Family first! Influence of parental investment in Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) prosocial choices

Animal Cognition - Literature often assumed that prosocial behaviours (behaviours that benefit others with or without a cost for the actor) would have evolved many species to improve the...     

The Development of a Short Form of an Irrational/Rational Beliefs Scale

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - This study developed a short form of the Attitudes and Beliefs Scale-2 (ABS-2), a measure of Ellis’s irrational and rational...     

Improving Interdisciplinary Research in Well-Being—A Review with Further Comments of Michael Bishop’s The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being

Journal of Happiness Studies -     

Contrasting Grammatical and Lexical Determiners

This paper investigates the difference between the production of grammatical determiners and lexical determiners in the production of adjective-noun phrases (NPs) in Danish. Models of sentence processing (Garrett in Psychology of learning and motivation, Academic press, New York, pp 133–177, 1975; Bock in J Mem Lang 26(2):119–137, 1987) suggest that the phonological encoding stage of grammatical items can only be specified once lexical items have been phonologically encoded. In their usage-based linguistic theory of the grammar-lexicon distinction, Boye and Harder (Lang 88(1):1–44, 2012) propose that this later encoding of grammatical elements is motivated by two specific features of grammatical elements. The first feature, dependence, is that grammatical items (morphemes, words, constructions) cannot be produced in isolation, but are always dependent on a lexical host item. This feature entails a more complex processing which might lead to longer reaction times when comparing the production of NPs with a grammatical determiner to a lexical one. Additionally, a more complex processing might lead to a lower accuracy rate for the grammatical condition relative to the lexical one. The second feature, low prominence, is that grammatical items code background information and therefore cannot convey the main point of a linguistic message. Less focus on grammatical elements might lead to a lower accuracy rate for the production of grammatical elements relative to lexical ones. Those predictions were tested in a task comparing the production of Danish grammatical determiners (indefinite articles) with the production of lexical ones (numerals, which are homonymous with the articles except for a stress difference) in similar contexts. Group-based analyses were performed in order to take inter-individual differences into account. The results show that the two features as proposed by Boye and Harder (2012) are only revealed for the fastest speakers group but not the slower ones.     

Reactive aggression tracks within‐participant changes in women's salivary testosterone

The relation between testosterone and aggression has been relatively well documented in men, but it is less well understood in women. Here we assessed the relationship between salivary testosterone and reactive aggression (i.e., rejection rate for unfair offers) in the Ultimatum Game. Forty naturally cycling women were tested twice, once in the late follicular phase (around ovulation) and once during the luteal phase. Ovulation was determined using urine test strips measuring luteinizing hormone levels. Salivary samples were assayed for testosterone, estradiol, progesterone, and cortisol at both test sessions. There was no association with the cycle, but multilevel modeling revealed a significant within‐participant association between testosterone and rejection rate for extremely unfair offers (i.e., high reactive aggression), indicating that women showed greater reactive aggression when their testosterone levels were higher. Additionally, we found that women with relatively high individual concentrations of testosterone were more likely to reject extremely unfair offers than women with relatively low concentrations of testosterone. This study is the first to demonstrate that women react more aggressively in response to provocation when their testosterone level is high than when their testosterone is low, suggesting that testosterone plays an important role in the regulation of women's aggressive behavior following social provocation.

     

Does Dispositional Aggression Feed the Narcissistic Response? The Role of Narcissism and Aggression in the Prediction of Job Attitudes and Counterproductive Work Behaviors

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to extend the personality and work-related outcomes literature by examining: (1) the effects of narcissism on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and counterproductive work behaviors and (2) the moderating effects of dispositional aggression on the narcissism–counterproductive work behaviors relationship.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Multi-wave data were collected from 381 workers employed in a variety of work settings within the United States.

Findings

Narcissism had consistent main effects on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and counterproductive work behaviors after controlling for the personality characteristics agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and aggression. Aggression moderated the relationship between narcissism and counterproductive work behaviors, such that the positive relationship between narcissism and counterproductive work behaviors was stronger when dispositional aggression was high.

Implications

This study provides greater clarity regarding the role of narcissism within job attitudes and behaviors, shows that dispositional aggression strengthens or amplifies the narcissistic response for counterproductive work behaviors, and provides a platform to further explore narcissism and aggression within the workplace.

Originality/Value

This study found that narcissism consistently predicted unique variance in work-related criteria after the effects of agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and aggression were controlled. It also found evidence that aggression moderates the effects of narcissism on counterproductive work behaviors. This study is the first to directly examine these effects.     

Leader Profiles and Their Effectiveness on Employees’ Outcomes

An underlying premise of the transformational–transactional leadership theory is that different forms of leadership can reside simultaneously within the same individual. This fundamental hypothesis has received scarce attention in the empirical literature. The objectives of this study are thus to examine whether leader profiles combining these leadership forms do exist and to evaluate how these profiles are associated with specific employee attitudes and behaviors. Results obtained from two different samples using cluster analyses revealed six different leader profiles (i.e., superleaders, transactors, moderate leaders, distant-visionary, distant-rewarding, and distant-punitive leaders). Our results showed that these types of leaders differ in terms of employees’ perceptions of trust, justice, and commitment, as well as supervisor-rated in-role and contextual performance. Results and implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Decision making is affected in obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome

We assessed decision making in 20 patients newly diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and 20 healthy controls with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which evaluates the ability to learn to sacrifice immediate rewards in favour of long‐term gains. A standard neuropsychological battery was administered. Switching scores tended to be lower in patients. Patients persisted in selecting risky decks throughout the IGT, whereas controls behaved normally. Performance was correlated with hypoxaemia. Brain regions underlying decision making may be affected by OSA‐related hypoxaemia.     

Effect of distinctive encoding on false recognition,discrimination, and decision criteria in young and elderly adults

In order to examine the effects of distinctive encoding on age-related differences in false memory and decision criteria, we used a standard recognition paradigm and manipulated three encoding conditions: control, general, and distinctive. The results revealed main effects of age and encoding condition on hits and false recognition, and interactions between these variables, with elderly adults benefiting more than young adults from the encoding tasks. In the distinctive encoding condition, the age-related difference on false recognition was eliminated. These findings are discussed in terms of an age-related deficit in self-initiated distinctive processing. Further analyses showed that elderly adults used a more lenient decision criterion than young adults. Distinctive encoding led all subjects to use stringent decision criteria, but did not eliminate age differences.