Perceived stressors and stress responses among hospital-based nursing trainees

Perceived sources and levels of stress were assessed with a rating scale describing the experience of stressors and stress responses and an unstructured self-report about the reasons of such ratings in 60 nursing students in their first and final year of hospital training. The results, which show a significantly higher report of stress in the latter group, also point to identifiable sources of stressors in hospital-based nursing training procedures. Several recommendations to alleviate these conditions are discussed.     

Catholic Religious Orders of Women in China: Adaptation and Power

Although sociologists have argued that religious orders fulfill the same creative functions within Catholicism that sectarian groups perform for Protestantism, no research has examined whether the orders can serve this function in non-Western societies where Catholics are a minority. This article examines Catholic religious orders of women in mainland China today. Both internal and external factors prevent Chinese sisters from gaining the power and autonomy they would need to serve as change agents in the Chinese Catholic Church. The effectiveness of external attempts to ameliorate the sisters' difficulties is evaluated.     

Linking the fits, fitting the links: Connecting different types of PO fit to attitudinal outcomes

In this paper we explore the linkages among various types of person-organization (PO) fit and their effects on employee attitudinal outcomes. We propose and test a conceptual model which links various types of fits—objective fit, perceived fit and subjective fit—in a hierarchical order of cognitive information processing and relate them to employee organizational commitment and job satisfaction. By unveiling how the different types of fit relate to each other in influencing individual outcomes, we address some of the theoretical and methodological concerns in the use of different methods in measuring PO fit.     

The soft embodiment of culture: camera angles and motion through time and space

Cultural assumptions about one's relation to others and one's place in the world can be literally embodied in the way one cognitively maps out one's position and motion in time and space. In three experiments, we examined the psychological perspective that Asian American and Euro-American participants embodied as they both comprehended and produced narratives and mapped out metaphors of time and space. In social situations, Euro-American participants were more likely to embody their own perspective and a sense of their own motion (rather than those of a friend), whereas Asian American participants were more likely to embody a friend's perspective and sense of motion (rather than their own). We discuss how these psychological perspectives represent the soft embodiment of culture by implicitly instantiating cultural injunctions (a) to think about how you look to others and to harmonize with them or (b) to know yourself, trust yourself, and act with confidence.     

Behavioral and neural correlates of memory selection and interference resolution during a digit working memory task

Neuroimaging studies have shown the involvement of prefrontal and posterior parietal cortexes in regulating information processing. We conducted behavioral and fMRI experiments to investigate the relationship between memory selection and proactive interference (PI), using a delayed recognition task with a selection cue presented during the delay indicating which two of the four studied digits were relevant to the present test. PI was indexed by the response time differences between rejecting probes matching and not matching the no longer relevant digits. By varying the delay intervals, we found that the effect of PI did not diminish, even for cases in which the postcue interval was extended to 9 sec, but was stronger when the precue interval was lengthened to 5 sec. By examining the correlation between PI index and neural correlates of memory selection, we found that stronger PI is predicted by lower selection-related activity in the left inferior parietal lobe, the precuneus, and the dorsal middle frontal gyrus. Our results suggest that activity in the prefrontal-parietal network may contribute to one’s ability to focus on the task-relevant information and may proactively reduce PI in working memory.     

Rapid reacquisition of fear to a completely extinguished context is replaced by transient impairment with additional extinction training

A series of experiments studied reacquisition of fear reactions to a completely extinguished context. Reacquisition was rapid when reconditioning occurred as soon as the fear reactions were completely extinguished, showing that the original conditioning was intact. However, when reconditioning occurred after massive extinction training, fear reactions were depressed but then recovered across a long retention interval. This recovery was due to reconditioning and was similar to that produced by conditioning a massively preexposed context. These results show that massive extinction converts a potentially dangerous context into one that is merely familiar.     

Romantic beliefs, styles, and relationships among young people from Chinese, Southern European, and Anglo-Australian backgrounds

In this study, the romantic beliefs, styles of relating, sex-role traits, and social self-efficacy of 433 young people from three cultural groups were assessed and their links with relationship status and loneliness explored. A majority cultural group (Anglo-Australians) was compared with two minority groups (Chinese- and Southern European-background young people) within the same society. Chinese-background youth were less likely to be in a romantic relationship and more likely to be lonely than Anglo-Australian or Southern European-Australians. Greater loneliness was associated with non-secure relationship styles, lower social self-efficacy, and lower scores on psychosocial femininity and masculinity. Predictors of relationship status included romantic attitudes and relationship styles. Some evidence pointed to stronger social efficacy and more secure relationship styles being associated with greater acculturation but it was rather weak and inconsistent.     

The psychological adaptation of overseas and migrant students in Australia

This study aimed to examine the psychological adaptation of overseas and migrant students, and Anglo‐Australian students, in the light of various individual variables including social self‐efficacy, locus of control, loneliness, age, sex, and acculturating group membership. Participants were 382 students attending various universities in Melbourne, Australia. There were 189 Anglo‐Australian students, 72 Southern‐European second‐generation migrant students, 33 Asian migrant students, 33 Chinese migrant students, and 55 Chinese overseas students. The results suggested that there were ethnic differences in loneliness, social self‐efficacy, locus of control, and academic satisfaction. For nonmigrant students, a sense of control was important to their psychological and academic adaptation whereas for migrant/overseas students, supportive social relationships were important for their psychological and academic adaptation. The implications of these results for service provisions to students were also discussed.     

Parental and Child Characteristics Predicting Asian immigrants’ Feeding Practices

To explore parenting style, child effortful control, parenting stress, and their associations with maternal use of pressure to eat among Asian U.S. immigrant families with preschoolers. One hundred and nine Asian immigrant mothers with 3-to-5-year-old children in Maryland, United States rated their authoritative and authoritarian parenting styles, frequency of pressuring their child to eat, perceived parenting stress, and child’s effortful control. Two proposed moderated mediation models were tested using conditional process modeling. Effortful control mediated the association between authoritative parenting style and pressure to eat practices, αβ?=??0.07, p?<?0.05, and the association between authoritarian style and pressure to eat, αβ?=?0.12, p?<?0.05. Moreover, parenting stress moderated the association between child effortful control and maternal pressure to eat in the authoritarian style model, but not in the authoritative style model. Specifically, higher effortful control was associated with less use of pressure to eat at low and mean levels of parenting stress. Our findings revealed potential mechanisms underlying the associations between parenting styles and controlling feeding practices. Importantly, information learned from the present study may guide transdisciplinary efforts to design and implement culturally sensitive and family-based interventions targeting Asian immigrants’ wellbeing and obesity in the United States.