The depth of a group's personality resources: Impacts on group process and group performance

The present study examines the productivity of task groups in relation to the personality resources of its members and its two dimensions of group process: task focus and shared exchange. It is hypothesized that the depth of a group's personality resources impacts upon productivity both directly through the application of its member's personality resources to successful group outputs, and indirectly through the mediating agency of group process variables that also contribute separately to successful group outputs. To test these hypotheses, the performance of 43 groups in a 3-month social psychology class was measured across three course assignments. This averaged performance score was related to the groups' process scores and to their total levels of personality resources measured by a comprehensive personality inventory administered at the beginning of the groups' life. Using multiple regression, we found that a group's performance was predicted by total member intellect, openness (negatively), and emotional stability (negatively). Blocked regression revealed that group intellect exercised a direct effect upon group performance, but that the effects of group openness and group emotional stability on performance were mediated through the group's two group processes of task focus and shared exchange. It is hoped that this demonstration of a two-step approach to studying the impact of group member's personality through its direct effects on group performance and its indirect effect on performance-linked aspects of group process will be extended to other types of personality measures, and to other types of groups addressing different tasks in other cultural settings.     

How do reinforcers affect choice? Preference pulses after responses and reinforcers

In concurrent schedules, reinforcers are often followed by a brief period of heightened preference for the just‐productive alternative. Such ‘preference pulses’ may reflect local effects of reinforcers on choice. However, similar pulses may occur after nonreinforced responses, suggesting that pulses after reinforcers are partly unrelated to reinforcer effects. McLean, Grace, Pitts, and Hughes (2014) recommended subtracting preference pulses after responses from preference pulses after reinforcers, to construct residual pulses that represent only reinforcer effects. Thus, a reanalysis of existing choice data is necessary to determine whether changes in choice after reinforcers in previous experiments were actually related to reinforcers. In the present paper, we reanalyzed data from choice experiments in which reinforcers served different functions. We compared local choice, mean visit length, and visit‐length distributions after reinforcers and after nonreinforced responses. Our reanalysis demonstrated the utility of McLean et al.'s preference‐pulse correction for determining the effects of reinforcers on choice. However, visit analyses revealed that residual pulses may not accurately represent reinforcer effects, and reinforcer effects were clearer in visit analyses than in local‐choice analyses. The best way to determine the effects of reinforcers on choice may be to conduct visit analyses in addition to local‐choice analyses.     

Decision to Leave Scale: Perceived Reasons to Stay In or Leave Violent Relationships

The 30-item Decision to Leave Scale (DLS) was developed with 631 college women and 420 college women and women in shelters. Seven DLS subscales emerged for concerns in deciding to stay or leave: Fear of Loneliness, Child Care Needs, Financial Problems, Social Embarrassment, Poor Social Support, Fear of Harm, Hopes Things Change. Mean internal reliability was .73, mean test-retest reliability was .70. Discriminant validity was demonstrated by expected associations between DLS concerns and self-esteem, children, and violence. Criterion validity was demonstrated by greater DLS concerns for women in shelters than for college women. Women in violent relationships who decided to stay reported more Fear of Loneliness than women who decided to leave.     

Lateral foot-movement times in sitting and standing postures

This study examined the effects of foot-side, sex, movement amplitude, and target width on lateral and nonvisually controlled foot-movement time with a reciprocal foot-tapping task in sitting and standing postures. 9 male and 9 female right-foot dominant undergraduates (ages 20 to 25 years) with no reported physical and health problems with their lower limbs voluntarily participated. Analysis indicated foot-movement time in a standing posture was much faster than that in a sitting posture. Target width and movement amplitude had significant effects on foot-movement time, while the effects of foot-side and sex were not significant. Multiple regression models with inclusion of the significant factors were examined which should be useful in predicting foot-movement time required for different tasks in sitting and standing postures. Possible applications of the results may be made to the design of work and foot controls in terms of the related task factors for person-machine interfaces with two or more pedals.     

The relationship of age to ten dimensions of job performance

Previous reviews of the literature on the relationship between age and job performance have largely focused on core task performance but have paid much less attention to other job behaviors that also contribute to productivity. The current study provides an expanded meta-analysis on the relationship between age and job performance that includes 10 dimensions of job performance: core task performance, creativity, performance in training programs, organizational citizenship behaviors, safety performance, general counterproductive work behaviors, workplace aggression, on-the-job substance use, tardiness, and absenteeism. Results show that although age was largely unrelated to core task performance, creativity, and performance in training programs, it demonstrated stronger relationships with the other 7 performance dimensions. Results also highlight that the relationships of age with core task performance and with counterproductive work behaviors are curvilinear in nature and that several sample characteristics and data collection characteristics moderate age-performance relationships. The article concludes with a discussion of key research design issues that may further knowledge about the age-performance relationship in the future.     

