Wisdom and Positive Psychosocial Values in Young Adulthood

The current project investigates wisdom and positive psychosocial characteristics in young adults in a series of three overlapping studies. Study 1 (N = 61) investigated wisdom and ego-integrity, values, and life attitudes. Results indicated that wisdom was positively correlated with ego-integrity and self/other-enhancing values, as well as a sense of personal coherence; wisdom was negatively correlated with hedonistic values. Study 2 (N = 62) investigated wisdom and attachment anxiety/avoidance and life attitudes. Results replicated the findings for the life attitudes of Coherence and Existential Vacuum demonstrated in study 1 and extended these findings by showing predicted correlations among wisdom and four other life attitudes, as well as demonstrated negative correlations among wisdom and attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety. Study 3 (N = 62) showed that wisdom positively predicted attributional complexity, a variable found to reduce social judgement biases. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Development of aptitude at altitude

Millions of people currently live at altitudes in excess of 2500 metres, where oxygen supply is limited, but very little is known about the development of brain and behavioural function under such hypoxic conditions. We describe the physiological, cognitive and behavioural profile of a large cohort of infants (6–12 months), children (6–10 years) and adolescents (13–16 years) who were born and are living at three altitude locations in Bolivia (～500 m, ～2500 m and ～3700 m). Level of haemoglobin oxygen saturation and end‐tidal carbon dioxide were significantly lower in all age groups living above 2500 metres, confirming the presence of hypoxia and hypocapnia, but without any detectable detriment to health. Infant measures of neurodevelopment and behaviour yielded comparable results across altitude groups. Neuropsychological assessment in children and adolescent groups indicated a minor reduction in psychomotor speed with increasing altitude, with no effect of age. This may result from slowing of underlying brain activity in parallel with reduced cerebral metabolism and blood flow, evidenced here by reduced cerebral blood flow velocity, particularly in the basilar artery, in children and adolescents. The proportion of European, Native American and African genetic admixture was comparable across altitude groups, suggesting that adaptation to high altitude in these children occurred in response to chronic hypoxic exposure irrespective of ethnic origin. Thus, psychomotor slowing is proposed to be an adaptive rather than a deficient trait, perhaps enabling accuracy of mental activity in hypoxic conditions.     

Organizational Support and Contract Fulfillment as Moderators of the Relationship Between Preferred Work Status and Performance

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to examine organizational context variables as moderators of the relationship between preferred work status and job performance. The moderators were perceived organizational support (POS) and psychological contract fulfillment.     

Do early interviews affect children's long‐term event recall?

The present study examined the effects of the timing of an initial interview on children's recall of an event over delays of 1 and 2 years. Fifty‐five children who had originally participated in a novel event when they were between 5‐ and 6‐years old and had been interviewed about it following either short (1 week or less) or long (1 or 6 month) delays were re‐interviewed 1 and 2 years after the original experience. An additional 20 children not interviewed prior to the 1‐year interview were included as a no‐prior‐interview control group. Long delays to the initial interview led to better open‐ended recall at the 1‐year delay than short delays to initial interview or no prior interview. However, initial interviews that followed short delays had a greater impact on children's responses to specific questions. The results suggest that prior interview history is an important consideration when examining the effects of long delays on children's event reports, and that the effects of the timing of an initial interview depend on the nature of the information recalled. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of multiple negative,neutral, and positive organizational changes

Organizational change research has largely concluded that employees appraise changes in their workplace negatively and thus respond negatively to greater amounts of change. However, whether this conclusion is warranted remains unclear because previous research has examined single workplace changes in isolation or asked employees to make a global assessment of the changing nature of their workplace. Researchers have not had the means to capture the number of changes employees experience or their appraisals of the many different changes occurring in their workplace. In this study, we developed and validated the Quantity of Change Scale (QCS) to provide a more nuanced understanding of employees’ appraisals of their changing workplace. We found that the negative changes employees experience disproportionately influenced their reactions to the changing work environment. However, we also demonstrated that contrary to popular belief, employees appraised fewer changes as negative than as positive or neutral. Together these findings provide new insight into why assessments of employees’ general reactions to workplace change tend to be negative. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our empirical examination of employees’ appraisals of the many changes in their workplace.     

Comparing market orientation culture of businesses and schools of business: an extension and refinement

This study extends previous work concerning the market orientation culture within specialty businesses and schools of business. Specifically, member schools of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International are separated into public and private universities. Data were collected via a mailed survey to business schools holding membership. 106 public school deans and 35 private school deans responded, for a 23% response rate. Input from the deans was sought on their perceptions of the market orientation culture within the schools. Respondents' perceptions, rated on a 7-point scale, measured four dimensions of market orientation: customer orientation, competitor orientation, organizational coordination, and overall market orientation. Data for specialty businesses were drawn from a previous study. Comparison testing between the public and private business schools' deans and business managers was conducted. Analysis indicated perceived market orientation was significantly higher for deans of private business schools than public business schools. Compared with business managers, private school deans were statistically different on only one of the four dimensions, whereas public business school deans' scores were significantly different from those of business managers on all four. Compared with each other, business school deans were statistically different on three dimensions, with private school deans reporting greater market orientation.     

Personal identity: moving beyond essence

Education’s ancient and profoundly important pursuit to ‘know thyself’, is often realised through engaging with the question ‘who am I?’ In order to the identify who in this search, it is argued in this paper that personal identity should be understood to be embedded in the purposes one has for one’s life through how one relates, and is therefore spiritual. This spiritual quality of personal identity is therefore existential in character – not essential.

However, often when children respond to this question ‘who am I?’, they rely upon socially constructed categories and labels such as religious, feminine, cool, punk and the like. The application of such labelling assumes that meaningfulness lies in their essence; that is, they identify what is. This can become most problematic when individuals accept and apply such essentialist labelling to themselves, because such a process can only answer ‘what am I?’ and not the educationally more important question of ‘who am I?’ This paper therefore challenges the inadequacy of such an approach and offers a conceptualisation of personal identity which is spiritually embedded in a purpose for one’s life.     

An Exploratory Analysis of a Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale

Three studies investigated the psychometric properties of the newly developed self-assessed wisdom scale (SAWS). Study 1 investigated the reliability of a 30-item questionnaire assessing 5 interrelated dimensions of wisdom. Results indicated the scale had good reliability ( = .78) and adequate factor structure. Study 2 demonstrated clear differences in people's implicit theories of wisdom using the SAWS: persons instructed to complete the measure according to their implicit theories of wisdom scored significantly higher (t = 9.40, p = .000) than persons completing the measure according to their implicit theories of foolishness. Study 3 demonstrated the construct validity of the SAWS by showing significant relationships between it and two independent measures thought to reflect aspects of wisdom, namely, generativity and ego integrity. Preliminary analyses of the SAWS suggests it has good initial reliability and validity. Suggestions for scale refinement and future research are examined.