Usage of and Compliance with Power Tactics in Routine Versus Nonroutine Work Settings

This study examines situational determinants of power usage and compliance derived from the Interpersonal Power Interaction Model. Organizations where routine tasks predominate were compared with those where complex tasks prevail. Samples of workers (N = 194) and supervisors (N = 100) from four companies representing routine tasks and complex ones completed three versions of the Interpersonal Power Inventory (Raven, Schwarzwald & Koslowsky, 1998). Results indicated that in settings where routine tasks predominate usage of and compliance with harsh power tactics was greater than in complex ones. Yet, soft tactics were not related to task complexity. It was also found that rank and tactics interacted. Regardless of settings, supervisors as compared to subordinates reported more frequent usage of soft tactics and less frequent usage of harsh ones. The discussion suggests a mechanism for understanding these patterns.     

The Pantheon of National Hero Prototypes in Educational Texts Understanding Curriculum as a Narrative of National Heroism

This essay explores the relationship between Israeli public and educational discourse and, in particular, how, by implementing various pedagogical strategies aimed at inculcating a typology of national heriosm during the state's first three decades, the state sponsored curriculum “translated” ideological discourse into educational text, integrating the state's ideological value-system into a series of educational messages. The mapping of heroic prototypes in the national curriculum was conducted along the classic time-axis of Jewish history. The earliest prototype was the ancient Hebrew hero of the Bible and the most recent the “soldier as redeemer” of the Six Day War. At the same time, specific values constantly shifted to reflect changing perceptions and definitions of the heroic, including, eventually, the heroism of the Holocaust “survivor.” What remained invariable was the symbolic importance Israeli children living in a society accustomed to wars and continuously threatened violence were taught to attach to the ideal of the national hero and heroism itself. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Motherhood Is Not a Given Thing: Experiences and Constructed Meanings of Biological and Nonbiological Lesbian Mothers

This study was designed to examine the subjective experiences of Israeli lesbian mothers. We explored the constructed meanings that both biological and nonbiological mothers relate to their motherhood experience. Eight lesbian couples who were parenting together and who had 1, 2, or 3 children were interviewed. Our data suggest that the birth of the first child to lesbian couples marks a turning point in the lives of each partner, as well as in the lives of the couples, by creating for the first time a significant distinction between the partners. It was found that lesbian mothers tend to organize their experiences into 3 circles of “being”: personal, couple, and communal (e.g., familial and social) aspects. Three themes contribute to the theoretical understanding of lesbian motherhood. First, although lesbian couples are known to value the sense of equality in their relationships, the birth of a child by one of the partners is an event that creates 2 different statuses of motherhood: a biological mother and a nonbiological mother. Second, the legal aspects of lesbian motherhood become a part of everyday life for the lesbian family and shape the partners’ relationship. Third, being both a lesbian and a mother highlights the fundamental dialectic between marginality and mainstream conformity in the life experiences of lesbian mothers in Israeli society.     

Examination of the salutogenic model, support resources, coping style, and stressors among Israeli university students

The author investigated A. Antonovsky's (1979) concept of the sense of coherence (SOC) in relation to social support, coping styles, and the stress experiences of college students. A multivariate model was used to assess the relationships between the psychosocial resources, perceived stress, and the effect of different coping styles among 261 undergraduate students in three Israeli institutions of higher education. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance revealed that younger students used more emotional strategies and perceived having greater social support from friends than did older students. Students who did not work reported experiencing higher levels of stress associated with daily life and work-related issues. Women used more emotional and avoidance coping strategies. The findings of the regression analysis demonstrated that task-oriented and emotional coping modes, work stress, and family support explained 30% of the variance of SOC. These results increase our understanding of the salutogenic model of students within university settings and suggest focusing on the students and their interaction with the environment, using the concepts of stress, coping, and social support as inseparable characteristics of systems models.     

