Contemplating Mindfulness at Work: An Integrative Review

Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management research investigating a broad range of constructs. The framework identifies how mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being. Consideration of the evidence on mindfulness at work stimulates important questions and challenges key assumptions within management science, generating an agenda for future research

Influence of morning maternal care on the behavioural responses of 8-week-old Beagle puppies to new environmental and social stimuli

In mammals, maternal care represents a major constituent of the early-life environment and its influence on individual development has been documented in rodents, non-human primates, humans and recently in adult dogs. The quality and quantity of mother-offspring interactions exerts a multilevel regulation upon the physiological, cognitive, and behavioural development of the offspring. For example, in rats variations in maternal behaviour, such as mother-pup body contact and the amount of licking towards pups in the nest during the early days after parturition, influences the endocrine, emotional, and behavioural responses to stress in the offspring. This produces long-term consequences, which may remain into adulthood and can be transmitted to subsequent generations. Literature about maternal care in dogs and its effect on puppy behaviour is still scarce, although the topic is receiving a growing interest. The aim of the present study was to determine the effects of morning maternal care on behavioural responses of puppies to new environmental and social stimuli. In order to achieve this, maternal care (licking, ano-genital licking, nursing and mother-puppy contact) was assessed in eight litters of domestic dogs living in standard rearing conditions during the first three weeks post-partum. Puppies were subjected to two behavioural tests (arena and isolation tests) at 58-60 days of age, and their behavioural responses were video recorded and analysed. Data was analysed using multivariate analyses (PCA, PLS).During the isolation test, a higher level of maternal care was associated with more exploration and a higher latency to emit the first yelp; on the contrary, a lower level of maternal care was associated with increased locomotion, distress vocalisations and destructive behaviours directed at the enclosure.These results, comparable to those reported in laboratory rat models and to some extent to those recently reported in dog literature, highlight the importance of maternal care on the behavioural development of domestic dog puppies

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

Emotions Management within Organizations

Emotions management in organizations is meant to habilitate the employees in administrating the emotional resources aiming at the correct adaptation to the organizational environment and the necessities in the work activity. The study of emotions in organizations has the purpose to know and optimize the employees’ emotional condition. The efficient leaders are interested in administrating the emotions, being aware of and capable to revaluate the factors which positively activate the employees emotional life. Emotions management is accomplished at two more important levels: personal level or subjective (represented by the person’s self-control capacity, the emotional intelligence, the ability to administrate the positive and negative emotions) and an interpersonal or social level, centered upon settling the emotional changes between employees and leaders, between employees and clients. From their settling into the practice point of view, the increase in the work performance and the benefits brought to the organizational environment, the concepts by which emotions management is accomplished/operate (positive emotions and negative emotions, emotional intelligence, emotional self-control, emotional labour etc.), this issue presents greater interest both for theorists and for the real doers/practitioners.emotions management, emotional labour, emotional contagion, emotional intelligence, organizational group

Models of collaboration between psychologist and family doctor: a systematic review of primary care psychology

open2noThe prevalence of psychological suffering is greater than the actual request for clinical consultation in Europe (Alonso et al., 2004). In Italy, no more than 5.5% of the population requested psychological assistance during lifetime (Miglioretti et al., 2008). There are different obstacles that prevent the access to mental health services, such as economic restrictions (Mulder et al., 2011), cultural prejudice (Kim et al., 2010), and lack of knowledge about the service providers that can answer to the patient’s psychological needs (Molinari et al., 2012). Therefore, the psychologist is often consulted as a last resort, only after everything else has failed, when problems have become severe, and thus requiring longer, more intensive, and expensive treatments. The introduction of the Primary Care Psychologist, a professional who works together with the family doctor, allows to overcome the above-mentioned problems and intercept unexpressed needs for psychological assistance. This professional role is operating in many countries since several years. In this study, current literature concerning different models of collaboration between physician and psychologist, in Europe and in Italy, was reviewed. A systematic search of Web of Science (ISI), Pubmed, Scopus, and PsychINFO was conducted using the initial search terms Primary Care Psychologist, Family Doctor, Primary Care, Collaborative Practice, and several relevant papers were identified. The review has shown the improved quality of care when mental health care is integrated into primary. Analyzing how different programs are implemented, results indicated that the more efficacious models of Primary Care Psychology are those tailored on the environment’s needs.The results of our systematic review stress the importance of the Primary Care Psychologist implementation also in Italy, to intercept unexpressed psychological needs and enhance clients’ quality of life.openFrancesca, Bianco; Enrico, BenelliBianco, Francesca; Benelli, Enric

‘Offline’ vs ‘online’ media: Claim-makers, content, and audiences of climate change information

This paper aims to explore both similarities and differences between offline and online climate change communication in terms of claim-makers, content, and audiences. It is based on academic peer reviewed papers directly relevant to the communication of climate change by the media, published in English language between 2010 and 2016. Interdependences between offline and online media are often cited, especially in terms of web searches of information already reported by traditional media (both print and television). In some other cases, the study of the intermedia agenda shows that the debate originated on online blogs triggers and conditions the attention of print media. This interdependence is also showed by a polarisation between ‘activists’ and ‘contrarians’ in both online and offline arenas. However, while the web offers greater space for interaction and a variety of sources, the dominance of the ‘old media’ point of view seems to undermine these attempts

Emotion processing in infancy: specificity in risk for social anxiety and associations with two year outcomes

The current study examined the specificity of patterns of responding to high and low intensity negative emotional expressions of infants of mothers with social phobia, and their association with child outcomes at two years of age. Infants of mothers with social phobia, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) or no history of anxiety were shown pairs of angry and fearful emotional expressions at 10 weeks of age. Symptoms of social withdrawal, anxiety and sleep problems were assessed at two years of age. Only infants of mothers with social phobia showed a tendency to look away from high intensity fear faces; however infants of mothers with both social phobia and GAD showed a bias towards high intensity angry faces. Among the offspring of mothers with social phobia, anxiety symptoms at two years of age were associated with a preference for high intensity fear faces in infancy. The reverse pattern was found amongst the offspring of non-anxious mothers. These findings suggest a possible specific response to emotional expressions among the children of mothers with social phobia