A dark side of leadership: Corporate psychopathy and its influence on employee well-being and job satisfaction

Although psychopathy often is considered the most toxic of the “types” that make up the Dark Triad of personality (psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism), its role in organizational leadership is the least explored. Using the B-Scan 360, a measure of corporate psychopathy, we investigated the relationships among employees’ perceptions of psychopathic traits in their supervisors, employee psychological distress, work–family conflict, and job satisfaction. Participants in two different samples, one civic and the other financial, rated their supervisors with the B-Scan 360, and completed self-report measures of psychological distress, work–family conflict, and job satisfaction. Structural equation modeling (SEM) indicated that in each sample B-Scan 360 scores of supervisors were directly and negatively related to employee job satisfaction. The two samples differed somewhat in the associations of the B-Scan 360 with employee psychological distress and work–family conflict. Overall, the results illustrate the effects of perceived psychopathic traits in supervisors on employee well-being and job-related attitudes.     

The thematic hierarchy in sentence comprehension: A study on the interaction between verb class and word order in Spanish

Linking is the theory that captures the mapping of the semantic roles of lexical arguments to the syntactic functions of the phrases that realize them. At the sentence level, linking allows us to understand “who did what to whom” in an event. In Spanish, linking has been shown to interact with word order, verb class, and case marking. The current study aims to provide the first piece of experimental evidence about the interplay between word order and verb type in Spanish. We achieve this by adopting role and reference grammar and the extended argument dependency model. Two different types of clauses were examined in a self-paced reading task: clauses with object–experiencer psychological verbs and activity verbs. These types of verbs differ in the way that their syntactic and semantic structures are linked, and thus they provide interesting evidence on how information that belongs to the syntax–semantics interface might influence the predictive and integrative processes of sentence comprehension with alternative word orders. Results indicate that in Spanish, comprehension and processing speed is enhanced when the order of the constituents in the sentence mirrors their ranking on a semantic hierarchy that encodes a verb's lexical semantics. Moreover, results show that during online comprehension, predictive mechanisms based on argument hierarchization are used rapidly to inform the processing system. Our findings corroborate already existing cross-linguistic evidence on the issue and are briefly discussed in the light of other sentence-processing models.     

Profiles of psychological well‐being in a sample of Australian university students

The present study identified psychological well‐being profiles in a sample of Australian university students (N = 207, Mean age = 30.16 years; SD = 11.90). Respondents completed two measures: Ryff's (1989) Psychological Well‐Being (PWB) scale and Lovibond and Lovibond's (2002) Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scales‐21 (DASS‐21) assessing their levels of PWB and depression. Latent profile analysis was applied to six indices of positive functioning derived from PWB scale: self‐acceptance, purpose in life, environmental mastery, positive relations with others, personal growth and autonomy. An optimal 5‐profile solution, reflecting significant incremental shifts from very low to very high PWB, was interpreted. As predicted, profile membership distinguished participants on depression. Importantly, profiles indicating moderate to very high PWB, particularly with the presence of above average autonomy, reported significantly lower levels of depression. Our results suggest prevention of, and treatment efficacy for, mental health problems may be improved by incorporating strategies that address positive functioning attributes, particularly associated with a sense of autonomy.     

Dynamics and moderating factors of esport participation and loneliness: A daily diary study

The purpose of this study was to examine the association between esport participation and loneliness, as well as its moderating factors. Chinese college students (N = 216) self-reported their esport playing time and degree of loneliness each day immediately before bedtime for four consecutive weeks. The findings revealed that as playing time increased, students did not experience reduced sense of loneliness during playing esport, but they experienced a temporary and intensified feeling of loneliness the same day following gameplay. Students with higher general loneliness tended to feel more after-game loneliness associated with increased esport participation. Students with higher obsessive passion about esport tended to experience more loneliness (both in-game and after-game) associated with increased esport participation. Students with greater coping motivation about esport tended to experience more in-game loneliness associated with previous increased esport participation. Students who played esport less often with friends in person, or with more escape motivation toward esport, tended to increase esport participation time more following previous increased after-game loneliness. The findings suggested that college students should avoid utilizing esport to achieve a sense of belonging and should be cautious of the loneliness-inducing effect after gameplay. A healthy level of loneliness can be maintained by playing esport more with friends in person, learning strategies to avoid obsessive passion, coping motivation, and escape motivation towards esport.     

