Gone Today but here Tomorrow: Extending the Unfolding Model of Turnover to Consider Boomerang Employees

Turnover research typically views voluntary turnover as an end state that severs the employment relationship permanently. However, this perspective overlooks the possibility that an employee who quits may return in the future. Anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that these “Boomerangs” can be a valuable staffing resource for their organizations. Yet, research regarding this type of employee is largely absent. Thus, we know little about whether the experiences of these temporary leavers differ from those who leave an organization permanently. In this paper, we examined differences between Boomerangs (employees who quit but are later rehired) and “Alumni” (employees who quit but will not return) using both qualitative and quantitative data. In a large sample of professional service employees, we found that Boomerangs and Alumni reported different reasons for having quit, which meant they were more likely to be classified on different paths in the unfolding model of turnover. In addition, survival analyses on the time to turnover suggest that Boomerangs quit earlier than Alumni in their original tenure, paradoxically suggesting that employees who quit earlier may be the very employees who will return in the future. Together, our findings suggest an extension to the unfolding model that considers how the timing of and reasons for turnover impact post‐turnover (return) decisions.     

Role of amygdala and hippocampus in the neural circuit subserving conditioned defeat in Syrian hamsters

We examined the roles of the amygdala and hippocampus in the formation of emotionally relevant memories using an ethological model of conditioned fear termed conditioned defeat (CD). Temporary inactivation of the ventral, but not dorsal hippocampus (VH, DH, respectively) using muscimol disrupted the acquisition of CD, whereas pretraining VH infusions of anisomycin, a protein synthesis inhibitor, failed to block CD. To test for a functional connection between the VH and basolateral amygdala (BLA), we used a classic functional connectivity design wherein injections are made unilaterally in brain areas either on the same or opposite sides of the brain. A functional connection between the BLA and VH necessary for the acquisition of CD could not be found because unilateral inactivation of either BLA alone (but not either VH alone) was sufficient to disrupt CD. This finding suggested instead that there may be a critical functional connection between the left and right BLA. In our final experiment, we infused muscimol unilaterally in the BLA and assessed Fos immunoreactivity on the contralateral side following exposure to social defeat. Inactivation of either BLA significantly reduced defeat-induced Fos immunoreactivity in the contralateral BLA. These experiments demonstrate for the first time that whereas the VH is necessary for the acquisition of CD, it does not appear to mediate the plastic changes underlying CD. There also appears to be a critical interaction between the two BLAs such that bilateral activation of this brain area must occur in order to support fear learning in this model, a finding that is unprecedented to date.Our laboratory has taken a novel approach to examine the behavioral and physiological changes that accompany social experience by studying a striking behavioral response that is exhibited following social defeat. When a Syrian hamster is paired with a larger, more aggressive opponent and is defeated, it subsequently becomes highly submissive and fails to defend its own home cage even against a smaller, nonaggressive intruder. We call this change in the behavior of the defeated hamster conditioned defeat (CD) (Portegal et al. 1993) and believe that it is a valuable model with which to study neural and behavioral plasticity following exposure to a biologically relevant stressor.One of the critical structures subserving CD is the amygdala; temporary inactivation of its major subnuclei, including the basolateral amygdala (BLA), blocks the acquisition of CD (Jasnow and Huhman 2001). Together with the findings that protein synthesis inhibition in the BLA effectively disrupts CD (Markham and Huhman 2008) and that overexpression of cAMP response element binding protein (CREB) in the BLA enhances CD (Jasnow et al. 2005), the data support the hypothesis that the BLA is a critical site for plasticity related to CD.One brain region that we have largely overlooked, but which receives considerable attention for its role in learning and memory, is the hippocampus. Several groups have now gathered anatomical and behavioral data demonstrating functionally specific dissociation between the dorsal (DH) and ventral (VH) regions of the hippocampus (Risold and Swanson 1996; Moser and Moser 1998; Bannerman et al. 2004; McEown and Treit 2009). While the DH is critical for spatial relationships (O''Keefe and Nadel 1978; Moser et al. 1993; Eichenbaum 1996) and has been shown to play an important role in social recognition in hamsters (Lai et al. 2005), the VH appears to be involved in the production of behaviors produced in response to aversive stimuli (Trivedi and Coover 2004; Pentkowski et al. 2006).Considering how critically important the hippocampus and amygdala are in relation to fear and memory, some studies are beginning to suggest that these areas may functionally interact to modulate memory function (Akirav and Richter-Levin 2002; McGaugh et al. 2002; McGaugh 2004; Vouimba et al. 2007). The BLA projects to the hippocampus (Amaral and Insausti 1992), and high-frequency stimulation of the BLA combined with tetanic stimulation of the perforant pathway facilitates hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) (Ikegaya et al. 1996). Additionally, electrolytic lesions of the VH produce a deficit in the acquisition of fear to a contextual conditioned stimulus, and NMDA lesions of the BLA cause a nonselective deficit in the acquisition of fear to both contextual and acoustic conditioned stimuli (Maren and Fanselow 1995). Although our laboratory has previously demonstrated that the BLA is critically involved in the acquisition of CD (Jasnow and Huhman 2001), the role of the hippocampus has yet to be investigated. The aim of the present study was to examine whether the VH and DH are involved in mediating CD and also to determine whether there is a functional interaction between the hippocampus and the amygdala in the acquisition of CD.     

Anxiety and hypervigilance to cardiopulmonary sensations in non-cardiac chest pain patients with and without psychiatric disorders

We investigated body vigilance, cardiac anxiety, and the mediating role of interoceptive fear on pain in patients with non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP; a syndrome of chest pain in the absence of identifiable organic etiology). Patients were more attentive to cardiac-congruent sensations than cardiac-incongruent sensations (e.g., gastrointestinal, cognitive dyscontrol; p's < .001). Patients with a DSM-IV Axis I anxiety or mood disorder were more body vigilant compared to patients who did not have a disorder (p's < .05). Patients with anxiety disorders were particularly vigilant to and fearful of cardiac sensations relative to patients without anxiety disorders. Latent variable path models examined the extent that interoceptive fear mediated the association between body vigilance and cardiac anxiety on chest pain. Within each model, diagnostic status, body vigilance, and cardiac anxiety were exogenous and predicted interoceptive fear that in turn predicted pain. Separate models examined body vigilance and cardiac anxiety, and both models fit the data well. Findings showed partial mediation for the body vigilance factor, and full mediation for the cardiac anxiety factor. Interoceptive fear played a mediating role in both models. The syndrome of NCCP may persist partly due to conscious hypervigilance to and fear of cardiac-congruent body sensations, particularly among anxious patients.     

What are we studying? Student jurors,community jurors,and construct validity

Jury researchers have long been concerned about the generalizability of results from experiments that utilize undergraduate students as mock jurors. The current experiment examined the differences between 120 students (55 males and 65 females, mean age = 20 years) and 99 community members (49 males and 50 females, mean age = 42 years) in culpability evaluations for homicide and sexual assault cases. Explicit attitude measures served as indicators of bias for sexual assault, defendant, and homicide adjudication. Results revealed that student and community participants showed different biases on these general explicit attitude measures and these differences manifested in judgments of culpability (guilt likelihood, convincingness of state's arguments, convincingness of defendant's arguments, and the defendants' criminal intentions) in sexual assault and homicide case scenarios. The results also showed that student mock jurors were more lenient when assigning guilt in homicide cases than were community members. The implications for future mock jury research are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.