The Importance of Positive Affect: the Role of Affective Personality in Predicting Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Previous research demonstrates inconsistent results in predicting how affect influences organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This study aims to solve the inconsistency by taking the position that positive affect and negative affect are orthogonal, and their interaction produces four types of affective personality. They are ‘Self-fulfilling\u27 (high positive affect and low negative affect), ‘High affective\u27 (high positive affect and high negative affect), ‘Low affective\u27 (low positive affect and low negative affect) and ‘Self-destructive\u27 (low positive affect and high negative affect). The study hypothesizes that the self-fulfilling group displays the highest mean of OCB while the self-destructive displays the lowest. The high affective and low affective groups lie somewhere in between the two groups. The participants of this study were 227 employees, consisting of 151 males and 76 females with ages ranging from 20 to 60 years old (mean=38). They were measured using the Organizational Citizenship Behavior Scale (OCBS) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Based on the scores of their positive and negative affect dimensions, they were classified into four groups of affective personality types. One-way ANOVA analysis supported the hypothesis. The self-fulfilling group revealed the highest mean of Organizational Citizenship Behavior while the Self-destructive group revealed the lowest. The High affective and Low affective groups were located in between the first two groups. This paper discusses this contribution and highlights how it is potential to explain organizational behavior

An in vitro model for the Allergen-IgE-FcεRI interaction

Background: The interaction of immune complexes consisting of allergens and allergen-specific IgE with the high-affinity Fcε receptor represents the key event in the induction of symptoms in type I allergic individuals. Immediate-type symptoms result from the release of biological mediators due to allergen-induced cross-linking of FcεRI receptors on mast cells and basophils, whereas FcεRI-mediated presentation of allergen-IgE complexes may contribute to late-phase symptoms through enhanced T cell activation. The interaction of allergens/allergen-specific IgE/FcεRI represents, therefore, an important target for therapeutic intervention strategies in type I allergy. Methods and Results: A molecular model of the allergen-IgE-FcεRI interaction was established. It consists of recombinant purified Bet v 1, the major birch pollen allergen, a chimeric Bet v 1 specific monoclonal IgE antibody, and the baculovirus-expressed purified human alpha chain of FcεRI. The chimeric Bet v 1-specific IgE antibody consists of the light chain and the heavy chain variable region of a mouse monoclonal Bet v 1 specific antibody, Bip 1, and the constant region of human IgE. The interaction of rBet v 1, chimeric Bip 1, and human alpha chain was investigated by overlay experiments. Nitrocellulose-immobi lized recombinant alpha chains was incubated with chimeric Bip 1 and, for control purposes, with mouse-derived Bip 1. Bound chimeric Bip 1 was detected with 125]-labeled rBet v 1. The specific interaction of rBetv 1, chimeric Bip 1, and recombinant human alpha chain is demonstrated. We thus establish a molecular model of the allergen/IgE/alpha chain interaction. The usefulness of the described in vitro system is exemplified by the identification of a mouse monoclonal antihuman IgE antibody which blocked the IgE-alpha chain interaction. Conclusions: The module system consisting of rBet v 1, chimeric Bip 1, and recombinant alpha chain may be used for the identification of competitors of the allergic effector reaction by means of high throughput screening of compounds or by combinatorial chemistry

Children’s Interactions in an Asynchronous Video Mediated Communication Environment

Part 2: Long and Short PapersInternational audienceVideo-mediated communication (VMC) has become a feasible way to connect people in remote places for work and play. Nevertheless, little research has been done with regard to children and VMC. In this paper, we explore the behavior of a group of children, who exchanged video messages in an informal context. In particular, we have analyzed 386 videos over a period of 11 weeks, which were exchanged by 30 students of 4th and 5th grade from USA and Greece. We found that the number of views and the duration of a video message significantly depend on the gender of the viewer and creator. Most notably, girls created more messages, but boys viewed their own messages more. Finally, there are video messages with numerous views, which indicates that some videos have content qualities beyond the communication message itself. Overall, the practical implications of these findings indicate that the developers of asynchronous VMC should consider functionalities for preserving some of the video messages

Supporting collaborative task management in email

-mail is one of the most successful computer applications ever developed. Despite its success, it is now dogged by numerous problems. Users complain about feeling overwhelmed by the volume of messages they receive, they have difficulties too in organizing and managing their e-mail data but, most importantly, they have problems in using e-mail to manage collaborative tasks (Bellotti, Ducheneaut, Howard, & Smith, 2003; Balter, 1998, 2000; Mackay, 1988; Whittaker, Jones, & Terveen, 2002a; Whittaker & Sidner, 1996). These require extended interaction with others for their definition and execution (Bellotti et al., 2003; Venolia, Gupta, Cadiz, & Dabbish, 2001; Whittaker & Sidner, 1996). As a result, users are often concurrently working on multiple outstanding tasks as they await responses from others concerning these tasks. This requires users to (a) create reminders, (b) identify messages that relate to the same task, and (c) combine information from these related messages. Currently, people try to use the email inbox to do this but our data indicate it is ineffective for these purposes. Other recent approaches attempt to tackle Collaborative Task Management but we show that these offer at best only partial solutions. In contrast, we present two systems, TeleNotes and ContactMap, that directly address Collaborative Task Management. These are motivated by empirical research into paper-based and people-based task management strategies. We describe how our systems implement these different strategies and present evaluation data for each system in use. We contrast the success of these two approaches with earlier work and discuss outstanding design and theory problems arising from our research

Networks and emotion-driven user communities at popular blogs

Online communications at web portals represents technology-mediated user interactions, leading to massive data and potentially new techno-social phenomena not seen in real social mixing. Apart from being dynamically driven, the user interactions via posts is indirect, suggesting the importance of the contents of the posted material. We present a systematic way to study Blog data by combined approaches of physics of complex networks and computer science methods of text analysis. We are mapping the Blog data onto a bipartite network where users and posts with comments are two natural partitions. With the machine learning methods we classify the texts of posts and comments for their emotional contents as positive or negative, or otherwise objective (neutral). Using the spectral methods of weighted bipartite graphs, we identify topological communities featuring the users clustered around certain popular posts, and underly the role of emotional contents in the emergence and evolution of these communities. Copyright EDP Sciences, SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010