The Contribution of Job Happiness and Job Meaning to the Well-Being of Workers from Thriving and Failing Companies

In a time of global economic crisis, workers’ well-being is of paramount concern for both organizations and society at large. Conceptualizations within positive psychology distinguish between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being components, and call for the need to include them in an integrated perspective. Within this framework, the present study aimed at investigating the impact of situational uncertainty on eudaimonic and hedonic well-being, and the spillover effects of work into individuals’ lives. Data were collected from 85 Italian employees at a thriving insurance company and at a failing one. Participants were administered Job Content Questionnaire, Eudaimonic and Hedonic Happiness Investigation, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and Psychological Wellbeing Scales. Data were analyzed through hierarchical regression analyses. Concerning well-being at work, employees at the failing company reported higher job insecurity and lower job happiness compared to employees at the thriving company, while job meaning scores did not differ between groups. Concerning general well-being, an unexpected positive association was found between positive relations and situational uncertainty. A spillover effect of job happiness and meaning on life satisfaction, environmental mastery, and autonomy was also detected. In particular, a moderating effect of job meaning was identified, showing that attributing high importance to one’s job had wide affective consequences, spilling over to global life evaluations. Findings bring forward practical suggestions for well-being promotion, in terms of shifting domain importance (Wu Journal of Happiness Studies 10:37–47, 2009), and investing in multiple life areas (Sirgy and Wu Journal of Happiness Studies 10:183–196, 2009) for the promotion of a balanced life.     

The semantic specificity of gestures when verbal communication is not possible: The case of emergency evacuation

The aim of the present study was to examine the comprehension of gesture in a situation in which the communicator cannot (or can only with difficulty) use verbal communication. Based on theoretical considerations, we expected to obtain higher semantic comprehension for emblems (gestures with a direct verbal definition or translation that is well known by all members of a group, or culture) compared to illustrators (gestures regarded as spontaneous and idiosyncratic and that do not have a conventional definition). Based on the extant literature, we predicted higher semantic specificity associated with arbitrarily coded and iconically coded emblems compared to intrinsically coded illustrators. Using a scenario of emergency evacuation, we tested the difference in semantic specificity between different categories of gestures. 138 participants saw 10 videos each illustrating a gesture performed by a firefighter. They were requested to imagine themselves in a dangerous situation and to report the meaning associated with each gesture. The results showed that intrinsically coded illustrators were more successfully understood than arbitrarily coded emblems, probably because the meaning of intrinsically coded illustrators is immediately comprehensible without recourse to symbolic interpretation. Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the comprehension of iconically coded emblems and that of both arbitrarily coded emblems and intrinsically coded illustrators. It seems that the difference between the latter two types of gestures was supported by their difference in semantic specificity, although in a direction opposite to that predicted. These results are in line with those of Hadar and Pinchas‐Zamir (2004), which showed that iconic gestures have higher semantic specificity than conventional gestures.     

Prevalence and Significant Determinants of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in a Large Sample of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Chronic and life-threatening neurodegenerative diseases may be associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therefore, the current study was an investigation of the prevalence of PTSD in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, and identification of significant determinants of PTSD. Two hundred thirty-two MS patients were consecutively recruited and screened for the presence of PTSD with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, corroborated by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Furthermore, participants were administered the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and the Fatigue Severity Scale. Twelve patients (12/232, i.e. 5.17 %) were diagnosed as suffering from PTSD. Levels of education, anxiety and depression were significant determinants of the presence of PTSD. The role played by the levels of education, anxiety and depression in determining the presence of PTSD has been discussed. Further research on the psychological features of neurodegenerative diseases is urgently needed in order to plan appropriate treatments and improve patients’ quality of life.     

Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Heterodox dictum de omni et de nullo

Aristotle's explanation of what is said ‘of every’ and ‘of none’ has been interpreted either as involving individuals (of which something is said ‘of every’, or of which something is said ‘of none’), or as regarding exclusively universal terms. I claim that Alexander of Aphrodisias endorsed this latter interpretation of the dictum de omni et de nullo. This interpretation affects our understanding of Alexander's syllogistic: as a matter of fact, Alexander maintained that the dictum de omni et de nullo is one of the core principles of syllogistic.     

Differentiated forgetting rates of spatial knowledge in humans in the absence of repeated testing

Spatial knowledge, necessary for efficient navigation, comprises route knowledge (memory of the landmarks along a route) and survey knowledge (map-like). Available data on the retention in humans of spatial knowledge show that this does not decline systematically over months or years. Here, two groups of participants elaborated route and survey knowledge during navigation in a complex virtual environment before performing route and survey tasks. Both groups were tested 5 minutes after learning and 3 months later, while one group was also tested 1 week and 1 month later (repeated testing). Performance was similar in both groups on the first testing session, remained stable in the repeated tested group, but decreased in the non-repeated tested group, especially on route tasks. These results are the first to reveal a substantial and selective decline of spatial knowledge, occurring only if there is no possibility of reactivating knowledge along repeated testing.     

