Relative Importance and Utility of Positive Worker States: A Review and Empirical Examination

Our purpose was to identity the unique contribution, relative importance, and utility of positive worker states. Using Luthans et al.'s (2007) five positive organizational behavior criteria, a variety of positive worker states were reviewed and then empirically tested to establish if they met these criteria. Data were collected from 724 restaurant employees. Positive worker states included: job involvement, perceived organizational support, engagement, and vigor. Criteria were self-reported performance, customer service, turnover intention, satisfaction, and quality of life. Our review indicated consistency between predictor adequacy of meeting the criteria and their empirical relationship with key outcomes. This research found the positive worker states to be independent constructs that had differential effects depending on the focused outcome. Regression and relative weights analyses showed involvement was a weak predictor of outcomes, while perceived organizational support was the most consistent predictor. Vigor was most useful when predicting job performance. Quality of life was poorly explained.     

How Introspections Concerning Cloninger’s Concepts of Temperament and Character Influence Eysenckian Personality Structure

Two studies examine the consequences of distinguishing between self-report responses on the Eysenck Personality Profiler (Eysenck et al. The European Journal of Psychological Assessment 8: 109–117, 1992) in terms of Cloninger’s concepts of Temperament and Character (Cloninger et al. Archives of General Psychiatry 50: 975–990, 1993). Character is thought to reflect conscious, maturation-related influences on personality, while Temperament is thought to reflect instinctive, biologically-based influences. In Study one, one-hundred and thirty-three participants (76.6% female) classify primary scales of the Eysenck Personality Profiler as relating to Character or Temperament. Impulsiveness, Anxiety and Aggression are perceived as the most Temperament-based scales, while Responsibility, Manipulativeness and Assertiveness are perceived as the most Character-based scales. In Study two, one-hundred and seventy-seven participants (74.4% female) complete the Eysenck Personality Profiler using the standard response scale, while one-hundred and thirty-eight participants (62.3% female) complete the Eysenck Personality Profiler using a scale which distinguishes between Character and Temperament. Results demonstrate differences in the factor structure and concurrent validity of the Eysenck Personality Profiler when scoring distinguishes between Temperament and Character. We conclude that the concepts of Temperament and Character might usefully be applied to Eysenck’s personality taxonomy.

Goal orientation profiles and task performance growth trajectories

Goal orientation theories were used to generate predictions regarding the moderating effect of goal orientation profiles on task performance growth trajectories. Participants were given multiple trials of practice on an air traffic control task. Analyses were conducted using growth curve modeling. As expected, individuals with high performance-approach orientation improved their task performance scores faster than their counterparts. The interaction between mastery and performance-avoid orientations moderated the performance growth curve such that individuals with high mastery and low performance-avoid orientation improved their performance at the fastest rate. The interaction between performance-approach and performance-avoid orientations also moderated the performance growth curve. Individuals with low performance-approach and high performance-avoid orientation improved their performance at the slowest rate. These findings contribute to theory and practice by elucidating how various combinations of goal orientations influence the rate of skill acquisition.

Motor maps, seizures, and behaviour

Atypically organised motor maps have been described in some people with epilepsy and we have modelled this in rats. Our goal is to more fully understand the mechanisms responsible for seizure-induced functional brain reorganisation and to reverse their effects. Here we present an overview of the relationship between neocortical motor maps, seizures, and interictal behaviour. To begin we summarise the observations of atypical motor maps with epilepsy and in animal models following experimentally induced seizures. Our novel experiments have established that motor map expansion is linked to a functional alteration of motor behaviour. Evidence for some of the putative brain mechanisms responsible for motor map size is discussed. Our successes reversing seizure-induced map expansion by two different methods are also briefly reviewed. Lastly, unanswered questions for possible future experimentation are posed.     

Jealousy in Relation to Envy

The conceptions of jealousy used by philosophical writers are various, and, this paper suggests, largely inadequate. In particular, the difference between jealousy and envy has not yet been plausibly specified. This paper surveys some past analyses of this distinction and addresses problems with them, before proposing its own positive account of jealousy, developed from an idea of Leila Tov-Ruach(a.k.a. A. O. Rorty). Three conditions for being jealous are proposed and it is shownhow each of them helps to tell the emotion apart from some distinct species of envy.It is acknowledged that the referents of the two terms are, to some extent, overlapping,but shown how this overlap is justified by the psychologies of the respective emotions.