Japanese college students' attitudes toward professional psychological services: the role of cultural self-construal and self-concealment

The utilization of professional help is affected by individual factors such as help-seeking attitudes and self-concealment as well as the availability of mental health services. The present study examined the role of cultural self-construal and self-concealment on attitudes toward professional psychological services. A survey was conducted with 214 Japanese college students. Multiple regression analyses found that interdependent self-construal significantly predicted the Recognition of Need for Psychological Services. Self-concealment was predictive of two different facets of help-seeking attitudes: Interpersonal Openness and Stigma Tolerance. Future studies are recommended to refine the model that was tested.     

Association of pupil vandalism, bullying and truancy with teachers' absence due to illness: a multilevel analysis

The aim of this study was to examine whether vandalism, bullying, and truancy among pupils at school are associated with absence due to illness among teachers. Data on such problem behaviour of 17,033 pupils in 90 schools were linked to absence records of 2364 teachers. Pupil reported vandalism and bullying at the school-level were associated with teachers' short-term (1- to 3-day) absences. Cumulative exposure to various forms of pupils' problem behaviour was associated with even higher rates of short-term absences among teachers. No association was found between pupils' problem behaviour and teachers' long-term (>3-day) absences. In conclusion, there seems to be a link between pupils' problem behaviour and teachers' short-term absence due to illness. Further work should determine whether problem behaviour is a cause or a consequence of absences or whether the association is noncausal.     

Too dog tired to avoid danger: Self-control depletion in canines increases behavioral approach toward an aggressive threat

This study investigated whether initial self-control exertion by dogs would affect behavioral approach toward an aggressive threat. Dogs were initially required to exert self-control (sit still for 10 min) or not (caged for 10 min) before they were walked into a room in which a barking, growling dog was caged. Subject dogs spent 4 min in this room but were free to choose where in the room they spent their time. Approaching the unfamiliar conspecific was the predisposed response, but it was also the riskier choice (Lindsay, 2005). We found that following the exertion of self-control (in comparison with the control condition), dogs spent greater time in proximity to the aggressor. This pattern of behavior suggests that initial self-control exertion results in riskier and more impulsive decision making by dogs.     

Do commodities reproduce themselves through human beings? Toward an ecology of goods

The argument of this paper—'an ecology of goods'—could be summarized as follows: Goods exist only in relation to each other. Goods form groups, and in time higher organizational levels, groups of groups, i.e. networks of artifacts emerge. Mass consumption society is the most developed manifestation of this organizing process. The process of association and dissociation of goods is only partly controllable through human decisions. Human beings making decisions about buying, using and disposing of goods are constrained by the “logic” of the general organizing process. This process emerges out of different kinds interactions between commodities and feedback cycles with unintended consequences. In routinization and institutionalization processes commodity interactions become stabilized, i.e. the fidelity of replicative cycles increases. From this perspective, a system of commodities could be seen as an entity, which reproduces itself in a continuous resource exchange with its co‐actors and environment. In a system there is both a tendency toward functional differentiation and integration with other systems. Accordingly, systems of goods are cyclic processes within processes rather than given stable entities. This approach places many theoretical and practical problems of consumer society in a new perspective.     

Burnout during a long-term rehabilitation: comparing low burnout,high burnout – benefited,and high burnout – not benefited trajectories

Abstract

To focus rehabilitation activities among burnout clients more effectively, it is important to investigate who benefits from burnout interventions. This study (N=85) aimed at identifying burnout trajectories in terms of benefit, that is, subgroups of clients who share similar mean levels and changes in burnout during a one-year rehabilitation intervention (17 days in total) with a six-month follow-up. After identifying the burnout trajectories, the relations of the trajectories with factors describing the clients, antecedents, and consequences of burnout during the one-year intervention were examined. Three burnout trajectories were identified by growth mixture modeling: (a) low burnout (n=39), (b) high burnout – benefited (n=29), and (c) high burnout – not benefited (n=17). Positive changes were detected in antecedents and consequences among the clients in the low burnout and high burnout – benefited trajectories. Recovery from burnout was associated with increased job resources and decreased job demands, as well as with increased job satisfaction and decreased depression. It seems that more precise targeting of rehabilitation is needed since the trajectories revealed not only clients with mild symptoms, but also clients who probably received this treatment too late.     

