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Previous research has indicated that gratitude and affect-balance play key stress-buffering roles. However, to date there is limited research on the impact of gratitude and affect balance on cardiovascular recovery from acute psychological stress, and whether affect balance moderates the relationship between gratitude and cardiovascular reactions to acute psychological stress. In this study, 68 adults completed measures of state gratitude, positive and negative affect, and completed a laboratory-based cardiovascular stress-testing protocol. This incorporated a 20-minute acclimatization period, a 10-minute baseline, a 6-minute arithmetic stress task, and an 8-minute recovery period. Mixed-effects growth curve models were fit and the results indicated that state gratitude predicted lower systolic blood pressure responses throughout the stress-testing period. Affect balance was found to moderate the association between state gratitude and diastolic blood pressure responses to stress, amplifying the effects of state gratitude. These findings suggest that state gratitude has a unique stress-buffering effect on both reactions to and recovery from acute psychological stress.

Advanced clinical prioritisation (ACP) pathways could potentially improve the interface between primary and secondary care, instigating appropriate treatment pathways with improved efficiencies. Telemedicine is a key component of ACP pathways.Telephone consultations for new referrals (as part of a pilot ACP pathway for chronic pain) were trialled to try (a) improve efficiency of outpatient clinics, (b) expedite assessment/treatment, and (c) reduce the number of face-to-face attendances. An audit of this activity was undertaken.The 100 longest waiting new referrals were identified. Over a 9-month period patients were contacted via telephone, undergoing an initial assessment. Treatment plans were initiated and outcomes (≥ 1) were documented.Average length of time on waiting list was 35.37 months. 40% patients were discharged with advice back to referrer, 8% were referred for diagnostics/imaging, 32% were offered pharmacological management, 30% were scheduled for interventional management, 9% were referred for further MDT assessment/treatment, 4% were referred directly for a pain management programme (PMP), 6% were referred for assessment by other specialist services, 9% were brought in for face-to-face consultation in our pain management OPD, 2% were uncontactable, and 1% had died before assessment could be made.Telemedicine as part of ACP represents an opportunity to improve speed of access to care, reducing the number of patients and time spent on waiting lists. Future studies should be directed at assessing efficacy of treatment plans initiated in telemedicine clinics whilst also looking at cost effectiveness and patient satisfaction.

Objective:While declarative learning is dependent on the hippocampus, procedural learning and repetition priming can operate independently from the hippocampus, making them potential targets for behavioral interventions that utilize non-declarative memory systems to compensate for the declarative learning deficits associated with hippocampal insult. Few studies have assessed procedural learning and repetition priming in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI).Method:This study offers an overview across declarative, conceptual repetition priming, and procedural learning tasks by providing between-group effect sizes and Bayes Factors (BFs) comparing individuals with aMCI and controls. Seventy-six individuals with aMCI and 83 cognitively unimpaired controls were assessed. We hypothesized to see the largest differences between individuals with aMCI and controls on declarative learning, followed by conceptual repetition priming, with the smallest differences on procedural learning.Results:Consistent with our hypotheses, we found large differences between groups with supporting BFs on declarative learning. For conceptual repetition priming, we found a small-to-moderate between-group effect size and a non-conclusive BF somewhat in favor of a difference between groups. We found more variable but overall trivial differences on procedural learning tasks, with inconclusive BFs, in line with expectations.Conclusions:The current results suggest that conceptual repetition priming does not remain intact in individuals with aMCI while procedural learning may remain intact. While additional studies are needed, our results contribute to the evidence-base that suggests that procedural learning may remain spared in aMCI and helps inform behavioral interventions that aim to utilize procedural learning in this population.

Trust is widely regarded as being foundational in workplace relationships. The violation of interpersonal trust results in a range of negative affective, cognitive and behavioural consequences for the injured party. However, research has yet to isolate the specific neural areas and processes activated when different types of interpersonal trust are breached. Using electroencephalogram with 68 participants, we identified the effects of three distinct types of trust violations—ability violation, integrity violation and benevolence violations—on electrical brain activity. Our findings indicate that trust violations are processed in social cognitive-related brain areas. Specifically, our results identify the significance of the default mode network (DMN), relevant to the processing of social information, in trust violation and further isolated distinct activity for ability, integrity and benevolence trust violation, with integrity violations demonstrating the greatest reaction in the DMN. Benevolence violations generated the next greatest reaction but were not significantly different from the ability violations. This potential distinction may be worth further investigation in future research. Our findings highlight the potential importance of the DMN in processing cues regarding the trustworthiness of others and the distinctiveness of the processing of violation cues of the three facets of trustworthiness.

