Gender differences in type a behavior and hostility within an organizational setting

Abstract

Recent investigations suggest that the hostility component of the Type A behavior patter (TABP) is a greater detriment to health than the overall pattern. Some researchers suggest that certain Type A characteristics (e.g., job-involvement) are actually adaptive. This study compared the relative relationship of the TABP and hostility to career-related achievement and psychosocial adjustment among 223 service-delivery employees. Male and female participants completed the Jenkins Activity Survey and the MMPI Hostility Scale as part of a cardiovascular disease risk factor screening. The TABP was positively associated with managerial status for both men and women. However, the TABP was positively related to psychosocial adjustment variables among men only. Hostility was significantly related to undesirable outcomes including lower job status, life dissatisfaction, and unfavorable perceptions of the workplace for both men and women. Discussion addresses organizational factors which might perpetuate hostility and the TABP, as well as gender differences in the experience of these constructs.     

Wisconsin card sorting test and Halstead Category Test performances of children and adolescents who exhibit the syndrome of nonverbal learning disabilities

Abstract

Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and Halstead Category Test (HCT) performances of 15 children/adolescents (age range 9 to 17 years) diagnosed with the syndrome of nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) and 15 age-, gender-, and FSIQ-matched verbal learning-disabled (VLD) controls were examined. The VLD group made significantly fewer errors on the HCT than did the NLD group. In addition, the VLD controls significantly outperformed the NLD participants on seven of the nine WCST index scores (all except failure to maintain set and learning to learn scores). Consistent with the adult literature, the common variance between the HCT and WCST was modest, indicating that these two neuropsychological measures gauge different domains of functioning. It is suggested that the HCT assesses conceptualization/higher order reasoning abilities, whereas the WCST taps dimensions of executive functioning.     

How Children Learn the Ins and Outs: A Training Study of Toddlers' Categorization of Animals

Young children are able to categorize animals on the basis of unobservable features such as shared biological properties (e.g., bones). For the most part, children learn about these properties through explicit verbalizations from others. The present study examined how such input impacts children's learning about the properties of categories. In a training study with thirty-six 2.5-year-olds (M_age = 2;9), we tested the prediction that a relatively small amount of input highlighting the importance of unobservable properties would lead to a gradual shift in children's use of these properties for categorization. Children with no initial categorization bias were trained to categorize either on the basis of shared unobservable properties or shared observable properties. During 3 days of training, children gradually developed a categorization bias in the direction of the property type for which they received training and sustained this bias more than a week after training. Also, a set of children who exhibited an initial perceptual bias showed an abrupt change in how they categorized after only 1 training session.     

A validation study of Belbin's team roles

The Belbin team role preferences of the members of 55 teams were assessed by three independent methods: (1) Cattell's 16PF (Form 5) personality questionnaire, (2) video observation of a business simulation exercise and subsequent analysis with a Belbin behavioural checklist, and (3) Saville and Holdsworth's Occupational Personality Questionnaire. The 338 participants were drawn in approximately equal measure from managerial and non-managerial levels from equal numbers of manufacturing and public service organizations. A multitrait-multimethod correlation matrix derived from the data collected from the participants was employed to evaluate the convergent and discriminant validities of the Belbin team roles. Application of the Campbell and Fiske criteria to the matrix did not produce clear support for discriminant validity. Application of a correlated uniqueness model in a confirmatory factor analysis showed the Belbin team role model to be overparameterized and to lack both convergent and discriminant validity. Further modelling revealed that the Belbin team roles fit easily into a “Big Five” five-factor personality framework.     

The journey of gestational surrogacy: religion,spirituality and assisted reproductive technologies

This article discusses the intersection of women’s experiences with the assisted reproductive technological practice of gestational surrogacy and spirituality and religion. During the interviews of eight gestational surrogates themes of spirituality-, religion- and faith-based language emerged as these women shared their narratives of assisted reproductive technologies in this Canadian study. Professionals supporting women before, during and after the experience of gestational surrogacy need to be mindful of the significance of spirituality and religion in third party reproduction practices for many women. In discussing these topics with gestational surrogates counsellors, child and youth care practitioners, faith leaders, social workers, and educators need to remain open and attentive to a multiplicity of diverse theological negotiations.     

Assessing spiritual well-being: relating with God explains greatest variance in spiritual well-being among Australian youth

How do we set standards in assessing spiritual well-being (SWB)? Most measures provide only scores on arbitrary scales. Therefore, if the questions differ, the scores are likely to as well. This paper reports on two scales developed with 460 Australian secondary school students, with diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, from state, Catholic, Christian Community and independent schools. The four domains model of spiritual health/well-being was the theoretical base from which 12 items were developed to reflect quality of relationships with each of self, others, environment and God/the Divine. The instrument with the five top-scoring items in each domain, known as Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), has been sought for use in over 200 studies in 20 languages. The second-highest sets of five items were extracted and found to form statistically valid factors, for a new instrument called SWBQ2. As would be expected, the mean values for the factor scores varied between SHALOM and SWBQ2, overall and by school type. However, regression analyses of the lived experience scores showed that relating with God provided greatest explanation of variance in SWB, on both measures. A double-response method introduced for SHALOM was also used with SWBQ2 to compare each person’s lived experience with their ideals, better reflecting quality of relationships, rather than just the arbitrary scores. There was negligible difference in dissonance scores on the four factors in both measures, that is, in comparing the difference between ideals and lived experiences. This method showed consistency in the quality of relationships reflecting SWB, contrasted with variance shown using only lived experience, as mentioned above. Relating with God was again most influential on SWB. These findings have implications for methods used in assessing SWB as well as outcomes.     

Sweetening the Till: The Use of Candy to Increase Restaurant Tipping1

A common practice among servers in restaurants is to give their dining parties an unexpected gift in the form of candy when delivering the check. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the impact of this gesture on the tip percentages received by servers. Experiment 1 found that customers who received a small piece of chocolate along with the check tipped more than did customers who received no candy. Experiment 2 found that tips varied with the amount of the candy given to the customers as well as with the manner in which it was offered. It is argued that reciprocity is a stronger explanation for these findings than either impression management or the good mood effect.     

The Personal and Social Correlates of Spiritual Well-Being Among Primary School Teachers

A sample of 311 primary school teachers completed the Spiritual Health in Four Domains Index alongside the abbreviated revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and measures of religiosity. The data demonstrate that higher levels of spiritual health are found among older teachers who record low scores on the psychoticism scale and who practice religious faith through church attendance and personal prayer.     

Structural limits on verb mapping: the role of abstract structure in 2.5‐year‐olds’ interpretations of novel verbs

Two experiments showed that 2.5‐year‐olds, as well as older children, interpret new verbs in accord with their number of arguments. When interpreting new verbs describing the same motion events, children who heard transitive sentences were more likely than were children who heard intransitive sentences to assume that the verb referred to the actions of the causal agent. The sentences were designed so that only the number of noun‐phrase arguments differed across conditions (e.g. She’s pilking her over there versus She’s pilking over there). These experiments isolate number of noun‐phrase arguments (or number of nouns) as an early constraint on sentence interpretation and verb learning, and provide strong evidence that children as young as 2.5 years of age attend to a sentence’s overall structure in interpreting it.