Teaching Oppressive Texts

Scholars have identified the many stories in the Bible that are oppressive to women or other minoritized groups. It is remarkable how common it is that North American undergraduate students remain blind to the oppression that is depicted and that is too often the result of commonly accepted interpretations of these texts. Three brief essays collected here, originally presented as part of a panel at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting (Atlanta, 2010), present various teaching strategies for exposing the oppressive elements in the biblical text and showing how the oppression operates (an aspect of ideological criticism). What are good strategies for communicating these hard points to students in a way they can hear them and work with them? Why is this important to do?     

Age-related effects in inter-trial inhibition of attention

ABSTRACT

Young and older adults indentified the shape of a color oddball in a visual search task, and both showed faster and more accurate responses when the distractor color was passively viewed in the preceding target-absent trial than when the target color was previewed. This inter-trial effect, known as the distractor previewing effect (DPE), reflects an attentional bias that prevents attention from focusing on recently inspected features that failed to produce a target. The results showed that the DPE pattern was preserved across the lifespan, and that the age-related increase in the magnitude of the DPE appeared rooted in age-related slowing, suggesting substantial sparing of this inhibitory effect in old age.     

Researching Child Sexual Abuse in South Africa: Complexities in the Field

This study reports on my fieldwork experiences applying qualitative research strategies to study child sexual abuse in South Africa. It considers the challenges associated with, at three stages of data collection: ethical clearance, recruitment and data collection, followed by possible solutions. The study also considers the challenges from ethical and epistemological perspectives. I used a reflective self-study to analyse my experiences. My experiences revealed the following challenges: ethical process due to reasons not linked to the content of the research process would cause delays to the field-work. In addition, the use of [formal institutions] welfare institutions as sole research sites would result in a homogenous sample that does not permit comparison of experiences among the abuse cases. The costs to the researcher in terms of emotional and physical investment can be significant.     

The Moderating Effect of Self-efficacy on Job Insecurity and Organisational Commitment Among Nigerian Public Servants

The study examined the moderating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between perceived job insecurity and organisational commitment of survivors of retrenchment among Nigerian public workers. Using a cross-sectional survey, data was collected from 186 survivors. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that organisational commitment was inversely related to job insecurity and positively related to the interaction factor for self-efficacy and job insecurity. However, the relationship between job insecurity and organisational commitment was moderated by self-efficacy such that as perceived job insecurity increased, survivors with moderate to high levels of self-efficacy showed greater levels of organisational commitment than those with low self-efficacy. The findings of this study suggest that as perceived job insecurity increased survivors' organisational commitment decreased. The theoretical and practical implications of the present findings and suggestions for enhancing the self-efficacy of survivors were discussed.     

教师工作压力与职业枯竭的关系：职业承诺的调节效应

应用工作压力、职业枯竭和职业承诺问卷对中小学教师2114人进行调查,主要探讨职业承诺对工作压力与职业枯竭关系的调节效应。结果发现：工作压力与职业枯竭的情绪衰竭、非人性化、认知枯竭具有显著正相关,情感承诺、规范承诺与职业枯竭具有显著负相关;教师职业承诺以及所包括的情感承诺、留职承诺、规范承诺对工作压力与职业枯竭关系具有负向调节效应;不同教龄段教师在职业枯竭不同方面存在差异。     

Happiness: unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth,by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener

No research to date has supported the ‘social contagion’ effect of laughter and smiles in a non-Western context, nor among children. Expressions of positive affect were here compared according to social and non-social conditions among 163 children between the ages of 5–12 while playing in a park in Afghanistan. Independent observers coded laugh and smile responses using published criteria and identified 147 laugh responses and 697 smile responses. Children in the social play condition demonstrated significantly more laughs than children in the non-social play condition, and the number of peer observers present in the social play condition significantly increased the number of participant smile responses, but not laugh responses. Findings supported the idea in Western research that laughter and smiles may function in moderating social relationships and communicating affect. The authors recommend future research to investigate the relationship between positive affect and well-being across cultures, with consideration for practical interventions.     

Is a life without meaning satisfying? The moderating role of the search for meaning in satisfaction with life judgments

Results from two studies revealed that the relation between meaning in life and life satisfaction was moderated by the extent to which the rater was searching for meaning in his or her life. In Studies 1a and 1b, the presence of meaning was more strongly related to life satisfaction for those who were actively searching for meaning in life than for those who were not. Study 2 extended the finding to judgments concerning a fictitious target's life satisfaction based on experimentally manipulated information regarding meaning in life. Thus, the role of meaning in life satisfaction judgments varies across individuals, depending on the level of search for meaning in life. These results suggest that search for meaning behaves like a schema increasing the salience of meaning-relevant information, and provides new ways of understanding people's efforts to establish meaningful lives.     

Character strengths and well-being among volunteers and employees: Toward an integrative model

The endorsement and deployment of character strengths in occupational contexts are two promising components for understanding how people create well-being. In this study, a model integrating character strengths, satisfaction with occupational activities, and meaning and well-being was proposed and tested in two samples of volunteers and a sample of working adults. The model fit the data well in all three samples. Results demonstrated that deploying strengths at work provided key links to satisfaction with voluntary and paid occupational activities and to meaning among both young and middle-aged volunteers, and adult working women. Among adult volunteers and paid workers, endorsing strengths was related to meaning, while both endorsing and deploying strengths were related to well-being. Together, these studies provide a model for understanding how strengths may play a role in how both volunteer and paid workers find meaning, well-being, and satisfaction.     

Having the will and finding the way: A review and meta-analysis of hope at work

Critics of the field of positive organizational psychology have expressed reservations with validity and utility of positive constructs, such as hope. The purpose of this article is to systematically review the existing research on hope at work and to determine the ‘true’ relationship between hope and work outcomes by meta-analyzing 133 effect sizes across 45 primary studies based on 11,139 employees. As predicted, we found that the overall corrected mean effect sizes between hope and work performance and employee well-being were positive and statistically significant. Gender and study location were significant moderators of these relationships, with women and US-based studies having stronger hope to work outcomes effects. Taken together, results demonstrate that positive psychology constructs, such as hope, play an important role in understanding and predicting employee behavior.     

Does conspicuity enhance distraction? Saliency and eye landing position when searching for objects

While visual saliency may sometimes capture attention, the guidance of eye movements in search is often dominated by knowledge of the target. How is the search for an object influenced by the saliency of an adjacent distractor? Participants searched for a target amongst an array of objects, with distractor saliency having an effect on response time and on the speed at which targets were found. Saliency did not predict the order in which objects in target-absent trials were fixated. The within-target landing position was distributed around a modal position close to the centre of the object. Saliency did not affect this position, the latency of the initial saccade, or the likelihood of the distractor being fixated, suggesting that saliency affects the allocation of covert attention and not just eye movements.