Employees' Sense of Community, Sense of Control, and Work/Family Conflict in Native American Organizations

This study examines two critical psychological states—employees' sense of work community and their sense of control—as mediating variables between personal/work factors and work/family conflict in the context of two Native American organizations. The questionnaire data come from 151 employees, 77 of whom are Nez Perce Indians. Results using structural equation modeling show that employees' sense of community and sense of control at work mediate the relationship among four personal/work factors (employees' ethnicity, family-sensitive supervision, the intrinsic value they place on their work, and work flexibility) and work/family role conflict.     

The analysis of young people’s experiences of domestic violence: spiritual and emotional journeys through suffering

The hermeneutical analysis of the stories of young people who have experienced domestic violence is described as multi‐layered having been developed from a voice centred relational methodology. The purpose was to uncover the complexity of lived experience. As the analysis proceeded, the young people’s voices emerged as ‘feeling’ voices, encompassing emotionality. Each young person’s journey through suffering was characterised by individuality, but the analysis has offered a glimpse of commonality which is present within each of the young people’s stories. Their resilience, their journey from disempowering to humanising emotions and their indomitable spiritual powers have been revealed through the analytical process.     

Affective guidance of intelligent agents: How emotion controls cognition

How do emotions and moods color cognition? In this article, we examine how such reactions influence both judgments and cognitive performance. We argue that many affective influences are due, not to affective reactions themselves, but to the information they carry about value. The specific kind of influence that occurs depends on the focus of the agent at the time. When making evaluative judgments, for example, an agent’s positive affect may emerge as a positive attitude toward a person or object. But when an agent focuses on a cognitive task, positive affect may act like feedback about the value of one’s approach. As a result, positive affect tends to promote cognitive, relational processes, whereas negative affect tends to inhibit relational processing, resulting in more perceptual, stimulus-specific processing. As a consequence, many textbook phenomena from cognitive psychology occur readily in happy moods, but are inhibited or even absent in sad moods (149).     

a test of holland's theory of vocational personalities and work environments

This study investigated the validity of J. L. Holland's (1997) theory of vocational personalities and work environments. The sample consisted of 241 randomly selected members of the National Association of School Psychologists, each of whom completed a demographic data form, the Self‐Directed Search‐Revised (SDS‐R; J. L. Holland, 1994) and a modified short form of the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (D. J. Weiss, R. V. Dawis, G. W. England, & L. H. Lofquist, 1967). Only limited support was found for major constructs associated with Holland's theory, although the study found several significant relationships between 3‐letter SDS‐R codes and desired role function as would be predicted by Holland's theory.     

FOCUS GROUPS

Focus groups are little used in feminist psychology, despite their methodological advantages. Following a brief introduction to the method, the article details three key ways in which the use of focus groups addresses the feminist critique of traditional methods in psychology. Focus groups are relatively naturalistic and so avoid the charge of artificiality; they offer social contexts for meaning-making and so avoid the charge of decontextualization; and they shift the balance of power away from the researcher toward the research participants and so avoid the charge of exploitation. The final section of the article, which evaluates the potential of focus groups for feminist research, identifies some other benefits of the method and also discusses some problems in the current use of focus groups. It concludes that the use—and development—of focus group methods offer feminist psychology an excellent opportunity for the future.