Dispositional happiness and affective forecasting: General or specific effect?

Recent findings suggest that dispositional traits can influence personal affective forecasting. In this study, we investigated the relationship between dispositional happiness and affective prediction about academic performance among undergraduate students. Participants were asked to predict their emotional reactions on a 7-point Likert scale in regard to an important exam’s result two months prior obtaining their results. All the participants were contacted by SMS (Short Text Message) 8 h after the results were available and were requested to rate their actual emotional feelings on the same scale. According to their scores on the subjective happiness scale, participants were assigned into ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’ groups. Results show no emotional prediction differences between the two groups for extreme results (i.e. good and bad results). In contrast, happy participants predicted less negative emotional feelings than unhappy ones for moderate results. No differences appear for the emotional feelings assessed the day they received their exam’s scores. These findings support the idea that dispositional happiness is related to emotional prediction and, more particularly, indicate that happiness induces more positive feelings concerning moderate future events, but not for extreme ones. This study suggests that happiness induces a positive view about emotional coping for future intermediate accomplishments only and not a positive view of the future in general.     

Pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia and affective disorders: Behavioral assessment of psychiatric medications

Objectively defined, publicly observable ward behaviors (body activity, extremity activity, scanning, social interaction, proximity, participation, laughing/smiling, and idiosyncratic behavior) emitted by psychiatric inpatients with either schizophrenic or affective disorders were time sampled both before and during the administration of psychiatric medications (neuroleptics, tricyclics, and lithium). The data indicate that the primary effects of the pharmacological interventions are confined to activity measures and symptoms rather than social behaviors. The implications of these results for treatment protocols are discussed in terms of interactions between pharmacological and psychosocial interventions. In addition, rates of behavior during treatment were related to baseline rates via a log-log function of negative slope, a result that is consistent with data derived from the infrahuman laboratories. Taken together the results provide support for attempts to relate preclinical and clinical psychopharmacology and suggest that behavioral assessment can be applied profitably to drug effects in clinical situations.These investigations were supported in part by State of Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Grants RD836-13 and RD622-02 to the first author. The cooperation of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute staff is gratefully acknowledged. Assistance in data collection was provided by S. Sussman and K. Mueser.     

Are The Very Happy Too Happy?

Although positive emotions undoubtedly confer benefits, one can have too much of it. There is probably a point beyond which enjoyment interferes with realism, yet it is unclear where that point is. The original States of Mind (SOM) model (Schwartz and Garamoni, 1986; 1989) proposed that a ratio of [positive] to [positive plus negative] affective/cognitive states [P/(P+N)] of about 0.62 is optimal, but previous research indicated that higher ratios may go with good mental health. The revised balanced states of mind (BSOM) model (Schwartz, 1997) suggests a higher cutoff, with ratios above 0.90 being dysfunctional. This paper reports a study of 72 very positive subjects (mean ratio = 0.85) and assessed possible dysfunction by means of questionnaires, role-plays, and physiological responses to induced stress. Signs of dysfunction were no more frequent among the most positive subjects (ratios of 0.90 and above) than among moderately positive subjects. This suggests that there is nothing wrong with the high levels of happiness in present day society. As yet, it is still not established how much more happiness will be too much. One possibility is that standard cognition/emotion measures need to be revised in order to detect truly excessive positivity in a sensitive manner.     

Health Risk Behaviors and Their Relationships to Health Care Utilization Among Veterans Receiving Primary Medical Care

This paper reports the findings of a behavioral health risk screening form and examines the interrelationships among behavioral risk factors and health care utilization. Participants were 1,000 veterans who completed a brief self-report questionnaire assessing affective distress and behavioral health risk factors while they waited to see their primary care provider. Participants reported a mean level of affective distress in the mild range on a scale of 0 to 20 (M = 6.4, SD = 4.95), and 22.4% reported moderate or high levels of affective distress. Fifty percent of the sample denied alcohol use; 5% of the men and none of the women reported a pattern of use that met established criteria for at-risk drinking. Twenty-six percent of the sample reported current tobacco use, 45% acknowledged concerns about diet and/or weight, and 54% reported concern about pain. These factors were largely significantly intercorrelated and several were related to indices of health care utilization. It was concluded that veterans receiving health care in primary care settings report significant levels of affective distress and other health risk behaviors and that the presence of these factors is associated with increased use of the health care system. These data encourage increased efforts to identify these factors and to develop behavior change interventions.     

Social Support at Work and Affective Commitment to the Organization: The Moderating Effect of Job Resource Adequacy and Ambient Conditions

ABSTRACT

This study investigated whether both supervisor and coworker support may be positively related to affective commitment to the organization on one hand; and on the other hand, it examined the moderating effect of job resource adequacy and ambient conditions on these relationships. The sample included 215 participants working within a health care organization. Results of regression analysis showed that supervisor and coworker support have an additive effect on affective commitment. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that supervisor and coworker support are more strongly related to affective commitment when job resource adequacy is high. Furthermore, ambient conditions moderate the relationship between supervisor support and affective commitment in such a way that favorable ambient conditions strengthen this relationship. Overall, these findings reinforce the importance of taking into account contingent factors in the study of antecedents of affective commitment to the organization.     

Identifying the situational triggers underlying avoidance of communication situations and individual differences therein

People are actively involved in the selection and avoidance of the situations they face during everyday life. Moreover, such selection/avoidance behavior is subject to sizeable individual differences. Yet, to a large extent this phenomenon has been underinvestigated, and a full understanding of selection/avoidance remains lacking. In the present paper, we take a first step to a more in-depth understanding of situation avoidance, which is conceptualized in terms of individual profiles or signatures across situations. Two key objectives with regard to those signatures are being addressed, that is: (a) identifying the critical situational triggers that elicit avoidance behavior, and (b) identifying the most important individual differences in the link between these situational triggers and avoidance, along with their underlying process dynamics. To achieve these objectives, we performed an empirical study on avoidance of communication situations. This study revealed a set of person types that meaningfully differ in sensitivity to a few key situational features. These person types further appeared to differ from one another on several dispositional cognitive/affective forecast variables.