Personal vulnerability and work‐home interaction: The effect of job performance‐based self‐esteem on work/home conflict and facilitation

Innstrand, S. T., Langballe, E. M., Espnes, G. A., Aasland, O. G. & Falkum, E. (2010). Personal vulnerability and work‐home interaction: The effect of job performance‐based self‐esteem on work/home conflict and facilitation. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 51, 480–487. The aim of the present study was to examine the longitudinal relationship between job performance‐based self‐esteem (JPB‐SE) and work‐home interaction (WHI) in terms of the direction of the interaction (work‐to‐home vs. home‐to‐work) and the effect (conflict vs. facilitation). A sample of 3,475 respondents from eight different occupational groups (lawyers, physicians, nurses, teachers, church ministers, bus drivers, and people working in advertising and information technology) supplied data at two points of time with a two‐year time interval. The two‐wave, cross‐lagged structural equations modeling (SEM) analysis demonstrated reciprocal relationships between these variables, i.e., job performance‐based self‐esteem may act as a precursor as well as an outcome of work‐home interaction. The strongest association was between job performance‐based self‐esteem and work‐to‐home conflict. Previous research on work‐home interaction has mainly focused on situational factors. This longitudinal study expands the work‐home literature by demonstrating how individual vulnerability (job performance‐based self‐esteem) contributes to the explanation of work‐home interactions.     

On the Positive Side of Avoidance Motivation: An Increase in Avoidance Motivation Reduces Procrastination among Students

People who procrastinate often pay a heavy price in terms of illness, stress, and poor performance. Because procrastination has harmful consequences, we predicted that avoidance motivation, a self‐regulation system that protects people from harm, would also protect them against procrastination. We hypothesised that avoidance motivation reduces procrastination, despite the known destructive effects avoidance motivation has on thriving. In Study 1, students high in chronic‐avoidance motivation had the lowest dropout rates from a bonus‐granting longitudinal study. In Study 2, avoidance motivation was negatively related to delay in submitting a term paper, when controlling for chronic procrastination, self‐efficacy, impulsiveness, and age. In Study 3, an experimental manipulation of avoidance motivation reduced procrastination three times, but only once significantly. In Study 4, manipulations of both avoidance motivation and approach motivation, relative to a control motivation, using a within‐subjects design, indicated that the avoidance manipulation reduced procrastination in submitting subsequent reading reports, whereas the approach manipulation did not. We subjected all our results to a meta‐analysis that indicated that avoidance motivation had a significant preventive effect on procrastination. We conclude that avoidance motivation can reduce procrastination, and suggest that our avoidance‐manipulation techniques could be applied across a variety of organisational and educational settings.     

Sensing Feeling Alive: Attentiveness to Movements in/with Embodied Teaching

Studies in Philosophy and Education - This is an explorative work on teaching. The understanding of teaching that I use in my work is that teaching is action, it happens in the present – here...     

Linking Substance Use and Problem Behavior Across Three Generations

This study examined patterns of between-generation continuity in substance use from generation 1 (G1) parents to generation 2 (G2) adolescents and from G2 adult substance use and G1 substance use to generation 3 (G3) problem behavior in childhood. Structural equation modeling of prospective, longitudinal data from 808 participants, their parents, and their children showed low levels of G1 to G2 cross-generational continuity in the general tendency to use drugs. This effect was fully mediated by G2 early adolescent behavior problems. Drug-specific residual effects were observed across generations for cigarette smoking. Once established in adolescence, substance use in G2 showed stability over time. G2 substance use at age 27 significantly predicted G3 problem behavior. G1 substance use also was related to G3 problem behavior indirectly. These findings highlight the importance of interrupting intergenerational cycles of substance use and problem behavior.     

From the left to the right: How the brain compensates progressive loss of language function

In normal right-handed subjects language production usually is a function oft the left brain hemisphere. Patients with aphasia following brain damage to the left hemisphere have a considerable potential to compensate for the loss of this function. Sometimes, but not always, areas of the right hemisphere which are homologous to language areas of the left hemisphere in normal subjects are successfully employed for compensation but this integration process may need time to develop. We investigated right-handed patients with left hemisphere brain tumors as a model of continuously progressive brain damage to left hemisphere language areas using functional neuroimaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to identify factors which determine successful compensation of lost language function. Only patients with slowly progressing brain lesions recovered right-sided language function as detected by TMS. In patients with rapidly progressive lesions no right-sided language function was found and language performance was linearly correlated with the lateralization of language related brain activation to the left hemisphere. It can thus be concluded that time is the factor which determines successful integration of the right hemisphere into the language network for compensation of lost left hemisphere language function.     

Qualitative and quantitative change in the dynamics of motor learning

The experiments examined qualitative and quantitative changes in the dynamics of learning a novel motor skill (roller ball task) as a function of the manipulation of a control parameter (initial ball speed). The focus was on the relation between the rates of change in performance over practice time and the changing time scales of the evolving attractor dynamic. Results showed 3 different learning patterns to the changes in the dynamics as a function of practice that were mediated by the initial ball speed. Only participants who learned the task showed a bifurcation in coordination mode that was preceded by enhanced performance variability. The observed multiple time scales to motor learning are interpreted as the products of the dynamical stability and instability realized from (a) the continually evolving landscape dynamics due to bifurcations between attractor organization and (b) the transient phenomena associated with moving toward and away from fixed-point dynamics.     

Analogical reasoning in handling emerging technologies: the case of umbilical cord blood biobanking

How are we individually and as a society to handle new and emerging technologies? This challenging question underlies much of the bioethical debates of modern times. To address this question we need suitable conceptions of the new technology and ways of identifying its proper management and regulation. To establish conceptions and to find ways to handle emerging technologies we tend to use analogies extensively. The aim of this article is to investigate the role that analogies play or may play in the processes of understanding and managing new technology. More precisely we aim to unveil the role of analogies as analytical devices in exploring the "being" of the new technology as well the normative function of analogies in conceptualizing the characteristics and applications of new technology. Umbilical cord blood biobanking will be used as a case to investigate these roles and functions.     

Associations between volume of alcohol consumption and social status, intelligence, and personality in a sample of young adult Danes

Relatively few studies have investigated associations between volume of alcohol consumption and psychological characteristics in normal samples. A sub-sample, comprising 363 men and 331 women between 29 and 34 years of age, was selected from the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort on the basis of perinatal records. The sample was divided into four consumption categories: abstainers (including occasional drinkers), light, moderate, and risk drinkers. ANOVA and relevant contrasts were used to test the significance of differences among consumption categories. Both abstaining and risk drinking were associated with low social status family background, low education and intelligence. Abstaining was associated with low disinhibition and social recognition scores, while risk drinking was associated with high neuroticism and, in males, high disinhibition, low social recognition, and low achievement scores. Compared with light drinkers, a more "carefree" life orientation characterized male moderate drinkers, while relatively high scores on anxiety, dysthymia, and somatoform symptom scales characterized female moderate drinkers.     

Prevalence of alcohol use by rural primary care outpatients in South Africa

In a primary care outpatient sample of 600 rural South Africans 37.4% of men and 10.7% of women were identified as hazardous drinkers, and 9.2% of men and 0.3% of women met criteria for probable alcohol dependence or harmful drinking as defined by AUDIT. Logistic multiple regression identified men and being single, divorced, or widowed as predictors for hazardous and harmful drinking.