Fluctuating emotions: relating emotional variability and job satisfaction

This study focuses on the relation between emotional variability and job satisfaction and examines emotional exhaustion as a potential explanation for why variability may result in lower satisfaction. In addition, this study examines organizational identification as a potential moderator of the relation between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. A total of 244 nonacademic staff in two universities in Ecuador responded to the surveys. The results demonstrated that emotional exhaustion mediated the relation between emotional variability and job satisfaction and that organizational identification weakened the negative relation between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. This research is among the first to investigate emotional variability in organizations and examine the role of organizational identification in buffering the negative effect of emotional variability.     

Observed Leadership Potential of Personnel in a Team Setting: Big Five traits and proximal factors as predictors

The authors explored implications of Big Five traits and proximal factors for the observed leadership potential of personnel in newly formed teams. Big Five traits were designated as distal factors having indirect links to observed leadership potential via three proximal factors: individual perception of team cohesion, team‐oriented proactivity, and teamwork knowledge. Drawing from implicit personality theory, the authors introduced a team‐leader personality profile as a higher‐order construct for explaining covariation among extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. A structural analysis of data from 472 personnel supported hypothesized relationships. Specific findings included validation of a team‐leader personality profile and preliminary support for the measure of team‐oriented proactivity that was developed for this study. Implications of the various findings are discussed.     

Effects of Individual Differences on Applicant Perceptions of an Operational Assessment Center

Knowing to what extent applicant reactions are related to stable individual differences and not only to characteristics of a selection procedure is important for the design and administration of the selection procedure and for dealing with applicants. The aim of this study was to explore relationships between individual differences (Big Five, core self‐evaluations, trait affectivity, and general mental ability) and applicants' perceptions of an operational assessment center (AC). Data from 294 applicants revealed that individual difference variables explained significant variance in their perceptions of the AC, even after controlling for self‐rated and actual performance. Based on these results, the nature of the applicant pool should be considered for designing selection procedures, dealing with applicants, and for research purposes.     

Are Happiness and Life Satisfaction Different Across Religious Groups? Exploring Determinants of Happiness and Life Satisfaction

This study explores whether different religions experience different levels of happiness and life satisfaction and in case this is affected by country economic and cultural environment. Using World Value Survey (from 1981 to 2014), this study found that individual religiosity and country level of development play a significant role in shaping people’s subjective well-being (SWB). Protestants, Buddhists and Roman Catholic were happier and most satisfied with their lives compared to other religious groups. Orthodox has the lowest SWB. Health status, household’s financial satisfaction and freedom of choice are means by which religious groups and governments across the globe can improve the SWB of their citizens.     

Response to McDowell

The rationale for the common rejection of classical societal functionalism is that it entails treating a society as an intelligent purposer, capable of directing its own internal organization in furtherance of survival. But a more acceptable alternative account of the origins of a society's functional organization is conceivable: the individual unconsciously recognizes the needs of his group and directs his behaviour so that they are met. The plausibility of this explanation hangs on whether selection between groups occurs to any significant extent, however, and it is therefore on this question that the plausibility of classical societal functionalism itself depends.     

Skills,historical disclosing,and the end of history: A response to our critics

We appreciate the thoughtful responses we have received on ‘Disclosing New Worlds’. We will respond to the concerns raised by grouping them under three general themes. First, a number of questions arise from lack of clarity about how the matters we undertook to discuss ‐ especially solidarity ‐ appear when one starts by thinking about the primacy of skills and practices. Under this heading we consider (a) whether we need more case studies to make our points, and (b) whether national and other solidarities require willingness to die for the values that produce that solidarity. Second, we take up questions concerning the historical character of the skills of entrepreneurs, virtuous citizens, and culture figures. Here we shall (a) emphasize how we distinguish ourselves from earlier writers on these subjects, (b) consider essentialism, relational identities, and exclusion, (c) answer a number of Habermasian concerns raised by Hoy, (d) speak to Taylor's concern regarding the contingency of solidarity and forgetting, and (e) take up Grant's objection that we are both formalists and relativists. Third, we shall take up the concern, raised mostly by Borgmann, that historical disclosing, that is to say history as the West has known it, is over, and that now all that can be done by those who transform the practices is to make them more and more technological.     

Unhappy Self-Esteem: A Meaningful Exception to the Rule

Self-esteem and well-being are often seen as closely related and sometimes even considered conceptually identical. In marked contrast to this association, the focus of this article is on experiences of a high level of self-esteem coexisting with a low level of well-being: unhappy self-esteem. Although these experiences constitute an exception to the general rule, they nevertheless have a theoretically coherent character. In this article, a framework was used in which the self was considered an organized process, and an idiographic assessment procedure—the method of self-confrontation—was called upon. The self-statements of 15 subjects in the Netherlands showing unhappy self-esteem were compared, and the phenomenon was found to clearly refer to anger and opposition.     

Magnetostatic Field Effect: Stress Syndrome Pattern and Functional Relation With Intensity

The stressing action of a medium-intensity, magnetostatic field was studied for several levels of intensity. Our purpose was (a) to verify a stressing action by display of the general adaptation syndrome Pattern on the growth rate of mice and (b) to establish the relation between effect and field intensity on the same variable. Eight groups of mice showed a linear relation. Moreover, stressing action was noticed at lower intensities than previously suggested.     

Properties of 5f6d electron complexes in the light actinides

Recently temperature-sensitive 5f6d electron complexes were postulated to explain certain properties of the light actinide metals Pa, U, Np and Pu, but the sizes of these complexes remained undefined. Here it is shown that these complexes are localized in the short (covalent) bonds of α-U, govern the anomalous properties of α-Pa and explain the stabilization of certain binary alloy phases between light actinide metals. The systematic variation in certain properties in the light actinide series can be correlated with the presence of 5f6d complexes. In the first three metals (Th, Pa and U), typical 5f effects are more or less suppressed. In contrast these effects exist with clearly different strengths in Np and Pu. Experiments are proposed by which the properties of 5f6d complexes might be studied further.     

The personalisation method applied to a working memory task: Evidence of long-term working memory effects

Ericsson and Kintsch (1995) proposed that, in situations of expertise, individuals can overcome working memory limitations by using long-term working memory. It allows a greater capacity than working memory thanks to long-term memory encoding and retrieving. To test this characteristic, an adaptation of Daneman and Carpenter's (1980) reading span was used. To operationalise expertise, the personalisation method (Guida & Tardieu, 2005) was employed. In Experiment 1, a personalised group, which read reading span sentences that mentioned familiar locations, was compared to a nonpersonalised group, which read sentences with unfamiliar locations. In Experiment 2, a personalised group, which read reading span sentences with neutral locations, was encouraged to mentally personalise these locations by thinking about known locations. This group was compared to a nonpersonalised group, which was encouraged to think about unknown locations. The personalised groups were expected to store and retrieve information in long-term memory via long-term working memory more easily than the nonpersonalised groups, which had to count massively on working memory. The results showed that personalisation enhanced reading span and confirmed one implication of the long-term working memory theory: high- and low-reading-span differences could also be due to long-term memory retrieval. Finally, these results are interpreted in terms of interaction between working memory size and long-term memory knowledge, showing that participants with a lower reading span benefited more from high domain knowledge than participants with a higher reading span.