimulus on a computer screen, and told to imagine that the head was part of a mirror image of themselves in a standing position. They were then instructed to judge where, relative to the head, each of several parts of their body would be located. The relative positions of each landmark can be used to construct an implicit perceptual map of bodily structure. We could thus measure the internally-stored body image, although we cannot exclude contributions from other representations. Our results show several distortions of body image. First, we found a large and systematic over-estimation of width relative to height. These distortions were similar for both males and females, and did not closely track the idiosyncrasies of individual participant's own bodies. Comparisons of individual body parts showed that participants overestimated the width of their shoulders and the length of their upper arms, relative to their height, while underestimating the lengths of their lower arms and legs. Principal components analysis showed a clear spatial structure to the distortions, suggesting spatial organisation and segmentation of the body image into upper and lower limb components that are bilaterally integrated. These results provide new insight into the body image of healthy adults, and have implications for the study and rehabilitation of clinical populations.     

Hedonic value of intentional action provides reinforcement for voluntary generation but not voluntary inhibition of action

Intentional inhibition refers to stopping oneself from performing an action at the last moment, a vital component of self-control. It has been suggested that intentional inhibition is associated with negative hedonic value, perhaps due to the frustration of cancelling an intended action. Here we investigate hedonic implications of the free choice to act or inhibit. Participants gave aesthetic ratings of arbitrary visual stimuli that immediately followed voluntary decisions to act or to inhibit action. We found that participants for whom decisions to act produced a strong positive hedonic value for the immediately following visual stimulus made more choices to act than those with weaker hedonic value for action. This finding is consistent with reinforcement learning of action decisions. However, participants who experienced inhibition as generating more positive hedonic value did not choose to inhibit more than other participants. Thus, voluntary inhibition of action did not act as reinforcement for future inhibitory behaviour. Our finding that inhibition of action lacks motivational capacity may explain why self-control is both difficult and limited.     

Assessing and Reporting the Accuracy of Position Measurements Made With Optical Tracking Systems

The use of optical tracking systems to record human movement is now widespread. Although such systems are convenient and potentially very accurate, they must be used carefully to ensure good data. This paper describes the procedures of calibration and reconstruction of position data in cartesian coordinates and suggests steps to maximize their accuracy. Procedures are proposed for characterizing the accuracy of measurement throughout the experimental workspace, and open discussion of the issue by the research community is invited.     

Be Happy,don't Wait: The Role of Trait Affect in Job Search

In this study we developed and tested a self‐regulatory model of trait affect in job search. Specifically, we theorized that trait positive and negative affect would influence both motivation control and procrastination, and these mediating variables would, in turn, influence job search outcomes through job search intensity. Using longitudinal data from 245 graduating students who were searching for a full‐time position, we found that positive, but not negative, affect influenced the self‐regulatory variables of motivation control and procrastination, which in turn influenced the job search outcomes. Procrastination had direct effects on the number of first interviews, controlling for job search intensity, and on the number of second interviews, controlling for first interviews, suggesting the importance of timeliness of job search activities. We discuss the implications of such results for understanding the role of affect and self‐regulation in the job search process and for measuring the quality as well as quantity (i.e., intensity) of job search tactics.     

The cutaneous rabbit revisited

In the cutaneous rabbit effect (CRE), a tactile event (so-called attractee tap) is mislocalized toward an adjacent attractor tap. The effect depends on the time interval between the taps. The authors delivered sequences of taps to the forearm and asked participants to report the location of one of the taps. The authors replicated the original CRE findings and observed a smaller but significant mislocalization when the attractor tap preceded the attractee tap. These results are consistent with the CRE arising from spatiotemporal interactions between the sensory codes for each individual tap. In subsequent experiments, the authors showed that the CRE was not affected by either gaze direction or concurrent auditory temporal information. The authors propose a model that explains the CRE by the spatiotemporal dynamics of an early, unimodal, sensory map.     

Having a body versus moving your body: How agency structures body-ownership

We investigated how motor agency in the voluntary control of body movement influences body awareness. In the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), synchronous tactile stimulation of a rubber hand and the participant's hand leads to a feeling of the rubber hand being incorporated in the participant's own body. One quantifiable behavioural correlate of the illusion is an induced shift in the perceived location of the participant's hand towards the rubber hand. Previous studies showed that the induced changes in body awareness are local and fragmented: the proprioceptive drift is largely restricted to the stimulated finger. In the present study, we investigated whether active and passive movements, rather than tactile stimulation, would lead to similarly fragmented body awareness. Participants watched a projected image of their hand under three conditions: active finger movement, passive finger movement, and tactile stimulation. Visual feedback was either synchronous or asynchronous with respect to stimulation of the hand. A significant overall RHI, defined as greater drifts following synchronous than asynchronous stimulation, was found in all cases. However, the distribution of the RHI across stimulated and non-stimulated fingers depended on the kind of stimulation. Localised proprioceptive drifts, specific to the stimulated finger, were found for tactile and passive stimulation. Conversely, during active movement of a single digit, the proprioceptive drifts were not localised to that digit, but were spread across the whole hand. Whereas a purely proprioceptive sense of body-ownership is local and fragmented, the motor sense of agency integrates distinct body-parts into a coherent, unified awareness of the body.