A lengthy look at the daily grind: time series analysis of events, mood, stress, and satisfaction

Office Design's Impact on Psychosocial Work Environment and Emotional Health

This study explores the association between office design and (a) the psychosocial work environment and (b) the emotional health among 4352 employees in seven different office designs. A multivariate linear regression analysis was performed with adjustments for age and educational level for men and women separately. Results show that psychosocial factors and emotional exhaustion differ between both office designs and between genders, with best outcomes in cell offices, except for psychological demands that are rated the most favourable in shared-room offices. Cell offices and small open-plan offices show a strong beneficial association with emotional exhaustion in women. Among men, hot-desking is most problematic regarding psychosocial work environment and emotional exhaustion. Women rate the psychosocial environment low in combi-office and report emotional exhaustion in small open offices.

Training augmentation using additive sensory noise in a lunar rover navigation task

Background

The uncertain environments of future space missions means that astronauts will need to acquire new skills rapidly; thus, a non-invasive method to enhance learning of complex tasks is desirable. Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon where adding noise improves the throughput of a weak signal. SR has been shown to improve perception and cognitive performance in certain individuals. However, the learning of operational tasks and behavioral health effects of repeated noise exposure aimed to elicit SR are unknown.

Objective

We evaluated the long-term impacts and acceptability of repeated auditory white noise (AWN) and/or noisy galvanic vestibular stimulation (nGVS) on operational learning and behavioral health.

Methods

Subjects (n = 24) participated in a time longitudinal experiment to access learning and behavioral health. Subjects were assigned to one of our four treatments: sham, AWN (55 dB SPL), nGVS (0.5 mA), and their combination to create a multi-modal SR (MMSR) condition. To assess the effects of additive noise on learning, these treatments were administered continuously during a lunar rover simulation in virtual reality. To assess behavioral health, subjects completed daily, subjective questionnaires related to their mood, sleep, stress, and their perceived acceptance of noise stimulation.

Results

We found that subjects learned the lunar rover task over time, as shown by significantly lower power required for the rover to complete traverses (p < 0.005) and increased object identification accuracy in the environment (p = 0.05), but this was not influenced by additive SR noise (p = 0.58). We found no influence of noise on mood or stress following stimulation (p > 0.09). We found marginally significant longitudinal effects of noise on behavioral health (p = 0.06) as measured by strain and sleep. We found slight differences in stimulation acceptability between treatment groups, and notably nGVS was found to be more distracting than sham (p = 0.006).

Conclusion

Our results suggest that repeatedly administering sensory noise does not improve long-term operational learning performance or affect behavioral health. We also find that repetitive noise administration is acceptable in this context. While additive noise does not improve performance in this paradigm, if it were used for other contexts, it appears acceptable without negative longitudinal effects.

Psychological contract breach during the pandemic: How an abrupt transition to a work from home schedule impacted the employment relationship

Organizations shifted employees to a work from home schedule as a protective health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper depicts the path through which the abrupt workplace disruptions can trigger employees' perceptions of felt mistrust, intensify work to life conflict, and cause a psychological contract breach. In study 1, we conducted an experiment with 133 college students and found that switching to a work from home schedule with enhanced supervisor control increased the psychological contract breach through felt mistrust. In Study 2, we surveyed 239 adults who worked from home during the pandemic. Results underline the role of work to life conflict as a mediator through which disruptions and felt mistrust influenced the breach of psychological contract. Further, coping strategies were found to mitigate this detrimental effect. Overall, our findings suggest that sudden shifts in management practices can challenge workplace relationships during environmental shocks.

When and Where Do People Regulate Their Emotions? Patterns of Emotion Regulation in Unselected and Socially Anxious Young Adults

Introduction: The current studies examined how smartphone-assessed contextual features (i.e., location, time-of-day, social situation, and affect) contribute to the relative likelihood of emotion regulation strategy endorsement in daily life. Methods: Emotion regulation strategy endorsement and concurrent contextual features were assessed either passively (e.g., via GPS coordinates) or via self-report among unselected (Study 1: N = 112; duration = 2 weeks) and socially anxious (Study 2: N = 106; duration = 5 weeks) young adults. Results: An analysis of 2,891 (Study 1) and 12,289 (Study 2) mobile phone survey responses indicated small differences in rates of emotion regulation strategy endorsement across location (e.g., home vs. work/education settings), time-of-day (e.g., afternoon vs. evening), time-of-week (i.e., weekdays vs. weekends) and social context (e.g., with others vs. alone). However, emotion regulation patterns differed markedly depending on the set of emotion regulation strategies examined, which likely partly explains some inconsistent results across the studies. Also, many observed effects were no longer significant after accounting for state affect in the models. Discussion: Results demonstrate how contextual information collected with relatively low (or no) participant burden can add to our understanding of emotion regulation in daily life, yet it is important to consider state affect alongside other contextual features when drawing conclusions about how people regulate their emotions.

