SINGLE-ATTRIBUTE UTILITY ANALYSIS MAY BE FUTILE,BUT THIS CAN’T BE THE END OF THE STORY: CAUSAL CHAIN ANALYSIS AS AN ALTERNATIVE

Research on providing single-attribute utility analysis has shown moderate or even negative effects on the acceptance of selection and training tests by human resource decision makers. In this study, we contrasted the perceived utility of single-attribute utility analysis with causal chain analysis as an alternative way of conducting utility analysis. Causal chain analysis focuses on measuring the linkages between HRM interventions and organizational outcomes mediated by employee attitudes and customer perceptions. We compared 144 managers' reactions to both methods of utility analysis concerning the variables understandability, information quality, perceived usefulness, user information satisfaction, and intention to use. Causal chain analysis yielded higher results than single-attribute analysis for these variables, and a compound measure of these constructs supported this finding. This indicates that causal chain analysis is a valuable alternative method of communicating the utility of HRM interventions.     

Turkish Mothers’ Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions: A Brief Report

This study is one of the first to examine emotion socialization behaviors of Turkish mothers; it also provides information on psychometric properties of the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES; Fabes et al. 1990) in a sample of Turkish mothers of preschoolers. Participants were mothers (M _age = 35.07, SD = 4.14) of 141 children attending daycare centers in middle and upper-middle class suburbs of Istanbul. The patterns of inter-correlations between emotion socialization reactions and general child-rearing behaviors showed that they reflect related but different aspects of broader parenting styles. Both aspects of parenting displayed associations with child emotional reactivity in the expected direction, further confirming patterns previously revealed for emotion socialization in Western samples. The results also confirmed the six emotion socialization behaviors assessed by the CCNES and all dimensions had good internal consistencies. The pattern of inter-correlations among maternal emotion socialization behaviors, general child-rearing behaviors, and child negative emotionality confirmed construct validity of the instrument for Turkish mothers.     

Mothers' Reactions to Preschoolers' Proactive and Reactive Aggressive Behaviours

The present study was designed to examine mothers' emotional reactions, causal attributions, and socialization strategies in response to preschool children's engagement in proactive and reactive physical aggression with peers during free play at school. Participants were 84 mothers (M_age = 31.83, SD = 4.48) with preschool‐aged children (M_age = 4.92, SD = 0. 97), residing in Ankara, Turkey. Supporting our expectations, mothers reacted with negative emotions to both functions of aggressive behaviours, with less anxiety, disappointment, embarrassment, and guilt for reactive aggression. They also believed that reactive aggression is more contextually dependent and intentional and reported more indirect (e.g., asking the child, teacher, or other children to find out more about the situation and aggressive episode) and other‐oriented strategies (e.g., telling the other child to behave properly) to address these behaviours. Overall, our findings suggest that Turkish mothers' feelings, perceptions, and socialization approaches to childhood aggression vary depending on the functions of aggression, and mothers perceive preschool‐aged children's engagement in reactive aggression in the school setting as relatively more acceptable than proactive aggression. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of sense of coherence during two group interventions

Kähönen, K., Näätänen, P., Tolvanen, A. & Salmela‐Aro, K. (2012). Development of sense of coherence during two group interventions. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 523–527. Burnout is a serious occupational hazard. This study investigated the possibility to develop an effective salutogenic group intervention among employees suffering from severe burnout symptoms. Participants consisted of employees aged 31 to 59 years working in different public service occupations, such as police officers, tax officers, (and other public service officers), and assigned to three different groups: analytic (N = 25), psychodramatic (N = 24) and controls (N = 28). The intervention comprised 16 separate days over a nine‐month period. Changes in sense of coherence (SOC) were measured four times with the 13‐item Orientation to Life Questionnaire during the intervention and at six‐month follow‐up, and analyzed by general linear model (GLM) and using Cohen’s d to estimate effect sizes. Change in SOC between the three groups was statistically significant (F(4,148) = 2.65, p = 0.036). The psychodrama group showed a higher increase in SOC than the analytic group during the intervention, while the improvement in the analytic group was significant during the six‐month follow‐up. Total effect size from baseline to follow‐up was in the analytic group 0.71, in the psychodrama group 0.47, and in the control group from baseline to end of intervention 0.09. The results show that it is possible to improve SOC by group intervention in the occupational healthcare context. The dialogue‐based analytic method and action‐based psychodramatic method differ in their specific effects.     

The dynamics of search,impasse, and representational change provide a coherent explanation of difficulty in the nine-dot problem

The nine-dot problem is often used to demonstrate and explain mental impasse, creativity, and out of the box thinking. The present study investigated the interplay of a restricted initial search space, the likelihood of invoking a representational change, and the subsequent constraining of an unrestricted search space. In three experimental conditions, participants worked on different versions of the nine-dot problem that hinted at removing particular sources of difficulty from the standard problem. The hints were incremental such that the first suggested a possible route for a solution attempt; the second additionally indicated the dot at which lines meet on the solution path; and the final condition also provided non-dot locations that appear in the solution path. The results showed that in the experimental conditions, representational change is encountered more quickly and problems are solved more often than for the control group. We propose a cognitive model that focuses on general problem-solving heuristics and representational change to explain problem difficulty.     

Attention biases and habituation of attention biases are associated with 5-HTTLPR and COMTval158met

Fundamental biases in affective information processing are modulated by individual differences in the emotional response to environmental stimuli that may be partly based on the individual’s genetic make-up. To extend prior dot probe studies on attention genetics, we used a visual-search paradigm (VSP) with pictures of angry and happy faces of both sexes as targets, neutral faces as distractors, and a varying set size. Participants were selected a priori depending on their 5-HTTLPR (s/s, s/l, l/l; on a constant rs25531 A-allele background) and COMTval158met (val/val, valmet, met/met) genotypes and were matched for sex and age. We demonstrate a bias towards angry male faces (as opposed to happy male faces) irrespective of 5-HTTLPR genotype in the first experimental block that was maintained during the second experimental block only in carriers of the s-allele, which implies differential habituation processes. While a bias towards angry male faces was observed irrespective of COMTval158met genotype, only individuals with the val/val genotype exhibited a bias towards a happy female face (as opposed to an angry female face). In sum, our results both replicate and extend prior findings in the field of attention genetics and add important pieces of information to the research on attentional biases in emotion processing.     

Student Teachers' Reflections of a Community Service Learning Experience

The study examined student teachers' reflections on being involved in a social responsibility project in a community setting. Participants were 71 beginning students in two sequential cohorts (cohort 1 = 34, cohort 2 = 37). Data on their community learning experience were gathered using focus group discussion and reflection journals. The data were thematically analyzed. The teacher education students engaged in focus group discussions junior students who joined the project in the 2007–2008 academic year (Cohort 1) and 37 junior students who joined the project in the 2008–2009 academic year (Cohort 2). Three themes were listed for students' reflections: entry into the teaching profession, constraints and barriers, and the school principal as a community leader. Results of the study revealed that student teachers had the opportunity to have their first-hand experience in a context that they had never encountered in the same way before.     

What is the Basis for Self-assessment of Comprehension when Reading Mathematical Expository Texts?

The purpose of this study was to characterize students’ self-assessments when reading mathematical texts, in particular regarding what students use as a basis for evaluations of their own reading comprehension. A total of 91 students read two mathematical texts, and for each text, they performed a self-assessment of their comprehension and completed a test of reading comprehension. Students’ self-assessments were to a lesser degree based on their comprehension of the specific text read but based more on prior experiences. However, the study also produced different results for different types of texts and for different components (or levels) of reading comprehension.