Positive psychology research is increasingly being transferred to organizational contexts, and organizations are increasingly striving for healthier and more motivated employees. In this study, a three-week self-instructed online intervention which combines positive activities and mindfulness was developed and evaluated using a randomized-controlled group design with employees. All exercises could be easily integrated into the daily working routine. The intervention is based on broaden-and-build theory, the two-component model of mindfulness and the positive-activity model. Results indicate that the intervention is effective in increasing work engagement, hope and sleep quality as well as in reducing fatigue. Practical implications for human resource departments and corporate health management are discussed. Practitioner points A three-week mindfulness intervention can increase work engagement, hope, sleep quality, and reduce fatigue. Such activities can easily be integrated into the workday and thus, represent a realistic way for employees to improve motivation and reduce health impairment.

Persons with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI) are at risk for experiencing changes in their daily functioning due to their memory impairment. The Memory Support System (MSS), a compensatory calendaring system, was developed to support functional independence in persons with aMCI (pwaMCI). This cross-sectional study examined procedural learning, declarative learning, and working memory as predictors of MSS learning efficiency in pwaMCI. Sixty pwaMCI participated in MSS training. The Serial Reaction Time Test and Mirror Tracing Test were used to assess procedural learning. The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and CogState One Card Learning were used to assess declarative learning and the CogState One Back task was used to assess working memory. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to assess if procedural learning, declarative learning, and working memory predicted MSS learning efficiency. This study showed that declarative learning predicted MSS learning efficiency in pwaMCI, with less consistent results for procedural learning and non-significant results for working memory. Findings suggest that success in teaching compensatory tools is greater when training is offered in early aMCI before declarative learning skill is fully lost. Future studies should assess additional strategies to facilitate MSS learning in advanced aMCI.

peer-reviewed The full text of this article will not be available in ULIR until the embargo expires on the 31/03/2021 Psychological detachment from work is crucial for employees to replenish resources and maintain well-being. In this study, we tested the stressor detachment model (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015. Recovery from job stress: The stressor-detachment model as an integrative framework. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(S1), S72–S103. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1924) by examining the mediation of psychological detachment between workload and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, we investigated work engagement and occupational self-efficacy as moderators in the stressor-detachment model Our study comprised a 3-wave lagged design with 257 participants with flexible working hours. The results show that psychological detachment mediated the workload-exhaustion relationship and that work engagement buffered the negative effect of workload on psychological detachment. We found no moderated mediation for occupational self-efficacy; however, occupational self-efficacy significantly predicted psychological detachment. Our findings suggest that research should conceive a broader stressor-detachment model that considers different paths (i.e. moderators, mediators, and predictors). Moreover, organisations should support engagement and resource replenishment to ensure detachment from work. ACCEPTED peer-reviewed

Interest in psychological resilience has grown rapidly in the last couple of decades (Britt, Sinclair, & McFadden, 2016; King & Rothstein, 2010; Youssef & Luthans, 2007). Psychological resilience occurs when a person can “recover, re-bound, bounce-back, adjust or even thrive” in the face of adversity (Garcia-Dia, DiNapoli, Garcia-Ona, Jakubowski, & O’flaherty, 2013, p. 264). As such, resilience can be conceptualized as a state-like and malleable construct that can be enhanced in response to stressful events (Kossek & Perrigino, 2016). It incorporates a dynamic process by which individuals use protective factors (internal and external) to positively adapt to stress over time (Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000; Rutter, 1987). Building on the dual-pathway model of resilience, we integrate adaptive and proactive coping to the resilience development process and add a heretofore unexamined perspective to the ways in which resilience changes over time. We propose that resilience development trajectories differ depending on the type of adversity or stress experienced in combination with the use of adaptive and proactive coping. We outline the need for future longitudinal studies to examine these relationships and the implications for developing resilience interventions in the workplace.

