Expanding and Reconceptualizing Aberrant Personality at Work: Validity of Five‐Factor Model Aberrant Personality Tendencies to Predict Career Outcomes

This study proposes and tests an alternative methodology to conceptualize and assess aberrant personality tendencies at work beyond the dark triad. A sample of college alumni (N= 247) were administered the NEO PI‐R prior to entering the labor market and 15 years later when their professional careers had unfolded. Drawing on the dimensional perspective on personality functioning, 6 five‐factor model (FFM) aberrant compounds were computed as indicators of aberrant personality tendencies. As expected, FFM aberrant personality tendencies were highly stable across time, with test–retest correlations ranging from .61 (Narcissistic) to .73 (avoidant). With regard to predictive validity, borderline, schizotypal, and avoidant tendencies were negatively associated with extrinsic and intrinsic career outcomes. The obsessive‐compulsive tendency was largely unrelated to career outcomes, whereas individuals with antisocial and narcissistic characteristics tended toward higher hierarchical and financial attainment. In addition, relative importance analyses indicated that (a) FFM aberrant personality tendencies showed incremental validity in the prediction of career outcomes beyond FFM general traits, and that (b) both FFM general and FFM aberrant personality tendencies are important predictors when considered jointly. It is concluded that FFM aberrant personality tendencies suggest interesting avenues for personnel psychologists to form new linear combinations of FFM facets, complementing FFM general domains.     

Attention capture while switching search strategies: Evidence for a breakdown in top-down attentional control

Whereas capture experiments typically repeat a single task many times, real world cognition is characterized by frequent switching. Lien, Ruthruff, and Johnston (2010) reported that the attentional control system can rapidly and fully switch between different search settings (e.g., red to green), with no carryover and no intertrial priming. The present study examined whether this impressive flexibility is possible even when the switch is not between different features along the same dimension, but between mutually incompatible search modes. On each trial, participants were prompted to find and identify the letter that was in a specific colour (feature search mode) or was uniquely coloured (singleton search mode). Within each block, search mode was either pure or mixed; the mixed blocks contained a fixed AABB search sequence (singleton-singleton-feature-feature) in Experiment 1 and a random sequence in Experiment 2. The target display was preceded by a noninformative cue display containing a nontarget colour singleton. In pure feature search blocks, these irrelevant singleton cues were generally unable to capture attention, replicating previous findings of “contingent capture”. In mixed blocks, however, irrelevant colour singletons captured attention on feature search trials. This breakdown indicates a limitation in the sharpness of attentional control following mode switches, which might be common in the real world.     

Existential themes in the treatment of people at suicide risk. Understandings and practices of specialist healthcare professionals

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study focuses on the ways in which existential themes were understood and addressed in therapeutic relationships with patients who had attempted suicide. Health care professionals (HCP) from Norway specialist healthcare participated in focus groups. The interviews were transcribed and analysed by systematic text-condensation through a four-step procedure. We found that the HCPs emphasised the context-specific functions of their departments. They considered these conversations essential but demanding. They indicated existential themes of hope/hopelessness, loneliness, meaning, life/death, shame, religion and suicide. The HCPs’ understandings of themes deemed to be existential and how they should be addressed were primarily based on clinical experience. This appeared to exacerbate the pressure on their personal involvement, leading to the question of whether patients’ existential needs are tackled or instead disappear into a conversational vacuum. The study suggests that HCPs' professional competence of existential themes pertaining to patients at suicide risk needs to be strengthened.     

Managing Stress and Maintaining Well‐Being: Social Support,Problem‐Focused Coping,and Avoidant Coping

This study tested a model that links stress, social support, problem‐focused coping, and well‐being. First, it looks at how high support significantly moderated the association between stress and well‐being. Next, the students' problem‐focused coping was seen as mediating this moderated association. Finally, a 3‐way interaction of stress, social support, and avoidant coping revealed that only frequent use of avoidant coping accelerated the association between stress and well‐being in a negative way at both low and high support.     

Subtyping children and adolescents who are overweight based on eating pathology and psychopathology

Children and adolescents who are overweight can differ on dimensions measuring dietary restraint and psychopathology. Classifying clinical obese children and adolescents based on these psychological characteristics is shown to be useful in making differential prognoses. The present study aimed to research the validity of subtyping children and adolescents with overweight (N?=?138) in a non-clinical sample. Using cluster analysis, results revealed three subtypes: a dietary restraint/internalizing group (DR?+?IN; n?=?41), a pure internalizing group (IN; n?=?20) and a non-symptomatic group (NS; n?=?77). The DR?+?IN group outscored both other groups on measures of eating pathology, whereas the IN group outscored both other groups on measures of negative offect. Interestingly, the three groups did not differ on degree of overweight. The results seem to suggest that different psychological mechanisms can be observed in subgroups of young overweight adolescents. Further research should explore how individual psychological characteristics can be helpful when stipulating weight loss treatment programmes.     

Differentiation is key: should employers offer something unique or the same yet better?

ABSTRACT

Researchers agree that employers should differentiate themselves from their competitors to become the employer of choice. However, from the recruitment literature, it is not clear how employers should differentiate their employment offers. Building upon the structural alignment theory, we investigated in two experimental studies whether offering something unique (i.e., non-alignable attributes; e.g., offer a benefit package when competitors do not) or offering the same yet better (i.e., alignable attributes; e.g., offer a bigger benefit package than competitors) is the most effective differentiation strategy for employment offers and whether this depends on job seekers’ work experience. Offering the same yet better affected job seekers’ preferences more positively than offering something unique in lowly complex judgement and decision-making situations (Study 1) as well as in highly complex judgement and decision-making situations if job seekers had more work experience (Study 2). Hence, our findings suggest that differentiation strategies matter: employers should differentiate by offering the same yet better, particularly when they look for highly experienced job seekers in highly complex judgement and decision-making situations.     

The meaning of service questionnaire and its association with psychological growth among Veterans

ABSTRACT

Few studies have investigated what soldiers find meaningful after being exposed to highly stressful events and what positive effects they might have in the aftermath. This study reports the psychometric properties of a newly developed questionnaire, Meaning of Service (MoS), and its application to the study of how strongly meaning-making processes are associated with psychological growth. One hundred eighty-four Norwegian Air Force Veterans who have participated in various missions abroad in different branches of the military completed the MoS questionnaire along with other scales reflecting psychological growth, hardiness, resilience, stress, and exposure, as well as personal and mission characteristics. The principal component analysis mainly identified three major meaning themes as expected from previous qualitative research (Confirmation of ability, Cohesion of peers, and Significance of effort). The hierarchical regression analysis showed that all three meaning themes and two coping strategies were associated with psychological growth, and that Confirmation of ability (coping and recognition of coping) seems particularly important to enhance Veterans’ prospects of psychological growth. Future research directions are proposed including suggestions for minor modifications of the questionnaire.