Help seeking and social competence mediate the parental attachment–college student adjustment relation

This short‐term longitudinal study investigated whether attitudes about academic help seeking, social competence, and self‐compassion mediated the relations between parental attachment and college student adjustment. Two hundred and four first‐year students completed measures of parental attachment and the proposed mediators at the beginning of their first semester. At the end of the semester, students reported on their academic, social, and personal/emotional adjustment. Results showed that attitudes about academic help seeking mediated the attachment–academic adjustment relation and social competence mediated the attachment–social adjustment relation. Personal/emotional adjustment largely was predicted by initial personal/emotional adjustment. These findings suggest that help‐seeking attitudes and social competence could be fruitful targets of intervention for personnel working with college students who have strained parental relationships.     

Body image and personality: Associations between the Big Five Personality Factors,actual‐ideal weight discrepancy,and body appreciation

Studies have suggested associations between personality dimensions and body image constructs, but these have not been conclusively established. In two studies, we examined direct associations between the Big Five dimensions and two body image constructs, actual‐ideal weight discrepancy and body appreciation. In Study 1, 950 women completed measures of both body image constructs and a brief measure of the Big Five dimensions. In Study 2, 339 women completed measures of the body image constructs and a more reliable measure of the Big Five. Both studies showed that Neuroticism was significantly associated with actual‐ideal weight discrepancy (positively) and body appreciation (negatively) once the effects of body mass index and social status had been accounted for. These results are consistent with the suggestion that Neuroticism is a trait of public health significance requiring attention by body image scholars.     

Responses to Embarrassment

This study focused upon responses to the emotion of embarrassment. Specifically, the situations causing embarrassment, the degree of perceived embarrassment and the agent of the embarrassment were examined as predictive of the embarrassed party's responses. These same three factors, as well as the response of the embarrassed person, were examined in association with the responses of others. In addition, the issue of multiple responses to embarrassment by the embarrassed party was examined. Self-report data werecollected from 387 persons ranging in age from 17 to 90 years. Log-linear analyses revealed strong associations between both the type of situation and the degree of embarrassment and the type of situation and the agent of the act. The type of situation did indeed predict responses by persons involved in the event. The degree of embarrassment was predictive of neither the types of responses utilized by the embarrassed party nor the others present. Theagent of the incident was strongly associated with responses of the embarrassed party, but was not associated with others’ responses. Responses of an embarrassed party were associated with the responses of others present. Finally, it was found that combinations of responses by the embarrassed party were discovered but were not associated with the situation nor with the degree of embarrassment.     

An Empirical Comparison of Three Theories of Nonverbal Immediacy Exchange

This study provides a contrastive test of three immediacy-exchange theories: Burgeon's expectancy violations theory (EVT), Cappella and Greene's discrepancy-arousal theory (DAT), and Andersen's cognitive valence theory (CVT). EVT predicts that high immediacy, by rewarding communicators, leads to an orientation response and positive behavioral and affective outcomes. In contrast, DAT and CVT predict aversive arousal and compensatory responses in response to high immediacy increases. Findings from opposite-sex friend dyads failed to find unequivocal support for a single theory. Targets showed a mix of reciprocal and compensatory responses in the higher immediacy condition, indicating that existing immediacy-exchange theories should consider incorporating elements from all three theories and perhaps from dialectics theory to explain the complex reactions that occur in response to high immediacy changes from friends.     

Why Be an Anti‐Individualist?

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti-individualism is an implicit part of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts.     

Sad Songs Say So Much: The Paradoxical Pleasures of Sad Music

In this article I revisit the question of why people like to listen to sad music. If music can induce genuine sadness in listeners, why would we deliberately seek out such negative experiences? Drawing from work in both the philosophy and psychology of music, as well as work in the philosophy and science of affect, I argue to shift the focus of the question to music‐induced moods, not emotions. This reframes the debate but does not dissolve the puzzle. To understand what is appealing about the affective experience of listening to sad music, I suggest we take into account the unique features of music‐induced sad mood. I argue that sad mood and a certain sort of focused music listening are mutually reinforcing in ways that differ from other mood/music interactions. Sad mood and sad music are, in a sense, made for each other.     

PAY SATISFACTION AND ORGANIZATIONAL OUTCOMES

Using multi level and multi method data, we investigated the relationship between pay satisfaction and outcomes at the organizational level of analysis. Individual-level survey data on pay satisfaction (including satisfaction with pay level, satisfaction with pay structure, satisfaction with pay raises, and benefits) were collected from 6,394 public school teachers. Organizational-level outcome data, both survey and archival, were collected from the 117 public school districts employing these teachers. With respect to its influence on organizational outcomes, pay satisfaction was positively related to school district-level academic performance and negatively related to average teacher intention to quit. We also explored the relationship between district-level union satisfaction and pay satisfaction, which was found to be positive. We discuss implications of our findings for for-profit companies that are knowledge based and human capital intensive (e.g., the service sector) and address possible future directions for research on pay satisfaction.     

SELF-MONITORING AS A MODERATOR OF THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERSONALITY TRAITS AND PERFORMANCE

This study examined the hypothesis that self-monitoring moderates the relationship between Big Five personality traits and interpersonal performance. The findings from a sample of 102 employed Executive MBA students reveal that when self-monitoring was high the relationships between 3 of the Big Five personality traits (Extraversion, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience) and supervisory ratings of interpersonal performance were attenuated. These effects were replicated using peer ratings of interpersonal performance for Extraversion and Emotional Stability but not for Openness to Experience. Further, as expected, self-monitoring did not moderate the relationships between personality traits and supervisory or peer ratings of task performance. Implications for future research in the area of personality and other motivational theories are discussed.