Challenge and threat emotions as antecedents of recovery experiences: findings from a diary study with blue-collar workers

The aim of this study was (1) to investigate whether threat (e.g., anxiety, fear) and challenge (e.g., confidence, excitement) emotions that employees experience before work while thinking about the upcoming workday predict their recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control) after work and (2) to explore the moderating role of job control on the effect of threat and challenge emotions on recovery experiences. For two to four weeks, 57 blue-collar workers at an airport’s hub station completed a diary. Multilevel analyses (N = 1104) reveal that threat emotions in the morning decrease psychological detachment and relaxation after work. Job control buffers this negative effect. Furthermore, challenge emotions in the morning boost mastery after work. Next, when employees have low job control, challenge emotions also boost the recovery experience control. Practical implications and the need for future studies to examine more fine-grained mechanisms for better understanding how threat and challenge emotions experienced before starting work affect recovery experiences after work are discussed.     

人之将尽,消费国货？死亡信息的暴露增加国货选择的现象、中介和边界条件解析

死亡信息无处无时不在。恐惧管理理论认为,死亡暴露会促使个体采取两种防御机制：支持文化世界观和提升自尊。来自西方发达国家消费者的数据显示,死亡暴露会促使这些消费者偏爱国货、支持文化世界观,内在机制是爱国主义情绪的唤醒。但对将购买外国货视为追求高自尊和高身份的发展中国家消费者而言,尚没有学者检验死亡暴露会促使他们继续购买外国货以提升自尊,还是转而购买国货以支持文化世界观。本文用实验检验了这两种竞争预测,发现死亡暴露会增加发展中国家消费者的国货选择,但机制是补偿个人控制感的缺失。同时,已有探讨死亡暴露与国货偏好的研究并没有检验何时死亡暴露将不再增加国货偏好,本文发现启动亲密的人际归属感是边界条件。     

Defining Work Stress in Young People

Stress experienced by young workers can be very different from stress experienced by adults because of differing psychosocial developments. It is important to understand how early workplace experiences shape young workers' subsequent attitudes and behaviors, which may affect their psychological well‐being. This study examined how 18 young workers ages 17–29 perceive work stress. The authors found that young workers view job stress in 3 dimensions: lack of opportunity to learn, poor social interaction, and lack of opportunity to exercise initiative. Young workers also view work demands as challenging tasks and become job crafters to find more satisfaction in routine tasks.     

Dual commitment profiles and job satisfaction among temporary agency workers

Temporary agency workers (TAWs) are an ever-increasing type of employees which establish a double work relationship with both the agency and the client organization. Within this context, the concept of dual commitment has received considerable attention in the last years. The present contribution integrates dual commitment line of research with the one adopting a person-centered approach to the study of commitment configurations, to investigate commitment profiles on a large sample of TAWs. According to Sinclair et al.'s framework, we aimed to identify TAWs' commitment profiles based on their levels of dual affective commitment (to the agency and to the client organization) and on their general continuance commitment and to investigate differences in job satisfaction among profiles. Latent profile analyses on 7225 TAWs revealed 5 distinct profiles, namely Dually Free Agents, Dually Involved, Dually Allied, (Unilaterally) Client Allied and (Unilaterally) Agency Invested. The Dually Involved profile, followed by the Dually Allied profile, had the highest level of job satisfaction, whereas the Dually Free Agent profile and the (Unilaterally) Agency Invested had the lowest. Furthermore, the (Unilaterally) Client Allied group had a higher level of job satisfaction as compared to the (Unilaterally) Agency Invested profile. Implications are discussed.     

Caught in the rejection–abuse cycle: are we really treating perpetrators of domestic abuse effectively?

This article proposes that some perpetrators of domestic violence respond to their partners' apparent rejection of them with abusive behaviour, and that there exists a cycle of rejection and abuse. The model posits that some men, having experienced rejection within their families of origin or in relation to past partners, become sensitive to potential rejection in their current relationships. The cycle for rejection‐sensitive men consists of an event that constitutes a threat to self, leading to a defence against this threat which in turn results in psychological or physical abuse. This model was tested on sixty‐six male participants of perpetrator group programmes who completed a survey designed to measure each point in the proposed model through path analysis. There was support for the following model: rejection, threat to self‐defence against threat, abuse. Other paths were tested, but were not significant. These results are discussed in terms of the implications for treating perpetrators.     

Age discrimination in the workplace: Validation of the Nordic Age Discrimination Scale (NADS)

Furunes, T. & Mykletun, R. J. (2010). Age discrimination in the workplace: Validation of the Nordic Age Discrimination Scale (NADS). Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51 , 23–30.
Due to population ageing, older workers will make up a larger proportion of the workforce. However, recent reports show an increase in perceived age discrimination among older employees. Previous research found that age discrimination may result in negative feelings, such as uselessness, powerlessness and lower self-esteem. This study develops and validates a scale for monitoring age discrimination in the workplace. The validation study draws on three datasets, from Norway, Sweden and Finland respectively. The study provides a psychometric contribution to the study of the behavioral component of ageism.     

Identity narratives of Muslim foreign workers in Japan

This article examines the identity and acculturation experience of Muslim foreign workers in Japan. The psychological impact of prolonged stay in a foreign country was studied by eliciting narratives of experiences of 24 male foreign workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran who had been in Japan more than 5 years. By analysing the narratives they produced, three different styles of stories emerged which explained their experiences and their attempts to maintain or construct a sense of identity. Accepting the dominant narrative of Japanese society and describing oneself as ‘almost like Japanese’ was one way. Another strategy stressed the rejection of the dominant narrative as well as attempts to maintain the original narrative of the self as educated and active young men. The third narrative showed how individuals re‐defined themselves as Muslim by incorporating religious identity into a central part of their self‐concepts, and asserting its pervasive effect on all aspects of life. This study provides a perspective for acculturation research focused on social elements of identity, and derived from experiences in a relatively mono‐cultural society recently opening to immigration and in which there is a prevailing ideology of assimilation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.