Testing the Francis Burnout Inventory among Anglican clergy in England

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory (FBI) conceptualised good work-related psychological health among religious leaders in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. In the FBI negative affect is assessed by the Scale of Emotional Exhaustion in Ministry (SEEM) and positive affect is assessed by the Satisfaction in Ministry Scale (SIMS). A sample of 99 Anglican clergy serving in a rural diocese in the Church of England (75 men and 24 women) completed SEEM and SIMS together with the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) as an independent measure of wellbeing. The results confirm the hypothesis that high SIMS scores reduced the negative effects of high SEEM scores on the independent measure of wellbeing.     

Empathy and the responsiveness to social affordances

The direct perception theory of empathy claims that we can immediately experience a person’s state of mind. I can see for instance that my neighbour is angry with me in his bodily countenance. I develop a version of the direct perception theory of empathy which takes this perceptual capacity to depend upon recognising in what way the other person is responsive to the affordances the environment provides. By recognising which possibilities for action are relevant to a person, I can thereby understand something about the meaning they give to the world. I come to share something of their perspective on the world, and this allows me to grasp based on my perception of them something about their current state of mind. I argue that shared affect plays a central role in this perceptual capacity. Shared affect allows me to orient my attention to possibilities for action that matter to the other person. I end by briefly discuss the implications of this view of empathy for the disturbances in so-called “cognitive empathy” that are found in people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.     

A matter of taste: Nietzsche and the structure of affective response

ABSTRACT

Nietzsche’s work is filled with references to taste. He frequently expresses his own judgements of taste and criticizes or praises individuals and groups on account of their taste. Some recent attempts to account for Nietzsche’s understanding of taste argue that Nietzsche understands affective response, when guided by good taste, as being appropriate to, or merited by, the intrinsic features of the object. This is in direct contrast to anti-realist accounts of Nietzsche’s taste, according to which his evaluative judgements have no special epistemic status. In this article, I argue against objectivist or universalist readings of Nietzsche’s judgements of taste. However, in doing so I aim to show that affective responses do not thereby turn out to be arbitrary. Nietzsche suggests that by engaging with one’s affective responses, one can organizes them into a coherent and unified taste. This process of unification is central to Nietzsche’s understanding of value and self-creation.     

X good things in life: Processing fluency effects in the “Three good things in life” exercise

The present study examined whether difficulty of recollection may influence the effectiveness of the “Three good things in life” exercise that has previously been shown to increase happiness. Participants were randomly assigned to write 1–10 good things that happened to them during the day in the course of two weeks. We measured life satisfaction, positive and negative affect before the exercise and three times after the exercise. We found no effect of the number of good things participants wrote each day. Life satisfaction and positive affect of participants did not increase after the two weeks of the exercise, but we found a reduction in negative affect. We further investigated various aspects of the exercise in exploratory analyses.     

Working with Bangladeshi young women

The author describes once-weekly psychoanalytically informed work in a child mental health setting with young Bangladeshi women making the transition to adulthood. She argues that the prevalent notion of 'culture conflict' used to account for patterns of emotional disturbance and self-harm in these young women is reductionist and represents a denial of severe family dysfunction and individual psychic pain. She shows how, despite cultural differences, psychoanalytically informed thinking can provide a basis for understanding these young women's experience and facilitate their emotional growth. However, faced with complex unconscious processes, the worker has to remain alert to her countertransference in order not to be drawn into an unhelpful collusion or denial of reality. Organizational defences may also operate to protect staff and their institutions from awareness of such high levels of emotional distress, which therefore remain hidden. The author is grateful to the two young women who consented to publication in the hope that it might help others. Details have been changed to protect their anonymity.     

