Associations between work family conflict,emotional exhaustion,musculoskeletal pain,and gastrointestinal problems in a sample of business travelers

The aim of the study was to examine the associations among work‐family conflict (WFC), emotional exhaustion, musculoskeletal (MS) pain, and gastrointestinal problems on a sample of business travelers (n = 2,093). An additional aim was to examine differences in the mentioned relationships among three traveler groups: commuters, national travelers, and international travelers. The study was conducted in a large Norwegian oil and gas company, and the company's business travel database was utilized to examine business travel. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed significant relations between WFC and emotional exhaustion and between emotional exhaustion and health problems. Contrary to the expectations, no direct association was found between WFC and health problems. However, we found that emotional exhaustion mediated the relation between WFC and health outcomes. The results from multi‐group analysis revealed that associations among WFC, emotional exhaustion, and health‐outcomes showed a similar pattern for commuters, national travelers, and international travelers. However, the association between emotional exhaustion and MS pain proved to be significantly stronger for the commuter group compared to the national and international travel groups. Practical implications and the consequences of these findings for future research are discussed.     

Blind Speakers Show Language‐Specific Patterns in Co‐Speech Gesture but Not Silent Gesture

Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence how semantic elements are organized in gesture, but only when those gestures are produced with speech (co‐speech gesture), not without speech (silent gesture). We ask whether the cross‐linguistic similarity in silent gesture is driven by the visuospatial structure of the event. We compared 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English or Turkish (20/language) to 80 sighted adult speakers (40/language; half with, half without blindfolds) as they described three‐dimensional motion scenes. We found an effect of language on co‐speech gesture, not on silent gesture—blind speakers of both languages organized their silent gestures as sighted speakers do. Humans may have a natural semantic organization that they impose on events when conveying them in gesture without language—an organization that relies on neither visuospatial cues nor language structure.     

Job satisfaction among Swedish soldiers: Applying the Job Characteristics Model to newly recruited military personnel

A professional military organization was introduced in Sweden in 2010. This means that the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) need to attract and employ soldiers, and to retain them within the organization. This scenario creates new types of challenges in manning the organization. The transition to an all-volunteer force puts job satisfaction in focus in order to retain personnel. This cross-sectional study of the relations between working conditions and job involvement among 300 recently employed soldiers showed that the dimensions of the Job Characteristics Model related significantly to job satisfaction and work motivation and (negatively) to turnover intentions from the SAF. The results further showed that all the critical psychological states contributed independently to the variance in the outcome variables.     

THE STUDY AND TREATMENT OF MOTHERS AND INFANTS,THEN AND NOW: MELANIE KLEIN'S “NOTES ON BABY” IN A CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYTIC CONTEXT

This paper draws on Melanie Klein's (unpublished) observational notes of her infant grandson, written primarily in 1938 and 1939. Apart from moving glimpses into a young family's life, the notes contain astute observations of an infant's behavior and emotions. Compared with Klein's published writings, the style is less theoretical and polemical. Later, in his latency years, Klein's grandson was in analysis with Marion Milner, who in 1952 published a paper drawing on the treatment. The present paper focuses on (1) how observations and treatment of the same child and his family by clinicians in close relationships with each other (Klein, Milner, and Winnicott) fertilized reciprocal influence but also brought into question the validity of Klein's observations, and (2) the relative merits and contributions of various modalities in understanding the infant's psyche, including experimental research, direct observation, parent–infant psychotherapy, and reconstructions from older patients—as occurs, for example, in psychoanalysis.     

