How does a vacation from work affect employee health and well-being?

Health and well-being (H&W) improve during vacation. However, it is unclear whether this general development applies to all employees, while also little is known about the underlying processes causing such an improvement. Our research questions were: (1) Does every worker experience a positive effect of vacation on H&W? and (2) Can vacation activities and experiences explain changes in H&W during vacation? In a 7-week longitudinal field study, 96 workers reported their H&W 2 weeks before, during, 1 week, 2 and 4 weeks after a winter sports vacation on 6 indicators (health status, mood, fatigue, tension, energy level and satisfaction). Sixty percent of the sample experienced substantial improvement of H&W during and after vacation. Yet, a small group experienced no (23%) or a negative effect of vacation (17%). Spending limited time on passive activities, pleasure derived from vacation activities, and the absence of negative incidents during vacation explained 38% of the variance in the vacation effect. Although vacation has a positive, longer lasting effect for many, it is not invariably positive for all employees. Choosing especially pleasant vacation activities and avoiding negative incidents as well as passive activities during active vacations apparently contributes to the positive effect of vacation on H&W.     

Job Control and Job Stressors as Predictors of Proactive Work Behavior: Is Role Breadth Self-Efficacy the Link?

Previous research showed that job stressors are positively related to proactive work behavior. This study examines if these relations can be generalized to supervisor-rated proactive behavior and if relations of job stressors (time pressure, situational constraints) and job control with proactive behavior can be explained by role breadth self-efficacy as an underlying mechanism. We used supervisor ratings of proactive behavior (personal initiative, taking charge) from 140 employees working in small and medium-sized companies. Multilevel path analyses supported a partial mediation model. Job control and time pressure were positively related to role breadth self-efficacy, and role breadth self-efficacy was positively related to proactive behavior. Job control had also a direct relation with proactive behavior. The relation between situational constraints and proactive behavior was not significant.     

Stripping the Boss: The Powerful Role of Humor in the Egyptian Revolution 2011

The Egyptian Revolution 2011 has shaken the Arab world and stirred up Middle-East politics. Moreover, it caused a rush in political science and the neighboring disciplines, which had not predicted an event like this and now have troubles explaining it. While many things can be learned from the popular uprising, and from the limitations of previous scholarship, our focus will be on a moral resource, which has occasionally been noticed, but not sufficiently explored: the role of humor in keeping up the spirit of the Revolution. For 18 days, protestors persevered at Liberation Square in Central Cairo, the epicenter of resistance; at times a few dozens, at times hundreds of thousands. What they did was to fight the terror of the regime, which reached absurd peaks during those days, with humor—successfully. We offer a social-functionalist account of the uprising, which includes behavioral as well as cultural levels of analysis, and illuminates how humorous means helped to achieve deadly serious goals. By reconstructing how Egyptians laughed themselves into democracy, we outline a social psychology of resistance, which uses humor both as a sword and a shield.     

Does irrelevant music cause an irrelevant sound effect for auditory items?

The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) describes the significant reduction in verbal serial recall during irrelevant sounds with distinct temporal-spectral variations (changing-state sound). Whereas the ISE is well-documented for the serial recall of visual items accompanied by irrelevant speech and nonspeech sounds, an ISE caused by nonspeech sounds has not been reported for auditory items. Closing this empirical gap, Experiment 1 (n=90) verified that instrumental staccato-music reduces auditory serial recall compared to legato-music and silence. Its detrimental impact was not due to perceptual masking, disturbed encoding, or increased listening effort, as the employed experimental design and methods ensured. The found nonspeech ISE in auditory serial recall is corroborated by Experiment 1b (n=60), which, by using the same experimental design and methods, replicated the well-known ISE during irrelevant changing-state speech compared to steady-state speech, pink noise, and silence.     

A Perception-Action Coupling Type of Control in Long Jumping

The authors' goal was to identify the control mechanisms used by long jumpers (N = 6) to precisely position their foot at the board. In addition to the intertrial method usually used in previous research, an original method based on a trial-by-trial analysis was also implemented. If the approach to the board in long jumping encompasses two distinct sequences separated by a key step that marks the initiation of visual control, then a trial-by-trial analysis should reveal those sequences, regardless of the amount of adjustment: The step number at which regulation is initiated should be the same irrespective of the amount of adjustment. If, in contrast, a perception-action coupling mechanism operates, then the step number at which regulation is initiated should be a function of the amount of adjustment: A linear relation between those 2 variables should emerge. The results of the present study are compatible with continuous control mechanisms based on a perception-action coupling.     

