Supervisor–Subordinate Relationship,Differentiation, and Employee Creativity: A Self‐Categorization Perspective

This study seeks to explore the effect of the quality of supervisor–subordinate relationship (i.e., leader–member exchange; LMX) on employee creativity by examining a moderated‐mediation model. The model focuses on the mediating role of perceived insider status and the moderating role of perceived LMX differentiation in influencing the mediation. Using a time‐lagged research design, we collected data from 358 supervisor–subordinate dyads in a large Chinese diversified company. As predicated, we found that (a) perceived insider status mediated the positive relationship between LMX and employee creativity; and (b) perceived LMX differentiation moderated the strength of the mediated relationship between LMX and employee creativity via perceived insider status, such that the mediated relationship is stronger under high‐perceived LMX differentiation than under low‐perceived LMX differentiation.     

Blame After Forgiveness

When a wrongdoing occurs, victims, barring special circumstance, can aptly forgive their wrongdoers, receive apologies, and be paid reparations. It is also uncontroversial, in the usual circumstances, that wronged parties can aptly blame their wrongdoer. But controversy arises when we consider blame from third-parties after the victim has forgiven. At times it seems that wronged parties can make blame inapt through forgiveness. If third parties blame anyway, it often appears the victim is justified in protesting. “But I forgave him!” In other cases, however, forgiveness seems irrelevant: B can forgive A, but it can still seem that third parties can aptly blame A for the wrong against B. This perplexity adds a dimension to ongoing discussion regarding criteria for apt blame and the related issues of standing and fittingness. This paper explores the status of third party blame after forgiveness. I argue that while post forgiveness blame is often inapt, in many other cases forgiveness is irrelevant. This difference is explained by appeal to the various relationships third parties might have to wronged parties, and how these differences affect the ways we blame and thereby blame’s aptness.     

Divergent thinking and the core executive functions: a state-of-the-art review

Cognitive Processing - The study of the relationships between divergent thinking and the core executive functions is long standing. However, the literature on this topic is not conclusive. The...     

Metarelational models: Configurations of social relationships

Beyond cognizing persons and social relationships, people also think about combinations of relationships: metarelational models (MeRMs). If relationships are words, then MeRMs are syntax; if relationships are atoms, MeRMs are chemical compounds. MeRMs are the motivated, emotionally experienced, morally directive models for generating, understanding, coordinating, planning, evaluating, modulating, sanctioning, and redressing configurations of social relationships. Previous research and theory on triads and balance, networks, cross‐cutting ties, and kinship systems has explored the causal connections among social relationships, but MeRM theory posits something more: shared, culturally informed MeRMs that people use to jointly construct meaningful coordinated action. The social interactions of nonhuman animals and pre‐verbal infants indicate that they use MeRMs, supporting the contention that core innate cognition includes the basic structures of MeRMs. There are six elementary kinds of MeRMs, and recursive linking of relational models (RMs) generates indefinitely more. MeRMs shape individual psychology, relationships, groups, institutions, and cultures. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Language, perception, and the schematic representation of spatial relations

Schemas are abstract nonverbal representations that parsimoniously depict spatial relations. Despite their ubiquitous use in maps and diagrams, little is known about their neural instantiation. We sought to determine the extent to which schematic representations are neurally distinguished from language on the one hand, and from rich perceptual representations on the other. In patients with either left hemisphere damage or right hemisphere damage, a battery of matching tasks depicting categorical spatial relations was used to probe for the comprehension of basic spatial concepts across distinct representational formats (words, pictures, and schemas). Left hemisphere patients underperformed right hemisphere patients across all tasks. However, focused residual analyses using voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) suggest that (1) left hemisphere deficits in the representation of categorical spatial relations are difficult to distinguish from deficits in naming these relations and (2) the right hemisphere plays a special role in extracting schematic representations from richly textured pictures.     

School barricaded captive-taking: A literature review and critique

Although schools are among the safest places for children and youth, they are the occasional site of violent behavior. One form of violence is the barricaded-hostage event. In this article, the authors review the research literature pertaining to these events. Specifically, studies examining the impact on direct and indirect victims, and responders to these events, are presented and critiqued. Recommendations for future research are also made, followed by a summary and conclusions.     

Randomised trial of expressive writing for distressed metastatic breast cancer patients

Women with metastatic breast cancer and significant psychological distress (N?=?87) were assigned randomly to engage in four home-based sessions of expressive writing or neutral writing. Women in the expressive writing group wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings regarding their cancer, whereas women in the neutral writing group wrote about their daily activities in a factual manner. No statistically significant group differences in existential and psychological well-being, fatigue and sleep quality were found at 8-weeks post-writing. However, the expressive writing group reported significantly greater use of mental health services during the study than the neutral writing group (55% vs. 26%, respectively; p?<?0.05). Findings suggest that expressive writing may improve the uptake of mental health services among distressed cancer patients, but is not broadly effective as a psychotherapeutic intervention.     

An explanation of the indentation size effect in ceramics

Abstract

A quantitative model is proposed to explain the indentation size effect (ISE) often observed in the hardness response of hard brittle materials, namely that hardness is observed to increase with decreasing indentation size. The model is based on a mixed elastic/plastic materials deformation response whereby plastic deformation occurs in a discrete manner progressively to relieve stresses created by elastic flexure of the surface at the edges of the indentation. During unloading of the indenter, recovery of the elastic increment of deformation, which precedes each new band of plastic deformation, results in the indentation appearing smaller than expected, particularly as the indentation sizes decrease to approach the scale of the plastic deformation band spacing. The model fits observed experimental data well and analysis of hardness/size data in this way is shown to allow both a bulk hardness value and a characteristic deformation band scale to be calculated for a given sample.