Investigation of the Multidimensional Model of Job Insecurity in China and the USA

Il y a plus d'une décennie, Ashford, Lee, and Bobko (1989) ont développé un outil de mesure standard permettant évaluer des niveaux individuels d'insécurité au travail. Les années suivantes, des chercheurs se sont demandé si la totalité des mesures composant cet instrument était nécessaire. Nous avons donc examiné l'utilité des différentes dimensions du test multidimensionnel de l'Insécurité au travail de Ashford et al. (1989) aux Etats Unis et en Chine, en éprouvant et élargissant les conclusions antérieures. Nos résultats suggèrent qu'éliminer les dimensions "caractéristiques du travail" et "impuissance" de l'instrument multidimensionnel initial est prématuré dans les deux cultures. D'autres recherches s'avèrent donc nécessaires pour déterminer l'utilité de cet outil dans sa version complète. Les implications de nos résultats sont discutées.
Over a decade ago, Ashford, Lee, and Bobko (1989 ) developed a standard measure for those interested in assessing levels of individual job insecurity. In ensuing years, some researchers have questioned whether the entire measure is necessary. We examined the usefulness of the components of Ashford et al.'s (1989 ) multidimensional measure of job insecurity in both the United States and China, as well as replicating and extending prior findings regarding antecedents and consequences. Our results suggest that the call to eliminate job features or powerlessness from the fully composite measure of job insecurity is premature in both cultures. We call for more research on the utility of the fully operationalised measure. Implications of our findings are discussed.     

Differential attentional guidance by unattended faces expressing positive and negative emotion

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate whether focal attention can be guided by an analysis of the emotional expression in a face. Participants searched displays of 7, 11, 15, and 19 schematic faces for the location of a unique face expressing either a positive or a negative emotion located among distractor faces expressing a neutral emotion. The slopes of the search functions for locating the negative face were shallower than the slopes of the search functions for locating the positive face (Experiments 1A and 2A). When the faces were inverted to reduce holistic face perception, the slopes of the search functions for locating positive and negative faces were not different (Experiments 1B and 2B). The results suggest that the emotional expression in a face can be perceived outside the focus of attention and can guide focal attention to the location of the face.     

Unanswerable questions for everyone: reply to Inan

Millianism is the familiar view that some expressions, such as proper names, contribute only their referent to the semantic content of sentences in which they occur. Inan (Philosophical Studies 2010) has recently argued that the Millian is committed to the following odd conclusion: There may be questions that he is able to grasp but that he cannot answer, either affirmatively, negatively, or with a simple ??I don??t know??. The Millian is indeed committed to this conclusion. But we intend to show that Inan??s argument generalizes, so that everyone who accepts certain largely uncontroversial principles is committed to the odd conclusion that there may be questions that are graspable but not answerable.