A Work-Life Identity Model of Well-Being: Towards a Research Agenda Linking Quality-of-Work-Life (QWL) Programs with Quality of Life (QOL)

QWL is conceptualized in terms of the interface between employee role identities and work resources. QWL programs serve to enhance QOL by (1) providing appropriate work resources to meet the expectations of employee role identities, (2) reducing role conflict in work and non-work life, (3) enhancing multiple role identities, (4) reducing role demands, (5) reducing stress related to work and non-work role identities, and (6) increasing the value of the role identity. We describe a variety of QWL programs related to work life (decentralized organization structures, teamwork, parallel structures, ethical corporate mission and culture, the organization work schedule, etc.) and non-work life (work at home, flextime, compressed work week, part-time work arrangements, job sharing, etc.) and show how they serve to enhance QOL using the language of work-life identity. Doing so helps develop a research agenda based on the work-life identify model.     

The role of bystanders in students' perception of bullying and sense of safety

Two studies employing a mixed experimental design were conducted to determine if perceptions of bullying, attitudes towards victims, and students' sense of safety at school were influenced by bystanders' reactions to different types of bullying. In Study 1, 217 middle-school children were randomly assigned to read a hypothetical scenario describing a direct bullying episode. In Study 2, 376 primary-school children and 390 middle-school children were presented with scenarios describing a direct bullying episode and an indirect bullying episode. In all scenarios, the bystanders' reactions to the bullying and the gender of the victim were manipulated. Participants endorsed the prosocial behavior in favor of the victims and did not endorse pro-bullying behavior. Furthermore, they perceived passive reactions to the bullying as negative behavior. Participants showed positive attitudes towards victims, which were significantly higher at younger grade levels and among girls. Bystanders' behavior influenced both participants' perceptions of the victims and their perceived sense of safety at school. Implications for anti-bullying programs based upon the group ecology are discussed.     

Depression in Women with Heart Disease: The Importance of Social Role Performance and Spirituality

Compared with men, women are more likely to experience depression, and depression increases risk of morbidity and mortality in individuals with heart disease. Psychosocial interventions have been developed for depressed patients with heart disease; however, women's experience of chronic disease differs from men's and women may benefit from interventions tailored to address their difficulties. Spirituality and social roles have been related to depressive symptoms in other populations. To identify the relationship between depression and spirituality and social role performance (i.e., role concerns, role rewards and confidence in ability to fulfill roles) in women with heart disease, we assessed depressive symptoms, spirituality, social role functioning and medical history in 125 women with heart disease. After controlling for age and severity of medical conditions, spirituality, role confidence and role concerns were significantly associated with depressive symptoms. Consideration of spirituality and aspects of social role performance may be important when developing psychosocial interventions for depressed women with heart disease.     

Sex Differences in Perception: Exploring the Integration of Sensory Information with Respect to Vision and Proprioception

Inter- and intra-modal matching by right hand preferred Norwegian adults were tested using a matching task. The task required them to locate target pins visually, proprioceptively or in combination, while matching was always carried out without vision. When combined scores for both hands were analysed, the females showed superior performance in the intra-modal matching condition. For both groups, when the scores for the two hands were treated separately, superior performance was obtained in using the right hand to match under the visual condition. The only significant sex difference relative to hand preference was that the females matched the target more accurately with the right hand in the intra-modal matching condition. These findings are discussed relative to inter-hemispheric processing     

The relationship between body weight and perceived weight-related employment discrimination: The role of sex and race

This study provides unique empirical evidence regarding a growing concern internationally: weight discrimination in the workplace. Using survey data from a national sample of 2838 American adults, it responds to Puhl and Brownell’s [Puhl, R., & Brownell, K. D. (2001). Bias, discrimination, and obesity. Obesity Research, 9, 788-805] call for additional research investigating the prevalence of discriminatory experience among overweight employees, and to their more specific call for research that takes sex and race into account when examining weight discrimination. The results indicate that women are over 16 times more likely than men to perceive employment related discrimination and identify weight as the basis for their discriminatory experience. In addition, overweight respondents were 12 times more likely than normal weight respondents to report weight-related employment discrimination, obese 37 times more likely, and severely obese more than 100 times more likely. The implications of the study’s findings for organizations, policy makers, overweight employees, and career counselors are discussed, and future research directions suggested.     

Challenging the myth of the happy celibate: Muslim women negotiating contemporary relationships

In recent decades, the age of marriage in many minority Muslim communities has risen so that significant numbers of Muslims in these contexts are remaining unmarried into their late 20 s and beyond. As with other communities in Western contexts, Muslim communities have also experienced a rising divorce rate, leading to many more single women. These social and demographic changes, combined with traditional attitudes towards female sexuality and virginity, have led to a rise in the number of women who have either never had a sexual encounter or who no longer have sexual encounters. Cultural discourses surrounding virginity and female celibacy frequently conflate the virtue of refusing sexual encounters outside of marriage with happiness and satisfaction at ‘choosing the right path’. However, these discourses negate or downplay women’s sexual desires and result in women often feeling trapped into having to perform the ‘myth of the happy celibate’. To disrupt this myth is to unleash the potentially destructive power of female sexuality, while to openly challenge it is to risk being positioned as a ‘slut’.

Global Aging: Challenges for Community Psychology

Older persons are among the major marginalized, disenfranchised citizens worldwide, yet this group has generally been ignored in the community psychology literature. In this paper, we trace the demographic trends in aging worldwide, and draw the field’s attention to the United Nations Program on Aging, which structures its policy recommendations in terms of concepts that are familiar to community psychologists. A central theme of the paper is that community psychology can have a role in producing the conceptual shifts needed to change societal attitudes now dominated by negative age stereotypes.     

Subjective Distress to Violations of Trust in Mexican American Close Relationships Conforms to Evolutionary Principles

Sex differences in subjective distress to violations of trust in a close relationship were observed among Mexican American men and women. Imagining a partner’s emotional infidelity and other female-linked violations (for example, a partner who no longer desires to work) distressed a larger percentage of women than men. In contrast, imagining a partner’s sexual infidelity and other male-linked violations (for example, a partner who no longer makes an effort to look physically attractive) distressed a larger percentage of men than women. The results from two studies provided compelling evidence against a social–cognitive explanation of the sex differences and for an evolutionary psychology explanation based on men and women responding to threats to their sex-linked mating strategies.     

Induced Reminiscence of Love and Chivalrous Helping

This study tested the effect of semantically-induced thoughts of love on chivalrous helping. A field setting of four hundred and one participants was divided into two groups. One group was interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode, and the second group, the control group, was asked to retrieve a piece of music that they love. The two groups encountered another confederate, who inadvertently lost a stack of compact discs when they neared each other. The results demonstrated that participants were more helpful when they were male, when the person in need of help was female, and when they were induced to retrieve the memory of a love episode.