Performance expectations,personal resources,and job resources: How do they predict work engagement?

Research on work engagement has mainly focused on the role of job and personal resources and has ignored the possible impact of personal demands workers develop with regard to their work. The aim of our study was to test the reciprocal relationships that job resources, personal resources, and personal demands, operationalized as performance expectations, share with work engagement. Three-wave longitudinal data were collected in a Belgian public institution (N?=?473). Results confirm the causal effects of job resources, personal resources, and performance expectations on work engagement. Reciprocal relationships are not significant. Results are discussed with regard to the impact of changes in job and personal resources and performance expectations on work engagement. Practical implications including reinforcement of Human Resources practices such as appraisal interviewing and career management are also discussed.     

Personal Identity, Fission and Time Travel

One problem that has formed the focus of much recent discussion on personal identity is the Fission Problem. The aim of this paper is to offer a novel solution to this problem.

The Enhanced Agentic Diversity Perspective (EADP): An appeal for Co-creating an accommodative social space so that diversity unlocks innovativeness rather than problems

We propose in this article an Enhanced Agentic Diversity Perspective (EADP), which is derived from the concept of agentic resources in social relational theory. EADP recognizes that all human beings are equally agents, that agentic expressions differ due to variation of individual access to power resources (individual, relational and cultural) and that the current social conditions serve to promote agentic diversity by enhancing all the three domains of power resources. In addition, EADP comprises a proposal for the development of accommodative social spaces. We argue that only in an accommodative social space can diversity unlock innovation; otherwise, it serves as a source for conflict. A constructive, nonhierarchical account of diversity, such as EADP is needed under current social conditions for the optimal becoming of idiosyncratic human agents as well as human society as a whole.     

Struggling with self: The personal projects of students seeking psychological counselling

Personal projects can be described as self-articulated goals and related sequences of actions. In order to investigate what kind of personal projects people with psychological problems have, and how they work on them, 28 counselling client students, 44 students of psychology, and 45 students of technology completed a Finnish version of Little's (1987) Personal Project Inventory. The results showed that the clients scored lower on project accomplishment than other groups. Their personal projects were frequently self-related, while those of the technology students were often task-related. The higher their sense of coherence, self-esteem, mental health and life satisfaction, the more subjects expected to accomplish their projects, the more frequently they described task-related projects, the less negative affect they reported, and the less frequently they described self-related projects. These results suggest that psychologically distressed individuals struggle with self-related projects and have problems in accomplishing their projects.     

Disagreeing about who we are

ABSTRACT

One argument that has been suggested for conventionalism about personal identity is that it captures that certain disagreements about personal identity seem irresolvable, without being committed to the view that these disagreements are merely verbal. In this paper, I will take the considerations about disagreement used to motivate conventionalism seriously. However, I will use them to motivate a very different, novel, and as yet unexplored view about personal identity. This is the view that personal identity is a non-representational concept, the nature of which isn’t to be accounted for in terms of what entity it represents, but its non-representational role. I highlight that we find structurally very similar concerns about disagreement in another philosophical debate, namely in meta-ethics. But, in meta-ethics, such sorts of considerations are, traditionally, thought to support one distinctive view: meta-ethical expressivism, a non-representational view about normative thought and discourse. This suggests that we should take a similar view seriously for personal identity. I also develop what such an unfamiliar view might look like, using expressivism as a template. On this view, judgements about personal identity are plans that regulate who to hold accountable.     

Relating the Spherical representation of vocational interests to the HEXACO personality model

The present study extends previous research on interests–personality relations by comparing recent models of vocational interests (using the Personal Globe Inventory; PGI, Tracey, 2002) and personality (using the HEXACO-PI-R; Ashton, Lee, & de Vries, 2014) with each other. First, the structure of the Spherical representation was adequately replicated in a Dutch sample (N = 656). Second, in so far as comparisons were possible, the relations between interests and personality were found to be congruent with previous findings. Third, Prestige interests, the defining feature of the Spherical representation, were related, albeit weakly, to Openness to Experience and to Extraversion. Last of all, Honesty–Humility and Openness to Experience were related to profile elevation in interest scores. All results were obtained for normative and ipsatized scales, revealing several meaningful differences in interests–personality relations depending on the type of interest scoring procedure.     

A five-dimensional model of individual differences in social exchange styles

An evolutionary psychology framework was used to develop a five-factor model of individual differences in the domain of social exchange that built on a prior two-factor model (Leybman, Zuroff, Fournier, Kelly, & Martin, 2011). Two studies examined the factor structure of the revised Social Exchange Styles Questionnaire (SESQ-II), the reliability and validity of its five scales, and the relationship between social exchange styles (SESs) and social support. Principal components and principal factor analyses of the SESQ-II in 226 undergraduates found five social exchange dimensions: Tracking, Fairness, Individualism, Benefit-Seeking, and Overinvestment. These scales showed good internal consistency and retest reliability. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that SESs, while distinct from other personality variables, had expected relationships with several variables and predicted social support patterns.     

Faking propensity and faking-related change: A model-based analysis of the EPQ-R scores

Although change scores in a measure administered under neutral and faking-motivating conditions have become a main choice to operationalize faking, there are still some non-resolved issues on the results they provide. The present study uses a two-wave two-group design with a control group to assess three of these issues: (a) the role of individual differences in the amount of faking-induced change, (b) the relation between Impression Management (IM) scores under neutral conditions and change scores, and (c) the convergent validity of change scores as a requisite to view them as measures of an individual-difference variable. A Spanish translation of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised was administered twice to 489 undergraduate students under standard-standard instructions (N = 215) and under standard-faking-good instructions (N = 274). For the P, N, and Lie scales, the results showed that the role of individual differences was very relevant and that the only common variable underlying the scores was a general factor of faking-induced change. However, the IM scores were unable to predict effective change.     

Assessment of proneness to distraction: English adaptation and validation of the Attention-Related Driving Errors Scale (ARDES) and cross-cultural equivalence

Prior research developed the Attention-Related Driving Errors Scale (ARDES), a 19-item questionnaire aimed at evaluating the drivers’ predisposition to attentional error, and also provided validity evidence of ARDES measures across two countries: Argentina and Spain. In the current work we adapt the Spanish version of the ARDES to the English language and the culture, traffic regulations and driving habits of the UK, and then provide new evidence of the cross-cultural equivalence of the scale. First, an improved forward and backward translation design was used to translate the Spanish ARDES into English. A committee-approach review process was also performed during the translation phase to guarantee that the English ARDES was the most appropriate to reflect the language, culture, traffic regulations and driving habits of the UK. Second, the adapted questionnaire was tested on 301 British drivers to inspect its psychometric properties and study the relationships between the ARDES-UK and different socio-demographic variables. In agreement with the previous literature, the results of the factor analysis confirmed a single factor and accounting for 33.84% of the variance. Cronbach’s alpha was equal to .89. The observed pattern of relationships of the scores and the different socio-demographic variables was consistent with previous evidence and support the validity of the adapted questionnaire. For example, the ARDES-UK scores were significantly different between drivers reporting and not reporting traffic accidents with material damage. To conclude with, the translation design and the resulting psychometric suggest the validity of ARDES-UK measures for evaluating the British drivers’ predisposition to attentional error. In addition, the evidence in the current work supports the hypothesis of the cross-cultural stability of the scale across Spain and the UK.