Nostalgia in organizations.

Scholars have proposed that nostalgia plays various important roles in organizations. At present, there is no comprehensive overview of the role of nostalgia in this context. To help develop such an overview, we review research on personal nostalgia, insofar as it includes outcomes that are organizationally relevant, and research on organizational nostalgia. We propose a model that summarizes the processes through which nostalgia operates in organizations. In this model, we propose that threatening circumstances such as injustice or organizational change evoke organizational (and possibly personal) nostalgia, this evoked nostalgia subsequently counteracts the negative effects of threat on outcomes such as organizational identification and experienced work meaningfulness. We end by discussing implications and future research directions.

Diamonds and rust: The affective ambivalence of Nostalgia.

Affective ambivalence is the simultaneous experience of oppositely valenced emotions, such as happiness and sadness. Historic writings on the valence of nostalgia have proposed that nostalgia can best be conceptualized as an ambivalent emotion. A growing body of research provides empirical evidence for this proposal. Here, I review and summarize this evidence that nostalgia is an ambivalent emotion, albeit more positive than negative. I end by discussing implications and future research directions.

Self-protection predicts lower willingness to apologize.

Although apologies are effective at promoting reconciliation, perpetrators often choose not to apologize because doing so can be threatening to the self. We hypothesized that dispositional self-protection would be negatively associated with willingness to apologize, but only when the transgression pertained to the self rather than another person. Only in that case would self-positivity be threatened, thereby activating the self-protection motive. In addition, we hypothesized that the negative association between self-protection and willingness to apologize for self-referent offenses would be serially mediated by responsibility-taking and guilt. This would be so because perpetrators can self-protect by lowering their felt responsibility and, in turn, reduce guilt for the transgression. The results were consistent with the hypotheses. We discuss implications of this motivational account for unwillingness to apologize.

An online hazard prediction test demonstrates differences in the ability to identify hazardous situations between different driving groups.

Previous research has found that the traditional approach to measuring hazard perception, as used by the UK Government, does not necessarily transfer well to other countries. The speeded response times of a hazard perception test were susceptible to threshold bias, differentiating drivers according to cultural background more than driving experience. An alternative method - the hazard prediction test - appears to mitigate these problems when used across different countries. The current study applies the hazard prediction methodology to a new cultural context (Israel), delivered via an online platform. A further innovation was to include both hazardous and non-hazardous trials allowing measures of criterion and sensitivity parameters of the Signal Detection Theory to be calculated.In total, 74 participants (43 experienced and 31 novices) watched 26 hazard prediction clips that had been filmed in Tel Aviv (Israel), 13 of which contained cues to genuine hazards. Each hazardous clip was occluded prior to the hazardous situation fully materialising, though with sufficient evidence that any participant who was looking in the right place at the right time would be able to correctly identify the unfolding hazard. Participants were first asked to identify whether there was a hazard (a binary decision), and then to predict how the traffic situation was going to develop by choosing one of four options provided after each video.As hypothesised, experienced drivers outperformed novices in the multiple-choice prediction question, provided that they had correctly identified that the clip contained a hazard in the first question. Novices were poor at selecting the correct multiple-choice option, regardless of whether they correctly identified that the clip contained a hazard. Both driving experience and hazard sensitivity significantly predicted multiple-choice accuracy, though criterion did not. The newly developed online test was successful in differentiating between experienced and novice driver groups for accuracy in prediction. These results support the roll-out of the hazard prediction methodology across different countries. Practitioner summary: This study provides new insights into how to develop an online hazard prediction test suitable for international export. The results suggest that this newly developed test is successful in differentiating between experienced and novice drivers. This raises the possibilit y of assessing and training drivers on a global scale.

Organizational nostalgia lowers turnover intentions by increasing work meaning: The moderating role of burnout.

We report 3 studies addressing the relevance of organizational nostalgia for the meaning that employees ascribe to their work (work meaning). We hypothesized, and found, that organizational nostalgia enhances work meaning and thereby reduces turnover intentions. In Study 1, an employee survey, spontaneously experienced organizational nostalgia was associated with higher work meaning. In Study 2, an organizational-nostalgia induction increased work meaning, which subsequently predicted lowered turnover intentions. In Study 3, an organizational-nostalgia induction increased work meaning and thereby lowered turnover intentions, especially among employees who reported relatively high levels of burnout. When burnout is high, organizational nostalgia functions as a rich source of meaning that benefits employees' work experience. (PsycINFO Database Record