Psychological and demographic correlates of career patterns

Recent years have witnessed a growing diversity of career patterns, resulting from the relative decline of stable employment. In the present study of 1368 employed and self-employed German adults career pattern diversity was assessed using nine pictograms. The goal was to identify psychological and demographic correlates of these patterns and to answer the question of whether they differed for participants from the former (communist) East and the capitalist West. Findings indicated that upward-pointing career patterns still connected to extrinsic criteria such as income and job security. With regard to psychological correlates, upward patterns connected to lower work-related demands imposed by social change and a higher level of personal and social resources. Only in the West, upward patterns related to male gender and high education, reflecting more traditional access to upwardly mobile career opportunities.     

Visual and tactile action effects determine bimanual coordination performance

Effect-based models of motor control assign a crucial role to anticipated perceptual feedback in action planning. Two experiments were conducted to test the validity of this proposal for discrete bimanual key press responses. The results revealed that the normally observed performance advantage for the preparation of two responses with homologous rather than non-homologous fingers becomes inverted when homologous fingers produce non-identical visual effects, and non-homologous fingers produce identical visual effects. In the second experiment the finger homology effect was strongly reduced when homologous fingers produced non-identical tactile feedback. The results show that representations of to-be-produced visual and tactile action effects both contribute to action planning, though possibly to a varying degree. Implications of these results for effect-based models of motor control are considered.     

You don't always get what you pay for: Measuring depression with short and simple versus long and sophisticated scales

In three studies subjects' depressiveness was assessed by a variety of instruments. Questionnaire scales were either comparatively short or long and either fairly simple, content oriented, and undisguised or sophisticated in the sense of reflecting psychodynamic theorizing or elaborate multivariate approaches to scale construction. Simple self-ratings were also obtained. Results showed that (a) short scales were as valid on the average as long scales in all three studies, even though some of the short scales were merely subsets of the long scales; (b) simple scales were as valid as sophisticated scales in all three studies; and (c) self-rating scales were as valid as questionnaire scales in two studies, but not in the third. The discussion focuses on certain unrealistic assumptions of the Spearman-Brown formula and on the notion of personality assessment as a noise-afflicted communication process.     

Mothers' responses to the cries of normal and premature infants as a function of the birth status of their own child

Mothers of premature and full-term infants viewed and heard videotapes of premature and full-term infants. The onset of crying by both infants elicited physiological arousal (evident in blood pressure, skin conductance, and heart rate increases) in the adults. The mothers of premature infants responded with especially marked arousal to the infants' cries. These mothers also reported that they were more attentive and alert while the infant was crying. The subjects responded similarly to the cries of full-term and premature infants. Mothers who described their own baby as easy exhibited a lower increase in diastolic blood pressure and heart rate, and reported being more alert, attentive, and willing to interact with the stimulus babies than those whose own baby appeared “difficult.”     

From rocks to graphs — the shaping of phenomena

Assuming an essential difference between scientific data and phenomena, this paper argues for the view that we have to understand how empirical findings get transformed into scientific phenomena. The work of scientists is seen as largely consisting in constructing these phenomena which are then utilized in more abstract theories. It is claimed that these matters are of importance for discussions of theory choice and progress in science. A case study is presented as a starting point: paleomagnetism and the use of paleomagnetic data in early discussions of continental drift. Some general features of this study are presented in formalized language. It is suggested that the presentation given is particularly suited for a semantic conception of theories. Even though the construction of scientific phenomena is the main topic of this paper, the view presented here is more adapted to realism than social constructivism.     

Resilience in the Workplace: A Multilevel Review and Synthesis

In an increasingly dynamic business environment, the concept of resilience is fundamental to understanding how employees successfully handle adversity. Yet, the operationalisation of the concept, the factors which lead to its development, and how and why it influences outcomes of interest to organisations are issues still under debate in the literature. In this article, we address these debates by undertaking a critical review of research on resilience in the workplace at both the individual and team levels. We pinpoint different conceptualisations of resilience and highlight how resilience has been measured in extant quantitative work. Further, we provide a systematic literature review of empirical work on the antecedents and outcomes of resilience at the individual and team levels, as well as conduct a review of work that has introduced resilience as a moderator or mediator. In doing so, we highlight theoretical approaches that have been adopted to study resilience in the workplace. Based on our review of the extant empirical work on resilience, we develop a roadmap for future research. In particular, we pinpoint relevant theoretical approaches that help us understand the mechanisms underlying the development and outcomes of resilience and highlight opportunities for empirical advancement of the literature.     

The extended argument dependency model: a neurocognitive approach to sentence comprehension across languages

Real-time language comprehension is a principal cognitive ability and thereby relates to central properties of the human cognitive architecture. Yet how do the presumably universal cognitive and neural substrates of language processing relate to the astounding diversity of human languages (over 5,000)? The authors present a neurocognitive model of online comprehension, the extended argument dependency model (eADM), that accounts for cross-linguistic unity and diversity in the processing of core constituents (verbs and arguments). The eADM postulates that core constituent processing proceeds in three hierarchically organized phases: (1) constituent structure building without relational interpretation, (2) argument role assignment via a restricted set of cross-linguistically motivated information types (e.g., case, animacy), and (3) completion of argument interpretation using information from further domains (e.g., discourse context, plausibility). This basic architecture is assumed to be universal, with cross-linguistic variation deriving primarily from the information types applied in Phase 2 of comprehension. This conception can derive the appearance of similar neurophysiological and neuroanatomical processing correlates in seemingly disparate structures in different languages and, conversely, of cross-linguistic differences in the processing of similar sentence structures.     

Self-conscious emotions and depression: rumination explains why shame but not guilt is maladaptive

Feelings of shame and guilt are factors associated with depression. However, studies simultaneously investigating shame and guilt suggest that only shame has a strong unique effect, although it is not yet clear which psychological processes cause shame and not shame-free guilt to be related to depression. The authors hypothesized that shame, in contrast to guilt, elicits rumination, which then leads to depression. Therefore, in this study we investigated event-related shame and guilt, event-related rumination, and depression among 149 mothers and fathers following family breakup due to marital separation. Data were analyzed using latent variable modeling. The results confirm that shame but not guilt has a strong unique effect on depression. Moreover, the results show that the effect of shame is substantially mediated by rumination. The results are discussed against the background of self-discrepancies and self-esteem.