PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIONS TO HIGH WORKLOADS: IMPLICATIONS FOR WELL-BEING

We report a field study examining within-individual effects of workload on distress at work and daily well-being. The study was conducted using experience-sampling methodology to measure daily workload, affective distress, and blood pressure throughout and at the end of each of 10 workdays, and emotional burnout and daily strain (two indicators of low well-being) during the evening in a sample of 64 full-time employees who provided a total of 354 person-day data points. We also measured employees’ job control and perceived organizational support with a separate survey. Results showed that workload was positively associated with affective distress and blood pressure, and with the indicators of low daily well-being. Furthermore, affective distress mediated the relationship between workload and daily well-being. More importantly, job control and organizational support had cross-level moderating influences on the relationships of workload with affective distress and blood pressure such that these relationships were weaker for participants who reported having more control on their job, as well as for participants who reported receiving more organizational support.     

Love and Entitlement: Sartre and Beauvoir on the Nature of Jealousy

This paper argues that an essential and often overlooked feature of jealousy is the sense that one is entitled to the affirmation provided by the love relationship. By turning to Sartre's and Beauvoir's analyses of love and its distortions, I will show how the public nature of identity can inhibit the possibility of genuine love. Since we must depend on the freedom of others to show us who we are, the uncertainty this introduces into one's sense of self can trigger anxiety and pathological attempts to control those others upon whom one's self‐value depends. In jealousy one tries to possess the other person's freedom in the hopes that a constant positive evaluation can be thereby secured. The belief that one is entitled to the self‐perfection that such affirmation promises reveals both the important existential role that the beloved plays in the jealous person's psychic structure and the manner in which gender inequalities can promote such distortions of love.     

EMPLOYEES' CHALLENGING JOB EXPERIENCES AND SUPERVISORS' EVALUATIONS OF PROMOTABILITY

Promotability evaluations are important for individuals' career development and organizations' human resource management practices. Nevertheless, little empirical research has addressed predictors of promotability evaluations, and the studies that have, have often focused on current job performance and fixed, nonbehavioral predictors. This study takes a more behavioral approach, and investigates whether besides how one performs (i.e., job performance) what one performs also serves as an indicator of promotability. Specifically, we examine the relationship between employees' challenging job experiences and supervisors' evaluations of employees' promotability over and above employees' current job performance. Results from 3 field studies, sampling different types of employees via different measures, consistently showed that challenging job experiences explained incremental variance in supervisory and organizational evaluations of promotability over and above current job performance and job tenure.     

The measurement of Friendship-based Love in intimate relationships

Friendship-based Love (FBL) in intimate relationships may be defined as a comfortable, affectionate, trusting love for a likable partner, based on a deep sense of friendship and involving companionship and the enjoyment of common activities, mutual interests, and shared laughter. Theoretical derivation of the FBL concept is described, along with two versions of a new scale for its measurement. Two studies of the characteristics of Friendship-based Love with middle-aged married adults (N = 622) and dating young adults (N = 201) indicated that this type of love characterized the intimate relationships of both samples and was significantly and positively related to relationship satisfaction and to a variety of relationship characteristics. Discriminating comparisons of the FBL scale (both versions) with a revised measure of erotic love, with a revised measure of ludic or game-playing love with a variety of partners, and with Passionate Love also were conducted. Both versions of the Friendship-based Love scale showed substantial convergent and discriminant validity on the basis of correlational evidence (Studies 1 and 2), on multitrait-monomethod validity criteria (Study l), and via the method of contrasted groups (Studies 1 and 2).     

COUNSELING IN INDUSTRY: A SELECTED REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

This paper reviews the literature on counseling in business and industry. It summarizes what is known about (a) the extent to which personal and career counseling services exist within industry and (b) the effectiveness of various counseling programs in dealing with specific employee problems or concerns. The review is divided into three major sections. The first describes various programs and research involving counseling for personal problems. This is followed by a summary of efforts by industry to provide various forms of career counseling and guidance. Finally, the last section offers several conclusions about the current state of counseling in industry and discusses some implications for future research and evaluation such as the need for more clarity in what is typically referred to as counseling, increased specification of objectives and outcome criteria, comparison of different types of counseling approaches, a broader examination of the extensiveness of counseling in industry, and a higher standard for practitioner-oriented magazines which publish articles about counseling in industry.     

Domain Specificity in Creativity Testing: A Comparison of Performance on a General Divergent‐Thinking Test and a Parallel,Content‐Specific Test

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which domain‐specific components, such as content and type of task, influence divergent thinking and creativity by comparing the performance of 112 ninth‐grade students on two parallel divergent‐thinking tests. The Verbal Forms of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) represented the domain‐independent measures, while two forms of a Creativity in History Test (CHT), whose items corresponded closely to those of the TTCT, served as the content‐specific measures. The results indicated that both content‐specific and task‐specific factors have significant effects on divergent‐thinking and creative performance. Implications concerning the definition of creativity as a construct and its measurement are discussed.     

Consultation in adolescence: Hurried,terminable, interminable1

The physiological ambivalence displayed by adolescents towards dependence on adults is an obstacle, at least initially, to a course of psychotherapy. A consultation is often the only thing that can be offered to start with, and constitutes an essential stage even for those teenagers who go on to prove themselves able to benefi t from therapy or analysis. The way this fi rst meeting is handled is therefore crucial. The author investigates the diffi culties and paradoxes of this consultation, the particular nature of the ‘time’ of the consultation compared to that of therapy, and the different internal attitude this requires of the analyst. She thus identifi es two separate confi gurations‐a hurried consultation and an interminable consultation‐which can result when the consultation fails in its primary objectives. Both are connected with possible collusive elements in the professional linked to specifi c adolescent angst. The very detailed account of a consultation shows the ‘journey’ made by a 14 year‐old starting from her urgent request to be freed from a symptom experienced as an incomprehensible obstacle, to her gradual development of curiosity towards herself and towards her own mental and emotional make‐up, resulting in her acceptance of therapeutic treatment, which would initially have been impossible.     

Children,traditionalism in the division of family work,and marital satisfaction: “What's love got to do with it?”

This research examines several of the factors related to the frequently cited finding that the presence of children in the home is related to lower marital satisfaction. Structural equation modeling was used to test whether the number of children at home and the length of marriage predicted traditionalism in the division of family work, which, in turn, was differentially associated with erotic, ludic, friendship-based, and agapic love as well as marital satisfaction for 530 married men and women. For both men and women, the greater the number of children at home and the longer the marriage, the more traditional the division of family labor. Traditionalism predicted lower levels of erotic and friendship-based love for women, which ultimately were related to lower marital satisfaction. For men, however, traditionalism was associated with stronger erotic and friendship-based love, a phenomenon linked to higher marital satisfaction. These findings clarify the connection between the number of children at home and reduced marital satisfaction for the women in the sample and suggest that, for both men and women, it is how family work is divided, rather than the presence of children per se, that has meaning for the affective quality of the marriage.