The Interactive Role of Negative Affectivity and Job Characteristics: Are High-NA Employees Destined to Be Unhappy at Work?1

The present study examined whether employees high in negative affectivity (NA) are destined to be unhappy at work. Managerial employees provided information regarding perceptions of job characteristics, negative affectivity (NA), job satisfaction, and intentions to turnover. Using hierarchical regression, our findings suggest that employees who reported being high NA were more reactive to the environmental cues of perceived job scope. Specifically, NA interacted with job scope such that individuals high in NA who perceived their jobs as being higher (lower) in scope reported more (less) job satisfaction than did individuals low in NA. Implications for organizations and future research directions are discussed.     

When days are numbered: calendar structure and the development of calendar processing in English and Chinese.

Unlike English, Chinese uses a numerical system for naming months and days. This study explored whether this difference in naming affects the development of simple calendar calculation. Eight- and 10-year-old children as well as undergraduates in China and the United States were asked to name the day or month that comes a specified time before or after a given day or month. In each age group Chinese speakers primarily used calculation based on calendar names to solve these tasks, while English speakers primarily resorted to reciting the names. The magnitude of these differences was substantial; on difficult tasks Chinese fourth graders performed at speeds comparable to those of English-speaking adults. Implications for models of how linguistic structure affects cognition are discussed.     

Mitigating Burnout Among High-NA Employees in Health Care: What Can Organizations Do?

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which factors in the nursing environment have differential effects on burnout levels among nurses high and low in negative affectivity (NA). Specifically, this field study examined the moderating relationships among role ambiguity, role conflict, and collective efficacy on the NA–burnout relationship among nurses in a hospital setting. Findings suggest that perceived role conflict exacerbates while perceptions of collective efficacy reduce specific dimensions of burnout for nurses high in NA. These results offer some evidence regarding which environmental characteristics may mitigate burnout for high-NA nurses.     

Iterated Belief Revision, Reliability, and Inductive Amnesia

Belief revision theory concerns methods for reformulating an agent's epistemic state when the agent's beliefs are refuted by new information. The usual guiding principle in the design of such methods is to preserve as much of the agent's epistemic state as possible when the state is revised. Learning theoretic research focuses, instead, on a learning method's reliability or ability to converge to true, informative beliefs over a wide range of possible environments. This paper bridges the two perspectives by assessing the reliability of several proposed belief revision operators. Stringent conceptions of minimal change are shown to occasion a limitation called inductive amnesia: they can predict the future only if they cannot remember the past. Avoidance of inductive amnesia can therefore function as a plausible and hitherto unrecognized constraint on the design of belief revision operators.     

Social Anxiety and Peer Relations in Early Adolescence: Behavioral and Cognitive Factors

This study investigated factors associated with social anxiety during early adolescence using multiple informants, including self and peer perspectives, teacher ratings, and direct observations. Negative social performance expectations, maladaptive coping strategies, and social skill deficits were examined as correlates of social anxiety and mediators linking social anxiety with poor peer relations. Participants were 84 middle school students (47 girls, 37 boys) over-sampled for elevated social anxiety. Analyses revealed correlations linking social anxiety with decreased peer acceptance and increased peer victimization. Path analysis indicated that negative social performance expectations and social withdrawal-disengagement accounted for the association between social anxiety and decreased peer acceptance. Social anxiety, self-directed coping strategies, and social withdrawal-disengagement were each directly linked with increased peer victimization for boys. The results replicate findings based on clinical samples, extend understanding of cognitive, social, and behavioral factors associated with social anxiety in middle school, and provide new information regarding gender differences in the correlates of social anxiety.     

Research on Women of Color

Evidence that women of color are dealt with as anomalies in psychological research is discussed in order to: (a) inform researchers about the omissions, (b) stimulate interest in increased inclusion of women of color among research populations, and (c) demonstrate the need for increased diversity in research paradigms. It is noted that research paradigms directed at the study of the universal woman have in actuality focused on White middle class populations. This article examines the methodological and theoretical transformations that have occurred in the literature, and evaluates the extent to which researchers have successfully incorporated ethnicity into the study of gender issues. This is a call for an examination of women's experiences relative to ethnicity and a paradigmatic shift in the assumptions about what is worthy or appropriate for investigation.     

Associations between emotional avoidance,anxiety sensitivity,and reactions to an observational fear challenge procedure

Research has shown that emotional avoidance and anxiety sensitivity are associated with more self-reported fear and distress in response to laboratory fear challenge procedures. The present study aimed to expand upon this work and examined how emotional avoidance and anxiety sensitivity are related to emotional and physiological responses to an observational fear challenge procedure. To accomplish this aim, a carefully screened, non-clinical sample (N = 43) was administered the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ), a measure of emotional avoidance, and the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI). Participants then engaged in an observational fear challenge paradigm. During the fear challenge, participants watched mock panic attacks while emotional (e.g., fear and panic) and skin conductance levels were assessed. Consistent with expectation, emotional avoidance and anxiety sensitivity were positively associated with more self-reported fear and more severe panic symptoms to the challenge procedure. However, anxiety sensitivity was more highly associated with self-reported fear and panic symptoms in response to the challenge procedure than emotional avoidance. Emotional avoidance and anxiety sensitivity were not associated with levels of physiological arousal to the observational fear challenge procedure. Discussion focuses on the interplay between emotional avoidance, anxiety sensitivity, and the development of vicarious fear responses and how these constructs may contribute to the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders.