Reactions to the fate of one’s brain-child after its disclosure

After generating an idea we believe is original, we want it to be credited as original and receive recognition for it. So, we would be upset if its originality were questioned, or if our link to that intellectual self-extension were threatened, and we would cope with self-protective strategies. This rationale prompted an experiment with seventy-five female undergraduates. They (P) were to imagine drafting a paper for submission to a national creativity fair proposing a novel method for determining the structure of things, but then decided against submitting it. Fellow-participant, O, learning of P's decision to withdraw, borrows P’s draft. Later, P submits a revised, retitled draft that, unfortunately, goes astray. Still later P discovers that O, without P's knowledge and consent, submitted a copy of P’s original draft to the fair, listing O’s name, both names, or P’s name as author(s), and that the idea was or was not judged as original. Origination and recognition credit allocation had predicted effects on P’s emotional reaction, evaluation of the judges’competence, and of O’s trustworthiness. Unexpect-edly low self-evaluated creativity and sociability, and low desire for future collabora-tion, were obtained when recognition went to P and O jointly. We discuss the applica-bility of belief agreement-attraction and cognitive balance models, of imitation as flattery, of self-esteem as a moderator, and whether our results are culture-bound. Finally, we note how the reactions hint at conflict between inclinations toward altru-ism versus narcissistic self-interest when it comes to sharing one’s self-generated intellectual products with others.     

The linkage between spurned help and burnout among practicing nurses

One objective of the present study was to further establish the external validity for a model on spurned helpers' reactions through examining the spurning-burnout linkage in practicing nurses. A second objective was to explore whether or not social support from one's supervisor and one's colleague could reduce the negative impact of spurn-ing on burnout. The last objective was to assess if workload would add to the effects of spurning on burnout. One-hundred seventy-two practicing nurses in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire measuring the variables of interest. The results revealed once again the adverse effects of spurning on burnout, and that peer support and workload served as important moderators.     

Short-term retention of superimposed and of spatially distinct multiletter visual arrays

On each trial, Ss attempted to retain a series of five visually presented letters while concurrently “shadowing” (repeating aloud) a rapid series of aurally presented letters. If serial-position accuracy is ignored, they were able to store more than only the last letter of a typical series, even though all five letters appeared on the same screen, and that performance was superior to the retention of five auditorily presented letters. Together, these findings suggest that a form of visual storage might have been employed for the retention of visual stimuli and, specifically, one that was relatively immune to erasure as compared to “iconic” storage. In further support of that hypothesis, retention of such visual series as measured by free-recall accuracy was not inferior to that of five letters, each of which was presented on a separate screen.