Socializing Hungarians in Transylvania,Romania: A case of international organizational socialization

This study was the first to compare organizational socialization of Hungarians (N = 122) and Romanians (N = 193) in Transylvania. Organizational socialization content was measured with the OSI (Organizational Socialization Inventory; Taormina, 1994 Taormina, R. J. 1994. The Organizational Socialization Inventory. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 2: 133–145. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and included four domains: training, understanding, co-worker support, and future prospects. The effectiveness of organizational socialization was expressed in terms of global job satisfaction (Rice, Gentile, & McFarlin, 1991 Rice, R. W., Gentile, D. A. and McFarlin, D. B. 1991. Facet importance and job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 76(1): 31–39. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). When controlling for sample characteristics other than ethnic identity, there were no differences between Hungarians and Romanians on “understanding” and “future prospects”. On the domains “training” and “co-worker support” Hungarian respondents scored lower than Romanian respondents did. In both ethnic groups, “training” and “future prospects” facilitated global job satisfaction. In addition, “understanding” was positively related to global job satisfaction in the Hungarian sample. “Co-worker support” did not predict global job satisfaction. The role of tenure in content areas of organizational socialization and global job satisfaction was explored: There were no relations. Implications for the professional field discuss the provision of training, the facilitation of co-workers to act as socializing agents, and the information on future career opportunities.     

Assessing Parameter Invariance in the BLIM: Bipartition Models

In knowledge space theory, the knowledge state of a student is the set of all problems he is capable of solving in a specific knowledge domain and a knowledge structure is the collection of knowledge states. The basic local independence model (BLIM) is a probabilistic model for knowledge structures. The BLIM assumes a probability distribution on the knowledge states and a lucky guess and a careless error probability for each problem. A key assumption of the BLIM is that the lucky guess and careless error probabilities do not depend on knowledge states (invariance assumption). This article proposes a method for testing the violations of this specific assumption. The proposed method was assessed in a simulation study and in an empirical application. The results show that (1) the invariance assumption might be violated by the empirical data even when the model’s fit is very good, and (2) the proposed method may prove to be a promising tool to detect invariance violations of the BLIM.     

A convention or (tacit) agreement betwixt us: on reliance and its normative consequences

The aim of this paper is to clarify what kind of normativity characterizes a convention. First, we argue that conventions have normative consequences because they always involve a form of trust and reliance. We contend that it is by reference to a moral principle impinging on these aspects (i.e. the principle of Reliability) that interpersonal obligations and rights originate from conventional regularities. Second, we argue that the system of mutual expectations presupposed by conventions is a source of agreements. Agreements stemming from conventions are “tacit” in the sense that they are implicated by what agents do (or forbear from doing) and without that any communication between them is necessary. To justify this conclusion, we assume that: (1) there is a salient interpretation, in some contexts, of everyone’s silence as confirmatory of the others’ expectations (an epistemic assumption), and (2) the participating agents share a value of not being motivated by hostile attitudes (a motivational assumption). By clarifying the relation between conventions and agreements, the peculiar normativity of conventions is analyzed.     

How to hit Scylla without avoiding Charybdis: comment on Perruchet, Tyler, Galland, and Peereman (2004)

M. Pe?a, L. L. Bonatti, M. Nespor, and J. Mehler argued that humans compute nonadjacent statistical relations among syllables in a continuous artificial speech stream to extract words, but they use other computations to determine the structural properties of words. Instead, when participants are familiarized with a segmented stream, structural generalizations about words are quickly established. P. Perruchet, M. D. Tyler, N. Galland, and R. Peereman criticized M. Pe?a et al.'s work and dismissed their results. In this article, the authors show that P. Perruchet et al.'s criticisms are groundless.     

Manipulation of responsibility in non-clinical subjects: does expectation of failure exacerbate obsessive-compulsive behaviors?

An exaggerated sense of responsibility is currently considered as the ground for the obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obsessive-like behaviors, such as hesitations and checks, may be induced in non-clinical subjects by increasing perceived responsibility (i.e., perceived personal influence on negative outcomes). In line with Salkovskis' proposal [The cognitive approach to anxiety: threat beliefs, safety-seeking behavior, and the special case of health anxiety and obsessions, in: P.M. Salkovskis (Ed.), Frontiers of Cognitive Therapy, Guilford, New York], we tested the hypothesis that reduced coping abilities (i.e., an exaggerated expectation of failure) are another effectual factor contributing to obsessive-like behaviors. We examined 47 normal volunteers in a visuo-spatial memory task, and manipulated their perceived personal influence and expectation of failure by giving differential instructions and feedback about their performance. Increase of perceived personal influence induced slowness, hesitations and checks without enhancing performance. Expectation of failure exacerbated obsessive-like behaviors, again without affecting performance. These results confirm the role of responsibility in obsessive-like behavior and indicate that reduced coping abilities may contribute to worsen dysfunctional strategies.