A Longitudinal Person-Centered Perspective on Positive and Negative Affect at Work

Abstract

This research examines how the direction and intensity of employee’s positive and negative affect at work combine within different profiles, and the relations between these profiles and theoretically-relevant predictors (psychological need satisfaction and supervisor autonomy support) and outcomes (work-family conflict, absenteeism, and turnover intentions). A total sample of 491 firefighters completed our measures initially, and 139 of those completed the same measures again four months later, allowing us to examine the stability of these affect profiles over time. Latent profile analyses and latent transition analyses revealed five identical profiles across the two measurements occasions: (1) Low Negative Affect Facilitators; (2) Moderately Low Positive Affect Incapacitators; (3) High Positive Affect Facilitators; (4) Very Low Positive Affect Incapacitators; and (5) Normative. Membership into Profiles 3, 4, and 5 was very stable over time. In contrast, Profiles 1 and 2 were associated with a highly unstable membership over time. The highest levels of work-family conflict, absenteeism, and turnover intentions were associated with the Very Low Positive Affect Incapacitators. In contrast, the lowest levels of turnover intentions were associated with the Low Negative Affect Facilitators and High Positive Affect Facilitators.     

The return of the repressed. On Robert N. Bellah,Norman O. Brown,and religion in human evolution

As much as Robert Bellah’s final work, Religion in Human Evolution, has been studied and dissected, no critic underlined the importance of psychoanalysis for its main argument and its theoretical framework. The paper shows the influence exerted by a controversial interpreter of Freud, Norman O. Brown, on Bellah’s ideas, intellectual profile, and writing style in the late-1960s and early 1970s. While in search for a new intellectual voice, Bellah was struck by Brown’s work and began to make intensive use of his book, Love’s Body, both in his teaching and in his research of the early 1970s, during his so-called “symbolic realism” period. While Bellah abandoned Brown’s ideas and style in the mid-1970s, some of the basic intuitions he had during that period still survived as one of the major theoretical intuitions of Religion and Human Evolution.     

ON THE BENEFITS OF PHILOSOPHY AS A WAY OF LIFE IN A GENERAL INTRODUCTORY COURSE

Philosophy as a way of life (PWOL) places investigations of value, meaning, and the good life at the center of philosophical investigation, especially of one’s own life. This essay argues that PWOL is compatible with general introductory philosophy courses, further arguing that PWOL-based general introductions have several philosophical and pedagogical benefits. These include the ease with which high-impact practices, situated skill development, and students’ ability to “think like a disciplinarian” may be incorporated into such courses, relative to more traditional introductory courses, as well as the demonstration of philosophy’s value to students by explicitly tying philosophical investigation to students’ own lives.     

The knowledge norm of assertion in dialectical context

This paper aims to show that the Knowledge Norm of Assertion (KNA) can lead to trouble in certain dialectical contexts. Suppose a person knows that p but does not know that they know that p. They assert p in compliance with the KNA. Their interlocutor responds: ‘but do you know that p?’ It will be shown that the KNA blocks the original asserter from providing any good response to this perfectly natural follow-up question, effectively forcing them to retract p from the conversational scoreboard. This finding is not simply of theoretical interest: I will argue that the KNA would allow the retort ‘but do you know that p?’ to be weaponized in strategic communication, serving as a tool for silencing speakers without having to challenge their testimonial contributions on their own merits. Our analysis can thereby provide a new dimension to the study of epistemic injustice, as well as underscoring the importance of considering the norms governing speech acts also from the point of view of non-ideal social contexts.     

Differential aggressiveness and litigiousness: Social support and social status hypotheses

The Qolla Indians have high rates of involvement in agonistic forms of interaction. In previous reports the author suggested that ecological and physiological factors are causally associated with intracommunity differential participation in aggressive behavior. The present article described tests of hypotheses using other variables to explain this behavioral differentiation. The hypothesis that aggressiveness and participation in litigation are a function of the amount of social support the individual can potentially mobilize is tested. The relationships between indicators of social status (wealth, education, age, political activities, and ritual participation), on the one hand, and aggressiveness and litigiousness, on the other, also are examined.     