Work flow policy and within-worker and between-workers variability in performance

Work flow policies are shown to induce a change in average between-workers variability (worker heterogeneity) and within-worker variability in performance times. In a laboratory experiment, the authors measured the levels of worker heterogeneity and within-worker variability under an individual performance condition, a work sharing condition, and a fixed assignment condition. The work sharing policy increased the levels of worker heterogeneity and worker variability, whereas the fixed assignment policy decreased them. These effects, along with work flow policy main effects on mean performance times and variability are examined. This article represents an initial step in understanding effects that may be important in the selection of an operating policy, the ignorance of which may lead to costly misestimates of performance.     

A test of psychotherapists' and nontherapists' recognition of correct and incorrect process in managing client resistance

Objective

Psychotherapist management of client resistance (i.e., opposition to change or the therapy process) has a significant impact on therapy outcomes. This study aimed at assessing psychotherapists' and nontherapists' abilities to recognise empirically supported correct and erroneous therapist responses to client resistance.

Method

Seventy-eight therapists and 111 nontherapists completed a rapidly administered novel skills test, Therapist Errors in Resistance Management (TERM), assessing recognition of correct and erroneous resistance management.

Results

Participants were, on average, less than half as accurate at recognising therapist errors (recognised below chance levels) compared with correct therapist responses to resistance (recognised above chance levels). Therapists outperformed nontherapists in accurate recognition of therapist responding. However, among the therapist group, greater clinical experience did not predict superior recognition of therapist errors.

Conclusion

These results indicate that therapists and nontherapists alike may have difficulty detecting erroneous therapist responses to resistance, tending to mistake empirically contraindicated directive responses for correct responding. This may reflect the difficult and unintuitive nature of correct resistance responding and may suggest a need for increased training in process acuity and resistance management in therapist education.     

Developmental changes in assigning agent relations in Hebrew: The interaction between word order and structural cues

Developmental changes in the interaction between word order and structural cues was investigated by having Hebrew-speaking children between 4 and 10 years of age interpret NVN utterances that balanced the complementary and contradictory effects of work order and two types of morphological cues, inflections that mark subject-verb gender agreement and an object particle. In Hebrew, gender inflections are highly complex and irregular while the object particle is highly regular and distinctive. Both word order and structural cues affected interpretations by subjects of all age groups, though the role of structural cues increased with age. For all groups, the objec particle was a dominant cue. The likelihood of assigning the agent relation to the first or second noun systematically varied with the relative weights of cues that supported and opposed each assignment. Comparisons were made between processing of Hebrew and processing of Serbo-Croatian and Turkish.     

Hemispheric processing of idioms in schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder

Studies conducted on individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show that they find it difficult to comprehend figurative language, and have a tendency to interpret it literally. This study examines hemispheric processing of idioms in patients with SZ, in comparison to individuals with ASD. Seventeen adults with SZ and 18 adults with ASD participated in the study. The two clinical groups were matched in age, vocabulary scores and verbal executive function scores. Using the divided visual field paradigm, the participants performed a lexical decision task for a target word related to either a literal or a figurative interpretation of an idiom. Whereas SZ patients showed the typical right lateralisation for non-salient literal interpretations of idioms, adults with ASD showed atypical bilateral processing. These findings indicate different hemispheric lateralisation in idiom processing in the two clinical groups.     

Impulsive decision-making: learning to gamble wisely?

A decade ago, Bechara et al. [Bechara, A., Damasio, A. R., Damasio, H., & Anderson, S. W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7-15] published a paper in Cognition, introducing a Gambling Task which was designed to mimic everyday decision-making. Since then, the task has been computerized, its decision-making components have been scrutinized, and it has been employed in various patient groups, such as pathological gamblers, substance abusers, and so forth. Time and again it has been shown that while normal controls perform well on the task, it is the various target populations under scrutiny who exhibit poor performance. Yet, as we show in this paper, a total of 46% of normal individuals exhibited poor performance on the task, indicating a lack of learning. We argue that while so much importance has been placed on contrasting patients with controls, perhaps the real emphasis should lie in distinguishing among different individual profiles of performance on the task, irrespective of clinical classification. Our basic recommendation is to look at the individual data, pool when you can, and only then to contrast groups.