When Leadership Leads to Loathing: The Effect of Culturally (In)Congruent Leadership on Employee Contempt and Voluntary Work Behaviors

This article suggests that contempt ― a proclivity towards loathing others ― as an emotional response, can arise as a consequence of culturally incongruent leadership, i.e. leader behaviors and actions that do not comply with follower-held, culturally derived expectations and values. Outcomes of contempt were also studied by hypothesizing that contempt, when experienced in response to a situation of culturally incongruent leadership, can cause followers to reduce their display of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) while engaging in deviant behaviors. The model was tested in a sample of 348 follower-level employees using structural equation modeling. Empirical results largely support theoretical hypotheses. Culturally congruent leadership was negatively related to contempt, while contempt was positively related to deviant behaviors and negatively related to OCB. The results contribute to the understudied field of contempt research, and suggest that leaders faced with cultural diversity may be well advised to adapt their behaviors to the local cultural values to stimulate follower OCB rather than deviance

Fear and Foxes: An Educational Primer for Use with "Anterior Pituitary Transcriptome Suggests Differences in ACTH Release in Tame and Aggressive Foxes".

The way genes contribute to behavior is complicated. Although there are some single genes with large contributions, most behavioral differences are due to small effects from many interacting genes. This makes it hard to identify the genes that cause behavioral differences. Mutagenesis screens in model organisms, selective breeding experiments in animals, comparisons between related populations with different behaviors, and genome-wide association studies in humans are promising and complementary approaches to understanding the heritable aspects of complex behaviors. To connect genes to behaviors requires measuring behavioral differences, locating correlated genetic changes, determining when, where, and how these candidate genes act, and designing causative confirmatory experiments. This area of research has implications from basic discovery science to human mental health

Leading by example: A three-wave sequential mixed method food safety study

(Best Paper Award/ 253 submissions) According to the most recent government data, approximately 61% of foodborne illness outbreaks were attributed to lack of personal hygiene and improper food handling by employees in the foodservice industry. Foodservice employees fail to adhere to safe food preparation practices, may directly introduce pathogens that can cause illness and death. Few qualitative studies have examined the barriers of effective managerial practices that influence employee’s food safety behaviors. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to explore employees’ perspectives about managerial practices that influence their food safety behaviors

Cardiac Rehabilitation on Health Behaviors and Clinical Outcomes Among Myocardial Infarction Patients

The lack of adherence to health behaviors in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is the leading cause of recurrent myocardial infarction (MI) in Indonesia. This randomized control trial (RCT) study was conducted to examine the effect of a family based self-efficacy enhancing cardiac rehabilitation program on self-efficacy in cardiac health behaviors, health behaviors, and clinical outcomes among MI patients in Indonesia. Sixty MI patients who met the inclusion criteria were randomized by the modified stratified-block method and assigned into either the control group or the experimental group. The patients in the experimental group received the program during phase I over two days and continued to phase II of CR with weekly follow-up sessions. Patients were asked to complete the Self-Efficacy in Cardiac Health Behaviors Scale (SECHBS) and the Modified Myocardial Infarction Health Behaviors Questionnaire (Modified MIHBQ). The results revealed that self-efficacy, health behaviors, and clinical outcomes such as fasting blood glucose, total cholesterol, LDL, triglyceride, and BMI of the patients after receiving the intervention were significantly better than before receiving the intervention, except for blood pressure, and HDL levels. Self-efficacy, health behaviors, and clinical outcomes such as total cholesterol, LDL, and triglyceride were significantly better in patients in the experimental group than those in the control group (p < .05), except for blood pressure, HDL, BMI, and blood glucose levels (p > .05). In conclusion, the family based self-efficacy enhancing cardiac rehabilitation program shows evidence of effectiveness in enhancing self-efficacy, health behaviors, and some clinical outcomes in MI patients

Effects of Genetics and Environment on Red Flour Beetle Aggregation

Red Flour Beetles are major pests for farmers storing grain and cause large profit losses. These beetles infest grain stores and their presence leads to mold growth (Baldwin). Learning the cause of aggregation groupings in Red Flour Beetles will help with pest control and would be a great step in the Nature versus Nurture Debate (Breed). Males produce a pheromone to attract females that seems to influence social behaviors (Boake). The effects genetics and environment have on aggregation behaviors of Arkansas and Brazilian strains have never been evaluated. This project was designed to fill this research gap by assessing the impacts of genetics and environment on aggregation groupings of Arkansas and Brazilian strains of Red Beetles. The results of the study show that environment has the largest influence on groupings on the first day, but then genetics has the largest influence in the days following. This leads to the implication that genetics has a deeper effect on aggregation than environment overall; but environment has a stronger effect for a short amount of time

Speech-driven Animation with Meaningful Behaviors

Conversational agents (CAs) play an important role in human computer interaction. Creating believable movements for CAs is challenging, since the movements have to be meaningful and natural, reflecting the coupling between gestures and speech. Studies in the past have mainly relied on rule-based or data-driven approaches. Rule-based methods focus on creating meaningful behaviors conveying the underlying message, but the gestures cannot be easily synchronized with speech. Data-driven approaches, especially speech-driven models, can capture the relationship between speech and gestures. However, they create behaviors disregarding the meaning of the message. This study proposes to bridge the gap between these two approaches overcoming their limitations. The approach builds a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN), where a discrete variable is added to constrain the behaviors on the underlying constraint. The study implements and evaluates the approach with two constraints: discourse functions and prototypical behaviors. By constraining on the discourse functions (e.g., questions), the model learns the characteristic behaviors associated with a given discourse class learning the rules from the data. By constraining on prototypical behaviors (e.g., head nods), the approach can be embedded in a rule-based system as a behavior realizer creating trajectories that are timely synchronized with speech. The study proposes a DBN structure and a training approach that (1) models the cause-effect relationship between the constraint and the gestures, (2) initializes the state configuration models increasing the range of the generated behaviors, and (3) captures the differences in the behaviors across constraints by enforcing sparse transitions between shared and exclusive states per constraint. Objective and subjective evaluations demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach over an unconstrained model.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, 5 table

Factors that predispose youth to risk in Mexico and Chile

About half of Latin America’s youth are considered"at risk,"meaning that they engage in or are at risk of engaging in risky behaviors that are detrimental to their own development and to the well-being of their societies. While child psychologists identify many factors that may cause some youth to engage in at-risk behaviors and others not to, only empirical evidence can identify the set that is relevant to a particular population. This paper uses youth surveys from Chile and Mexico to test which of a large set of potential factors are correlated with a range of risky behaviors among youth. These factors range from relationships with parents and institutions to household behaviors (abuse, discipline techniques) to social exclusion. The authors use stepwise regressions to sort out which variables best explain the observed variance in seven different risky behaviors. They find that higher socioeconomic status, a good relationship with parents and peers, strong connection with local governmental institutions and schools, urban residence, younger age, and spirituality emerge as key explanatory factors for all seven behaviors for boys and girls in both countries. This points to a wider range of policy entry points than currently used, including targeting parents and the relationship with schools.Adolescent Health,Youth and Governance,Population Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Gender and Health