We investigated the effects of race and different acculturation strategies on perceptions of immigrants in Australia, an immigrant-based nation with a multicultural policy. Two experimental studies presented participants with scenarios that systematically varied racial group (African, Asian, and European) and acculturation strategy (assimilation, integration, separation, marginalisation), then assessed responses to immigrant targets using measures of warmth, competence, affect, and cultural distance. Attitudes were significantly more positive towards targets who either integrated or assimilated, and negative towards targets who separated. This was regardless of the racial group being assessed, supporting the prediction that acculturation strategy is a stronger influence than race on perceptions of immigrants.

Hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing are two prevailing approaches to wellbeing. However, remarkably little research has distinguished them from an activity perspective; the knowledge of behavioural paths for achieving these two wellbeings is poor. This study first clarified the behavioural contents of the two approaches through a bottom-up method and then analysed the representativeness of activities to indicate to what extent activities contributed to wellness. We found that the paths to hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing overlapped and differed from each other. Furthermore, this study explained why hedonic activity differed from eudaimonic activity by analysing activity characteristics. We found that people reported higher frequency, sensory experience, and affective experience in hedonic activity, whereas they reported higher intellectual experience, behavioural experience, and spiritual experience in eudaimonic activity. Finally, we explored the behavioural pattern of wellbeing pursuit in both an unthreatening situation and a threatening situation. We found that the overlap between the two approaches increased in the threatening situation. Moreover, people in the threatening situation tended to score lower on all characteristics except frequency relative to those in the unthreatening situation. It seemed that the behavioural pattern in the threatening situation was less effective than its equivalent in the unthreatening situation.

The current research drew upon the resource perspective (Grzywacz & Marks, 2000; ten Brummelhuis & Bakker, 2012) and firstly focused on the reciprocal mediation relationship between schedule control, work interference with family (WIF) and emotional exhaustion. First, the present study proposed that WIF mediates the negative relationship between schedule control and emotional exhaustion, and emotional exhaustion also mediates the negative relationship between schedule control and WIF. Second, family time adequacy was expected to play an amplifying role in the first path of the two mediations. Using a sample of 563 employees and adopting hierarchical linear modelling, the three-wave study first revealed that the emotional exhaustion mediates the relationship between schedule control and WIF while WIF also mediates the schedule control-emotional exhaustion relationship, which demonstrated a reciprocal mediation. Furthermore, the relationship between schedule control and emotional exhaustion, as well as the indirect effects of schedule control on WIF via emotional exhaustion, were stronger for employees with higher family time adequacy. Implications of the findings and future directions are discussed.

Our study profiles a varying process of the relationship between delay of gratification (DG) and job performance over time and examines the moderating role of perceived organisational justice in the DG-job performance relationship. Employees’ ability to delay gratification was measured during their job interviews (Time 1). When they had worked for 3 months (Time 2), their job performance was rated by their supervisors. When they had worked for 5 months (Time 3), their perception of perceived informational justice was measured. Their job performance was rated again by their supervisors at 6 months (Time 4). The results showed that DG could directly predict new employees’ short-term (3-month) job performance but not their longer-term (6-month) job performance. Moreover, perceived informational justice moderated the relationship between DG and 6-month job performance.

There has been much controversy about the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia in recent years, with the Australian Government continuing to enforce a very hard-line stance on asylum seekers who arrive to Australia by boat. The present study examined attitudes towards asylum seekers using 164 Australian community members during June 2015 by way of questionnaire. Our primary research question involved how five variables predicted false beliefs about asylum seekers. Specifically, we measured prejudice, the third-person effect, and confidence in the answers given to false beliefs about asylum seekers. Regression results indicated that the main predictors of false beliefs were right-wing political orientation, prejudice, confidence in espousing false beliefs, and the third-person effect (politicians). Furthermore, most of our community participants accepted a large number of false beliefs as being true, with approximately two-thirds of our participants scoring above the midpoint. This reflects similar findings over the last decade or so. Our results indicate that, if one believes in bottom-up change, a more nuanced approach needs to be undertaken with community anti-prejudice interventions.

Team psychological safety — a non-threatening and safe climate — allows team members to express and share each other's opinions freely, and this sharing may produce more useful perspectives to induce team creativity. In a psychologically safe climate, transactive memory systems (TMSs) may be constructed for describing the specialised division of cognitive labour for solving information problems and thereby enabling team members to quickly gain and use knowledge across domains. As a consequence, further ideas may be generated within teams, increasing team creativity. Our research model is assessed using data from a sample of 110 team members from 40 research and development (R&D) teams in a leading technology company in Taiwan and analysed using the partial least squares method. The results of this study reveal that: (1) team psychological safety did not directly affect team creativity, (2) team psychological safety affects TMSs, (3) TMSs affect team creativity, and (4) TMSs fully mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team creativity. This study also discusses the implications for team creativity.