peer-reviewed The global financial crisis and recession‐prompted budget cuts represent significant challenges to public sector organisations, limiting their ability to make changes to job design and increasing job demands. In such environments, primary interventions targeted at changing the job or the work are not always viable. In this research, we examine the effectiveness of a mindful emotion regulation (MER) intervention versus a “control” savouring nature (SN) intervention in terms of facilitating the investment of work engagement into proactive behaviours. We also examine how the job resource of supervisor justice impacts these relationships. We collected data from an Irish public sector organisation using a cluster randomised controlled trial design. The final sample comprised 108 participants (MER = 74; SN = 34). Results highlight the valuable role that job resources play as boundary conditions of psychological‐based interventions since the success of MER and SN depended on the participants’ perceptions of supervisor justice. When supervisor justice was high, a restorative SN exercise was effective in promoting proactive behaviours. When supervisor justice was low, a more complex cognitive and emotional exercise in the form of MER was required. We explain these results and consider their implications for future research. peer-reviewed

Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and uncertainty avoidance. Overall, the findings suggest that relationships between silence and cultural dimensions are more complex than commonly assumed. We discuss the explanatory power of nations as (cultural) units of analysis, our social scientific approach, the predictive value of cultural dimensions, and opportunities to extend silence research geographically, methodologically, and conceptually info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Background Working in direct contact with the public may involve psycho-social hazards for employees who are frequently exposed to rude or verbally aggressive customers. Negative encounters may undermine employees' well-being and job performance, impairing the quality of the service provided with tangible costs for organizations. Objective The paper provides a systematic review of research on customer incivility and verbal aggression in service settings using the following framework 1) antecedents of customer misbehavior as reflected in worker perceptions, customer reasons and environmental factors; 2) maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies used by service providers in response to customer incivility and verbal aggression; 3) effects of customer incivility and verbal aggression on service providers' well-being and work-related outcomes; and 4) practical implications for the management. We present a model of the relationships between these four areas. Methods A systematic review was conducted using PsychINFO and Scopus. Results Fifty-three papers (20 pertaining to customer incivility and 33 pertaining to customer verbal aggression) were included. Conclusion Both customer incivility and verbal aggression may impair employees' well-being and job outcomes. Current gaps, practical implications, and directions for future research are discussed.

This article examines how planning on dairy farms is affected by farmers' motivation. It argues that farmers' choice of expansion strategies can be specified in terms of risk decision making and understood as either prevention-focused or promotion-focused motivation. This relationship was empirically examined using mediated regression analyses where promotion/prevention focus was the independent variable and its effect on total milk production via planned expansion strategies was examined. The results indicate that promotion focus among farmers has an indirect effect on farm expansion via planning strategies that incur greater risk to the farm enterprise. Regulatory focus on the part of farmers has an influence on farmers' planning and risk management activities and must be accounted for in the design and implementation of policy and risk management tools in agriculture.

peer-reviewed Resilience research is undergoing a shift away from trait approaches, acknowledging the inherent process and dynamism of stress interactions. Hill et al. (2018) suggest that to understand the iterative nature of the multifactorial resilience process, a dynamical systems approach needs to be used. We suggest that explaining resilience through Whetten’s (1989) what, how, where and when of theory building will elucidate our understanding of both the disruptive and reintegrative pathways of resilience. Adopting this approach to resilience, we clarify (a) self-regulatory and episodic pathways to positive adaptation in the face of a broader range of stressors, and (b) we use conservation of resources theory to explain the fluctuation and developable capacity of resilience. Researchers and practitioners are encouraged to develop resilience interventions for specific predictable adversities in sport. Building strategies around the dual pathway model will promote preventive and reintegrative resilience approaches, optimizing performance episodes and well-being in ongoing sporting endeavors

Although some similarities are evident in manifestations, etiology and coping, research suggests that cultural variations may explain different reactions to workplace violence. This study explores ...

peer-reviewed The aim of this study was to test the effects of a daily positive work reflection intervention on fostering personal resources (i.e., hope and optimism) and decreasing exhaustion (i.e., emotional exhaustion and fatigue) among caregivers for the elderly and caregivers who provide services at patients homes. Using an intervention/waitlist control group design, 46 caregivers in an intervention group were compared with 44 caregivers in a control group at three points of measurement: Pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at a two-week follow-up. The results show that emotional exhaustion and fatigue were reduced for the intervention group. Primarily, caregivers with a high need for recovery at baseline benefited from the intervention. The results reveal no intervention effects for personal resources; however, they reveal a trend that the intervention led to an increase in hope and optimism among caregivers with a high need for recovery. Overall, the findings show that caregivers benefit from a daily positive work reflection intervention, particularly when their baseline levels of resources and well-being are low. ACCEPTED peer-reviewed

The aim of this qualitative interview study was to explore the change-coaching process as perceived by middle management executives and coaches using an inductive approach. We interviewed both exec...

