DIVISION OF HOUSEHOLD LABOR, STRAIN, AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS AMONG MEXICAN AMERICANS AND NON-HISPANIC WHITES

This article presents preliminary tests of the hypothesis that household labor serves as a source of strain and is indirectly associated with depressive symptoms. It also examines associations of gender and Mexican-American ethnicity with housework, household strain, and depressed mood. Respondents are 668 Mexican Americans and 394 non-Hispanic whites. Because respondents are randomly selected community residents and are married, average strain and depressive symptom levels are low. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that housework affects depressed mood indirectly, through household strain. Among women, housework is associated with an increased likelihood of household strain, which, in turn, is associated with depressive symptoms. Among men, housework is unrelated to household strain, but household strain is associated with depressed mood. Although ethnicity and gender are associated with household division of labor, with more traditional patterns among Mexican Americans, ethnicity does not modify associations among housework, household strain, and depressive symptoms.     

Emergent conditional discrimination in children: Matching to compound stimuli

This study reports two experiments that first taught preschool children identity-matching to compound sample and compound comparison stimuli. A compound stimulus consisted of a colour and a form superimposed on one another. Test sessions assessed whether children related the form and colour elements of a particular compound stimulus. The test for this was matching to sample in which an arbitrary conditional discrimination was required. A majority of the children selected the correct colour comparison in the presence of each form sample. The children also showed the reverse sample-comparison relations: they matched form comparisons to the corresponding colour samples, respectively. In the context of these arbitrary relations, new colours were paired with the form elements of the samples (Experiment 1), and new form elements were paired with the colour elements of the comparisons (Experiment 2). Subsequent tests assessed whether the new stimulus elements had control over responding when presented as single samples or comparisons. Test results showed that most subjects were able to relate the new stimulus elements to the corresponding colour and form elements, respectively. The study demonstrated that matching to compound stimuli in training and testing conditionsMaygenerate conditional relations between the individual stimulus elements.     

Über den Einfluß des phänomenalen Abstandes auf die Unterschiedsschwelle für Helligkeiten

Ohne Zusammenfassung Mit 12 Textabbildungen.     

Now Streaming: On Unconscious Communications in the Analytic Process

ABSTRACT

In this article, I illustrate the concept of unconscious communication by means of a clinical example in which a patient was able to recover the memory of a key adolescence experience as the result of the interplay of unconscious messages transmitted between himself and his analyst. When the patient spotted the analyst driving an old, beat-up family car, this triggered an unconscious memory of this painful adolescent episode, one that epitomized and stood for his troubled and disappointing relationship with his father. This memory, which was expressed nonverbally, in turn, evoked a memory in the analyst from his own adolescence that put him in touch with the patient‘s traumatic, adolescent experience, material that had come up previously in the analysis but had not been adequately dealt with or worked through. By grasping the meaning of the interplay of these unconscious messages, the analyst was able to help the patient get in touch with, better understand, and work through, an experience that had an enduring impact on his future life.     

Contextualizing psychological contracts research: a multi-sample study of shared individual psychological contract fulfilment

ABSTRACT

Research on psychological contracts has made significant contributions to theoretically advancing our understanding of the employee-employer exchange relationship and its implications for organizational practice. However, the predominant emphasis of this empirical research has been on the individual level of analysis and in the process does not give sufficient attention to contextual influences. Teams have become a common feature in organizations today and provide a proximal context through which to understand how teams affect individuals’ evaluation of their psychological contract. Based on the macrosociological perspective of social exchange theory as well as theories on the role of social influence in psychological contract evaluations, we examine how shared individual psychological contract fulfilment (PCF) shapes the relationship between individual PCF and outcomes (employee’s own contributions and contextual performance) at the individual level as well as the predictors (group POS) and consequences (average employee contributions and average contextual performance) of shared individual PCF at the team level. Our findings from three studies, representing a total sample of 995 employees and 170 teams, provide support for the study hypotheses. This paper contributes to the psychological contract literature by conceptually and empirically addressing the role of a team context (shared individual PCF) and its impact on individual- and team-level relationships.