Why Do You Make Us Feel Good? Correlates and Interpersonal Consequences of Affective Presence in Speed‐dating

Recent research indicates that people consistently make others feel a certain way (e.g. happy or stressed). This individual difference has been termed affective presence, but little is known about its correlates or consequences. The present study investigated the following: (i) whether affective presence influences others' romantic interest in a person and (ii) what types of people have positive and negative affective presence. Forty volunteers took part in a speed‐dating event, during which they dated six or seven opposite‐sex partners. A Social Relations Model analysis confirmed that individuals prompted consistent positive emotional reactions in others. Participants were more likely to want to see dates with greater positive affective presence again in the future, and positive affective presence explained the effects of perceived responsiveness on romantic interest. Associations between positive affective presence and trait predictors, including emotion regulation, emotional expressiveness, attachment style, agreeableness and extraversion, were also observed. The findings indicate that what emotionally distinguishes one individual from another lies in part in the emotional consequences of their behaviours on others. © 2013 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology.     

L’addiction au travail : quels effets de la charge de travail,de la dissonance émotionnelle et du surinvestissement ?

The present study aimed to assess workaholism in the light of job demands (psychological demands, efforts, emotional dissonance) and job resources (control, social support, rewards). The study was conducted among 342 employment counselors. The results revealed that the employment counselors would have all the more workaholism behaviors that the organizational context expose them to high levels of psychological demands and efforts, high levels of over-commitment and emotional dissonance and low levels of social support and rewards. Multiple regressions highlighted the central role of psychological demands, over-investment and emotional dissonance to reveal workaholism.     

From Ideology to Feeling: Discourse,Emotion, and an Analytic Synthesis

Recent arguments in the social sciences exhort a turn to affect and, either explicitly or by implication, a move away from or beyond the earlier turn to language. This conveys a presumption that the site and logic of discursive investigation must inevitably be different to the site and logic of affective investigation. Instead, this article suggests that a nonreductive psychosocial understanding of both discourse and affect needs a way of dissolving the dualism which inhabits and motivates much current debate around discursive and affective “fields.” This article illustrates a route towards dismantling the apparent segregation of discourse and affect in the call to an affective turn. The data come from a project exploring women’s talk of success and failure. Analysis here focuses on affective-discursive practices in discussion of “failed attempts to control body weight” set within the context of contemporary western neoliberal ideology. Discourse and affect are both approached as semiotic, relational practice. As such, affect is made accessible to analysis via concepts already familiar in studies of discursive practice in social psychology, including the reproduction and negotiation of ideologies and the management of trouble. This analytic focus on practical deployments in interaction enables epistemological and ontological psychosocial arguments to be grounded in practical discursive-affective accomplishments.     

The relationship between employment quality and work-related well-being in the European Labor Force

In this article, data from the 2005 European Working Conditions Survey are used to examine the relationship between contemporary employment arrangements and the work-related well-being of European employees. By means of a Latent Class Cluster Analysis, several features of the employment conditions and relations characterizing jobs are combined in a typology of five employment arrangements: SER-like, instrumental, precarious unsustainable, precarious intensive and portfolio jobs. These job types show clear relationships with separate indicators of job satisfaction, perceived safety climate and the ability to stay in employment, as well as with an overall indicator for work-related well-being. The findings from this multifaceted approach towards employment quality raise questions about the long-term sustainability of highly flexible and de-standardized employment arrangements.     

Job search self-efficacy: Reconceptualizing the construct and its measurement

Job search self-efficacy (JSSE) is one of the most studied variables in the job search literature and an important component of the theory of planned behavior and self-regulation theory which have both been used to explain the job search process. However, even though JSSE has been a part of job search research for thirty years, the measurement of JSSE has varied from study to study. This questions both the validity of the measures used and the findings from each study that used a different measure. In this paper, we propose and test a two dimensional measure of JSSE that corresponds to job search behavior (JSSE-B) and job search outcomes (JSSE-O). The results of a longitudinal study of employed and unemployed job seekers support a two-factor model corresponding to the two dimensions of JSSE. We also found differential relationships between each dimension of JSSE and several antecedents and consequences. Among the antecedents, environmental exploration and self-exploration were stronger predictors of JSSE-B while career planning was a stronger predictor of JSSE-O. In terms of consequences, JSSE-B was a stronger predictor of job search intention and behavior while JSSE-O was a stronger predictor of the number of job offers received. These findings provide support for two dimensions of JSSE and have important implications for job search research and practice.     

