To Seek or Not to Seek: The Relationship Between Help Seeking and Job Performance Evaluations as Moderated by Task-Relevant Expertise

The present study explored the relationship between level of employees' help-seeking behavior and their overall job evaluations. It was hypothesized that employees would seek more help from others whom they perceive as more knowledgeable than they are and that they would seek more help from superiors than from coworkers. Regarding the link between amount of help seeking and performance evaluations, it was predicted that the relationship between amount of help seeking and evaluations of overall job performance are curvilinear and affected by the perceived expertise of the helper. Study participants were employees of a chemical plant, and they reported on the amount of help seeking that they engaged in with superiors and coworkers. Data on the perceived expertise of the help seeker and the help giver in any helping interaction were collected. Most recent job performance evaluations as reported by participants' superiors served as a measure of job performance. The analyses indicate that in line with prediction, the relationships between help seeking and performance evaluations were curvilinear. These relationships were moderated by the help seeker's relative task-relevant expertise. The theoretical implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Safety Behavior After Extinction Triggers a Return of Threat Expectancy

Safety behavior is involved in the maintenance of anxiety disorders, presumably because it prevents the violation of negative expectancies. Recent research showed that safety behavior is resistant to fear extinction. This fear conditioning study investigated whether safety behavior after fear extinction triggers a return of fear in healthy participants. Participants learned that two stimuli (A and C) were followed by an aversive loud noise (“threat”), and one stimulus (B) was not. Participants then learned to use safety behavior that prevented the loud noise. Next, A and C were no longer followed by the loud noise, which typically led to extinction of threat expectancy. Safety behavior then became available again for C, but not for A and B. All participants used safety behavior on these C trials. In a final test phase, A, B, and C were presented once without the availability to use safety behavior. At each stimulus presentation, participants rated threat expectancy by indicating to what extent they expected that the loud noise would follow. Compared with the last extinction trial, threat expectancy increased for C in the test phase, whereas it did not increase for A and B. Hence, safety behavior after the extinction of classically conditioned fear caused a partial return of fear. The findings suggest that safety behavior may be involved in relapse after exposure-based therapy for anxiety disorders.     

In Honor of My Father and My Son

The author advises survivors on the four tasks of grief and reflects on the suicide of her college-age son in 1977 and the recent death of her father, a suicidologist, from age-related causes. She describes current collaborative efforts by organizations dedicated to the prevention and aftermath of suicide.     

Age-related differences in irrelevant-speech effects

Three experiments examined age-related differences in irrelevant-speech effects. Younger and older adults were required to recall short prose texts or lists of semantically related words presented visually together with distractor speech. In all experiments, older adults made more semantically related intrusion errors from the irrelevant speech than younger adults. Results of a source memory test suggested that these age-related differences in interference are most likely due to both inhibitory deficits and source-monitoring problems. The results lend partial support to the inhibition deficit theory of cognitive aging.     

Expectancy bias and the persistence of posttraumatic stress

Anxious individuals tend to overestimate the probability that encounters with anxiogenic stimuli (CS) will be followed by aversive consequences (UCS). This study examined whether such (biased) UCS expectancies predict the persistence of PTSD symptoms. A total of 265 soldiers were recruited before a four-month deployment to Iraq in 2004. About 2-5 months after deployment, 171 (65%) soldiers completed self-report scales about adverse events in Iraq and PTSD symptoms, and a UCS expectancy task. In this task, participants were exposed to a series of deployment-related and deployment-unrelated (control) picture stimuli. For each trial, the participants indicated the subjective probability that a particular slide would be followed by an imminent loud noise. Around 15 months after deployment, 130 (76%) soldiers completed surveys about PTSD symptoms again. Only a small group of participants had high levels of PTSD symptoms. Regression analyses showed that the level of PTSD symptoms at 15 months was predicted by earlier PTSD symptoms, but also and independently by an enhanced UCS expectancy to deployment-related stimuli. The findings support the notion that UCS expectancy bias contributes to the persistence of PTSD symptoms.     

Emotion Control Values and Responding to an Anger Provocation inAsian-American and European-American Individuals

The present research examined whether Asian-American (AA) versus European-American (EA) women differed in experiential, expressive, or autonomic physiological responding to a laboratory anger provocation and assessed the mediating role of values about emotional control. Results indicate that AA participants reported and behaviorally displayed less anger than EA participants, while there were no group differences in physiological responses. Observed differences in emotional responses were partially mediated by emotion control values, suggesting a potential mechanism for effects of cultural background on anger responding.     

Commitment and rival attractiveness: Their effects on male and female reactions to jealousy-arousing situations

The present study explored the way in which males and females are affected by a rival's attractiveness and by the commitment to an alternative relationship in jealousy provoking situations. Subjects, who were all married between 5 and 20 years, read experimental vignettes and rated the protagonist's likely responses. Further, data on several personal variables (e.g., dispositional jealousy; self-esteem and quality of marital relationship) were collected. The data indicate that responses to the vignettes were mediated by an interaction between the rival attractiveness, the degree of commitment to alternative relationships and subject's gender. Male responses appeared to be driven by their concern with protecting their egos; females, on the other hand, seemed most concerned with protecting their relationships. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Emerging Technologies and Family Communication: The Case of International Students

Families with members living in different countries have embraced emerging technologies but little is known of the impact of mediated communication among these families. Economic globalization and the emergence of accessible information communication technologies have been parallel to the unprecedented number of higher education students who now travel abroad to study. Understanding the students’ experience may expand our knowledge on how the adoption of emerging technology is shaping transnational family relationships. In this study, international students were interviewed to share their perspectives of how mediated family communication may impact their wellbeing. Students from 14 countries and attending a university in Spain participated in 12 in-depth interviews and one focus group (n?=?10). Overall, the results suggest emerging technologies enable the maintenance of close relationships, foster a sense of connectedness, and help students to better adapt to a new environment. Students’ choices of technology are influenced by accessibility factors and cost. The type of relationship students have with their families seem to become more pronounced with interactions mediated by emerging technology. Since members of the younger generation may be more technologically literate than their predecessors, a shift in the role of who controls the use of and supplies advice about technology is manifest, with young adults advising parents about technology choices. Therefore, the control of the communication—i.e., frequency and length—is transferred from parents to students. According to students, mediated family exchanges strengthen their physical, emotional, and social wellbeing. However, the continuous availability of the technology among family members may also be stressful.