心理健康素质测评系统·中国成年人认知风格问卷的编制

通过对认知风格既往文献的回顾和分析,从临床心理学的角度将认知风格定义为个体在解释生活事件时所偏爱的和习惯化的特征性认知方式,并确定了4个维度：过度概括化、选择性提取、个体化和灾难化。通过开放式问卷调查、参考国内外已有量表、自编项目及专家评定,形成27个项目的认知风格问卷初测版,并分别在大学生样本和非学生样本中进行测试,筛选出在两个样本中都符合心理测量学要求的16个项目,最终形成认知风格问卷正式版。对认知风格问卷正式版进行心理测量学指标考察,结果发现问卷的内部一致性信度、重测信度、结构效度、内容效度、聚合效     

Cross-sectional and longitudinal relations among peer-reported trustworthiness, social relationships, and psychological adjustment in children and early adolescents from the United Kingdom and Canada

Trustworthiness was examined in children and early adolescents from two countries. In Study 1,505 children in the fifth and sixth school years in the United Kingdom (mean age = 9 years 7 months) were tested across an 8-month period. In Study 2,350 sixth- through eighth-grade Canadian children and early adolescents (mean age = 12 years 11 months) were tested across a 1-year period. Participants completed measures assessing trustworthiness (ratings of promise and secret keeping by peer group and also by best friend in Study 1), assertiveness (Study 1), prosocial behavior (Study 2), social relationships (friendships and peer preference), and psychological adjustment (self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and loneliness). Peer-reported trustworthiness was positively associated with, and predicted changes across time in, the number of friendships. The observed relations were found to be statistically independent of peer preference and peer-reported assertiveness or prosocial behavior. Trustworthiness was found to be positively associated with peer preference (Study 1 and Study 2) and psychological adjustment (Study 1).     

Learning Verbs Without Arguments: The Problem of Raising Verbs

This paper addresses the problem of learning the class of raising verbs (e.g. seem). These verbs are potentially problematic for learners in that unlike typical main verbs, these verbs do not stand in a semantic relation with any Noun Phrase (NP) arguments. Moreover, a second class of verbs, known as control verbs, shares certain distributional properties with raising verbs, but the two verb classes differ in important structural properties. The central problem addressed here is that of how a learner would distinguish raising verbs from control verbs, given their partial overlap in distribution. A series of experiments with English-speaking adults using a fill-in-the-blank questionnaire revealed two main types of cues that led participants to distinguish the two verb classes: inanimate NPs and semantically empty subjects (its raining) yielded the highest proportion of raising verb responses from adults, while animate NPs paired with eventive predicates yielded a high rate of control verb responses. On the basis of these results, suggestions are made as to how one should study the learning of these verbs in children.This research was supported by an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. I owe many, many thanks to Lila and Henry Gleitman, John Trueswell and the whole cast of participants in the Cheese seminar at IRCS during 2000–2002. In addition I would like to thank Ash Asudeh, Robin Clark, Jeffrey Lidz, Elliott Moreton, Julien Musolino, Anna Papafragou, Carson Schutze and an anonymous reviewer for comments and suggestions. I also thank audiences at University of North Carolina, University of Delaware, UCLA, Penn Linguistics Colloquium 26, Chicago Linguistic Society 38 and the CUNY Graduate Center for stimulating discussions. All errors and shortcomings are my own.     

伪科学信徒的心理状态分析

伪科学现象的泛滥给社会造成极大危害。而各种伪科学的兴起均有众多信陡做为基础。是什么心理状态使许多人陷入其中,从俯仰危机、文化素质低下、精神病态心理、获益心理、利欲驱动、显示与控制欲等诸方面对伪科学信陡进行心理分析,以利于其迷知返,铲除伪科学现象,净化社会环境。     

Children's selective attention with variation in amount of stimulus exposure

Selective attention in children was measured by means of a central-incidental learning paradigm. Children performed a central task requiring attention to one element in each of several stimuli, after which their incidental learning was assessed by a combination of two tests measuring: (a) recognition of the second, or incidental, element in each stimulus, and (b) association between the incidental and central elements. Principal independent variables were the age of the children (9 vs 12 years) and the amount of exposure time per trial in the central task (6 vs 12 sec). Douling the exposure time increased the incidental as well as the central scores for 9-year-olds, while it increased only the central scores for 12-year-olds. It would appear that younger children maintain a relatively nonselective orientation during an extended exposure period, distributing attention between both relevant and irrelevant stimulus elements, whereas adolescents adopt a more selective approach and concentrate exclusively on task-relevant information. The results are discussed in relation to hypotheses regarding development of selective attention.     

Commitment,ego-involvement,and resistance to attack

Subjects with initially extreme or moderate positions (based on a median split) recorded a consonant speech under public, private, or no commitment and later received a strong, mild, or no attack on their position. Extremes were more ego-involved in terms of wider latitudes of rejection, narrower latitudes of non-commitment, and greater resistance to attack, relative to moderates. Commitment had no effect for extremes, suggesting a ceiling effect on changes in the latitudes and resistance to attack for initially high levels of ego-involvement. For moderates, commitment resulted in narrower latitudes of noncommitment, wider latitudes of rejection (greater rejection of discrepant positions), and greater resistance to attack, suggesting that commitment may elevate ego-involvement with the issue. Commitment and ego-involvement may increase the salience of one's attitude position in later situations, thereby increasing the probability of attitudeconsistent behavior.