Offence and defence in fights between young pigs (Sus scrofa)

Fights were observed between young, unacquainted, domestic pigs. These fights were described in terms of the frequency of bites and the time spent in each of five spatial configurations of the animals. Depending on the rate that bites were given or received, each spatial configuration was characterized as resulting from offence or defence by one of the pigs. Bites were mainly directed at the head and ears, and defensive moves placed these areas out of reach. The most effective offensive move was an attack from the side. Pigs that lost fights tended to turn away from such attacks: winners were as likely to turn towards the attacker. Whether turning away is submission or simply defence is not clear. Factor analysis showed that fights could be described on three dimensions: offence by the loser along with mutual offence and mutual defence: offence by the winner and defence by the loser: and defence by the winner. Long fights involved much offence by the loser and defence by the winner: short fights involved much defence by the loser. When the pigs met again after 24 h, the fights were shorter and involved less offence and more defence by the loser. The transitions between the configurations reflect a balance of offence and defence by the pig responsible making for the transition. This balance is, in turn, affected by attacks from the opponent, fatigue, and the pig's assessment of its relative fighting ability. Retaliation against attacks is partly responsible for the persistence of fighting.     

Quantifying the Interplay of Semantics and Phonology During Failures of Word Retrieval by People With Aphasia Using a Multiplex Lexical Network

Investigating instances where lexical selection fails can lead to deeper insights into the cognitive machinery and architecture supporting successful word retrieval and speech production. In this paper, we used a multiplex lexical network approach that combines semantic and phonological similarities among words to model the structure of the mental lexicon. Network measures at different levels of analysis (degree, network distance, and closeness centrality) were used to investigate the influence of network structure on picture naming accuracy and errors by people with Anomic, Broca's, Conduction, and Wernicke's aphasia. Our results reveal that word retrieval is influenced by the multiplex lexical network structure in at least two ways—(a) the accuracy of production and error type on incorrect productions were influenced by the degree and closeness centrality of the target word, and (b) error type also varied in terms of network distance between the target word and produced error word. Taken together, the analyses demonstrate that network science techniques, particularly the use of the multiplex lexical network to simultaneously represent semantic and phonological relationships among words, reveal how the structure of the mental lexicon influences language processes beyond traditionally examined psycholinguistic variables. We propose a framework for how the multiplex lexical network approach allows for understanding the influence of mental lexicon structure on word retrieval processes, with an eye toward a better understanding of the nature of clinical impairments, like aphasia.     

Judgments of marital rape as a function of honor culture,masculine reputation threat,and observer gender: A cross-cultural comparison between Turkey,Germany, and the UK

Previous research has shown that there is higher tolerance of violence against women in cultures with salient gender-specific honor norms, especially when the violence occurs in intimate relationships and in response to threat to male honor. The present cross-cultural study (N = 398) extended these findings to sexual aggression (i.e., marital rape) by comparing participants from a culture that emphasizes honor (Turkey) and participants from cultures without strong honor traditions (Germany and Britain). Turkish participants blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more than did German and British participants. In all cultural groups, participants blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more when the husband's reputation was threatened than in the absence of such threat, and in all cultural groups, men blamed the victim and exonerated the perpetrator more than women. Yet, the effect of masculine reputation threat and this pattern of gender differences were somewhat more pronounced among Turkish than German or British participants. Results exploring the predictive role of honor norms at the individual level beyond rape myth acceptance and traditional gender role attitudes revealed that honor norms were the primary predictor of rape perceptions and blame attributions in Turkey (an honor culture), but not in Germany and Britain (dignity cultures) where rape myth acceptance was the strongest predictor. These results provide insights into the cultural factors influencing marital rape judgments in ways that may undermine victim's well-being and fair handling of rape cases, and highlight the domains most urgently in need of potential intervention.     

Relative effects of breastfeeding intention and practice on maternal responsiveness

Our objective was to examine the differential effects of antenatal breastfeeding intention (BI) and breastfeeding practice (BP) on maternal postnatal responsiveness. We conducted a secondary analysis of longitudinal data from a subsample of 962 mother–infant dyads from a U.K.-based birth cohort study the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Exposures were BI and BPs measured at 32 weeks of gestation and 18 months’ postpartum. The outcome was maternal responsiveness assessed at 12 months’ postpartum. We used logistic regression analyses unadjusted and adjusted for confounders. Intention to breastfeed was associated with increased odds of postnatal maternal responsiveness independent of BP, adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 2.34, 95% CI [1.42, 3.86]. There was no evidence that BP was an independent predictor of maternal responsiveness, OR = 0.93, 95% CI [0.55, 1.57]. Life-course epidemiology analyses demonstrated that maternal responsiveness is most positive when both BI and BP are present. This is the first population-based study to provide evidence that BI during pregnancy is more strongly associated with maternal postnatal responsiveness than is BP. Further research is needed to understand the determinants of BI in pregnancy and its relationships with maternal responsiveness.