The Impact of Challenge Information Security Stress on Information Security Policy Compliance: The Mediating Roles of Emotions

Introduction

Methods

Results

Conclusion

A Semantic Scale Network analysis of the revised Mystical Experiences Questionnaire: A call for collaboration

Background and aims

Multiple laboratories have proposed measures of subjective effects of psychedelics as potential mediators of their therapeutic impact. Other work has identified individual differences that covary with subjective responses in informative ways. The range of potential measures of responses, traits, and outcomes is vast. Ideas for new measures are likely numerous. The field will progress efficiently if proposed new scales can add incremental validity. Semantic Scale Network analyses identify conceptual overlap among scales based on items (rather than participant ratings), which could help laboratories avoid putting effort into measures that are unlikely to account for unique variance. Semantic Scale Network analyses can also reveal links to constructs from disparate research literatures, potentially helping investigators generate novel hypotheses and explain connections among disparate findings. The results of Semantic Scale Network analyses have the potential to improve as more investigators enter their scales into the corpus.

Method

Example analyses using the revised Mystical Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) underscore the uniqueness and discriminant validity of the MEQ subscales.

Results

Findings dovetail with published theorizing and suggest potentially novel links with different therapeutic effects. The MEQ total or subscales overlap with measures of awe, inspiration, regret, dissatisfaction, transcendence, depression, fatigue, and spirituality. Links with measures of stress, alexithymia, and gender identity suggest lines of further work.

Conclusions

This analytic approach might suggest unique applications for psychedelic-assisted treatments and provide perspectives on phenomena outside the field. As psychedelic researchers enter their scales to the corpus for Semantic Scale Network analyses, the field will benefit.

Confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic: How multi-domain work-life shock events may result in positive identity change

During the COVID-19 pandemic many countries enforced mandatory stay-at-home orders. The confinement period that took place may be regarded as a multi-domain work-life shock event, severely disrupting both the professional and the family sphere. Taking an identity lens, this study examines whether and how identity changed during confinment by drawing from a diary study consisting of 14 working parents who filled out a daily diary over a period of seven weeks of mandated home confinement in France. The findings suggest how both work-related and family-related identity change may occur when individuals are confronted with a multi-domain work-life shock event such as the pandemic. Further, the findings point to three identity responses to this event: work-life identity threat, work-life identity reflection, and work-life identity reconstruction. For most participants, the seven-week period resulted in significant and positive shifts in their work and family identities to better align with their internal beliefs rather than relying on societally imposed expectations about what it means to be a good parent and worker.

Exploring customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during Covid-19 pandemic: An actor-network theory perspective

While the debate on online service failure and recovery strategies has been given considerable attention in the marketing and information systems literature, the evolving Covid-19 pandemic has brought about new challenges both theoretically and empirically in the consumption landscape. To fully understand customers' responses to service failure during a crisis we asked 70 millennials from three European Countries-Italy, France, and the UK-to describe their responses to service failure during the Covid-19 pandemic (30 completed a 4-week diary and 40 completed a 4-week qualitative survey). Drawing on phenomenological, constructivist, and hermeneutical approaches, and utilizing an actor-network theory perspective, the current study proposes a new framework for understanding customers' responses to online service failure and recovery strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Conclusions highlight implications for theory, policy, and management practice through extending comprehensions of service failure recovery processes by examining how marketing policies generate different social impacts during a crisis situation which facilitate the achievement of customer satisfaction and positive outcomes.

