Young managers’ drive to thrive: A personal work goal approach to burnout and work engagement

This study approaches young managers’ occupational well-being through their work-related goal pursuit. The main aim was to identify content categories of personal work goals and investigate their associations with background factors, goal appraisals, burnout, and work engagement. The questionnaire data consisted of 747 young Finnish managers (23-35 years; M = 31 years) who were mostly men (85.5%). Seven work-related content categories were found on the basis of qualitative data analysis: (1) competence goals (30.5%), (2) progression goals (23.7%), (3) well-being goals (15.2%), (4) job change goals (13.7%), (5) job security goals (7.4%), (6) organizational goals (5.6%), and (7) financial goals (3.9%). ANCOVA analyses, where goal appraisals and significant background factors were controlled for, indicated that organizational goals were related to low burnout and the highest level of work engagement, whereas well-being and job change goals were related to higher burnout and lower work engagement. The study shows that the contents of young managers’ work-related goals can contribute to the understanding of individual differences in occupational well-being.     

Who they are and what de se: Burge on quasi-memory

Tyler Burge has recently argued that quasi-memory-based psychological reductionist accounts of diachronic personal identity are deeply problematic. According to Burge, these accounts either fail to include appropriately de se elements or presuppose facts about diachronic personal identity—facts of the very kind that the accounts are supposed to explain. Neither of these objections is compelling. The first is based in confusion about the version of reductionism to which it putatively applies. The second loses its force when we recognize that reductionism is a metaphysical thesis, not an epistemological one.

Shared intention and personal intentions

This article explores the question: what is it for two or more people to intend to do something in the future? In a technical phrase, what is it for people to share an intention? Extending and refining earlier work of the author’s, it argues for three criteria of adequacy for an account of shared intention (the disjunction, concurrence, and obligation criteria) and offers an account that satisfies them. According to this account, in technical terms explained in the paper, people share an intention when and only when they are jointly committed to intend as a body to do such-and-such in the future. This account is compared and contrasted with the common approach that treats shared intention as a matter of personal intentions, with particular reference to the work of Michael Bratman.     

‘Peace in a Thatched Hut—that is Happiness’: Subjective Wellbeing Among Peasants in Rural China

Existing research about subjective wellbeing (SWB) in China is confined to student and urban samples, even though 60% of the population reside in rural areas. It is reasonable to predict that there could be a rural-urban difference in SWB as there is a marked difference in objective (socio-economic) measures of wellbeing. The present study measured SWB within a sample of Chinese peasants living in a remote farming village. The results show that despite their relatively low socioeconomic conditions, the rural residents’ satisfaction levels were within the normative range for the Chinese population, and generally did not differ significantly from a previously published study in an affluent Chinese region (Hong Kong). In-depth interviews with participants revealed that the lower living conditions in the rural area are not adverse to drive SWB below the normative range.

The Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire: Some unfinished business

This article gauges the extent to which items and sum scores of the Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ) are contaminated with social desirability response set (SDR), and the extent to which that contamination results in biased findings. Special validity coefficients are introduced for that purpose. Although the SDR confound was quite substantial across all items (with one exception), it is argued on the basis of the size of the introduced validity coefficients and other, logical considerations that paradoxically the confound had minimally distorting effects in estimating the BPAQ models selected for probing the extent of bias.     

Uncovering the links between brand choice and personal values among young British and Spanish girls

This paper presents empirical research which demonstrates how snacks brands can satisfy certain personal values for female 11–12 year‐old British and Spanish consumers. The qualitative research design uses a means‐end approach, based on a laddering technique, to uncover the links between brand choice and personal values. After reviewing the means‐end model and other relevant theory, the research methodology and design are presented in detail. The findings reveal significant scope for positioning snacks brands using the values of well being and fun and enjoyment (UK and Spain), while the value of friendship and belonging emerges as an extra dimension for the British respondents. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Rightly crossing the Rubicon: Evaluating goal self-concordance prior to selection helps people choose more intrinsic goals

We studied how people “cross the Rubicon” when making personal goal selections. In Studies 1 and 2 participants rated the self-concordance of four candidate goals, two with intrinsic and two with extrinsic content, before selecting two goals to actually pursue. Intrinsic goal content predicted higher self-concordance, as did matching between goal content and participant values and motives. Self-concordance in turn explained participants’ actual goal-selections. In longitudinal Study 2, intrinsic goal selection predicted increased well-being. In experimental Study 3, participants randomly assigned to rate candidate goals prior to selection made more intrinsic selections on average, compared to those not afforded this opportunity. We conclude that considering one’s motivations for various candidate goals prior to selecting among them can improve one’s goal choices.     

Normative values on the marks and mathews fear questionnaire: A comparison as a function of age and sex

While the Marks and Mathews Fear Questionnaire (1979) has gained widespread use, little information on its psychometric characteristics has been reported. Thus, one purpose of this investigation was to provide normative information on this device. A second purpose was to examine differences in reported fears as a function of age and sex. Fear Questionnaires were administered to a large sample of high-school students, college students, and adults. Means and standard deviations on the Fear Questionnaire are reported for the various groups. Significant differences were found between groups, with college and high-school women reporting more fears than corresponding men, college and high-school women reporting more fears than adult women, and college men showing a trend toward more fears than other men.Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, November 1985, Houston, Texas.     

An empirical investigation of the specificity and sensitivity of the automatic thoughts questionnaire and dysfunctional attitudes scale

Cognitive assessment of depression is not well advanced and the evidence for the validity and reliability of measures is incomplete. This study examined two cognitive assessments of depression-the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) and the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS). There were two major objectives of this study. The first objective was to examine the ability of these two measures of cognitions to discriminate depressive symptomatology within a variety of sample populations-university undergraduate students, medical and psychiatric outpatients, and acute psychiatric inpatients. The second objective was to examine the ability of the ATQ and DAS succesfully to classify depressed and nondepressed patients. The results of this study suggest that the ATQ is a sensitive and specific measure of depression. Nonspecificity to the ATQ, however, was demonstrated in the substance abuse disorder group and the personality disorder group. In contrast, the DAS, although correlated with depressive symptomatology, was not found to be specific to depression.Part of this project is supported by a Special Project Grant from the University of Queensland to Dr. Oei.     

Personal warmth and psychological health at midlife

Personal warmth, arguably a strong trait in the makeup of psychological health, seems to fade in conceptual importance at midlife. In contrast, ideas of interiority and androgyny appear to gain conceptual importance at midlife. The present study sought to rebalance these foci by determining the predictive power of personal warmth for psychological health of men and women at age 50: first, by developing separate California Psychological Inventory (CPI) scales to assess personal warmth; next, by joining these warmth scales with the 20 standard CPI scales to predict psychological health. Without the personal warmth scale, the standard CPI scales do not significantly predict psychological health for men; for women, the standard scales do. For both genders, the personal warmth scales add significantly to the predictability of psychological health. The results point to an amendment of current theoretical formulations of interiority and androgyny to better understand optimal psychological development in men and women at midlife.