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Three studies draw from evolutionary theory to assess whether sleepiness increases interpretive biases in workplace social judgments. Study 1 established a relationship between sleepiness and interpretive bias using ambiguous interpersonal scenarios from a measure commonly used in personnel selection (N = 148). Study 2 explored the boundary conditions of the sleepiness–interpretive bias link via an experimental online field survey of U.S. adults (N = 433). Sleepiness increased interpretive bias when social threats were clearly present (unfair workplace) but did not affect bias in the absence of threat (fair workplace). Study 3 replicated and extended findings from the previous two studies using objective measures of sleep loss and a quasi-experimental manipulation of minor sleep loss (N = 175). Negative affect, ego depletion, or personality variables did not influence the observed relationships. Overall, results suggest that a self-protection/evolutionary perspective best explains the effects of sleepiness on workplace interpretive biases. These studies advance the current research on sleep in organizations by adding a cognitive “threat interpretation” bias approach to past work examining the emotional reaction/behavioral side of sleep disruption. Interpretive biases due to sleepiness may have significant implications for employee health and counterproductive behavior. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The popular business media argues that the “fear of missing out” (FoMO) on work-related opportunities harms employees’ health and performance. Yet, these claims rely on the study of FoMO in college students in non-work contexts. Therefore, we explored workplace FoMO among employees across three studies. We first developed a measure and provided validation evidence for workplace FoMO among diverse employees (N = 324; Study 1) and MBA students (N = 223; Study 2). Using a third large employee sample (N = 300; Study 3), we tested whether workplace FoMO predicted health (i.e., work burnout and work well-being) and motivational outcomes (i.e., message-checking behaviors and work engagement). We also examined whether family-supportive organizational perceptions (FSOP) moderated these relationships. Results indicated that workplace FoMO is a distinct construct from other measures, including general FoMO. Workplace FoMO also predicted work burnout and message checking behavior, but not work well-being. Lower levels of FSOP strengthened the positive relationship between workplace FoMO and message checking behavior, but also produced a positive relationship between workplace FoMO and work well-being. Overall, FoMO appears to be relevant to the work context and predicts both employee well-being and behavior outcomes. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Constructing a personal narrative and consolidating identity is an ongoing process that becomes pressing in the face of mortality. The current pilot study examined the process of life review in a sample of older people, specifically examining the effects of participation in a memoir course on wisdom, identity, and well-being. We hypothesized that wisdom, identity fidelity and coherence, and subjective well-being would increase for those in the memoir group compared to a control. Eighteen elderly individuals from two senior retirement communities were randomly assigned to participate in weekly classes, for four weeks, either to work on a memoir or discuss films (control group). After engaging in the process of organizing their life story and writing about important memories, the nine individuals in the memoir group scored significantly higher on self-report measures of wise reminiscence, identity fidelity, and subjective well-being compared to those in the control group. Furthermore, exploratory analyses found that wise reminiscence statistically mediated relationships between the memoir condition and the outcome measures of identity fidelity, identity coherence, and subjective well-being. These findings point to the benefits of memoir writing for positive aging as well as potential mechanisms underlying its effectiveness.

This paper reports a two-part study examining the relationship between fear of missing out (FoMO) and maladaptive behaviors in college students. This project used a cross-sectional study to examine whether college student FoMO predicts maladaptive behaviors across a range of domains (e.g., alcohol and drug use, academic misconduct, illegal behavior). Participants (N = 472) completed hard copy questionnaire packets assessing trait FoMO levels and questions pertaining to unethical and illegal behavior while in college. Part 1 utilized traditional statistical analyses (i.e., hierarchical regression modeling) to identify any relationships between FoMO, demographic variables (socioeconomic status, living situation, and gender) and the behavioral outcomes of interest. Part 2 looked to quantify the predictive power of FoMO, and demographic variables used in Part 1 through the convergent approach of supervised machine learning. Results from Part 1 indicate that college student FoMO is indeed related to many diverse maladaptive behaviors spanning the legal and illegal spectrum. Part 2, using various techniques such as recursive feature elimination (RFE) and principal component analysis (PCA) and models such as logistic regression, random forest, and Support Vector Machine (SVM), showcased the predictive power of implementing machine learning. Class membership for these behaviors (offender vs. non-offender) was predicted at rates well above baseline (e.g., 50% at baseline vs 87% accuracy for academic misconduct with just three input variables). This study demonstrated FoMO’s relationships with these behaviors as well as how machine learning can provide additional predictive insights that would not be possible through inferential statistical modeling approaches typically employed in psychology, and more broadly, the social sciences. Research in the social sciences stands to gain from regularly utilizing the more traditional statistical approaches in tandem with machine learning.

Background & Objectives: Interviewers often provide positive nonverbal feedback to reduce interviewees' anxiety. Socially anxious individuals typically harbor negative self-views discrepant with positive feedback. We examined whether nonverbal feedback and social anxiety jointly influence cortisol responses to, and performance during, interviews. Design: An experimental between-subjects design randomly assigned participants to feedback condition. Methods: Undergraduate students (N = 130) provided saliva and completed social anxiety, interview anxiety, and affective measures before a simulated interview. Following a standardized script, a confederate interviewer provided positive, ambiguous, or negative nonverbal feedback. Participants then provided saliva and completed self-focused attention and self-awareness measures. Confederate interviewers and an external rater evaluated participants' anxiety displays, assertive behavior, and performance. Results: Positive feedback decreased cortisol and improved performance for low social anxiety participants. Socially anxious participants exhibited higher cortisol but did not exhibit significant differences in performance after positive compared to negative feedback. Conclusions: Consistent with previous findings, positive feedback did not benefit socially anxious interviewees. Positive feedback increased physiological arousal relative to negative feedback but did not hinder performance among people high in social anxiety. These results provide novel information about the interactive influence of social anxiety and nonverbal interviewer feedback on arousal, self-focus, and interview performance.

Across three online studies, we examined the relationship between the Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) and moral cognition and behavior. Study 1 (N = 283) examined whether FoMO influenced moral awareness, judgments, and recalled and predicted behavior of first-person moral violations in either higher or lower social settings. Study 2 (N = 821) examined these relationships in third-person judgments with varying agent identities in relation to the participant (agent = stranger, friend, or someone disliked). Study 3 (N = 604) examined the influence of recalling activities either engaged in or missed out on these relationships. Using the Rubin Causal Model, we created hypothetical randomized experiments from our real-world randomized experimental data with treatment conditions for lower or higher FoMO (median split), matched for relevant covariates, and compared differences in FoMO groups on moral awareness, judgments, and several other behavioral outcomes. Using a randomization-based approach, we examined these relationships with Fisher Tests and computed 95% Fisherian intervals for constant treatment effects consistent with the matched data and the hypothetical FoMO intervention. All three studies provide evidence that FoMO is robustly related to giving less severe judgments of moral violations. Moreover, those with higher FoMO were found to report a greater likelihood of committing moral violations in the past, knowing people who have committed moral violations in the past, being more likely to commit them in the future, and knowing people who are likely to commit moral violations in the future.