Despite their unprecedented popularity, the psychological mechanisms through which gratitude journals operate are poorly understood. Also the use of gratitude journaling to enhance social relationships has been neglected in past research, despite the importance of healthy relationships for people’s happiness. This randomized controlled study examined the effect of (a) a traditional gratitude journal (fostering gratitude for daily life), and (b) an interpersonal gratitude journal (fostering gratitude for one’s existing social relationships), versus (c) an active control journal, on life satisfaction. Ninety-one participants were randomized to one of three conditions with 2-week and 1-month follow-ups. The traditional gratitude intervention (vs. control) showed improvements in friendship at immediate post-test and 1-month follow-up, and these effects were accounted for by changes in gratitude over time. Additionally, the traditional gratitude intervention (vs. control) predicted enhanced life satisfaction at follow-up, and this was serially mediated by 6 week changes in gratitude and perceived friendship quality. No such differences over time were observed between the interpersonal gratitude intervention and either the control intervention or the traditional gratitude intervention. Actively appreciating things in daily life appears to be effective in enhancing the quality of people’s social relationships, and producing sustained improvements in subjective wellbeing.

Resilience research is plagued with conceptual inconsistencies, particularly when considered across different contexts, not least because of the diversity of adverse situations across these context...

Increasing and new work demands drain employees’ energy resources at work. This 4-week longitudinal field experiment investigated the energizing potential of a respite intervention conducted at the...

Psychological processes (e.g., cognition, motivation, emotions) have emerged as key to understanding entrepreneurial actions and success. Currently, we do not know enough about specific entrepreneurial psychological processes and particularly lack knowledge about their cumulative or interactive effects. Self-regulation offers some promise in understanding these issues. However, self-regulation in entrepreneurship has not been fully explored, which limits our understanding. We address this by introducing an integrated model of episodic self-regulation (the A-CEM-A model) to map the reciprocal regulatory effects of action, cognition, emotion, and motivation in entrepreneurship research and isolate a series of propositions stemming from the model. We further explore the resource implications of the A-CEM-A model for entrepreneurs managing several self-regulatory processes simultaneously. The A-CEM-A model offers a novel and unique insight into entrepreneurial action and psychological processes, and presents a roadmap for future researchers interested in adopting an episodic process perspective in entrepreneurship research.

Brief and cost-effective interventions focused on emotion regulation techniques can buffer against stress and foster positive functioning. Mindfulness and positive reappraisal are two techniques that can mutually enhance one another to promote well-being. However, research testing the effectiveness of interventions combining mindfulness and reappraisal is lacking. The current pilot examined the effect of a combined mindful-reappraisal intervention on daily affect in a 5-day diary study with 106 university students. Participants were randomized to a mindful-reappraisal intervention (n = 36), a reappraisal-only intervention (n = 34), or an active control activity (n = 36). All participants described a negative event each day but only reappraised the event in the intervention conditions. Using multilevel growth modelling, results indicated that negative affect in both interventions declined over 5 days compared to the control; however, there were no differences in the growth of positive affect. Compared to reappraisal-only, the mindful-reappraisal group reported overall lower daily negative affect and marginally higher daily positive affect over the 5-day intervention. These findings suggest that brief daily practice combining mindfulness and positive reappraisal can be trained as a self-regulatory resource to promote positive affect and buffer negative affect above and beyond reappraisal practice alone.

Silence in the workplace is a highly prevalent behaviour, but more is needed to understand the causes and consequences of such behaviour. In this article, we draw on theory and research to examine the role of discrete emotions in decisions to remain silent or to speak up. Three studies with full-time employees were carried out utilizing both qualitative and experimental methodologies. Study 1 (n = 110) demonstrated that there are many reasons for being silent and established fear as the main emotion associated with silence behaviour. Building on the results of Study 1 and using a quasi-experimental vignette design, Study 2 (n = 142) confirmed that different silence motives provoke different emotional experiences. Exploring the behavioural effects of emotions using a further experimental design, Study 3 (n = 80) showed that anger is an antecedent to speaking up about an observed transgression, whereas less intense anger was associated with staying silent. This pattern was not evident for fear. Taken together, these three studies provide empirical data regarding the relationship between silence, emotions, and actions. We contribute to theory and research at the intersection of silence, emotions, and behaviour and offer valuable insights into the dynamics of these concepts in the workplace. Practitioner points Our study demonstrates that employees are silent for many reasons and that managers need to be sensitive to the multiple motives driving silence behaviour Managers need to be aware that silence provokes specific emotions, with fear and anger being particularly common emotional consequences of silence. Employees are more likely to take action when emotions are intense and so managers need to incorporate a sensitivity to employee emotions in understanding worker silence and voice

