Exploring links between polychronicity and well-being from the perspective of person–job fit: Does it matter if you prefer to do only one thing at a time?

This research examined polychronicity, which refers to an individual’s preference for working on many things simultaneously as opposed to one at a time. It was hypothesized that supplies–values fit on this temporal variable is related to well-being. Specifically, it was predicted that deficient and excess polychronicity supplies are associated with poorer well-being, and that well-being is uniformly high along the continuum of polychronicity fit. It was also hypothesized that fit effects are stronger for individuals who place high importance on how their time is allocated than for individuals who place low importance on that dimension. Participants in Study 1, a laboratory experiment, were students (N = 266); participants in Study 2, conducted in a field setting, were employees of Canadian organizations (N = 746). No fit effects were observed in Study 1. Consistent with the hypotheses, however, fit on the dimension of polychronicity was related to job satisfaction, self-efficacy, and psychological strain in Study 2. The role of value importance as a moderator of the relation between supplies–values fit and well-being was not supported.     

Ethical Behavioral Intention in an Academic Setting: Models and Predictors

This study examines the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the multidimensional ethics scale (MES). Variables from both are included to determine which ones significantly correlate with student ethical behavioral intention in an academic setting. Using a survey, responses are collected from undergraduate business students from two southwestern universities in the United States using a scenario-based approach, looking at individual situations and group situations. SmartPLS was used to assess the results for four scenarios. From the theory of planned behavior, attitude was a significant predictor of behavioral intention across all four scenarios while subjective norm was significant in one scenario. From the multidimensional ethics scale, moral equity and relativism were significant in one group scenario while moral equity and utilitarianism were each significant in an individual scenario. The findings indicate support for the use of the TPB and the MES when exploring ethics in an academic setting and for the need to study both individual and group situations. A discussion of the findings and implications is given.     

Emotivational psychology: How distinct emotions facilitate fundamental motives

Fundamental motivational systems and distinct emotions have both been suggested to be critically involved in the orchestration of adaptive responses to recurrent challenges in humans' evolutionary history. Research on motivation has, however, proceeded largely independently from research on emotions. Here, we contend that distinct emotions are what motivate behavior, and that these emotions may have evolved in tandem with fundamental motivational systems because they play a critical role in the functioning of those systems. Specifically, once a threat or opportunity has been identified, a distinct emotion is elicited, automatically galvanizing and guiding physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses toward an adaptive outcome; this entire process occurs via a motivational system. We map six characteristic distinct emotions to six fundamental motivational systems and review evidence supporting each hypothesized link. In doing so, we propose a novel framework for understanding human motivation and the corresponding emergence of distinct emotions.     

Moderating variables of the sexual “victim to offender cycle” in males

Most existing research shows that outcomes after sexual abuse (i.e., behavioral, social, and psychological) are similar for men and women. The sexual abuse “victim to offender cycle” is one clear exception, in that it is reported with much greater frequency in men than in women. This comprehensive, critical review examines potential moderator variables of the sexual victim to offender cycle in sexually abused men. A conceptual model is presented, which integrates existing empirically-tested potential moderators of the victim to offender cycle into: (a) victim characteristics, (b) perpetrator characteristics, (c) abuse characteristics, (d) post-abuse factors, and (e) family factors. The literature preliminarily suggests that post-abuse masturbation, fantasy, and pleasure related to the abuse moderate the victim to offender cycle. Additionally, family factors, including parental loss, experiencing multiple forms of abuse, and family support moderate this outcome. Contrary to expectations, existing research does not indicate that the victim's relationship with the offender, perpetrator gender, victim's age at abuse onset, or penetration during abuse moderate the victim to offender cycle.     

Twenty four-month-old infants’ interpretations of novel verbs and nouns in dynamic scenes

The current experiments address several concerns, both empirical and theoretical in nature, that have surfaced within the verb learning literature. They begin to reconcile what, until now, has been a large and largely unexplained gap between infants’ well-documented ability to acquire verbs in the natural course of their lives and their rather surprising failures to do so in many laboratory-based tasks. We presented 24-month-old infants with dynamic scenes (e.g., a man waving a balloon), and asked (a) whether infants could construe these scenes flexibly, noticing the consistent action (e.g., waving) as well as the consistent object (e.g., the balloon) and (b) whether their construals of the scenes were influenced by the grammatical form of a novel word used to describe them (verb or noun). We document that 24-month-olds’ representations of novel words are sufficiently precise to permit them to map novel verbs to event categories (e.g., waving events) and novel nouns to object categories (e.g., balloons). We also document the time-course underlying infants’ mapping of the novel words. These results beckon us to move beyond asking whether or not infants can represent verb meanings, and to consider instead the conditions that support successful verb learning in infants and young children.     

The Relational Health Indices: A Study of Women's Relationships

A new measure of women's relationships, the Relational Health Indices (RHI), comprises three scales that assess growth-fostering connections with peers, mentors, and communities. The RHI was developed using the Relational Model (Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, Surrey, 1991; Miller & Stiver, 1997), a theory of women's psychological development. The 37-item measure assesses three conceptual dimensions of growth-fostering relationships: engagement, authenticity, and empowerment/zest. This study examined the psychometric properties of the RHI with a group of 450 students at a women's liberal arts college, providing evidence for the reliability, validity, and utility of the new measure. The factor analyses confirmed a three-subscale structure: engagement, authenticity, empowerment/zest. The RHI's components generally demonstrate good overall internal consistency. Furthermore, associations between RHI scales and convergent validation scales were significant and in the direction hypothesized. Correlations with adjustment scales varied across the RHI components. The RHI has potential for enriching our understanding of important, subtle qualities and complex dynamics of both dyadic and group relationships, especially among women. The instrument is available for use by researchers interested in continuing the scale and theory development.     

Predicting Adolescent Self-Esteem From Participation in School Sports Among Latino Subgroups

Data from the in-school survey of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health on girls and boys who claim a Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban heritage were employed to test two hypotheses: (1) Participating in a school-based sport is associated with self-esteem, and (2) school attachment and a sense of physical well-being mediate this relationship. The first hypothesis was partially confirmed in that participation in school sports was associated with self-esteem among Mexican American adolescent girls and boys, Puerto Rican girls, and Cuban American boys, but not among Cuban American girls nor Puerto Rican boys. The second hypothesis was confirmed in that, where there was a significant relationship between participating in a school sport and self-esteem, school attachment and physical well-being mediated this relationship. The results underscore the need to study psychosocial processes separately among Latino subgroups and to examine gender within each subgroup.     

Links Between Life Course Trajectories of Family Dysfunction and Anxiety During Middle Childhood

Using data from three waves of a large Canadian data set, we examine the relationship between two middle childhood trajectory variables, family dysfunction and anxiety. We draw upon family systems theory and developmental psychopathology, while attempting to expand their boundaries by capitalizing on the strengths within both approaches. Our data treatment strategy, guided by the life course analytical framework, included separate multivariate logits to examine this relationship, with and without the extent to, which selected explanatory risk variables predicted belonging to the highest family dysfunction trajectory. We also explored possible interactions between anxiety and explanatory risk variables. Supporting our hypothesis, a prolonged duration of high doses of family dysfunction was associated with the most extreme developmental trajectories of anxious behavior during middle childhood for both boys and girls. This relationship prevailed above and beyond the influence of other correlates of family dysfunction such as marital transition, socioeconomic status, family size, and depressive symptoms experienced by the informant (mostly mothers). Specific details regarding the sample, characteristics of measures, and unspecified estimates and their standard errors per data source are available from the first author in the form of tables and figures.