Exploring the Engaged Worker over Time-A Week-Level Study of How Positive and Negative Work Events Affect Work Engagement

Although work events can be regarded as pivotal elements of organizational life, only a few studies have examined how positive and negative events relate to and combine to affect work engagement over time. Theory suggests that, to better understand how current events affect work engagement (WE), we have to account for recent events that have preceded these current events. We present competing theoretical views on how recent and current work events may affect employees (e.g., getting used to a high frequency of negative events or becoming more sensitive to negative events). Although the occurrence of events implies discrete changes in the experience of work, prior research has not considered whether work events actually accumulate to sustained mid-term changes in WE. To address these gaps in the literature, we conducted a week-level longitudinal study across a period of 15 consecutive weeks among 135 employees, which yielded 849 weekly observations. While positive events were associated with higher levels of WE within the same week, negative events were not. Our results support neither satiation nor sensitization processes. However, a high frequency of negative events in the preceding week amplified the beneficial effects of positive events on WE in the current week. Growth curve analyses show that the benefits of positive events accumulate to sustain high levels of WE. WE dissipates in the absence of a continuous experience of positive events. Our study adds a temporal component by highlighting that positive events affect work engagement, particularly in light of recent negative events. Our study informs research that has taken a feature-oriented perspective on the dynamic interplay of job demands and resources.

Psychometric Properties of the RESTQ-Sport-36 in a Collegiate Student-Athlete Population

The purpose of the current study was to examine the reliability and validity of the RESTQ-Sport-36 for use in the collegiate student-athlete population. A total of 494 collegiate student-athletes competing in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I, II, or III sanctioned sport completed the RESTQ-Sport-36 and Brief Profile of Mood States (POMS). Structural equation modeling (SEM) procedures were used to compare first order to hierarchical model structures. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis (χ²[528] = 1129.941, p < 0.001; SRMR = 0.050; CFI = 0.929) and exploratory structural equation modeling analysis (χ²[264] = 575.424, p < 0.001; SRMR = 0.013; CFI = 0.963) indicated that the first order 12-factor structure demonstrated the best fit of all models tested. Support was not observed for the fit of any hierarchical model. Moderate to strong correlations were observed between stress and recovery subscales and mood states, thus supporting the construct validity of the abbreviated RESTQ measurement model. The current findings provide support for the measure's use in this population and give pause as it relates to the scoring and interpretation of hierarchical factors such as Total Stress and Total Recovery. Overall, the current results indicate that the RESTQ-Sport-36 may be a useful tool for collegiate student-athlete training load and competition monitoring.

Coping with the COVID-19 Crisis: Force Majeure and Gender Performativity

This article examines the coping strategies of individuals during the confinement in France using a sensemaking lens. We draw on two studies consisting of 85 qualitative surveys followed by a diary in which 20 individuals wrote about their experiences during the first three weeks of the confinement. We employ an interpretative phenomenological approach to analyse the data. The findings reveal two patterns in the ways men and women cope with their experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The first pattern shows intensification of gender performativity manifested in the reproduction of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ reactions to the crisis. The second pattern detects a tendency towards a gradual deflection from gender performances through mental improvisations that foster new awareness of the crisis presenting an opportunity to transcend traditional gender roles. Our study highlights some potential emancipatory implications the COVID‐19 crisis may have for the practices of ‘doing gender’ and perceptions of work–life balance therefore instigating a transition towards more egalitarian households.

Intensive Longitudinal Data Analyses With Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling

Recent developments in theories and data collection methods have made intensive longitudinal data (ILD) increasingly relevant and available for organizational research. New methods for analyzing ILD have emerged under the multilevel modeling framework. In this article, we first delineate features of ILD (including autoregressive relationships, trends, cycles/seasons, and between-subject variability in temporal trends). We discuss the analytic challenges for handling ILD using traditional analytic tools familiar to organizational researchers (e.g., growth models, single-subject time series analyses). We then introduce a statistical approach for handling ILD from the multilevel modeling framework: dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM). We provide three examples using simulated data sets to demonstrate how to apply DSEM to examine ILD with a software program familiar to organizational researchers (i.e., M plus). Finally, we discuss issues related to applying DSEM, including centering, missing data, and sample size.