This study investigates people's implicit stereotype of the social group of the rich in terms of competence and warmth. We further examine the stereotype's relationship with temporal selves. Implicit Association Tests were used as measures of implicit social perception in a social comparison context. We also rated the degree of psychological connectedness between current and possible future selves across time. Our results demonstrate that the rich are implicitly perceived as having high levels of competence and low levels of warmth compared to the average person, and that a close psychological connectedness mitigates the negative perception of the rich. The implications and limitations of these findings are also discussed.

Supporting the application of positive psychology in the workplace, the Shirom Melamed Vigor Scale (SMVS), which assesses vigorous feelings at work, was adapted to the Thai context. The Thai SMVS contains 14 items as in the original scale and was validated using a sample of 585 employed participants in Thailand. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis are consistent with the conceptual model of vigour as consisting of physical strength, cognitive liveliness, and emotional energy, with a suggestion that a 13-item scale can also be used. As expected, vigour has been found to be conceptually distinct from some similar constructs, and independent from job burnout. Vigour also showed unique predictive effects on employees’ health. These results support the previously-proposed conceptual framework of vigour and indicate crucial roles of positive emotion in the work setting. In concordance with a positive organisational psychology approach, applications of the Thai vigor scale are discussed with respect to its potential for enhancing employees’ wellbeing and productivity.

For many youth, attending university is their first extended time away from home, and uprooting stress can often lead to distress. The present research examines the impact of uprooting stress on educational Chinese migrants and how students cope with the unanticipated pressure of leaving home. Using a sample of recent first-year students, we employed a longitudinal design that allowed us to examine the interaction effect of coping strategies (primary and secondary coping) and stress at time 1 and their impact on anxiety at time 2. Results indicated primary coping exerted an interaction effect on stress, exacerbating the negative effects and leading to more anxiety at time 2, but secondary coping did not. Females also reported lower stress and anxiety. In conclusion, the impact of uprooting stress and coping on psychological symptoms suggests further research on internal Chinese migration should consider the impact of within-culture variation in Mainland China.

Freedom from fear and freedom from want are two of the fundamental freedoms and likely related to changes in the environment. It has usually been assumed that our subjective feelings should change accordingly with changes in the objective environment. However, two counterintuitive effects reviewed in this article imply a rather complex psychological mechanism behind how people respond to environmental changes and strive for the freedom from fear and want. The first is the ‘psychological typhoon eye’ effect, in which the closer people are to hazards, the calmer they feel. Several possible explanations have been proposed, but the mechanism behind this effect remains unclear. The findings are important for future post-disaster interventions and helpful for policy makers in risk management and researchers in risk studies. The second effect is the ‘town dislocation’ effect, wherein although inhabitants’ objective quality of life is improved during the urbanisation process, the projected endorsement and rated social ambience of town residents is lower than that of residents in the country and in the city; this effect is mediated by social support. The findings have implications for how to better assess the urbanisation process and how to improve people's affective appraisals of their living environment.

This study examines the effect of supervisors’ Confucian values on interpersonal trust, interpersonal justice, and information sharing in the context of South Korean workers, using multilevel analysis. We also investigate the moderating roles of blood, regional, and school ties (BRST) among their relationships. A survey was conducted with 46 supervisors and 210 subordinates from South Korean manufacturing companies. Our empirical findings indicated that supervisors’ Confucian values were positively associated with the interpersonal trust, interpersonal justice, and information sharing of subordinates. Contrary to our expectation, the BRST had no significant moderating role in the relationship between supervisors’ Confucian values and interpersonal trust, interpersonal justice, and information sharing of subordinates. Our study contributes to organisational behaviour and psychology by highlighting the significance of societal values such as Confucian values in understanding an organisational member's attitude and behaviour in the East Asian region.

A two-dimensional theory of adolescent coping with cross-cultural and cross-Human Development Index Categories (HDI) application was tested: the Measure of Adolescent Coping Strategies (MACS). The MACS was answered by 809 adolescents of diverse origins from different parts of Fiji and compared with findings from Australia and Iceland. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results showed the MACS to have a reliable factorial and dimensional structure in Fiji. Differences between girls and boys were similar in Fiji, Australia, and Iceland. Stoicism/distraction was identical for boys and girls in all countries. There were no differences comparing mother tongue (Fijian and Hindi). The two-dimensional theory of adolescent coping was supported.