Objective This study examined the effect of a reflective interpersonal gratitude journal, a reflective-behavioral interpersonal gratitude journal and an active control journal, on primary qualities of well-being and depression. Method Participants (n = 192; 67.2% female) completed this 3-month longitudinal randomized controlled design. Results Participants in the reflective-behavioral condition experienced the greatest improvements in affect balance and reductions in depression at immediate posttest. Both gratitude interventions improved affect balance at 1 month, compared to the control. Changes in affect balance for those in the reflective-behavioral condition were mediated by the rate at which people expressed gratitude in their existing relationships. This effect was moderated by participant's baseline depressive status. Conclusion Expressing felt gratitude to others appears to be a crucial step in deriving benefits, and these benefits may not be limited to the emotionally healthy. Given the applied popularity of gratitude interventions, understanding not only if but also how they work is essential.

Contains fulltext : 228242.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question the original findings, but also to replace them with revised, stronger theories with greater explanatory power. Achieving this will typically require adding new measures, conditions, and subject populations to research designs, in order to carry out conceptual tests of multiple theories in addition to directly replicating the original findings. To illustrate the value of the creative destruction approach for theory pruning in organizational scholarship, we describe recent replication initiatives re-examining culture and work morality, working parents’ reasoning about day care options, and gender discrimination in hiring decisions. Significance statement It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, published research findings across scientific fields are not readily replicable when the same method is repeated. Although extremely valuable, failed replications risk leaving a theoretical void - reducing confidence the original theoretical prediction is true, but not replacing it with positive evidence in favor of an alternative theory. We introduce the creative destruction approach to replication, which combines theory pruning methods from the field of management with emerging best practices from the open science movement, with the aim of making replications as generative as possible. In effect, we advocate for a Replication 2.0 movement in which the goal shifts from checking on the reliability of past findings to actively engaging in competitive theory testing and theory building. Scientific transparency statement The materials, code, and data for this article are posted publicly on the Open Science Framework, with links provided in the article. 19 p.

Objective Official reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that people with power frequently put pressure on athletes to fix a match. Therefore, it is assumed that athletes may attribute their involvement to this pressure. The present study was designed to investigate the role that power, attributions and moral emotions may play in the decision to fix a match. Method Team and individual sport athletes (N = 427) competing in five European countries participated in a quasi-experimental vignette design. Participants completed eight vignettes manipulating power, source of attributions and stability of attributions. Match-fixing susceptibility and five discrete anticipated moral emotions (guilt, shame, pride, indifference, anger) were measured. Results The results of the analyses demonstrated that athletes are perceived to be most susceptible to match-fixing when the reason is related to a stable attribute of the individual (e.g., enjoying gambling, having a betting problem). However, participants reported also being susceptible to match-fixing when power is high. Anticipated emotions negatively predicted match-fixing susceptibility and mediated the effect of attributions and power on match-fixing susceptibility. Conclusion The findings provide information on the interplay between attributions, power and anticipated emotions in predicting match-fixing susceptibility, and the determinants of match-fixing susceptibility. This will be of benefit to policy makers, sporting organizations and researchers in developing policies and interventions to protect athletes from being vulnerable to match-fixing requests.

The empirical study of gratitude has experienced unprecedented growth in the past decade. As such there is now a growing body of research showing the emotional, social and psychological health benefits of being grateful. More recently, emerging research is indicating that being grateful may also positively impact physical health. However, the underlying mechanisms explaining this effect are yet to be fully explored. This research examines the relationship between dispositional gratitude and self-reported physical health symptoms, and explores whether this relationship occurs because grateful individuals have fewer experiences of loneliness. In a sample of 118 adults, gratitude significantly predicted fewer physical health symptoms (sleep disturbances, headaches, episodes of respiratory infections and gastrointestinal problems) and experiences of loneliness. Simple mediation analysis revealed that the positive effect of gratitude on self-reported physical health symptoms was significantly mediated by lower reported levels of loneliness. Therefore participants who reported higher levels of gratitude, also reported lower levels of loneliness, and this then predicted better self-reported physical health symptoms. As attention to the intervening mechanisms underlying the relationship between gratitude and physical health has only begun to be investigated, the study offers novel preliminary information regarding the psychosocial mediators accounting for this association.