Being well at work: the impact of organizational climate and social identity on employee stress and self-esteem over time

In organizational psychology, staff perceptions of organizational climate have been found to be an important predictor of employee outcomes, such as employee stress. However, only a small pool of research has investigated the psychological mechanism that underpins the relationship, and no past literature has explored how the relationship persists over time. This paper uses the social identity approach to investigate whether social identification predicts and mediates the relationship between staff perceptions of organizational climate and their levels of stress and self-esteem over time. Employing a sample of public school teachers, the study was conducted over two years (N = 281, 65 schools). The results indicated that social identification fully mediated the relationship between organizational climate and self-esteem longitudinally but showed no significant relationship with stress. The implications of these findings are discussed, with recommendations for future research.     

Therapeutic progress and symptom elevation in treating dismissive attachment: A case study

A dismissive or avoidant attachment style can present clinical challenges in psychotherapy as the attachment style may interfere with the development of a constructive therapeutic alliance and impact the level of disclosure, expressions of distress, and risks for premature drop-out. This paper reports a naturalistic case study and offers an in-depth examination of a treatment with a client with dismissive attachment, including a detailed examination of relational interventions and countertransference struggles. Furthermore, this paper considers the notable differences between quantitative scores on a well-validated, practice-based clinical symptom inventory and the qualitative outcomes for this client to offer clinical and research implications in treatment with dismissive attachment.     

Academic-industrial relationships: Opportunities and pitfalls

Over the past 50 years, academic-industrial collaborations and technology transfer have played an increasingly prominent role in the biomedical sciences. These relationships can speed the delivery of innovative drugs and medical technologies to clinical practice, creating important public health benefits as well as income for universities and their faculty. At the same time, they raise ethical concerns, particularly when research involves human subjects in clinical trials. Lapses in oversight of industry sponsored clinical trials at universities, and especially patient deaths in a number of trials, have brought these issues into the public spotlight and have led the federal government to intensify its oversight of clinical research. The leadership of Harvard Medical School convened a group of leaders in academic medicine to formulate guidelines on individual financial conflicts of interest. They and other groups are working to formulate a national consensus on this issue. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

Individual variation for cognitive decline: quantitative methods for describing patterns of change

What are the best quantitative methods for studying cognitive decline? This question was investigated in a sample of 638 individuals aged 50 years and older from the Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging. A battery of cognitive tests tapping multiple domains was administered to each individual from 2 to 7 times over a span of 10 years. Four methods of operationalizing cognitive decline were compared: change scores, a criterion-based method, least squares, and random effects regression (RER). The RER results were most consistent with a significant decline across measures and differences between demented and nondemented individuals. Predicted slopes from the RER model also showed the strongest interrelationships within and across cognitive domains as indicated by factor analysis results and stronger associations with demographic, health, and psychosocial predictors.     

Age-related differences and change in positive and negative affect over 23 years

Positive and negative affect, measured by the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale, were studied in a longitudinal sample spanning from 1971 to 1994. The sample (N = 2,804) represented 4 generations of families. Linear trend analyses compared generations over time for positive and negative affect and also examined the possible influences of neuroticism and extraversion on initial levels of affect and patterns of change in affect. Negative affect decreased with age for all generations, although the rate was attenuated among the oldest adults. Higher neuroticism scores also attenuated the decrease in negative affect across time. For positive affect, the younger and middle-aged adults showed marked stability, but the older group evidenced a small decrease over time. Higher levels of extraversion were related to more stability in positive affect.     

Renewing Medicine’s basic concepts: on ambiguity

Background

Edmund Pellegrino lamented that the cultural climate of the industrialized West had called the fundamental means and ends of medicine into question, leading him to propose a renewed reflection on medicine’s basic concepts, including health, disease, and illness. My aim in this paper is take up Pellegrino’s call. I argue that in order to usher in this renewal, the concept of ambiguity should take on a guiding role in medical practice, both scientific and clinical. After laying out Pellegrino’s vision, I focus on the concept of normality, arguing that it undergirds modern medicine’s other basic concepts. I draw on critiques by scholars in disability studies that show the concept of normality to be instructively ambiguous. Discussing the cases of Deafness and body integrity identity disorder (BIID), I argue that if medicine is to uphold its epistemic authority and fulfill its melioristic goals, ambiguity should become a central medical concept.

Methods

In this theoretical paper, I consider how central concepts in the philosophy of medicine are challenged by research on experiences of disability. In particular, the idea that medical knowledge produces universal truths is challenged and the importance of historical, cultural, and otherwise situated knowledge is highlighed.

Results

I demonstrate how experiences of disability complicate dominant theories in the philosophy of medicine and why medical practice and the philosophy of medicine should make ambiguity a central concept.

Conclusions

If medical practitioners and philosophers of medicine wish to improve their understanding of the meaning and practice of medicine, they should take seriously the importance and centrality of ambiguity.

     

Criminal Behavior and Self-Control: Using the Dual Component Theory of Inhibition Regulation to Advance Self-Control and Crime Research

Predicting crime remains a central issue for social science research. Perspectives that consider the role of self-control have added greatly to our ability to explain and predict criminal behavior. However, this approach has been narrowly focused on the role of individual differences in trait self-control, limiting the potential of this approach to integrate a range of findings in the literature. To realize the full potential of the self-control construct to explain criminal behavior, we use the Dual Component Theory of Inhibition Regulation (DCTIR). We discuss how the model can account for a number of findings, including patterns of recidivism, age differences, and the role of socioeconomic factors in crime. The DCTIR provides a framework for integrating these findings, generating new predictions, and ultimately better predicting criminal behavior.