Dampening of positive affect prospectively predicts depressive symptoms in non-clinical samples

Past research has convincingly shown that a ruminative response style to negative affect (NA) predicts concurrent and prospective levels of depressive symptoms. Recent findings suggest that how people respond to positive affect (PA) might also be involved in the development of depressive symptoms, although this has heretofore not been tested prospectively. Participants from two non-clinical samples (total N=487) completed measures of depressive symptoms, response styles to NA (negative rumination) and response styles to PA (positive rumination and mood dampening) at two assessments separated by a 3-month (Sample 1) and 5-month period (Sample 2). Results in both samples showed that increased dampening responses to PA predict depressive symptoms at follow-up, even when taking into account baseline depressive symptoms and ruminative responses to NA. The results suggest that (dampening) responses to PA add useful information above and beyond (ruminative) responses to NA in predicting depression symptoms prospectively.     

Psychological Contracts and Their Implications for Job Outcomes: A Social Exchange View

This article explores the relationship between on the 1 hand psychological contract fulfilment and affective commitment and on the other hand, normative commitment and job satisfaction. We hypothesized that the perceived supervisor support (PSS) and the perceived organizational support (POS) mediate the relationship between the fulfilment of the psychological contract, commitment and job satisfaction. The sample consists in 337 soldiers in training. In order to test our model, we used 3 measures of psychological contract fulfilment (economic, socioemotional and developmental), PSS and POS measures as well as attitudes. Results show that the developmental psychological contract is related to affective and normative organizational commitment and job satisfaction whereas socioemotional fulfilment is unrelated to affective commitment. Psychological contract fulfilment has a greater impact on normative commitment than affective commitment. Results show also that only PSS plays a mediating role in psychological contract processes. Several implications emerge from this study. First, in a military context, it is important to strengthen the developmental psychological contract. Second, it is essential for organizations to place greater emphasis on encouraging supervisors to establish healthy working relationships with newcomers.     

Creative Thinking in Adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A widened attentional focus, that is typically associated with ADHD, has been postulated to be accompanied by enhanced creative ability. However, creativity has been only limitedly examined in ADHD. Performance across several creativity measures were investigated in three groups: adolescents with ADHD, those with conduct disorder, and a healthy control sample. The ADHD group exhibited selective cognitive advantages and disadvantages by demonstrating an enhanced ability in overcoming the constraining influence of examples, but a reduced capacity to generate a functional invention during an imagery task. These findings are interpreted with reference to inhibitory control mechanisms and the contextual modulation of creative cognition.     

The Role of a Model's Age for Young Children's Imitation: A Research Review

The influence of a model's age on young children's behaviour has been a subject of considerable debate among developmental theorists. Despite the recent surge of interest, controversy remains about the nature of peer influence in early life. This article reviews studies that investigated the influence of a model's age on young children's behaviour in the first 5 years of life, and presents an account of seemingly mixed results. We propose that children imitate familiar behaviour for social reasons, such as in order to identify with the model or to communicate likeness. Since age is an important indicator of the degree of being alike, we propose that children are more likely to imitate familiar behaviour from peers. In contrast, we propose that children primarily imitate novel behaviour for learning reasons. Since adults are perceived as being more competent than children, children are more likely to learn from adults. We further suggest that increased peer experience leads children to evaluate peers as valuable resources for learning novel behaviour in domains in which peers are knowledgeable. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Norms of valence, arousal, dominance, and age of acquisition for 4,300 Dutch words

This article presents norms of valence/pleasantness, activity/arousal, power/dominance, and age of acquisition for 4,300 Dutch words, mainly nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. The norms are based on ratings with a 7-point Likert scale by independent groups of students from two Belgian (Ghent and Leuven) and two Dutch (Rotterdam and Leiden-Amsterdam) samples. For each variable, we obtained high split-half reliabilities within each sample and high correlations between samples. In addition, the valence ratings of a previous, more limited study (Hermans & De Houwer, Psychologica Belgica, 34:115-139, 1994) correlated highly with those of the present study. Therefore, the new norms are a valuable source of information for affective research in the Dutch language.