Employees' Political Skill and Job Performance: An Inverted U‐Shaped Relation?

During the past decade, the construct of political skill has attracted a lot of attention. In particular, its relation to job performance has been examined. With regard to this link, it is typically proposed that political skill affects job performance in a positive linear manner. However, in this article it is suggested that intermediate levels of employees' political skill yield the highest job performance, implying that this association is in fact represented by an inverted U‐shape. Findings from two field studies (N₁ = 178, N₂ = 115 employee‐supervisor‐colleague triads) that incorporated different sample characteristics (early career employees, established employees), job performance dimensions (overall, task, contextual, and adaptive performance), and rating sources (supervisors and colleagues) supported this idea. Across different analyses, employees with intermediate levels of political skill received higher job performance ratings compared to those with lower and higher levels, respectively. In addition, the nature of the relationships between employees and their raters was found to moderate this curvilinear effect. Specifically, besides the fact that employees who had close working relationships with their raters generally received higher job performance ratings, the decreases in the job performance ratings of employees high in political skill were less pronounced when they had close relationships.     

The Tower of London Test: different scoring criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment

The Tower of London (TOL) is used for evaluating planning skills, which is a component of the executive functions. Different versions and scoring criteria were developed for this task, and some of them present with different psychometrical properties. This study aimed to evaluate two specific scoring methods of the TOL in diagnosing Mild Cognitive Impairment and probable Alzheimer's disease. The TOL total scores from 60 patients of each diagnosis were compared with the performance of 60 healthy-aged controls using receiver operating characteristics analysis and multinomial logistic regression. Krikorian method better diagnosed Alzheimer's disease, while Portellas's was better at discriminating healthy controls from Mild Cognitive Impairment, but were not efficient at comparing this last group with Alzheimer's patients. Regression analysis indicates that in addition to screening tests, TOL improves the classification of the three groups. The results suggest the two scoring methods used for this task may be useful for different diagnostic purposes.     

Gratitude, Ressentiment, and Citizenship Education

Patricia White (Stud Philos Educ 18:43–52, 1999) argues that the virtue gratitude is essential to a flourishing democracy because it helps foster universal and reciprocal amity between citizens. Citizens who participate in this reciprocal relationship ought to be encouraged to recognize that “much that people do does in fact help to make communal civic life less brutish, pleasanter and more flourishing.” This is the case even when the majority of citizens do not intentionally seek to make civic life better for others. Were citizens to recognize the appropriateness of gratitude in these situations, the bonds of our democratic communities would be strengthened. In this paper, I examine White’s argument more carefully, arguing that it fails to address adequately the difficulties that arise when we attempt to encourage the virtue of gratitude in our students. To address these difficulties, I turn to an unlikely source for democratic inspiration: Friedrich Nietzsche. In spite of his well-known anti-democratic sentiments, Nietzsche offers democratic citizens insights into the social value of gratitude. I argue that Nietzsche’s ideas resolve the educational difficulties in White’s argument and viably establish gratitude as an important democratic virtue that ought to be cultivated.     

Poor Sleep as a Risk Factor for Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Adolescent Girls

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between poor sleep and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), and to test the hypothesis that poor sleep is a risk factor for the development of NSSI in young adolescents. Questionnaire data were used from a 2-wave longitudinal study of a community sample of 881 young Swedish adolescents. The results showed that 7 % of the girls reported poor sleep (never or seldom sleeping well), and 20–26 % of the girls reported repeated NSSI (at least 5 instances). Poor sleep was associated prospectively with NSSI among girls, but not among boys. Of girls who responded that they seldom or never slept well at T1, 77 % reported repeated NSSI 1 year later. Poor sleep at T1 was found to predict the incidence of new cases of repeated NSSI in girls at T2, independently of their degree of psychopathology. No similar relationship between poor sleep and NSSI was found in boys. The present results suggest that screening for poor sleep in adolescents may serve to identify a subgroup of girls at risk for developing NSSI. It is concluded that poor sleep in young girls should be taken seriously, even in the absence of other self-reported psychological problems, and that interventions targeted at sleep disturbances may be important for prevention.