Conflict management styles and work-related well-being among higher education employees

The objective of the study was to assess the relationship between conflict management styles and work-related well-being of employees in a higher education institution in South Africa. Participants were academic personnel (n = 180) and support staff (n = 201), of which 59.9% were females and 29.9% were black African participants of a large South African university. They completed self-report measures of conflict management and work-related well-being. The data were analysed to predict work-related well-being from conflict management styles and to determine the differences between support staff and academic personnel regarding conflict management styles and work-related well-being. Findings indicated the conflict management style of compromise to predict lower levels of engagement and higher levels of disengagement. Support staff reported to utilise the compromising and dominating style more than did academic personnel. Diversity in conflict management styles may serve organisations better than a monolithic conflict management style.     

Building a Better WarBot: Ethical Issues in the Design of Unmanned Systems for Military Applications

Unmanned systems in military applications will often play a role in determining the success or failure of combat missions and thus in determining who lives and dies in times of war. Designers of UMS must therefore consider ethical, as well as operational, requirements and limits when developing UMS. I group the ethical issues involved in UMS design under two broad headings, Building Safe Systems and Designing for the Law of Armed Conflict, and identify and discuss a number of issues under each of these headings. As well as identifying issues, I offer some analysis of their implications and how they might be addressed.

离退休与在职人员生命质量的比较研究

为了寻找离退休人员生命质量 (QOL)影响因素 ,指导有限资源投入 ,本研究以问卷形式对该单位 1 4 2名离退休人员、66名在职人员随遇抽样调查。从物质生活状态、躯体功能、心理功能和社会功能四个方面对其QOL进行了多维评估研究。结果显示 :①该单位离退休人员QOL与在职人员有明显差异 ,其中离退休人员QOL总评、躯体、心理、社会功能评分等均低于在职人员 ;②躯体功能与离退休人员年龄呈负相关性趋势 ,其他维度与年龄相关性不显著。因此 ,离退休人员QOL总体上低于在职人员 ,因子、维度及QOL总评之间的相关性也有其特点 ,且年龄不是差异的决定因素 ,应通过改善主导需要的相关因子等手段提高离退休人员QOL ,为全社会的可持续发展服务。     

企业人事培训的理论化问题

企业管理中人员培训的重要性已被企业及学者普遍认同。但目前国内企业的培训往往仅停留在描述和经验性水平。培训方法的科学化应该通过培训方法的研究来解决。培训方法研究的基本思路可概括为心理特质的界定\测量方法的操作化以及训练程序的合理化等。     

Validité de construit d’une épreuve de jeu de rôle dans le cadre d’un centre d’évaluation chez des officiers de marine.

The present study was designed to obtain validity estimates for a role-play test. Participants were 125 french Navy officers who were rated by a pool of professional assessors and psychologists. All the assessors received reccurring training sessions, focusing on the behavioral checklist, on rating errors, and on share frame of reference. The assessment procedure included role play exercise, cognitive ability scale (g factor) and personality scale (big five factors). First, exploratory factor analyses were conducted on the data gathered, and four factors were identified (authoritarianism, oral communication, consideration with others and frankness). In a nomological perspective, we also analysed the links between the exercises dimensions, personality inventorie and intelligence scale. The findings suggest that role play dimension, personality and intelligence seem to measure different thinks.     

Affect,agency and responsibility: The act of killing in the age of cyborgs

I explore the role of affect (rages and panics) and pre-cognitive reflexes in enabling killing in infantry combat. I examine Vietnam-era infantry training, which constructed a practical agent of killing which operated at an emergent group level, using the trained reflexes of individual soldiers as its components. I show that individual soldiers sometimes retrospectively took guilt upon themselves (a responsibility that is traditionally reserved for acts of individual conscious intention) even though the practical agent was the group activating the non-subjective reflexes of the individual soldiers. To explain this phenomenon, I explore proto-empathetic identification, which produces psychological trauma at the sight of the blood and guts of the killed enemy, despite the common practice of dehumanization of the enemy. I also examine cutting-edge digital and video simulator training for urban warfare of the “shoot/no shoot” type, which produces a very quick decision upon recognition of key traits of the situation—an act that is close to reflexive, but a bit more cognitively sophisticated. The same proto-empathetic identification and individual guilt assumption is in play in this training regime, even as the use of real-time communication technology forms ever more distributed group cognition.

