Changing Definitions of Work and Play: Importance of Workplace Humour

World famous actor-comedian Charlie Chaplin once said that “A day without laughter is a day wasted”. But try applying the same quote in our work place, with fluctuating markets, unending competition and impossible deadlines; we may find more wasted days than the rest. All of us know what it feels to experience humour, but most of us think twice before having a hearty laugh at our workplace. What is the barrier which stops us from sharing humour at work? This paper attempts to answer this question and aims to understand the concept of humour at workplace and its importance in today’s context. It aims to review existing literature in this field and present the application of Workplace humour in an organizational context to achieve favourable work-related outcomes. In addition to this, the paper also enumerates the different workplace practices that are directly or indirectly related to humour and provide suggestions to organizations on how to use this powerful tool to bring about organizational effectiveness.     

Aims and Exclusivity

If belief has an aim by being a (quasi) intentional activity, then it ought to be the case that the aim of belief can be weighed against other aims one might have. However, this is not so with the putative truth aim of belief: from the first‐person perspective, one can only be motivated by truth considerations in deliberation over what to believe (exclusivity). From this perspective then, the aim cannot be weighed. This problem is captured by David Owens's Exclusivity Objection to belief having an aim (2003). Conor McHugh (2012; 2013) has responded to this problem by denying the phenomenon of exclusivity and replacing it with something weaker: demandingness. If deliberation over what to believe is characterised by demandingness and not exclusivity, this allows for the requisite weighing of the truth aim. I argue against such a move by suggesting that where non‐evidential considerations play a role in affecting what we believe, these considerations merely change the standards required for believing in a particular context, they do not provide non‐evidential reasons for forming or withholding belief, which are considered as such from the deliberative perspective. Exclusivity thus remains, and so too does Owens's objection.     

Authoritative Parenting of Chinese Mothers of Children with and without Intellectual Disability

The present study examined authoritative parenting and associations with parenting sense of competence and social support in Chinese mothers of children with intellectual disability and mothers of typically developing children. One hundred and sixty-seven mothers of children with intellectual disability with a mean age of 10.89 years (SD?=?1.74) and 119 mothers of typically developing children with a mean age of 10.55 years (SD?=?1.10) participated in a survey. Mothers of children with intellectual disability reported similar levels of parental warmth, and less use of reasoning and autonomy support compared with mothers of typically developing children. Parenting efficacy contributed uniquely to three dimensions of authoritative parenting for mothers of children with intellectual disability. By comparison, parenting efficacy did not contribute to use of reasoning and autonomy support for mothers of typically developing children. Social support made a unique but small contribution to parental warmth but not to parental reasoning and autonomy support for mothers of children with intellectual disability. For mothers of typically developing children, social support was associated with both parental warmth and autonomy support. This study suggests that child disability status is related to maternal authoritative parenting, and additionally, parenting efficacy plays a more critical role in predicting authoritative parenting of Chinese mothers of children with intellectual disability than mothers of typically developing children.     

The Emotional Foundation of Political Cognition: The Impact of Extrinsic Anxiety on the Formation of Political Tolerance Judgments

Common sense recognizes emotion's ability to influence judgments. We argue that affective processes, in addition to generating feeling states, also influence how political cognition is manifested. Drawing on the theory of affective intelligence, we examine the role that anxiety plays in how and when people rely on predispositions and when they rely on contemporaneous information in making political tolerance judgments. We report on two experimental studies to test our arguments. In the first study we find that extrinsic anxiety generates a resistance response among subjects who hold a strong predisposition and a receptive response among those who do not. In the second study we present subjects with explicit "frames" exposing them to a pro- or anti-free speech message. We find that extrinsic anxiety enhances responsiveness to frames while an absence of anxiety diminishes the impact of these frames. Taken together these results show that affective processes shape how people make political judgments.     

Active (not passive) spatial imagery primes temporal judgements

Previous research has shown that primes that induce particular spatial perspectives can influence temporal judgements. However, most studies have used priming stimuli that involve both spatial and motor language and imagery. Here we ask whether the motor content of these stimuli plays an important role in their ability to serve as effective primes. A total of 198 adult participants made temporal judgements after exposure to spatial primes involving varying levels of imagined effort. Spatial primes involving imagined motor actions, but not those involving equivalent passive motions through space, successfully primed decisions about time. This suggests that motor content, rather than spatial content alone, contributes to the priming effects that arise when people make temporal judgements after exposure to particular spatial perspectives.     

Experiences related to expert supervisors' views of ideal therapeutic practice

Aims: This study examines the relationship between expert supervisors' professional experiences and their views about the importance of different psychotherapy techniques. Method: Thirty psychodynamic‐interpersonal (PI) supervisors and 13 cognitive‐behavioural (CB) supervisors (N=43) were instructed to rate 20 therapeutic techniques according to how characteristic each technique is of an ideally‐conducted session within their theoretical orientation. The measure used for this assessment was the Comparative Psychotherapy Process Scale. Results: Findings demonstrated that supervisors' beliefs about ideal therapeutic techniques are related to their number of years in post‐graduate clinical practice, training, and supervising trainees, as well as to the number of publications they have authored. Further, experience within a given orientation tends to lead to a greater endorsement of techniques within that orientation, although this finding is more uniform for CB supervisors than PI supervisors. Finally, differential types of experience lead to differential focusing on specific techniques. Discussion: The clinical importance of these findings is explored.     

Intracerebral source generators characterizing concentrative meditation

Previous researchers have studied meditation practices as a means to understand consciousness as well as altered states of consciousness. Various meditation techniques, such as Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Qigong, have been explored with source localization tools; however, the concentrative meditation technique has yet to be fully studied in this manner. The current study demonstrates findings, which outline differential activation in a self-referential default network during meditation in participants who espouse themselves as regular concentrative meditation practitioners, as well as comparisons with a control group practicing a modified version of the relaxation response. The results are compared with other putative experimental findings employing other meditation techniques, and the findings outlined in the current study are discussed with respect to changes in perceptual awareness often reported by meditators.