Drive and Direction: Empathy with Intended Targets Moderates the Proactive Personality–Job Performance Relationship via Work Engagement

Proactive employees are self-starting and driven. Thus, they typically exhibit high levels of work engagement. While work engagement reflects the degree to which employees are attentive and absorbed when performing their work tasks, it does not guarantee effective job performance unless their actions are strategic. We draw on Grant and Ashford’s (2008) proactivity framework to develop a drive and direction contingency model that expands our understanding of how and when proactive personality predicts job performance via work engagement. We argue that employee’s drive (represented by the positive relation of proactive personality with work engagement) predicts job performance only when the employee also has high (vs. low) empathy with their intended targets, such as customers. Empathy with intended targets allows employees to understand and feel their targets’ concerns and feelings, thus providing a direction that guides their work engagement to address their targets’ interests and predict job performance. Results from a multiple-source (employees, supervisors, and organizational records) lagged (T1–T2) field study and a lab experiment support our model. We discuss the implications, limitations, and future directions of our findings.     

The Effect of Mindfulness-based Programs on Cognitive Function in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) are increasingly utilized to improve mental health. Interest in the putative effects of MBPs on cognitive function is also growing. This...     

Evidence of different developmental trajectories for length estimation according to egocentric and allocentric viewpoints in children and adults

This study investigated the influence of egocentric and allocentric viewpoints on a comparison task of length estimation in children and adults. A total of 100 participants ranging in age from 5 years to adulthood were presented with virtual scenes representing a park landscape with two paths, one straight and one serpentine. Scenes were presented either from an egocentric or allocentric viewpoint. Results showed that when the two paths had the same length, participants always overestimated the length of the straight line for allocentric trials, whereas a development from a systematic overestimation in children to an underestimation of the straight line length in adults was found for egocentric trials. We discuss these findings in terms of the influences of both bias-inhibition processes and school acquisitions.     

Self-reflection on emancipatory education practices with the ‘oppressed’ in community health

North American community health academics encourage the use of emancipatory education for the community development with vulnerable populations. Topics such as critical consciousness-raising, social justice, and political action constitute a significant part of the curricula. They often refer to Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. However, Freire has too often been presented as quasi-synonymous with a conception of critical education that de-emphasizes the context and ignores the history of his praxis. He has been made into a non-historical creator who invented a fully-formed point of view out of nothing. A self-reflection in Northeast Brazil revealed that Freire’s ideas were rooted in a Brazilian tradition with which he was familiar and which served him as a point of reference, most notably the ideas of Alvaro Vieira Pinto, a Brazilian philosopher, as well as a number of Russian and German populists.     

Gender Differences in Mental Health: The Mediating Role of Perceived Personal Discrimination

Why is women's mental health inferior to that of men? This study hypothesized that women's mental health is not as good as men's because women perceive more personal discrimination. It was confirmed that women obtained higher scores than did men on a subjective scale of psychological distress. Additionally, women perceived greater personal and group discrimination than did men. Perceived personal discrimination proved to be the more robust predictor of psychological distress. This was evident when results of a mediation analysis revealed that gender differences in subjective distress were mediated by the measure of perceived personal discrimination, but not by the measure of group discrimination.     

Virtual prejudice

According to recent theorizing in social psychology, social behavior is controlled not only by reflective, but also by impulsive systems. The latter are based on associative links that may influence behavior without intent. The current study examined how prejudiced implicit associations affect physiological and automatic behavioral responses. Our native Dutch participants were immersed in a virtual environment in which they encountered virtual persons (avatars) with either White or Moroccan facial features. In line with our predictions, participants maintained more distance and showed an increase in skin conductance level when approaching Moroccan avatars as opposed to White avatars. Participants’ implicit negative associations with Moroccans moderated both effects. Moreover, evidence was found that the relation between implicit prejudice and distance effects was fully mediated by skin conductance level effects. These data demonstrate how prejudiced implicit associations may unintentionally lead to impulsive discriminatory responses.     

Psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Flow State Scale

The purpose of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of a Spanish translation of the Flow State Scale (FSS; Jackson & Marsh, 1996). This instrument is used to assess the Flow State in participants of physical activity, although it can be adapted to other contexts (such as work, educational contexts, etc.). This construct can be considered the optimal psychological state to carry out an activity, being closely related to motivation and personal enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). A sample of 2036 athletes was recruited from diverse sports activities. The results revealed satisfactory validity and internal consistency of the instrument, obtaining a factor model made up of a main factor and nine subscales. The correlations between motivational orientations and the flow state are highlighted. The Spanish translation of this instrument is found to be acceptable, with similar psychometric properties as the original scale, although future research in other contexts is needed to support these outcomes.     

Distress in couples coping with cancer: a meta-analysis and critical review of role and gender effects

Research concerning distress in couples coping with cancer was integrated using meta-analysis and narrative critical appraisal. Individual levels of distress were determined more by gender than by the role of being the person with cancer versus that person's partner. That is, women reported consistently more distress than men regardless of their role (standardized mean difference = 0.31). The association between patient and partner distress within couples was only moderate (r = .29) but is sufficient to warrant further consideration of the notion that these couples react as an emotional system rather than as individuals. It is noteworthy that this association is not moderated by gender. With a general lack of comparison groups, the question of how much distress can be ascribed to the cancer experience cannot be answered decisively; elevations in distress are probably modest. We critically discuss these results, identify important unanswered questions, and indicate directions for future research. Attention needs to be directed toward factors other than cancer as direct influences of distress in these couples and to mediators and moderators of the cancer experience.