Disparity in occupational training and career planning between contingent and permanent employees

In modern work life, a common structure of staffing comprises a core of permanent employees and a fluctuating number of contingent workers. We examined the degree to which participation in occupational training and career planning differed between these two groups. The study cohort comprised 5127 hospital employees (96% full time), of whom 4211 were permanent, 677 had a contingent contract, and 239 were contingent at baseline but got a permanent job during the 4-year follow-up period. Results show that contingent employees participated less in occupational training and career planning than permanent employees. The difference remained significant even after 6 years' employment in the hospital. Those contingent employees who became permanently employed did not differ from the permanent employees in occupational training and career planning. These trends in human resource allocation support the human capital theory. They also point to an unintended mechanism potentially increasing inequalities in the workforce, arising from the different human capital investments depending on the employment status.     

The role of unattended distractors in sustained inattentional blindness

When participants are attending to a subset of visual targets or events and ignoring irrelevant distractors (“selective looking”), they often fail to detect the appearance of an unexpected visual object or event even when the object is visible for several seconds (“sustained inattentional blindness”). An important factor influencing detection rates in selective looking is the attentional set of the participant: the more similar the features of the unexpected object are to the attended ones, the more probably it will be detected. We examined the possible contribution of active ignoring to this similarity effect by studying the role of the distractor objects in sustained inattentional blindness. First we showed the similarity effect for chromatic colors and then we manipulated the similarity of the unexpected object in relation to the distractor objects and did not find any effects. Moreover, we found that inattentional blindness was present even when the displays did not contain any irrelevant to-be-ignored objects. We conclude that attending to target items on the basis of attentional set, but not active ignoring of nontargets items, is sufficient for the occurrence of sustained inattentional blindness.     

The role of attention in subitizing

The process of rapidly and accurately enumerating small numbers of items without counting, i.e. subitizing, is often believed to rest on parallel preattentive processes. However, the possibility that enumeration of small numbers of items would also require attentional processes has remained an open question. The present study is the first that directly contrasts the preattentive and attentive models of subitizing. We used an inattentional blindness paradigm to manipulate the availability of attentional resources during enumeration. In the inattention condition, the items to be enumerated were presented unexpectedly while participants focused on a line length comparison task. Divided- and full-attention conditions were also included. The results showed that only numbers one and two could be enumerated when the effects of attention were minimized. Freeing attentional resources increased the enumeration accuracies considerably, including for number two. The results suggest that even for enumerating small numbers, the attentional demands increase as the number of objects increases.     

Personality as a moderator in the relations between perceptions of organizational justice and sickness absence

This longitudinal study examined whether hostility and neuroticism moderated the effect of organizational justice perceptions on short-term sickness absence among 506 male and 3570 female hospital employees. Organizational justice perceptions were assessed using a questionnaire on procedural and relational justice. Self-certified sickness absence records at baseline and during the two-year follow-up were derived from employers’ registers. Hierarchical moderated Poisson regression models suggest that low procedural justice perceptions related to increased sickness absence more in hostile men than in other male employees. Low relational justice perceptions were a greater risk for sickness absence for male employees with higher neuroticism than for their colleagues with lower neuroticism.     

Impulsivity as a predictor of smoking and alcohol consumption

This prospective study examined the relationships between impulsivity, smoking and alcohol use in a large non-clinical sample of 601 men and 4832 women working in 12 Finnish hospitals. Data on impulsivity, smoking and alcohol consumption were collected by two questionnaires with a two-year interval. At baseline, impulsivity was associated with smoking and alcohol use. After controlling for baseline smoking, impulsivity predicted increased number of cigarettes smoked per day in women (p=0.08), but not in men. After controlling for alcohol use at baseline, impulsivity predicted increased alcohol consumption similarly in both genders (p<0.01). Higher impulsivity was also associated with increased likelihood of taking up smoking or becoming a heavy drinker (p<0.05). This evidence suggests that impulsivity contributes to increasing health risk behaviours.