Attributional mediators of social inhibition and avoidance

People differ in the degree to which they become inhibited and avoidant when they feel socially anxious This study explored the hypothesis that characterological attributions for one's feelings of nervousness in social settings are related to social inhibition and avoidance In a preliminary study, the dimensions people use to explain their feelings of nervousness and relaxation were determined One hundred and twenty-five subjects then completed measures of social anxiousness, inhibition, and avoidance, and made attributions for feeling nervous and relaxed in 10 interpersonal scenarios As predicted, attributions of nervousness to characterological factors, such as ability and personality traits, correlated positively with social inhibition and avoidance Unexpectedly, behavioral attributions for nervousness also predicted inhibition and avoidance     

Miserliness is heritable

Despite numerous folk sayings about miserly people, the genetic and environmental architecture of the character trait of miserliness has been very rarely studied to date. We administered six items of the miserliness scale to 1110 pairs of South Korean twins aged 12- to 25-years (M = 18.0, SD = 3.3). Model-fitting analyses indicated that 28% (95% CI: 21–34%) and 72% (95% CI: 66–79%) of individual difference in miserliness were attributable to genetic and unique environmental influences, respectively. Common family environmental effects were negligible, consistent with a large body of behavioral genetic literature on personality. Sex differences in the magnitude of genetic and environmental factors in miserliness were not significant.     

Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Continuous Scales of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: An Analysis Based on Twins Reared Apart

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was administered to a sample of 61 monozygotic twins reared apart (MZA), 49 dizygotic twins reared apart (DZA), and 92 spouses, who participated in the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA) from 1979 to 1995. Twins' scores on the continuous scales were subjected to behavior genetic model-fitting procedures. Extraversion-Introversion and Thinking-Feeling yielded heritabilities of about .60, consisting largely of nonadditive genetic variance. Sensing-Intuition and Judgment-Perception yielded heritabilities of about .40, consisting largely of additive genetic variance. Spouse correlations for three of the four scales were near zero and not statistically significant; one spouse correlation (Sensing-Intuition) was modestly positive and statistically significant.     

An Integrative View of Conflict Adaptation and Active Maintenance

The conflict adaptation (CA) effect refers to the reduction in the interference effect observed in conflict tasks that follow incongruent compared to congruent trials. It has been suggested that CA is caused by the exertion of flexible cognitive control, supported by many behavioral and neuroimaging studies; however, it remains unclear how conflict‐related features of the preceding trial are conveyed to subsequent trials for following adaptation. This review aims to summarize evidence supporting the top‐down modulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and passive short‐term maintenance in the posterior brain areas as mechanisms underlying CA, respectively, and to suggest a new integrated view of CA, including active maintenance in working memory. We review empirical evidences suggesting that both dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior brain regions play critical roles in CA, rather than either top‐down modulation or passive maintenance alone. Although the active maintenance view of CA appears to explain many existing findings, empirical studies are required to directly test this view.     

Catching up with wonderful women: The women‐are‐wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies

Inequalities between men and women are common and well‐documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies—there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women‐are‐wonderful effect—that women are evaluated more positively than men overall—is also common. Cross‐cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self‐reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women‐are‐wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.     

Bridging Service Employees’ Perceptions of CSR and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Moderated Mediation Effects of Personal Traits

This study aims to examine how service employees’ perceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) affect their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) at work and its mediated link through organizational identification. Another important purpose of this study is to see whether personal traits such as gender, age, and work experience moderate the relationship between the CSR perceptions of service employees and organizational identification. Using a sample of 250 frontline service employees at four five-star hotels in South Korea and employing a mediation model by way of structural equation modeling, we estimated the moderating effect of three personal traits - gender, age, and work experience - on the relationship between CSR perceptions of service employees and organizational identification. The CSR perceptions of service employees increase their organizational identification, which ultimately increases OCB. Moreover, organizational identification partially mediates the relationship between the CSR perceptions of service employees and OCB. Furthermore, the results of our study show that the positive relationship between the CSR perceptions of service employees and organizational identification are moderated by gender, age and work experience. Our study extends research in both the CSR and the OCB literature since we attempt to bridge the macro concept of CSR with the micro concept of OCB.     

Writing content predicts benefit from written expressive disclosure: Evidence for repeated exposure and self-affirmation

Expressive disclosure regarding a stressful event improves psychological and physical health, yet predictors of these effects are not well established. The current study assessed exposure, narrative structure, affect word use, self-affirmation and discovery of meaning as predictors of anxiety, depressive and physical symptoms following expressive writing. Participants (N = 50) wrote on four occasions about a stressful event and completed self-report measures before writing and three months later. Essays were coded for stressor exposure (level of detail and whether participants remained on topic), narrative structure, self-affirmation and discovery of meaning. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software was used to quantify positive and negative affect word use. Controlling for baseline anxiety, more self-affirmation and detail about the event predicted lower anxiety symptoms, and more negative affect words (very high use) and more discovery of meaning predicted higher anxiety symptoms three months after writing. Findings highlight the importance of self-affirmation and exposure as predictors of benefit from expressive writing.     

Chosŏn-Centrism and Japan-Centrism in the Eighteenth Century: Han Wŏn-chin vs. Motoori Norinaga

The eighteenth century was a peaceful era for East Asia, ruled by the emperors of Ching. However, intellectuals who refused to accept the Great Ching order appeared in Chos?n and Japan. They developed homeland-centric ideologies. This article compares the Han W?n-chin (韓元震, 1682–1751)‘s Chos?n-centrism with the Motoori Norinaga (本居宣長, 1730–1801)’s Japan-centrism. There is a lot of research about the Norinaga’s Japan-centrism in Japanese academia, which contains both aspects of the culture theory and order theory. In Korea, however, discourse about Chos?n-centrism is still ongoing argument under the concept of ‘Chos?n’s Sino-centrism (朝鮮中華主義)’. I would like to pay attention to that, although homeland-centrism is constructed with two aspects, which are theories of international order and culture, the Chos?n’s Sino-Centrism related discourse only discuss about culture theory aspect. Therefore, comparing Japan-centrism, which contains both culture and order parts, I will point out the problem of Chos?n’s Sino-centrism discourse has, and assert that when Han W?n-chin came up with the idea of a Chos?n-led world, Chos?n-centrism had born with both aspects of culture and order. In order to reveal the Chos?n-centrism, I will use a new concept called ‘Zhonghua Community (中華共同體)’.     

J.P. Rushton’s contributions to the study of altruism

This essay describes Rushton’s work on altruism over the past 40 years. During his academic career, he changed his theoretical approach from social learning theory to trait theory to sociobiology. My essay includes five sections. The first gives an overview of Rushton’s work on altruism. The second reviews his early work based on social learning theory. His laboratory and naturalistic experiments led him to conclude that altruism could be increased by exposure to models exemplifying the behavior, and that, once engaged in, the behavior could be durable over months and generalizable across situations. The third section discusses his work on the genetic foundation of altruism with social biology including his twin studies of prosocial behaviors using different age groups of both western and Asian samples. He concluded that about 50% of the variance in prosocial behaviors is heritable. The fourth section will describe altruism as part of the general factor of personality, the apex of the personality hierarchy. The last section summarizes my review of Rushton’s work on altruism.     

The Role of Job Crafting and Perceived Organizational Support in the Link between Employees’ CSR Perceptions and Job Performance: A Moderated Mediation Model

Current Psychology - This study aims to test the mediating effect of job crafting on the relationship between employees’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) perceptions and job performance,...