Classification and differentiation of bladder and bowel related anxieties: A socio-cognitive exploration

Current Psychology - The current study aimed to explore the validity of a single, self-report measure for bladder and bowel anxieties (Bladder and Bowel Anxiety Grouping Item; BABAGI), using two...     

Philosophy of medicine in 2021

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Employee Happiness: Why We Should Care

Albert Schweitzer once stated that “success is not the key to happiness, happiness is the key to success.” Despite this widespread belief, employee happiness is often perceived by organizations as an insubstantial topic, irrelevant to bottom-line outcomes. Equally as problematic, past investigations have primarily utilized other positive emotion variables as a proxy for happiness, thus convoluting the relationships between happiness and work outcomes. As such, taking a scientist-practitioner approach, the present study sought to address the need to: (a) directly measure employees’ happiness, (b) link employee happiness to outcomes of organizational interest, and (c) assess the impact that organizational psychosocial factors have in decreasing employee happiness levels. Therefore, by measuring employee happiness, job demands, and organizational outcomes through a two-wave full panel design, the present study provided evidence for employee happiness’s ability to significantly mediate the relationship between job demands and organizational outcomes. Explicitly, a high level of job demands decreased employee happiness, which subsequently decreased employees’ organizational commitment, task performance, and contextual performance, while increasing turnover intentions and counterproductive work behaviors. These results carry significant theoretical and practical implications. Future QOL (Quality of Life) and organizational research would benefit from building on the present findings and establishing a nomological net of employee happiness. Additionally, practitioners have the opportunity to utilize this evidence to demonstrate the impact that employee happiness has on organizationally-relevant outcomes and the role that organizations can have in fostering employee happiness.

     

Readers and service commissioners require clear financial disclosures: Comment on innovation,research integrity,and change: A conflict of interest management framework for program developers (Sanders et al., 2019)

Sanders et al.'s proposal for a management framework for conflicting interests among program developers is very welcome. The underlying principles of such a framework must nevertheless prioritise the need for researchers and commissioners of services to make objective assessments of the impact of interventions reported in journal articles. This is particularly important in the field of randomised trials which may influence public sector expenditure. Using a strict definition derived from known financial conflict of interest, we have demonstrated that child-based effect sizes are much lower for independent studies than for studies with developer involvement. On this basis, we propose that journals publishing evaluations of psychosocial interventions should agree a standardised format for declarations of conflicts of interest based on that recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.     

Romantic Conflict Narratives in Emerging Adult Couples: Viewpoint and Gender Matter

Healthy romantic relationships entail understanding the needs of the self and other when interpreting conflict events. Yet how couples make meaning around specific conflicts and their capacity to reflect on their own and their partners’ unmet needs is understudied. Using narratives, we examined destructive (e.g., extreme anger and break-up anxiety) and constructive (e.g., perspective taking) interpretations of past romantic conflicts in 80 emerging adult heterosexual couples and the extent to which such interpretations varied by viewpoint and gender. Couple members were interviewed separately about two conflict episodes in which their partner did not meet their needs (victim viewpoint) and two episodes in which they did not meet their partners’ needs (perpetrator viewpoint). As anticipated, destructive interpretations were more evident in the victim viewpoint and for female couple members. In contrast, within constructive interpretations, the use of insight was greater in the perpetrator than the victim viewpoint. Although perspective taking was expected to be more common in the perpetrator viewpoint and in female narratives, this was not the case, as this type of constructive interpretation was infrequent in narratives about conflict. The findings revealed aspects of meaning making that might be useful to mental health professionals concerned with building skills to improve romantic competence in emerging adult couples.     

Challenging anxious cognitions or accepting them? Exploring the efficacy of the cognitive elements of cognitive behaviour therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy in the reduction of children's fear of the dark

Anxiety is highly prevalent in pre-adolescent children. Distorted cognitions are characteristic for dysfunctional levels of anxiety. However, applying cognitive elements in pre-adolescent children cannot be fully ascertained, as it is not until adolescence before children can apply logical and abstract reasoning in a sophisticated manner. Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) both target distorted cognitions. Whereas CBT encourages children to change the content of negative cognitions by applying cognitive restructuring, ACT stimulates youth to have a more accepting attitude towards these thoughts by applying cognitive defusion. The current study examined the efficacy of applying cognitive elements and compared the cognitive elements of CBT and ACT in pre-adolescent children. We included no behavioural elements to specifically study the developmental appropriateness of the cognitive elements in this age group. Highly anxious children, aged 8–12 years were randomised to a 30-minute cognitive restructuring (n = 21) or cognitive defusion intervention (n = 22). Subjective fear of the dark levels, behavioural darkness toleration, and comprehension and fun associated with the interventions were assessed. Both interventions had a significantly positive impact on children's fear of the dark. Cognitive restructuring led to more favourable results on subjective fear than cognitive defusion, no differences were found for darkness toleration.     

The self and eating disorders

In our review, we focus on self-related constructs in the context of eating disorders with four aims. First, we examine a variety of self-related constructs that have been theoretically and empirically linked to the development and course of eating disorders. In addition to the more well-researched constructs of self-esteem and self-efficacy, we also report on findings related to selflessness, contingent self-worth, self-objectification, ego-syntonicity, self-concept clarity, self-compassion, social comparison, self-oriented perfectionism/self-criticism, and narcissism. Second, we discuss self-related constructs that may be especially relevant to comorbidities common among those with eating disorders. Third, we review intervention and prevention programs where self-related constructs play a prominent role. Lastly, we share future research directions regarding self-related constructs and eating disorders that we believe will advance a deeper understanding of the role of the self in the eating disorders.     

The effects of mood and retrieval cues on semantic memory and metacognition

We investigated whether the previously established effect of mood on episodic memory generalizes to semantic memory and whether mood affects metacognitive judgments associated with the retrieval of semantic information. Sixty-eight participants were induced into a happy or sad mood by viewing and describing IAPS images. Following mood induction, participants saw a total of 200 general knowledge trivia items (50 open-ended and 50 multiple-choice after each of two mood inductions) and were asked to provide a metacognitive judgment about their knowledge for each item before providing a response. A sample trivia item is: Author – – To kill a mockingbird. Results indicate that mood affects the retrieval of semantic information, but only when the participant believes they possess the requested semantic information; furthermore, this effect depends upon the presence of retrieval cues. In addition, we found that mood does not affect the likelihood of different metacognitive judgments associated with the retrieval of semantic information, but that, in some cases, having retrieval cues increases accuracy of these metacognitive judgments. Our results suggest that semantic retrieval processes are minimally susceptible to the influence of affective state but does not preclude the possibility that affective state may influence encoding of semantic information.