Leader Humor Extends beyond Work: how and when Followers Have Better Family Lives

Although the consequences of leader humor on subordinates have been well documented, the important issues of how and when leader humor affects employees’ attitudes or behaviors beyond the workplace have received limited attention. We integrate the humor literature with spillover-crossover theory to address the gap regarding the implications of leader humor in the nonwork domain. By performing an experiment and two field studies involving employee-spouse dyads, we consistently find 1) a positive association between leader humor and followers’ job satisfaction, 2) a spillover effect of followers’ job satisfaction on subordinates’ work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and a crossover effect of subordinates’ WFE on their spouses’ marital satisfaction, 3) serial mediating effects of followers’ job satisfaction and WFE on the leader humor-spouses’ marital satisfaction link, and 4) a stronger positive indirect effect of leader humor on spouse’ marital satisfaction via followers’ job satisfaction and WFE when followers’ perceived organizational interpersonal harmony is low. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and suggest practical implications for developing leader humor to enhance employee well-being.

     

Developmental Trajectories of Maladaptive Perfectionism in Middle Childhood

The developmental trajectories of maladaptive perfectionism, along with their consequences and origins, were examined in middle childhood. A sample of Singaporean children and their parents (N = 302) were recruited for a longitudinal study when the children were 7 years old. Subsequent follow‐up assessments were made at ages 8, 9, and 11. A multimethod approach was adopted where parent reports, child reports, and observational data on a dyadic interaction task were obtained. Using latent class growth modeling, four distinct classes were obtained for critical self‐oriented perfectionism (SOP‐C), whereas two classes emerged for socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP). Children with high and/or increasing SOP‐C and SPP trajectories constituted 60% and 78% of the sample, respectively. For both SOP‐C and SPP, trajectories with high initial status were associated with higher internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Parental intrusiveness and negative parenting predicted high and/or increasing SOP‐C trajectories, whereas the child temperament dimension of surgency predicted high SPP trajectory. Both SOP‐C and SPP trajectories tended to co‐occur, suggesting a mutually reinforcing process. This study yields important findings that help advance current understanding of the emergence and developmental pathways of maladaptive perfectionism in children.     

Global-local processing impacts academic risk taking

Research has shown that academic risk taking—the selection of school tasks with varying difficulty levels—affords important implications for educational outcomes. In two experiments, we explored the role of cognitive processes—specifically, global versus local processing styles—in students’ academic risk-taking tendencies. Participants first read a short passage, which provided the context for their subsequent academic risk-taking decisions. Following which, participants undertook the Navon’s task and attended to either global letters or local letters only, i.e., were either globally or locally primed. The effects of priming on academic risk taking were then assessed using a perception-based measure (Experiment 1) and a task-based measure (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 provided preliminary evidence, which Experiment 2 confirmed, that globally focused individuals took more academic risk than did locally focused individuals after controlling for participants’ need for cognition (how much they enjoy effortful cognitive activities). Additionally, the inclusion of and comparisons with a control group in Experiment 2 revealed that locally focused participants drove the observed effects. The theory of predictive and reactive control systems (PARCS) provides a cogent account of our findings. Future directions and practical applications in education are discussed.     

Psychological and Sociocultural Adaptation of Children Adopted from Russia and their Associations with Pre-Adoption Risk Factors and Parenting