Affluence and Subjective Well-Being: Does Income Inequality Moderate their Associations?

Using the Gallup World Poll data, we examined whether national income inequality moderated the effects of affluence on individual subjective well-being (SWB). Multilevel analyses found that people reported higher life evaluation in years when their nation had higher GDP. Between-nation effects showed that people in wealthier nations reported greater SWB (but also more negative feelings) than those in poorer nations. Furthermore, people in unequal nations (i.e., greater income inequality) reported higher life evaluation and positive feelings than those in more equal nations. National income inequality also moderated the effects of individual-level income on SWB— income showed stronger associations with SWB in more equal nations than in nations with higher income inequality. People who earned higher incomes had higher life evaluation and positive feelings, and lower negative feelings than those who earned lower incomes, but the effects were stronger in more equal nations. These findings suggest that money matters less to the SWB of people in unequal nations than those in equal nations.

     

Parental Attachment and Adjustment to Higher Learning Institutions: The Role of Stress for a Malaysian Sample of Late Adolescents

The current study examined the mediating role of stress in the linkages between attachment to parents and adjustment to attending higher learning institutions in another country. Self‐reports from 114 Malaysian late adolescents studying in Singapore supported the primacy of stress for adjustment; more pertinent, stress mediated all the attachment‐adjustment linkages that met the conditions for mediation testing, although this mediating role of stress applied mostly to the late adolescent girls and was also dependent on parent gender.     

Personality, Meta-Mood Experience, Life Satisfaction, and Anxiety in Australian versus Singaporean Students

This study explores two issues concerning the relationships between personality, meta-mood experience, life satisfaction, and anxiety. First, it explored the incremental value of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience in predicting the three components of meta-mood experience (that is, attention to feelings, emotional clarity, clarity of feelings and mood repair), after controlling for demographic variables across Australia and Singapore. Second, it explored the incremental value of the three meta-mood experience components in predicting life satisfaction and anxiety, after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables across the two countries. One hundred and eighty nine tertiary students from Australia and 243 tertiary students from Singapore participated in this study. First, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that Agreeableness and Neuroticism are the two most important personality predictors of meta-mood experience, emotional attention, and emotional repair. Second, hierarchical regression analyses for both samples suggested that emotional repair was a significant predictor for life satisfaction and anxiety, even after controlling for demographic variables and personality variables. These results have implications for therapeutic interventions with life satisfaction versus anxiety. Funding for this research is facilitated partially by a research grant from the National Institute of Education.     

Inhibition of endogenous carbon monoxide production induces transient retention losses in the day-old chick when trained using a single trial passive avoidance learning task

Carbon monoxide (CO) is most often thought of as an exogenous toxin rather than as a possible endogenous nootrope. However, a limited number of studies have suggested that CO is necessary in memory processing for at least some tasks. While nitric oxide (NO) and CO are known activators of guanylyl cyclase (GC), only the effect of NO on GC has been extensively investigated as a mechanism underlying memory processing. The aim of the present study was to determine if inhibition of CO production would have an effect on memory processing. Using chicks trained on a single trial passive avoidance task, inhibition of CO production using zinc (II) deuteroporphyrin IX 2,4-bis ethylene glycol (ZnBG; 5 microM) resulted in two transient retention losses occurring at around 40 and 130 min post-training. The timing of these transient retention losses was similar to those observed following inhibition of GC, using the same species and task in a previous study. This supports the notion that CO is necessary in memory processing for this task and may act through a GC-dependent mechanism. As ZnBG also directly inhibits GC or nitric oxide synthase (NOS) at high concentrations, a second experiment was carried-out to confirm the specificity of ZnBG for heme oxygenase (HO) at the concentration used. The action of ZnBG was challenged with the HO agonist hemin (100 microM) and the transient deficits were abolished. This confirmed that the action of ZnBG on memory was through a CO-related mechanism rather than directly on GC or NOS. In this way the specificity of ZnBG (5 microM) for HO could be confirmed. The results support a role for endogenous CO in memory processing, possibly through activation of GC. In addition, the transient retention losses observed following administration of ZnBG suggest that CO may be necessary for memory retrieval and not formation as previously thought.