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.     

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.     

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.     

Measurement,Classification, and Prediction of Paradigm Adherence of Marriage and Family Therapists

This study assessed the theoretical perspectives of marriage and family practitioners using the Paradigm Adherence Scale (PAS), which measures practitioner adherence to the psychological, systems, and social constructionist paradigms associated with marriage and family therapy. Results from a survey of clinical members of AAMFT ( N = 204) indicated that a majority of therapists were primarily adhering to the systems paradigm (43.6%) or practicing from a combination of paradigms (42.2%), while the social constructionism approach was used by a smaller but significant percentage of therapists (13.7%). Factors predicting membership in paradigm adherence groups included the current or most recent supervisor's preferred paradigm (most predictive), therapist gender, and years of clinical experience. While only 16.5% of the variance in paradigm adherence was accounted for by the set of predictor variables, this was viewed as having some practical significance in the difficult task of explaining choice and utilization of theoretical framework.     

A mediation analysis of achievement motives,goals, learning strategies,and academic achievement

Background. Previous research is inconclusive regarding antecedents and consequences of achievement goals, and there is a need for more research in order to examine the joint effects of different types of motives and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement. Aims. To investigate the relationship between achievement motives, achievement goals, learning strategies (deep, surface, and strategic), and academic achievement in a hierarchical model. Sample. Participants were 229 undergraduate students (mean age: 21.2 years) of psychology and economics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Methods. Variables were measured by means of items from the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS), the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students, and an achievement goal scale. Results. Correlation analysis showed that academic achievement (examination grade) was positively correlated with performance‐approach goal, mastery goal, and strategic learning strategies, and negatively correlated with performance‐avoidance goal and surface learning strategy. A path analysis (structural equation model) showed that achievement goals were mediators between achievement motives and learning strategies, and that strategic learning strategies mediated the relationship between achievement goals and academic achievement. Conclusions. This study integrated previous findings from several studies and provided new evidence on the direct and indirect effects of different types of motives and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement.     

Mother–Child Agreement on Reports of Internalizing Symptoms Among Children Referred for Evaluation of ADHD

The effects of maternal (bias), child (age, severity of behavior problems), and measurement characteristics (similarity of parent and child measures; types of internalizing symptoms) on mother–child agreement on reports of children's internalizing symptoms were examined for 65 children referred for evaluation of ADHD. Agreement was low and did not improve when parents and children completed parallel measures. Mothers and children were more likely to agree on severity of internalizing symptoms rated as behavioral than those rated as ideational. The majority of discordant reports were of the type that mothers, but not children, reported clinically elevated symptoms. This type of discordance appeared to be a function of maternal negative bias rather than underreporting of symptoms by children.     

Risky decision making across three arenas of choice: are younger and older adults differently susceptible to framing effects?

In the present study, the authors investigated the effects of framing of options on risky decision making in groups of younger adults (M = 23.8 years, n = 192) and older adults (M = 69.1 years, n = 192). The participants were assigned to one of three scenarios varying in the goods at stake (human lives, paintings, money). The authors observed a majority preference in favor of the risky options after negative, but not positive framing. They also found, as they had predicted, that the type of framing effect varied across scenarios, with a bidirectional framing effect for the life-death scenario and unidirectional (risk averse) framing effects when public property (paintings) or personal property (money) were at stake. It is important to note that these choice preference patterns were highly similar across the age groups, which reinforced the conclusion that younger and older adults are equally susceptible to framing effects.     

Cognitive deficit or cognitive distortion in childhood depression

Three studies were conducted to evaluate cognitive disturbance and depression in children. In Study I, 47 sixth-grade children, including 17 who received a DSM-III diagnosis of depression, and their parents were independently interviewed with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children, and they completed the Parent-Child Depression Inventory. Children completed the Children's Depression Inventory, the Matching Familiar Figures Test, and the My Standards Questionnaire. Results of Study 1 were consistent across raters and measures: Depression was associated with a negative style of processing self-evaluative information, while being unrelated to a processing deficit. A second study was initiated to replicate the results of Study 1 and to extend them to a wider age range of children. Thirty- eight third-, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children, half of whom were depressed and half of whom indicated a minimum of depressive symptomatology on the Children's Depression Inventory, completed the Matching Familiar Figures Test and the My Standards Questionnaire. Results were very similar to those found in Study 1. A third study was conducted to test whether the self-perceptions of depressed children were accurately negative or negatively distorted, as judged against their teachers' observations of them. Results supported the hypothesis that depressed children exhibit a distorted style of processing self-evaluative information. The implications of the results for theory and treatment were discussed.This research was funded by the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, The University of Texas at Austin. The first two authors contributed equally to this investigation, and the order of their authorship was determined by the flip of a coin.