I Am So Tired… How Fatigue May Exacerbate Stress Reactions to Psychological Contract Breach

Previous research showed that perceptions of psychological contract (PC) breach have undesirable individual and organizational consequences. Surprisingly, the PC literature has paid little to no attention to the relationship between PC breach perceptions and stress. A better understanding of how PC breach may elicit stress seems crucial, given that stress plays a key role in employees' physical and mental well-being. Based on Conservation of Resources Theory, we suggest that PC breach perceptions represent a perceived loss of valued resources, subsequently leading employees to experience higher stress levels resulting from emerging negative emotions. Moreover, we suggest that this mediated relationship is moderated by initial levels of fatigue, due to fatigue lowering the personal resources necessary to cope with breach events. To tests our hypotheses, we analyzed the multilevel data we obtained from two experience sampling designs (Study 1: 51 Belgian employees; Study 2: 53 US employees). Note that the unit of analysis is "observations" rather than "respondents," resulting in an effective sample size of 730 (Study 1) and 374 (Study 2) observations. In both studies, we found evidence for the mediating role of negative emotions in the PC breach-stress relationship. In the second study, we also found evidence for the moderating role of fatigue in the mediated PC breach-stress relationship. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Differential Reactivity and the Within-person Job Stressor-Satisfaction Relationship

An experience sampling methodology was used to study the direct and conditional within-person relationship between job stressors and job satisfaction. One hundred and one full-time administrative staff completed momentary measures of job stressors and job satisfaction three times a day on six different workdays over a 3-week period (N = 1818 observations). Multilevel random coefficients models were specified, and the results suggest that within-person stressors are negatively related to within-person job satisfaction. These results stand when controlling for the effects of time, demographics, work characteristics, baseline levels of job stressors and satisfaction, and between-person effects of job stressors. Furthermore, consistent with the differential reactivity model, the results suggest that the observed within-person stressors-satisfaction relationship is conditional upon locus of control and positive affect. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Introduction to Time Series Analysis for Organizational Research

Organizational science has increasingly recognized the need for integrating time into its theories. In parallel, innovations in longitudinal designs and analyses have allowed these theories to be tested. To promote these important advances, the current article introduces time series analysis for organizational research, a set of techniques that has proved essential in many disciplines for understanding dynamic change over time. We begin by describing the various characteristics and components of time series data. Second, we explicate how time series decomposition methods can be used to identify and partition these time series components. Third, we discuss periodogram and spectral analysis for analyzing cycles. Fourth, we discuss the issue of autocorrelation and how different structures of dependency can be identified using graphics and then modeled as autoregressive moving-average (ARMA) processes. Finally, we conclude by describing more time series patterns, the issue of data aggregation, and more sophisticated techniques that were not able to be given proper coverage. Illustrative examples based on topics relevant to organizational research are provided throughout, and a software tutorial in R for these analyses accompanies each section.

Effect of workplace incivility on job satisfaction and turnover intentions in India

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of workplace incivility on job satisfaction and employees’ turnover intentions in Indian work settings.

Design/methodology/approach

– Data were collected randomly from 283 employees at various restaurants in the Northern and Western parts of India via the survey method and, thereafter, hierarchical regression analysis was performed to analyze the data.

Findings

– The study established that moderate to high levels of workplace-incivility-related issues are present in India’s restaurant industry. Regression analysis further revealed that workplace incivility is negatively related to job satisfaction and positively related to employee turnover in the Indian context as well.

Practical implications

– Relevant recommendations are presented to restaurant owners as well as HR practitioners that could curb unethical practices in Indian restaurants and promote civil behavior in the workplace.

Originality/value

– Relevant extant studies have recognized that there is a need to study workplace incivility in different cultures to establish the global relevance of the subject. This research studied the impact of workplace incivility on job satisfaction and turnover intentions with respect to Indian employees.

The effects of distress and the dimensions of coping strategies on physicians' satisfaction with competence

Objectives:

The purposes of this study were to (1) articulate the dimensions of Coping strategies used by physicians, and (2) determine whether Coping strategies alleviated Distress and enhanced Satisfaction with Competence.

Methods:

Comprehensive questionnaires on factors associated with Satisfaction with Competence were sent to a stratified sample of 5300 physicians across Canada. The response rate was 57% with negligible bias. Factor analysis was used to articulate the dimensions of Coping strategies. The classic Baron and Kenny regression series was used to establish whether Coping mediates the effects of Distress on Satisfaction with Competence. Years in Practice, Self-Reported Health, and Duties of Physicians were control factors.

