Working with animals: Implications for employees’ compassion,awe, prosocial behavior,and task performance

Human-animal work represents a collaboration between humans and animals to achieve work goals, and is common in the domains of healthcare, therapy, entertainment, and education. Although the scope and types of human-animal work is diversifying and increasing, organizational scholars have yet to explore its impacts on employees. Drawing from the models of compassion and mind perception theories, we first develop a theoretical model pertaining to the development of compassion as a result of human-animal work. In a study with zookeepers (Study 1), we find that human-animal work evokes the emotion of compassion, which in turn is positively associated with employee prosocial behavior and task performance. These mediated effects are moderated by how employees perceive animals—employees are more likely to experience compassion, and in turn, become more prosocial and work better when they generally perceive animals to be able to experience emotions and bodily sensations. Furthermore, two follow-up studies (i.e., Studies 2 and 3) with employees who engage in human-animal work in Hong Kong and the United States reveal that working with animals evokes awe in addition to compassion, and provides insight into their resultant impact on prosocial behavior and task performance. We end by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of this work.     

Reflection for learning in doctoral training: writing groups,academic writing proficiency and reflective practice

This literature review highlights the benefits of participating in a doctoral writing group, with specific emphasis on how these learning communities foster reflective practice skills development. In particular, this review proposes that the process of continuous peer feedback and discussion benefits students by helping them verbalise their internal reflective thinking, fostering reflective practice skills development through various authentic learning experiences. Consequently, this review highlights the importance of establishing and supporting doctoral writing groups to further develop doctoral students’ personal epistemology, growth and professional practice.     

What’s the 411? Assessing the Feasibility of Providing African American Adolescents with HIV/AIDS Prevention Education in a Faith-Based Setting

This study examines African American faith based leaders’ attitudes and beliefs about providing HIV prevention education and services to adolescents. Using a convenience sample, we identified priority adolescent health issues, attitudes about abstinence messages, and willingness to provide and participate in HIV prevention. Leaders identified drugs, gangs, alcohol, sex, and pregnancy as priority health issues affecting youth in their institutions. Leaders’ strongly preferred to emphasize abstinence messages. Although leaders were willing to provide youth with health education, they were not willing to discuss specific behaviors associated with HIV transmission. African American churches provide a venue to reach African American youth; however, there are limitations to relying on faith-based HIV prevention services. HIV prevention education should continue to be supplemented via parents, schools, and public health agencies.

Reach/Grasp Times with Lateral Reach Obstructions

When moving to grasp an object having adjacent obstacles that limit the space available for placing the fingers, the time for the reach/grasp is dependent on the distance of reaching and the space available for finger placement. Here we model the time taken in terms of these variables and develop mathematical models for the reach and grasp phases of the task and the location of obstacles. Data show that the movement to the target may be made under visual control and that, when the obstacles are close to the target object, a visually-controlled movement is made that is modeled by a modified form of Fitts' law. The time for the two components of the reach/grasp appear to be independent and linearly additive.     

Leader-member exchange and member performance: a new look at individual-level negative feedback-seeking behavior and team-level empowerment climate

From a basis in social exchange theory, the authors investigated whether, and how, negative feedback-seeking behavior and a team empowerment climate affect the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) and member performance. Results showed that subordinates' negative feedback-seeking behavior mediated the relationship between LMX and both objective and subjective in-role performance. In addition, the level of a team's empowerment climate was positively related to subordinates' own sense of empowerment, which in turn negatively moderated the effects of LMX on negative feedback-seeking behavior.     

Motivated prediction of future feelings: effects of negative mood and mood orientation on affective forecasts

This article examines the role of motivational factors in affective forecasting. The primary hypothesis was that people predict positive emotional reactions to future events when they are motivated to enhance their current feelings. Three experiments manipulated participants' moods (negative vs. neutral) and orientation toward their moods (reflective vs. ruminative) and then assessed the positivity of their affective predictions for future events. As hypothesized, when participants adopted a reflective orientation, and thus should have been motivated to engage in mood-regulation processes, they predicted more positive feelings in the negative than in the neutral mood condition. This pattern of mood-incongruent affective prediction was not exhibited when participants adopted a ruminative orientation. Additionally, within the negative mood condition, generating affective forecasts had a more positive emotional impact on reflectors than on ruminators. The findings suggest that affective predictions are sometimes driven by mood-regulatory motives.     

An experimental investigation of the impact of biological and psychological causal explanations on anxious and depressed patients' perception of a person with panic disorder

It is often suggested that biological accounts of the cause of mental health problems are beneficial in health education initiatives. However, an alternative view is that the idea of a diseased brain may result in stigma and therapeutic pessimism in sufferers, professionals and the public with implications for the perception of unpredictability and risk. Anxious and depressed patients (n=49) were randomly allocated to three experimental conditions. Prior to watching a video of a person suffering from panic disorder, participants were told either that research indicated that panic was caused by biological factors, by psychological factors or the cause was unclear (control condition). Those in the biological condition were significantly more pessimistic about the patient's prospects for recovery and rated risks as higher compared to those in the psychological condition. The results call into question the widely accepted practice of promoting biological/disease explanations of mental health problems.