Coping with Abusive Supervision: the Neutralizing Effects of Perceived Organizational Support and Political Skill on Employees’ Burnout

While research into the antecedents of burnout has steadily grown, the relationship between abusive supervision and burnout remains largely unknown. In addition, we know little about the contingencies under which abusive supervision may be related to employees’ burnout. This study aims to examine the contingency side of the abusive supervision-burnout relationship by addressing the exploratory question of whether perceived organizational support and individual differences in political skill play moderating roles in the abusive supervision-burnout relationship. The present article developed a model and tested it with data from a sample of 248 supervisor–subordinate dyads. We hypothesized and found that (1) Abusive supervision was positively associated with burnout; (2) the positive relationship between abusive supervision and burnout was moderated by the employees’ perceived organizational support in such a way that the relationship was weaker for employees who perceive higher rather than lower organizational support; (3) the positive relationship between abusive supervision and burnout was moderated by the employees’ political skill in such a way that the relationship was weaker for people with high, rather than lower level of political skill.     

How Creativity Was Affected by Environmental Factors and Individual Characteristics: A Cross-cultural Comparison Perspective

The purpose of this study was to explore how environmental factors (family environment and school education) and individual characteristics (personality, creative attitudes, and divergent thinking) collectively affect creative achievement of American and Chinese college students. Data were collected from 378 college students in the United States (N = 193) and China (N = 185). Results showed that the US sample had significantly higher means in home resources, high-school education, Conscientiousness, creative achievement, and all four dimensions of the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) than the China sample. In contrast, the China sample scored significantly higher in understanding the importance of creativity. Results indicated creative attitudes and divergent thinking sequentially mediated the effects of parental values on creative achievement for the US sample, whereas Openness mediated the effect of high-school education on creative achievement for the China sample. For both samples, creative attitudes mediated the effect of Openness on divergent thinking. The results suggested cultural differences in the effects of environmental factors on creativity, yet more similar findings in the effects of individual characteristics on creativity between the two samples. The results and implications are discussed.     

Psychometric Properties of the Shortened Chinese Version of the Family Resilience Assessment Scale

Family theory has refocused attention from deficits to family strengths, and interest in family resilience across cultures has become more widespread. However, few instruments were designed for quantitative research on family resilience. The Family Resilience Assessment Scale (FRAS) was designed to measure family resilience and has been administered in Western populations. The aim of this study was to adapt the FRAS for use with Chinese populations and examine its psychometric properties. The study was conducted using a sample of 991 university students in China (62.9 % female, mean age 20, SD = 1.12). First, the scale was translated and modified into Chinese, and good language equivalency was found. Next, confirmatory factor analysis was used to identify the best-fitting model. Results showed that the 3-factor model consisting of 32 items was an adequate fit. The goodness-of-fit index values for the model were χ ²/df = 5.97, CFI = .84, RMSEA = .08, SRMR = .05. Total scale reliability was α = .95. According to these values it can be said that the modified Chinese version of the FRAS was adapted successfully to the Chinese culture. Moreover, researchers and clinicians can use this instrument to assess family strengths when working with individuals in families experiencing adversity.     

Cultural worldviews and climate change: A view from China

We investigated the association between cultural worldviews and climate change risk perceptions, support for climate friendly policies and climate change mitigation behaviours in a large Chinese sample. Items from Dake's cultural theory scales and Kahan's cultural cognition scale were presented to a Qualtrics online panel consisting of 515 Mandarin‐speaking residents of Beijing. A series of factor analyses revealed that the combined item sets were best represented by four‐dimensions: hierarchism, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Mediation analysis revealed that respondents with egalitarian and non‐fatalist worldviews perceived greater risk associated with climate change, which in turn predicted greater support for policies to manage climate change and increased mitigation behaviour. In addition, respondents who scored high on individualism were less likely to support climate change policies, but this effect was not mediated by risk perceptions. Overall, our results suggest cultural worldviews may influence policy support both directly and indirectly through risk perceptions.     

Culture and the Structure of Affect: A Bifactor Modeling Approach

This paper tested the impact of culture on the basic structure of affect. It examined positive affect and negative affect at three levels of activation in the U.S. and China. It used a well-suited tool, the bifactor model, to separate the common variance shared by all types of affect from the variance unique to each. The findings indicate that the structure of affect is different cross-culturally. In the U.S., the most fundamental dimension is defined by moderate activation of positive affect and negative affect, which is the largely bipolar dimension of pleasure-displeasure, whereas in China, it is defined by moderate activation of positive affect only, which is pleasure. In both cultures, negative affect across levels of activation forms another important dimension. Beyond these basic dimensions, secondary dimensions are also identified in both cultures: high activation positive affect, low activation positive affect, and low activation negative affect. They form relatively weak unique factors, independent of the two basic dimensions, suggesting that they are largely mixtures of the basic dimensions.     

AMERICAN MISSIONARIES TRANSMITTING SCIENCE IN EARLY TWENTIETH‐CENTURY EASTERN TIBET

This article is based on the author's extensive research on the missionaries to Tibet from the Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) USA, and discusses various missionary efforts to transmit scientific and practical knowledge such as medicine, building, and agriculture in Eastern Tibet from 1904–1919. It shows that American missionaries played a prominent and distinctive role in the dissemination of scientific and practical knowledge as a result of their hard work and wisdom. In this sense, they made an important contribution to the development of Tibetan society and the modernization movement in early twentieth‐century Eastern Tibet.     

Vision and abstraction: an empirical refutation of Nico Orlandi’s non-cognitivism

This article argues against the non-cognitivist theory of vision that has been formulated in the work of Nico Orlandi. It shows that, if we understand ‘representation’ in the way Orlandi recommends, then the visual system’s response to abstract regularities must involve the formation of representations. Recent experiments show that those representations must be used by the visual system in the production of visual experiences. Their effects cannot be explained by taking them to be non-visual effects involving attention or memory. This contradicts Orlandi’s version of the non-cognitivist hypothesis, but does so while vindicating her methodological position.     

互依性与团队协作

互依性是指团队成员在完成作业的过程中相互依赖的程度,分为作业互依性和产出互依性两大类。该文全面的阐述了互依性的概念、分类和测量方法,并重点介绍了20世纪90年代以后有关互依性在团队协作领域中的研究结果。总结发现,两类互依性与很多团队变量均有显著相关,特别是团队的结果变量。在对结果变量的影响上,两类互依性存在交互作用,或互依性与其他变量存在交互作用。文章最后提出了目前研究的局限性,以及未来的研究展望