Results:

A reliable 15-item measure of Coping was confirmed (α = .76) with four reasonably reliable dimensions: Collegiality (α = .80), Attitude (α = .63), Managing Work (α = .60), and Self-Care (α = .62). Physicians reported a mean Satisfaction with Competence of (M = 4.26 out of 6.0, standard deviation (SD) = 0.64) with General practitioners reporting slightly lower levels of Satisfaction with Competence than average. Conversely, chronic disease, clinical, and procedural specialists reported higher levels of Satisfaction with Competence. The mean Distress level for all physicians was (M = 3.66 out of 7.0, SD = 0.93). The highest levels of distress were reported by emergency physicians, general practitioners, and surgeons. Clinical specialists, anesthesiologists, and psychiatrists reported the lowest levels of distress. Physicians reported (M = 4.48 out of 7.0, SD = 0.78) as the mean level of Coping ability with clinical specialists and general practitioners reporting lower than average abilities to cope. Laboratory and chronic care specialists reported greater than average coping abilities. Regression analyses established Coping as a mediator of Distress which predicted physicians’ Satisfaction with Competence.

Conclusion:

Four groups of coping strategies were significant in relieving the pressures of work: (1) Collegiality, (2) Self-Care, (3) Managing Work, and (4) Positive Attitude.

Dynamic Modeling

Recent effort in organizational psychology and organizational behavior (OPOB) research has placed increasing emphasis on understanding dynamic phenomena and processes. This calls for more and better use of dynamic modeling in OPOB research than before. The goals of this review are to provide an overview of the general forms of dynamic modeling in OPOB research, discuss three longitudinal data analytic techniques for conducting dynamic modeling with empirical data [i.e., time-series-based modeling, latent-change-scores-based modeling, and functional data analysis (FDA)], and introduce various dynamic modeling approaches for building theories about dynamic phenomena and processes (i.e., agent-based modeling, system dynamics modeling, and hybrid modeling). This review also highlights several OPOB research areas to which dynamic modeling has been applied and discusses future research directions for better utilizing dynamic modeling in those areas.

Modeling factors explaining physicians' satisfaction with competence

OBJECTIVE

Attention to physician wellness has increased as medical practice gains in complexity. Physician satisfaction with practice is critical for quality of care and practice growth. The purpose of this study was to model physicians' self-reported Satisfaction with Competence as a function of their perceptions of the Quality of Health Services, Distress, Coping, Practice Management, Personal Satisfaction and Professional Equity.

METHODS

Comprehensive questionnaires were sent to a stratified sample of 5300 physicians across Canada. This cross-sectional study focused on physicians who examined and treated individual patients for a final study population of 2639 physicians. Response bias was negligible. The questionnaires contained measures of Satisfaction with Competence, Quality of Health Services, Distress, Coping, Personal Satisfaction, Practice Management and Professional Equity. Exploring relationships was done using Pearson correlations and one-way analysis of variance. Modeling was by hierarchical regressions.

RESULTS

The measures were reliable: Satisfaction with Competence (α = .86), Quality (α = .86), Access (α = .82), Distress (α = .82), Coping (α = .76), Personal Satisfaction (α = .78), Practice Management (α = .89) and the dimensions of Professional Equity (Fulfillment, α = .81; Financial, α = .93; and Recognition, α = .75) with comparative validity. Satisfaction with Competence was positively correlated with Quality (r = .32), Efficiency (r = .37) and Access (r = .32); negatively correlated with Distress (r = -.54); and positively correlated with Coping strategies (r = .43), Personal Satisfaction (r = .57), Practice Management (r = .17), Fulfillment (r = .53), Financial (r = .36) and Recognition (r = .54). Physicians' perceptions on Quality, Efficiency, Access, Distress, Coping, Personal Satisfaction, Practice Management, Fulfillment, Pay and Recognition explained 60.2% of the variation in Satisfaction with Competence, controlling for years in practice, self-reported health and duties of physicians.

CONCLUSION

Satisfaction with Competence could be affected by excessive accumulation of duties, concerns about quality, efficiency, access, excessive distress, inadequate coping abilities, personal satisfaction with life as a physician, challenges in managing practices and persistent inequities among physicians.

Do recovery experiences moderate the relationship between workload and work-family conflict?

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of four recovery experiences (psychological detachment from work, relaxation, mastery, and control) in preventing work-family conflict (WFC). Specifically, on the basis of WFC and recovery theories the authors hypothesized that workload would be positively related to WFC, and that recovery experiences would moderate this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

– The research involved 597 Italian employees (on pay-role or self-employed) from different occupational sectors. Participants filled-in an on-line questionnaire. Moderated structural equation modelling were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings

– Results showed a positive relationship of workload with WFC. Regarding the hypothesized interaction effects, the relationship between workload and WFC was particularly strong under condition of low (vs high) psychological detachment, low relaxation, and low control.