We investigated academic and behavioral outcomes of internationally adopted children and the associations between these outcomes and age at adoption, time spent in the adoptive family, and parenting. At two time points (T1 and T2, ~15 months apart), we examined early academic skills (school readiness), and parent-reported behavioral adjustment (internalizing and externalizing behavior) and adaptive functioning of a sample of 75 children (45.9% boys, mean age?=?5.17 years) adopted from Russia into US families. We also collected parents’ self-assessments of their parenting at T1. Children who were adopted at a younger age showed higher levels of early academic skills. Correlations between age at adoption and other outcomes were overall small and mostly non-significant. However, adoptees’ academic and behavioral progress differed notably in several respects. Specifically, adoptees improved in early academic skills over time, whereas, as a group, their adaptive functioning and behavioral adjustment remained stable within the normal range. Early academic skills were not related to behavioral adjustment at each time point and over time. The time spent in the adoptive family was positively related to early academic skills at T2. Whereas outcomes showed little to no relation to parenting as reported by mother and father separately, higher discrepancies between mothers' and fathers' reports of positive parenting were related to higher levels of behavioral symptoms and lower levels of adaptive skills at T2. These differential results may be explained in part by drawing upon the notion of dissociated domains of psychological and sociocultural adaptation and acculturation, outlined in the immigration literature. These results also bring to light the possible importance of between-parent consistency in parenting for adoptees’ behavioral outcomes.     

顿悟问题解决不同阶段中工作记忆的作用

该研究探讨了顿悟问题解决不同阶段中工作记忆的作用。在实验1中,以87名大学生为被试,使用多种工作记忆广度任务和言语顿悟任务,探讨了工作记忆对于言语顿悟问题解决不同阶段的影响;在实验2中,以119名大学生为被试,使用多种工作记忆广度任务和空间顿悟任务,探讨了工作记忆对于空间顿悟问题解决不同阶段的影响。研究结果表明,初始搜索阶段与重构阶段是相对独立的两个阶段;工作记忆对于顿悟问题解决的不同阶段有着不同的影响,它主要影响顿悟问题解决的初始搜索阶段,工作记忆能力越强,初始搜索阶段所需时间越少;工作记忆对于顿悟问题解决的重构阶段无显著影响,这一点支持了关于重构内在机制的特殊过程观。     

Conducting community‐based participatory research in an urban Malaysian community: Lessons learned and challenges in establishing partnerships

This paper presents the process of how partnerships are established between an urban residential community and an academic institution in Malaysia by employing community‐based participatory research, which involves researchers, community members, and organizational representatives as coresearchers. The research process encompasses colearning, power sharing, and coconstructing of knowledge, with the community members driving the research direction. The research paradigm is grounded on conducting research with the community. This paper highlights the experience and lessons learned while applying the principles of community‐based participatory research that promotes social participation of older persons living in a residential community. Two pertinent challenges surface in the research process. The first challenge involves the complexity noted in the gap between the emancipation of community‐based participatory research and the hierarchical social structure of the society. The second challenge is the prevalence of unspoken yet subtle domination that undermines the local cultural values affecting the process of coconstructing knowledge with the community. Recommendations for addressing these challenges include future partnerships with other Malaysian communities as well as cross‐border research partnerships.     

The Vasarhelyi method of child art psychotherapy: an adjunctive treatment in childhood depression

We describe the use of child art psychotherapy (CAP) following the Vasarhelyi method in an 11-year-old female with a history of anxiety and depression which limited her capacity to attend school and in a 15-year-old male who had a history of depressive symptoms with suicidal thinking. In each case, the use of other therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy was not possible or unsuccessful. Through the creation of images, each young person revealed concerns which had not been previously verbalised, and recovery was linked in time to the revelation of these worries. We propose the use of the Vasarhelyi method of CAP as an adjunctive treatment of depression in young people.     

Why rare targets are slow: Evidence that the target probability effect has an attentional locus

Target probability has a well-known effect on detection times: Targets that occur with lower probability are detected more slowly than their higher-probability counterparts. A long-standing issue of interest is what causes this effect. In the two experiments of this study, we examined the possibility that the target probability effect has an attentional locus. We report two key findings that are consistent with this hypothesis. First, we observed a magnification of the effect when the attentional resources available for target detection were limited. Second, we also observed the complementary pattern: an attenuation of the effect when more attentional resources were available for detection. We propose that the target probability effect is caused by an asymmetry in the attentional demands made by targets that occur with different probabilities, with low-probability targets being more attentionally demanding than high-probability ones.