The importance of distinguishing between harassment-only and assault military sexual trauma during screening

Extant research demonstrates that a history of military sexual trauma (MST) is associated with PTSD and depression diagnoses as well as heightened risk for suicidal ideation and death by suicide. Past studies of MST and its sequelae typically collapse harassment-only and assault MST screening items into a single response, recorded as positive or negative for a history of MST. It is presently unclear whether assault is associated with poorer mental health outcomes relative to harassment-only MST. Female service members/Veterans (n = 656) completed an online survey assessing history (present, absent) and type (harassment-only, assault) of MST, PTSD, depression, sexual satisfaction and function symptoms, as well as suicidal ideation. Findings revealed that those who reported a history of MST, and assault more specifically, were more likely to report higher PTSD symptoms and probable PTSD diagnosis, higher depression symptoms and probable depression diagnosis, worse sexual function and probable sexual function diagnosis, lower sexual satisfaction, and presence of suicidal ideation. Those who reported harassment-only MST also reported higher PTSD severity and probable PTSD diagnosis, but the magnitude of the association of harassment-only MST and PTSD severity relative to assault MST and PTSD severity was substantially lower. Findings suggest it is critical to distinguish between history and type of MST during screening as a combined screening item loses sensitivity to identify those at heightened risk for distress and dysfunction.     

Vulnerability associations and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers deployed to Iraq

The purpose of this prospective study was to examine whether explicit and implicit vulnerability associations before and after trauma exposure predict the onset and persistence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The implicit association test (IAT) was modified to assess associations of self with vulnerability related cues. Dutch soldiers completed the IAT 6 weeks before being deployed to Iraq, and again 5 months upon return home. They also rated an explicit vulnerability scale. PTSD symptoms were assessed 5 and 15 months after deployment with a clinical interview and questionnaire. The results showed that (1) the pre-deployment vulnerability measures did not predict PTSD symptoms at 5 months, (2) both explicit and implicit post-deployment vulnerability measures explained unique variance in concurrent PTSD symptoms, over and above pre-existing neuroticism, and (3) only the explicit post-deployment vulnerability measure predicted unique variance in later PTSD symptoms (at 15 months), after controlling for earlier symptoms. This was no longer the case after controlling for neuroticism. The results suggest that strong implicit associations between the self and vulnerability are a consequence rather than a cause of PTSD symptoms.     

Psychological Types of Male Evangelical Missionary Personnel Training in England: A Role for Thinking Type Men?

A sample of 92 male evangelical missionary personnel completed Form G (Anglicised) of the MBTI. The two predominant types among this group were ESTJ (24%) and ISTJ (15%). In the group as a whole there were clear preferences for extraversion over introversion, for sensing over intuition, for thinking over feeling, and for judging over perceiving.     

用于企业人事管理的《企业管理能力倾向测验》

《企业管理能力倾向测验》（简称ＭＡＴ）的开发满足了企业改革的需要,企业管理职业能力倾向被界定为一种介乎于一般智力和具体的知识,技能之间的心理特点,ＭＡＴ主要考究受测者与做好企业管理工作有关的那些影响较广,比较稳定,潜在的,不易受到环境影响的能力,ＭＡＴ包括言语理解,数量关系,逻辑推理,资料分析和思维策略等５个部分,ＭＡＴ经过两次预测和课目筛选,常模样本包括２６个省市的１４９家企业２８１４名中层以上