Originality/value

– This study highlights the beneficial role of recovery experiences in preventing the spillover of workload to the family domain, showing their moderating effects for the first time. These findings have several implications for both future research and practitioners.

Psychological vulnerability to daily stressors in old age: Results of short-term longitudinal studies

A growing numbers of intensive longitudinal studies examine the short-term variability of behavior in response to daily stressors. Collectively, these studies address the vulnerability for stress-related emotional burden as assessed in terms of the intraindividual association between daily stressors and negative affect (NA). This article provides a brief overview of the relevant research on so-called affective reactivity to daily stressors and focuses on findings on development of age-related stressor reactivity across the adult lifespan. Two theoretical propositions have been put forward. Firstly, it has been postulated that aging should be associated with increased affective reactivity, i.e. it has been assumed that the vulnerability in terms of physiological stress reactivity increases across the adult life span and, thus, a higher stress-induced emotional reactivity should result with increasing age. Secondly, it has been argued that due to the continued development of emotional self-regulation skills, there should be an age-related decrease in stress reactivity and, hence, an increased resilience. Findings on age differences in NA reactivity to daily stressors, however, have been inconsistent. A possible explanation for the inconsistent findings may lie in the fact that the postulated dynamics of increased vulnerability or resilience imply different time-related reactions to stressors. In particular, the activation and effectiveness of emotional self-regulation strategies increase with increasing time intervals from the stressors. This leads to the conclusion that with increasing age the resilience for longer periods of stress and accumulated stress should increase. Results from our own research support this hypothesis, where older adults reacted to multiple stressors in a more adaptive way than younger adults.

Time series analysis for psychological research: examining and forecasting change

Psychological research has increasingly recognized the importance of integrating temporal dynamics into its theories, and innovations in longitudinal designs and analyses have allowed such theories to be formalized and tested. However, psychological researchers may be relatively unequipped to analyze such data, given its many characteristics and the general complexities involved in longitudinal modeling. The current paper introduces time series analysis to psychological research, an analytic domain that has been essential for understanding and predicting the behavior of variables across many diverse fields. First, the characteristics of time series data are discussed. Second, different time series modeling techniques are surveyed that can address various topics of interest to psychological researchers, including describing the pattern of change in a variable, modeling seasonal effects, assessing the immediate and long-term impact of a salient event, and forecasting future values. To illustrate these methods, an illustrative example based on online job search behavior is used throughout the paper, and a software tutorial in R for these analyses is provided in the Supplementary Materials.

Time Series Analysis of Individual Music Therapy in Dementia

Abstract. This pilot study evaluated the effects of individual music therapy on communication behavior and emotional well-being in persons with advanced dementia. Contrary to more common qualitative designs in dementia-related music therapy research, we used time series analysis of videographed music therapy sessions. This quantitative statistical method for modeling and explaining time-dependent processual data has not been employed in this research area before. Based on aggregated time series data, the results showed positive and statistically significant intervention effects on participants’ communication behavior, situational well-being, and their expression of positive emotions. The study results indicate that, by choosing appropriate outcomes, video-based time series analysis is sensitive and well suited to displaying the effects of music therapy in dementia care.

Reactivity to stressor pile-up in adulthood: effects on daily negative and positive affect

This study used data from a 30-day diary study with 289 adults (age range 18-89 years) to model the effects of stressor pile-up on individuals' daily negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) and to test for age differences in these effects. Specifically, we developed a new approach to operationalize and model stressor pile-up and evaluated this approach using generalized mixed models, taking into account the gamma response distribution of the highly skewed daily NA data. Findings showed that pile-up of stressors over a 1-week period was significantly coupled with increases in individuals' daily NA above and beyond the effect of concurrent stressors. Findings also showed that the effects of stressor accumulation and concurrent stress were additive rather than multiplicative. Age interacted significantly with stressor accumulation so that a higher age was associated with less NA reactivity to stressor pile-up. Yet, we did not find such an age-related association for NA reactivity to concurrent daily stressors. Daily PA was not associated with daily stress or with stressor pile-up. The operational definition of stressor pile-up presented in this study contributes to the literature by providing a new approach to model the dynamic effects of stress, and by providing new ways of separating the effects of acute stressors from the effects of stressor pile-up. The age differences found in the present study suggest that older adults develop effective emotion regulation skills for handling stressor pile-up, but that they react to acute daily stressors in a similar way than younger adults.