Matching Patient and Therapist Anaclitic–Introjective Personality Configurations Matters for Psychotherapy Outcomes

Decades of psychotherapy research suggest that patient–therapist match accounts for outcome beyond single patient or therapist variables. This study examines the associations between different patterns of patient–therapist matching (in terms of orientation on relatedness or self-definition) and outcomes at termination of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with young adults. Thirty-three patients and their therapists were classified as predominately anaclitic or introjective at baseline. Patients in the convergent patient–therapist dyads (both anaclitic or both introjective) showed significantly greater symptom reduction and increased developmental levels of representations of mother than patients in the complementary dyads (opposite personality configurations). Moreover, convergent patient–therapist match was connected with larger effect sizes on all outcome measures and lower proportion of non-improved patients. These findings suggest the importance of the therapists’ early adjusting their orientation on relatedness or self-definition to their patients’ predominant personality configuration in order to enhance treatment outcomes.     

Does Problem Focused Coping Buffer the Effects of Trait Anxiety on Depressive Symptoms of Chronic Urticaria Patients?

The present study examined the moderating role of problem-focused coping in trait anxiety—depressive symptoms' relationship in patients with chronic urticaria (CU). Eighty-eight CU patients, who applied to an outpatient clinic of Clinical Immunology and Allergic Diseases, filled out a questionnaire set including State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Ways of Coping Inventory, and Beck Depression Inventory. The results suggested that CU patients high on trait anxiety reported more depressive symptoms, and the ones using more problem-focused coping (PFC) strategies reported less depressive symptoms. Also, PFC strategies moderated trait anxiety-depressive symptoms relation. Accordingly, PFC strategies did not lead to any significant difference in CU patients who were low on trait anxiety in terms of the level of depressive symptoms. However, CU patients with high trait anxiety experienced significantly less depressive symptoms if they used more PFC strategies. The findings were discussed in the light of the relevant literature.     

Do Equal Rights for a Minority Affect General Life Satisfaction?

While previous research examines how institutions matter for general life satisfaction and how specific institutions embodying equal rights for gay people matter for the life satisfaction of gays, we combine these two issues to analyze how the latter type of institutions relates to general life satisfaction. The question is how people in general are affected by laws treating everyone equally irrespective of sexual orientation. We find that legal recognition of partnership, marriage and adoption rights, as well as an equal age of consent, relate positively to general life satisfaction. Consequently, same-sex marriage and similar reforms come at no “welfare” cost to society at large—if anything, the opposite appears to hold. We further build on previous research showing positive effects of economic freedom on happiness and on tolerance towards gay people and interact our rights measure with economic freedom. This reveals that the positive effect on general happiness of equal rights mainly appears in countries with low economic freedom. This likely follows because minority rights are perceived to indicate openness to much-desired reforms in other areas.     

Mentoring in-service chemistry teachers: acquirements as mentees

The aim of this study is to identify a group of chemistry teachers’ (mentees) acquirements of mentoring program by analyzing their reflective journals. Four mentees participated in this study and they met with their mentors once a week for eight consecutive weeks. The mentees devised lesson plans as well as activities during the mentoring sessions. After each mentoring session, the mentees were asked to reflect the process and their gains to their journals. The journals were analyzed in two stages; content analysis of the journals and the analysis of the mentees level of reflections. The analysis of the mentees’ journals showed that the mentorship program supported the mentees to improve their pedagogical content knowledge; allow them to utilize various methods, techniques, and materials in their lessons. Besides, the mentees indicated that they performed chemistry courses more effectively with the help of the acquirements from the mentoring sessions. The result of this study showed also that mentors can play key roles in supporting professional developments of teachers. It is suggested that rehearsing lesson plans before going into the classroom would make the mentoring sessions more beneficial.     

Multiplicity Within and Between: Addressing Multiple Roles Through Role Profiles in Couples

The purpose of this study is to test the validity of a personality assessment, Role Profiles, by exploring the relationship between role balance and individual well-being and the relationship between couples’ role profiles similarity and their marital satisfaction. Twenty couples were recruited and completed the assessments. This study partially supported Role Profiles’ validity and the findings were consistent with previous studies: individuals with higher role confusion were more likely to report lower self-esteem, and couples who shared many identical roles in their roles profiles were more likely to report higher marital satisfaction. The utility of Role Profiles as a clinical assessment in couples therapy is discussed.