Traditional and modern characteristics across the generations: similarities and discrepancies

The authors examined, through an analysis of self-construals and beliefs about social interaction, the traditional and modern orientations of younger and older generations of Taiwanese people. The authors surveyed 169 pairs of parent-child dyads with a battery of structured questionnaires. Within-subjects analyses revealed high generational correlations as well as discrepancies in both traditional and modern characteristics. Between-subjects analyses further indicated that individual traditional and modern characteristics were affected by age and gender and by their interactions. The authors discuss (a) the pattern of generational similarities and discrepancies in the framework of culture stability and change and (b) the coexistence of traditional and modern characteristics in a rapidly changing society.     

Emotion understanding, theory of mind, and prosocial orientation: Relations over time in early childhood

Data were collected when children were 42, 54, and 72 months of age (Ns=210, 191, and 172 for T1, T2, and T3, respectively). Children's emotion understanding (EU) and theory of mind (ToM) were examined as predictors of children's prosocial orientation within and across time. EU positively related to children's sympathy across 2.5 years, and T1 EU positively related to parent-reported prosocial orientation concurrently and across 1 year (T2). T2 ToM positively related to parents' reports of sympathy and prosocial orientation concurrently and 18 months later (T3); in contrast, T3 ToM did not relate to sympathy or prosocial orientation. T2 ToM accounted for marginally significant variance (p<0.058) in T3 mother-reported prosocial orientation over and above that accounted for by T2 prosocial orientation. Fostering the development of EU and ToM may contribute to children's prosocial orientation.     

A multilevel study on the relationships between work characteristics, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and organizational citizenship behavior: the case of Taiwanese police duty-executing organizations

Public security, traffic management, and service for the people are the 3 major functions of policing in Taiwan. This definition encompasses not only the traditional job characteristics, but also the level of contextual characteristics and social characteristics because of police work's characteristics and its frequent interaction with the public. Thus, the present study conducted a multilevel model analysis by taking self-efficacy and collective efficacy as the mediating variables. The purpose was to investigate the influences of motivational work characteristics (knowledge-oriented) and social work characteristics (socially and contextually oriented) of work-design model on the police officers' organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), by using first-line police officers in Taiwan as the research objects. The study showed not only that knowledge characteristics will influence the self-efficacy of a police officer and that self-efficacy can in turn influence individual police officers' OCB, but also the contextual effect of social characteristics, contextual characteristics, and collective efficacy on self-efficacy and individuals' OCB. Additionally, there was a crosslevel moderating effect from contextual characteristics on the relationship between knowledge characteristics and self-efficacy and the relationship between self-efficacy and the individuals' OCB. The authors conclude the article with research implications.     

How are depression and autobiographical memory retrieval related to culture?

This study investigated how culture influences the association between autobiographical memory retrieval and depression. Thirty clinically depressed patients and 30 controls, 15 each from Britain and Taiwan, completed the English and Chinese versions of the Autobiographical Memory Cueing Task (AMT). Overall, the depressed individuals from both cultural groups retrieved significantly fewer specific and more categoric autobiographical memories than their matched, nondepressed controls. Within the control groups, the British participants retrieved significantly more specific autobiographical memories and fewer categoric memories than their Taiwanese counterparts. These results suggest that difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories typical of depression may be a cognitive bias that occurs across cultures.     

Creaturely Solidarity

This essay examines several recent contributions to the growing literature on animal ethics from Christian perspectives. I categorize the four books under review in one of three ways depending on the scholars' methodological points of departure: (1) a reconstruction of the place of other animals in Christian history through a selective retrieval of texts and practices; (2) an identification of a key Christian ethical principle; and (3) a reconsideration of foundational doctrines of systematic theology. On the premise that social ethicists are interested in not only understanding the world, but also changing it, I observe that these authors have offered different answers to the following three questions: (1) whether the theoretical basis for reform is ultimately grounded upon notions of human sameness or difference with other animals; (2) whether scholar‐activists should emphasize logic over passion or values over interests (or vice versa) in their calls for transformation; and (3) whether moral motivation for their targeted audiences is best served by reliance upon secular argumentation and interdisciplinary research or upon the distinctive claims of revelation and other tradition‐specific norms. I conclude by offering my own thoughts about which approaches might prove more effective than others.     

Linking ICT Availability Demands to Burnout and Work-Family Conflict: The Roles of Workplace Telepressure and Dispositional Self-Regulation

Abstract

The advancement of technology has led to an increasingly permeable boundary between work and off-work time. As such, employees may face pressure to immediately respond to work-related information and communication technology (ICT) messages during off-work time. This study examines the mediating role of workplace telepressure on the relationships between ICT availability demands with burnout and work-family conflict, as well as the moderating effects of self-regulation on these relationships. Data were collected from 185 full-time employees at two time points. Results indicated full support for the moderated mediation model, demonstrating that workplace telepressure mediated the relationships between ICT availability demands and burnout and work-family conflict. Moreover, dispositional self-regulation strengthened the direct effect of ICT availability demands on workplace telepressure and the indirect effects of ICT availability demands on burnout and work-family conflict. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.