Information Load: A Test of an Inverted-U Hypothesis with Hourly and Salaried Employees

We surveyed 714 hourly and 516 salaried employees of a midwestern telephone company to test the effects of information load on work-related outcomes. Using curvilinear regression analyses, we found support for our hypothesis that employees are less satisfied with outcomes as the load of information deviates positively or negatively from some level. We also predicted, and found, that this quadratic function was more prevalent in the hourly group than in the salaried group. Implications, future research directions, and limitations of the present study are discussed.     

Cultural Differences in Attitudes Toward Smoking: Developing Messages Using the Theory of Reasoned Action1

The theory of reasoned action was used to identify the culturally appropriate beliefs of Hispanic smokers that might be targeted in an anti-smoking campaign. In-depth interviews were conducted with 263 Hispanics and 150 non-Hispanic whites. Intentions to quit smoking were predicted most strongly by the attitudinal rather than the normative component of the model. A pattern of cultural differences between the two ethnic groups was identified. Family-related consequences and concerns about bad smell contributed more to Hispanic attitudes toward quitting than to those of non-Hispanic whites, while the effects of withdrawal from cigarettes contributed more to non-Hispanic whites'attitudes than to Hispanics'. The bad smell of cigarettes, improving relationships with the family, weight gain, breathing more easily, and having a better taste in the mouth were the consequences of smoking and quitting that most strongly discriminated between those Hispanics intending and not intending to quit. These results should be used in the creation of culturally appropriate anti-smoking messages for this group.     

Interparental conflict and risk behaviors among Mexican American adolescents: a cognitive-emotional model

This study used a cognitive-emotional model to examine the relations between multiple dimensions of interparental conflict and health risk behaviors among young adolescents. Participants were 151 Mexican American adolescents and their parents. At initial individual interviews, parents reported on conflict with their spouses, and adolescents reported on their parents' conflict, their appraisals of the conflict, their emotional distress, and their acculturation level. At 6-month follow-ups, adolescents reported on their risk behaviors, including substance use and sexual activity. In general, adolescents' acculturation level was not related to their risk behaviors. More frequent conflict, more conflict about the adolescent, more adolescent involvement in the conflict, and poor conflict resolution were related to greater emotional distress. More conflict about the adolescent, mothers being more demanding/dominating during conflict, and more adolescent involvement in the conflict were related to greater risk behaviors. Adolescents' cognitions mediated the link between two dimensions of parental conflict, frequency and resolution, and emotional distress. Adolescents' emotional distress mediated the association between adolescent involvement in parental conflict and adolescents' risk behaviors.     

Marital conflict and acculturation among Mexican American husbands and wives

This study examined the relationship between acculturation and multiple dimensions of marital conflict among Mexican American husbands and wives. Participants were 151 husbands and wives who were recruited from a health maintenance organization in northern California and individually interviewed. More acculturated husbands and wives engaged in less avoidance of conflict and were more expressive of their feelings in an argument. Husbands who were more acculturated reported more conflict concerning sex and consideration for the other. Bicultural and more acculturated husbands reported that their wives were more verbally and physically aggressive, compared with mono-Mexican husbands. The findings provide evidence that more acculturated husbands and wives are involved in more direct expressions of conflict in their marriages, compared with less acculturated husbands and wives.     

Timing is everything: Anticipatory stress dynamics among cortisol and blood pressure reactivity and recovery in healthy adults

Psychological states of anticipation modulate biological stress responsivity. While researchers generally investigate how subjective distress corresponds to the magnitude of stress reactivity, physiological recovery after acute stressors must also be considered when investigating disease vulnerabilities. This study assessed whether anticipatory stress would correspond to stress reactivity and recovery of salivary cortisol and blood pressure levels in response to a well-validated psychosocial stressor. Thirty participants (63% female; mean?±?SEM age 45.4?±?2.12 years) were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) consisting of a public speech and mental arithmetic. Ten salivary cortisol samples and systolic and diastolic blood pressure recordings were collected at time points spanning 50?min before and up to 50?min after stress exposure. These data were transformed into parameters representing stress reactivity (area under the curve) and stress recovery (percent change). The Primary Appraisal Secondary Appraisal scale assessed anticipatory stress before exposure to the TSST. Our results revealed that increased anticipatory stress predicted increased stress reactivity for cortisol (p?=?0.009) but not blood pressure. For stress recovery, increased anticipatory stress predicted greater decrements of cortisol concentration (p?=?0.015) and blood pressure (p?=?0.039), even when controlling for total systemic "output" by incorporating baseline activity. This efficient shutdown of stress responses would have otherwise been ignored by solely investigating reactive increases. These findings underscore the importance of measuring multiple dynamic parameters such as recovery when investigating physiological stress response patterns as a function of psychosocial factors.     

Care,Oppression, and Marriage

This article draws attention to a form of injustice in intimate relationships of care that is largely ignored in discussions about the legal rights and obligations of intimate partners. This form of injustice is connected to a feature of caregiving I call “flexibility,” in virtue of which caregiving requires “skills of flexibility.” I argue that the demands placed by these skills on caregivers create constraints that amount to “vulnerability to oppression.” To lift these constraints, caregivers are entitled to open‐ended responses to their work, responses that would enable them to pursue their own projects while providing care. Instead of protecting individual choice of intimate relationships, marriage law should protect these entitlements.     

Predictors of Health Self-Appraisal: What's Involved in Feeling Healthy?

Increased interest in the prevention of illness underscores the importance of understanding how people evaluate their health. This study investigated self-report measures of health status, medical complaints, and psychosocial factors in 455 undergraduates. After controlling for neuroticism, regression analyses indicated that positive mood, negative mood, perceived vulnerability to illness, and vitality were significant contributors to self-assessed health independent of physical symptoms and diseases. Together, psychosocial factors accounted for more variance in health assessments (R² = .44) than did disease and symptom reports alone (R² = .25; p. < .01 for all betas). These results demonstrate the strong association of psychosocial stares with evaluations of health and suggest that physical discomfort may play a relatively minor role in how "healthy" we feel.     

Expertise and self‐regulation processes in a professional task

This study investigated self‐regulation processes in a professional task, a beverage service task, using the model of self‐regulated study. The main purpose was to explore how self‐regulatory activity changes both with professional experience and with memory task demands. In a simulated beverage service task, 22 beginner waiters and 22 experienced waiters were asked to request the drink ordered by each customer until they were sure they knew the entire order. Then, they had to execute an immediate recall of the customer‐beverage pairs and a delayed recall. Results showed that globally beginners did not modify their self‐regulation processes as a function of task demands. By contrast to beginners, experienced waiters increased their self‐regulatory activity when they had to face with a more demanding task. Besides, experts showed higher recall performance than beginners under all conditions. In the conclusion, results from this more naturalistic task were compared to those obtained in experimental studies and discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamics of expertise level: Coordination in handstand

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of expertise on coordination patterns. We thus tested the coordination dynamics of two groups: experts in the handstand also having high expertise in gymnastics and experts in the handstand but only intermediate expertise in gymnastics. All participants were instructed to track a target with their ankles while maintaining the handstand. The target moved on the anterior-posterior axis according to three frequency conditions: 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 Hz. The results showed that the suprapostural task was performed better by the group with high gymnastics expertise. Moreover, the spontaneous coordination was specific to the level of gymnastics expertise. We concluded that (i) the dynamics of coordination progress with the overall level of expertise in a sport discipline, independently of the mastery of a single skill, (ii) persistence and change are seen in related movement properties, and (iii) high expertise offers greater adaptability relative to the task.