High Aspirations: Differences in Employee Satisfaction Between University Faculty and Staff

Employee satisfaction surveys were examined for five universities in the US, UK and Canada, selected because they presented results for faculty and other staff separately. Faculty consistently score more negatively on employee satisfaction across a wide range of areas. The most negative responses are for areas such as personal/worklife balance, work demands/workload, university direction, and whether the employee would choose to work at the same institution again/would recommend it for employment. The results are consistent with previous studies which have shown that education level is negatively associated with job satisfaction. The results suggest that university faculty have high aspirations, since in a number of indicators faculty working conditions appear superior to those of staff (tenure; average income; sabbatical leaves; work control; involvement and consultation in university decision-making), although junior faculty prior to tenure may experience more stress than staff. Employers undertaking employee satisfaction surveys need to take into account systematic differences in aspirations among their employees, when interpreting survey results.     

Comparing techniques for estimating automatic retrieval: effects of retention interval

Results from implicit memory (IM) tasks suggest that automatic retrieval remains stable or decreases over time. In contrast, results from the process dissociation approach (PDA) suggest that automatic retrieval may actually increase over time. One explanation for these discrepant results is that performance on IM tasks is contaminated by controlled retrieval strategies, thereby overestimating automatic retrieval, particularly at short retention intervals, when controlled retrieval strategies are high. An alternative explanation is that automatic and controlled retrieval are positively correlated, rather than independent as assumed by the PDA. If so, the PDA would underestimate automatic retrieval, particularly when controlled retrieval strategies are high. Results from a speeded IM task suggest that a standard IM task provided an accurate estimate of automatic retrieval, whereas the PDA underestimated automatic retrieval at a short retention interval. This pattern of underestimation by the PDA supports the conclusion that automatic and controlled retrieval were positively correlated rather than independent.     

Development of and change in cognitive control: A comparison of children, young adults, and older adults

Cognitive control involves adjustments in behavior to conflicting information, develops throughout childhood, and declines in aging. Accordingly, developmental and age-related changes in cognitive control and response-conflict detection were assessed in a response-compatibility task. We recorded performance measures, pre-response time (pre-RT) activity and medial frontal negativity (MFN)—sequentially occurring, putative event-related potential (ERP) indexes, respectively, of cognitive control and response-conflict detection. When response conflict reached the highest levels by requiring incompatible responses on posterror trials, children and older adults showed the greatest performance decrements. ERPs indicated that young adults implemented control (pre-RT) and detected the increased conflict (MFN) only when that conflict was at the highest levels, whereas children and older adults did so at lower levels (e.g., posterror, compatible responses). Consequently, the developmental and age-related performance decrements observed here may be due to the undifferentiated and inefficient manner in which children and older adults recruited the processes associated with both cognitive control and response-conflict detection.     

The self and dreams during a period of transition

The content of dreams and changes to the self were investigated in students moving to University. In study 1, 20 participants completed dream diaries and memory tasks before and after they had left home and moved to university, and generated self images, “I am…” statements (e.g. I am an undergraduate), reflective of their current self. Changes in “I ams” were observed, indicating a newly-formed ‘university’ self. These self, images and related autobiographical knowledge were found to be incorporated into recent dreams but not into dreams from other periods. Study 2 replicated these findings in a different sample (N = 55). We suggest that these data reflect a period of self-consolidation in which new experiences and self images are incorporated into autobiographical memory knowledge structures representing personal goals during sleep.     

Narcissistic Responding to Ego Threat: When the Status of the Evaluator Matters

ABSTRACT Narcissists and nonnarcissists were insulted by high-status and low-status evaluators and were given an opportunity to self-protect with a comparative (evaluator derogation; Experiment 1 ) and noncomparative (inflated state self-esteem; Experiments 1 and 2 ) strategy. Narcissists engaged in comparative self-protection indiscriminately (i.e., derogating both low-status and high-status evaluators), whereas nonnarcissists showed some mercy to low-status evaluators. With regard to noncomparative protection, the findings were consistent across studies: Evaluator status interacted with narcissism such that narcissists engaged in noncomparative self-protection more than nonnarcissists when the evaluator was high, but not low, in status. Evaluator status and, more generally, source of feedback are worth serious consideration when untangling the intricacies and flexibility of narcissistic self-protection.