Reciprocal effects of alcohol and nicotine in smoking cessation treatment studies

OBJECTIVE

Smoking and alcohol use are highly related; as such the present study investigated whether alcohol use is associated with failure in tobacco cessation attempts. We first examined the self-reported drinking behavior and smoking over the course of a year at a basic level. Next, we addressed two hypotheses to characterize this relationship at a deeper level: (Hypothesis 1) Alcohol use would be lower for those who attempted to quit smoking (quit for one or more days) during the year compared to those who never quit, and (Hypothesis 2) for those who relapsed to smoking after a quit increases in alcohol consumption would be positively associated with increases in smoking.

METHOD

Subjects were participants in two smoking cessation programs. One group of participants (N=139) was part of a smoking cessation study in alcohol dependent smokers in early recovery and the other group of participants (N=163) was drawn from a smoking cessation study for HIV positive smokers. H1 was tested using t-tests. For H2, a time series analysis examined relationships between smoking and alcohol use within person over a one year period. For H1 and for H2, the analyses utilized bivariate time series procedures. Timeline follow-back data allowed for detailed daily reports of both tobacco and alcohol use.

RESULTS

In the overall sample, there was no difference in alcohol use between those who stopped smoking and those who never stopped. However, when broken up by study, a difference was found in the alcohol dependent sample such that mean drinks were higher for those who stopped compared to those who never stopped smoking (H1). The results indicated a high number of positive significant cross-correlations between tobacco and alcohol use such that one substance predicted current, as well as past and future use of the alternate substance. Same-day cross-correlations were the most common, and dissipated with time (H2).

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis provided insights into the proximal influence of one substance on the other. Alcohol is related to relapse in smoking cessation attempts. It is important that smoking cessation efforts in alcohol using populations consider alcohol use in treatment.

Mood and the market: can press reports of investors' mood predict stock prices?

We examined whether press reports on the collective mood of investors can predict changes in stock prices. We collected data on the use of emotion words in newspaper reports on traders' affect, coded these emotion words according to their location on an affective circumplex in terms of pleasantness and activation level, and created indices of collective mood for each trading day. Then, by using time series analyses, we examined whether these mood indices, depicting investors' emotion on a given trading day, could predict the next day's opening price of the stock market. The strongest findings showed that activated pleasant mood predicted increases in NASDAQ prices, while activated unpleasant mood predicted decreases in NASDAQ prices. We conclude that both valence and activation levels of collective mood are important in predicting trend continuation in stock prices.

Spurious Results in the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Organizational Research

Organizational scientists increasingly focus on the dynamics of human behavior through longitudinal and event sampling methodologies. Random coefficient modeling such as hierarchical linear modeling and latent growth modeling is the dominant analytical method for longitudinal data. These models require that the covariance matrix of the errors is time invariant. Unfortunately, if unmeasured or unpredictable influences (i.e., unmeasured variables) consistently impact the dynamic process under investigation, the error term can become time-dependent. If random coefficient modeling is used to analyze data with time-dependent errors, then a serious inflation of Type I error rates, known as spurious regression, is observed. Monte Carlo simulation results from several common random coefficient models are presented to highlight the scope and severity of the problem, focusing on the potential mistaken inferences researchers can make. An analytic strategy is proposed to aid researchers in determining the underlying structure of the error covariance matrix, and alternative statistical techniques are given to analyze data that may contain a time-dependent error term.

Evidence and Deployment-Based Research into Care for the Elderly Using Emotional Robots

Global aging, particularly in Japan and Europe, an associated shortage of qualified healthcare personnel, and a general preference for living at home, have all sparked an interest in the possibilities offered by robot therapy in improving quality of life. To date, however, both evidence-based research and psychological theory building on whether, and if so how and why, robots can influence the life of the elderly are rather sparse and scattered across many scientific disciplines and countries. The present paper argues in favor of a psychological, cross-cultural framework for evidence-based analyses of emotional robots. Against the background of this framework, we present building blocks for an evidence-based approach to the assessment of emotional robots and discuss interactions between evidence- and deployment-based research.