Stressful work, psychological job strain, and turnover: a 2-year prospective cohort study of truck drivers

Based on a model that combines existing organizational stress theory and job transition theory, this 2-year longitudinal study examined antecedents and consequences of turnover among Dutch truck drivers. For this purpose, self-reported data on stressful work (job demands and control), psychological strain (need for recovery after work and fatigue), and turnover were obtained from 820 drivers in 1998 and 2000. In agreement with the model, the results showed that strain mediates the influence of stressful work on voluntary turnover. Also in conformity with the model, job movement to any job outside the trucking industry (i.e., interoccupational turnover) resulted in a larger strain reduction as compared to job movement within the trucking industry (intraoccupational turnover). Finally, strain was found to stimulate interoccupational turnover more strongly than it stimulated intraoccupational turnover. These findings provide a thorough validation of existing turnover theory and give new insights into the turnover (decision) process.     

The Mediation Effect of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms on the Relationship of Intimate Partner Violence and IFN-γ Levels

Background: Women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) report greater stress and negative health consequences than nonabused women. Although an association between psychological stress and altered immune function has been shown, IPV studies have not investigated this relationship. Objective: This study explored the association of IPV with mental health symptoms and an immune marker to determine if posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms mediate the effect of IPV on pro-inflammatory (IFN-γ) cytokine levels. Methods: A cross-sectional, comparative design was used to compare 62 women with IPV and 39 nonabused women. Results: Mean IFN-γ values were higher in abused women and in women with current PTSD symptoms. There were no significant relationships with potential confounding variables that could provide an alternative explanation for the increase in production of proinflammatory cytokines. Conclusions: PTSD symptoms mediate the association between IPV and IFN-γ levels and may partially explain the association of mental health symptoms with physical health sequelae in IPV.     

An online measure of thought suppression

An online thought-suppression paradigm was developed to test predictions of ironic process theory. Participants concentrated on or suppressed a particular semantic category. Semantic activation was indexed by the latency to name words from the category. In Experiments 1 and 2, an analog intrusion was introduced while participants were trying to suppress the information. Results consistent with ironic process theory were observed using words with polar opposites in Experiment 1 and words without polar opposites in Experiment 2. To determine whether these effects were dependent on the analog intrusion, Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 without the intrusion. Concentration generated semantic activation, but suppression exacerbated this activation. The data imply that hyperaccessibility results from efforts to suppress, whereas the processes of thought suppression identified by ironic process theory require the presence of material inconsistent with a desired cognitive state.     

Social and psychiatric influences on urban-rural differentials in Australian suicide

The purpose of this study was to investigate urban-rural differentials in Australian suicide rates, and to examine influences that previously have remained largely speculative. Suicide rates for males (all ages and young adults) were significantly higher in rural areas compared to urban areas. Urban-rural suicide rate differences in males were rendered nonsignificant after adjustment for migrant and area socioeconomic status. Adjusting for mental disorder prevalence, in addition to migrant status, reduced the excess suicide risk in rural areas; the excess was reduced further with addition of mental health service utilization. The implications of this study are that socioeconomic circumstances in rural populations contribute to higher male suicide rates compared to urban areas, but these conditions may be partly mediated by mental disorder prevalence and mental health service utilization.     

Story understanding and counterfactual reasoning

D. Kahneman and A. Tversky (1982), in a seminal study on counterfactual reasoning, claimed empirical support for a simulation heuristic wherein ease of converting unusual conditions determines their selection as causes over normal conditions. Discourse analysis of their stories revealed a confounding of explanation and normality. A connectionist simulation of online comprehension and memory access of alternative conditions without conversion accounted for their data. Normality and explanation were varied independently in 2 experiments. Explanation but not normality affected the rank ordering of counterfactual conditions after reading. Access of alternative conditions in simulation was again the best predictor of empirical findings. Comprehension and memory operate where stories communicate information for decision making such as counterfactual reasoning and hindsight bias.     

Loneliness and alcoholism risk in late adolescence: a comparative study of adults and adolescents.

The Short Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (SMAST) was administered via phone survey to a random sample of subjects 18 years of age and older in a large metropolitan county. Among late adolescents (aged 18 to 20), lonely females had the highest mean score on the SMAST, indicating a higher degree of alcoholism risk than lonely males and nonlonely males and females. Among lonely females, late adolescents scored higher on the SMAST than any other age group. For males, loneliness did not appear to increase alcoholism risk in the late adolescent age group, but did appear to do so during the early and middle adulthood years. The implications of these findings for mental health professionals and adolescent substance abuse treatment personnel are discussed.     

Occupational physical activity as an indicator of health and fitness

Recent government guidelines suggest that simply increasing physical activity, regardless of mode, leads to improved health profiles. This study examined the relationship between amount of work-related physical activity of United States Forest Service (USFS) workers and 12 indicators of health and fitness. Subjects were 110 USFS workers recruited from 8 separate USFS ranger stations in the Pacific Northwest. The associations between work-related physical activity and indicators of health and fitness indicated the 63 workers who were physically active on the job displayed better overall health and fitness patterns as evidenced by higher aerobic capacity, lower body fat, and greater muscular flexibility than their 47 inactive peers.     

Place learning in virtual space III: Investigation of spatial navigation training procedures and their application to fMRI and clinical neuropsychology

This paper describes the utilization of a desktop virtual environment task, the Computer-Generated (C-G) Arena, in the study of human spatial navigation. First, four experiments examined the efficacy of various training procedures in the C-G Arena. In Experiment 1, participants efficiently located a hidden target after only observing the virtual environment from a fixed position (placement learning). In Experiment 2, participants efficiently located a hidden target after only observing an experimenter search the virtual environment (observational learning). In Experiment 3, participants failed to display alatent learning effect in the virtual environment. In Experiment 4, all training procedures effectively taught participants the layout of the virtual environment, but the observational learning procedure most effectivelytaught participants the location of a hidden target within the environment. Finally, two experiments demonstrated the application of C-G Arena procedures to neuroimaging (Experiment 5) and neuropsychological (Experiment 6) investigations of human spatial navigation.     

Interpersonal leveling,independence, and self‐enhancement: a comparison between Denmark and the US,and a relational practice framework for cultural psychology

We argue that the relational model that people use for organizing specific social interactions in any culture determines whether people self‐enhance. Self‐enhancement is not a functional consequence of the (independent or interdependent) cultural model of self. Across three studies, Danes self‐enhanced considerably less than did Americans but were more independent on the Twenty Statements Test, made more individual attributions about social life, made more autonomous scenario choices, and were more independent on the self‐construal scale. Public modesty did not account for these Danish‐American differences in self‐enhancement. However, Danes practiced interpersonal leveling, preferring equality of outcome more than did Americans. This leveling strongly and inversely predicted self‐enhancement within both cultures and mediated Danish‐American differences in self‐enhancement. In contrast, no independence measure systematically predicted self‐enhancement within both cultures nor mediated the cultural differences in self‐enhancement. This dissociation of independence and self‐enhancement demonstrates that self‐enhancing downward social comparisons are not functionally necessary for an independent concept of self. We conclude that social relationships, not the model of the self, mediate the mutual constitution of psyche and culture. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.