Change-oriented behavior: A meta-analysis of individual and job design predictors

We propose and meta-analytically test a theoretical model of individual and job-based predictors of change-oriented behaviors. Meta-analytic tests (106 effect sizes, N = 28,402) demonstrate that employee's proactive personality is a stronger predictor of change-oriented behavior than the five-factor model (FFM) personality traits of openness and extraversion. Also, enriched job characteristics (autonomy, complexity, and task significance) are more important in predicting change-oriented behavior, than un-enriched job characteristics (routinization and formalization). Finally, we establish work engagement as a mediator that provides an explanation for how and why proactive personality and enriched job characteristics predict change-oriented behavior. We provide both theoretical and empirical integration of the literature with practical implications for managing change-oriented behaviors, which are increasingly recognized as important to both organizational effectiveness and employee career management.     

A comparison of individuals with unanswered callings to those with no calling at all

The purpose of this research was to compare the life-, job-, and health-related experiences of those who perceive an unanswered occupational calling to those who (1) are living a calling and (2) perceive no calling at all. Surveys containing measures of callings, work engagement, job involvement, career commitment, life and job satisfaction, turnover intentions, physical health and emotional well-being were administered to 378 American academics. As expected, academics with an answered occupational calling tended to report better job attitudes and domain-specific satisfaction and less withdrawal intentions than those who reported an unanswered occupational calling or no calling at all. Furthermore, those who did not have a calling to a particular vocation reported better life-, job-, and health-related outcomes than those experiencing an unanswered calling. Surprisingly, only those academics experiencing an unmet calling reported significantly poorer physical and psychological health as compared to the other two calling groups. These results are consistent with the self-determination theory, which predicts that those who are able to satisfy their basic psychological needs reap benefits in terms of psychological growth, optimal functioning, and wellbeing. The study contributes to the literature on callings by showing that having a calling is a benefit only if it is met, but can be a detriment when it is not as compared to having no calling at all.     

Analytic change: Assessing ways of being in a psychoanalytic follow‐up interview

The article argues that the concepts of relational scenario, structuralized affect and actualized affect are proposed candidates for observation of changes in relational ways of being as it is expressed in transference. A psychoanalytic follow‐up interview of a former analytic patient is presented in order to illustrate how change in relational ways of being may be registered and studied. By triangulating the patient's verbal report of change with nonverbal information and transference–countertransference dynamics, one may grasp qualitative changes in relational ways of being. The case presented illustrates a former patient's on‐going process of working towards representing aggression in a more direct manner and how this process is made observable with the aid of the proposed concepts in the interview situation. The proposed concepts of relational scenario, structuralized and actualized affect discussed are compared to the concept of transference used in studies of core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT).     

Configurations of unemployment,reemployment, and psychological well-being: A longitudinal study of unemployed individuals in Portugal

This study examined how four different configurations of unemployment and reemployment (defined by history of past unemployment and unemployment/reemployment 3 years later) related to changes in psychological well-being. The longitudinal sample consisted of 566 Portuguese men and women who were unemployed at the beginning of the study. Using true change score models, we found that individuals who reported a long period of unemployment at T1 but were reemployed at T2 showed meaningful gains in positive affect and life satisfaction compared to those who had a shorter history of unemployment and were reemployed. An examination of gender differences revealed that the women who were reemployed after a long history of unemployment showed the greatest relative gains in positive affect. We conclude by noting limitations of this research and suggesting future research to address these limitations.     

Effects of team and organizational commitment – A longitudinal study

Retention management, i.e., keeping qualified employees, is a top priority for contemporary organizations. Commitment, and especially team commitment, can be the key to mastering this challenge. There is a lack of longitudinal research concerning the development and the direction of the effects of team commitment over time. In a longitudinal field-study design with three points of measurement, a total of 360 employees in 52 semi-autonomous industrial teams were surveyed over a period of three years. On the one hand, organizational commitment showed stronger effects on organization-related criteria (job satisfaction and intention to leave). These effects were consistent over the three points of measurement. Team commitment, on the other hand, affected team-related criteria (team performance and altruism). Longitudinal analyses confirmed the effects of organizational commitment on job satisfaction and intention to leave, and of team commitment on team performance and altruism. Moreover, these effects increased over time. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.