Blurring the Dichotomy of Good and Evil: The Idiosyncratic Helping Strategies Associated with Unmitigated‐Agentic and Unmitigated‐Communal Personalities

We theorized that unmitigated‐agentic personality constructs (UAPs)—prioritizing 'getting ahead’ over 'getting along’—and unmitigated‐communal personality constructs (UCPs)—prioritizing getting along over getting ahead—are associated with distinct affect‐regulatory helping strategies. In Study 1 (N = 179), UAPs, on average, related to greater negative‐affect versus positive‐affect induction helping tactics. In two experiments, UAPs, on average, related to a greater likelihood of selecting anger‐inducing versus love‐inducing or sadness‐inducing songs to help a target overcome a breakup (Study 2; N = 313) and greater selection of anger‐inducing and hubris‐inducing messages versus authentic‐pride‐inducing and love‐inducing messages to help a teammate struggling in a game (Study 3; N = 246). UCPs manifested the opposite patterns. Generally, these associations corresponded with helping‐strategy utility beliefs and were robust to moderators of helping target (self or other; Study 2) or altruistic versus selfish motives (Study 3). Study 4 (N = 205) provided some evidence of ecological validity in contexts of recalled everyday helping. Associations between personality constructs and relative helping strategies were about moderate in size (rs ~ .20) across these four studies. Findings suggest that UAPs are associated with helping strategies believed to promote ‘contemptuous’ self‐enhancement relative to ‘innocuous’ self‐enhancement and self‐transcendence, and vice versa for UCPs. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Why employee psychopathy leads to counterproductive workplace behaviours : an analysis of the underlying mechanisms

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to examine possible explanatory mechanisms linking employee secondary psychopathy to counterproductive workplace behaviour (CWB). Based on the emotion-centred model of voluntary work behaviour we argue that secondary psychopathy is characterized by unfavourable cognitive appraisal tendencies, which in turn positively relate to negative affectivity. We further assume that this cognitive-affective process enhances CWB. We also include primary psychopathy into our research model to test if the presumed mechanism applies to both psychopathy dimensions. We collected daily-survey data from 470 employees (1670 days) and analysed these data using multilevel structured equation modelling. We found strong support for the hypothesized serial mediation model, indicating that secondary psychopathy triggers dysfunctional cognitive-affective tendencies and consequently increases the likelihood of CWB. The proposed model did not hold up for primary psychopathy. Our study outlines the presence of distorted cognition-affective patterns in employee secondary psychopathy only. These patterns seem to play a key role in explaining the link between employee secondary psychopathy and deviant workplace behaviour. Based on this procedural knowledge relevant implications for theory and practice are provided.     

From religious emotions to affects: historical and theoretical reflections on injury to feeling,self and religion

ABSTRACT

Images of angry Muslims have become a common sight in repeated controversies problematising the compatibility of Islam and freedom of speech. To explain such outrage, it is often put forward that Muslims reacted to the disrespect and violation of their ‘religious feelings’. In this paper, we challenge the trope of hurt religious feelings in the explanation of unrest. Referring to the writings of Schleiermacher, James and Taylor, the discussion traces how religion and feeling have become inextricably intertwined, located within the individual self and institutionalised as a dominant interpretation of religion. We introduce affect as a conceptual alternative to such understandings, which allows us to analyse the emphasis on Muslim emotionality as a relationship between Muslim and secular bodies, hence no longer reduced to the interiority of Muslim subjects. We will illustrate the potential of an affect-based approach discussing Muslim feelings’ vital role in the construction of European democracies.     

Parentification and mental health symptoms: mediator effects of perceived unfairness and differentiation of self

Existing research indicates that parentification can result in positive and negative outcomes for individuals; however, little is known about the mechanisms that account for the variability. This study tested a theoretical model of the relation between parentification tasks and mental health symptoms, with perceived unfairness and differentiation of self (DoS) as mediators. The results supported the proposed model in a sample of 783 college students. A significant total indirect effect existed between the latent construct of parentification and that of mental health symptoms. Significant specific indirect effects were observed between parentification and mental health symptoms with perceived unfairness as a mediator; between parentification and DoS with perceived unfairness as a mediator and between perceived unfairness and mental health symptoms mediated by DoS. Implications for clinical work with adult clients who have experienced parentification in their family of origin are addressed.