A question of time: How demographic faultlines and deep-level diversity impact the development of psychological safety in teams.

Psychological safety (PS) is a shared belief among team members that it is safe to take interpersonal risks. It can enhance team learning, experimentation with new ideas, and team performance. Considerable research has examined the positive effects of PS in diverse organizational contexts and is now shifting its focus toward exploring the nature of PS itself. This study aims to enhance our understanding of PS antecedents and development over time. Based on the model of team faultlines and research on team diversity, we examined the effects of demographic faultlines, team member personality, and member competencies on the development of PS. Over 5 months, 61 self-managed teams (N = 236) assessed their PS at the beginning, midpoint, and end of a research project. Results of a multilevel growth curve model show that PS decreased from project beginning to end. Initial levels of PS were especially low when teams had strong demographic faultlines and when team members differed in neuroticism. PS decreased more strongly over time when team members were diverse in agreeableness and assessed their task-related competencies to be relatively high. Our study identifies time and team composition attributes as meaningful predictors for the development of PS. We present ideas for future research and offer suggestions for how and when to intervene to help teams strengthen PS throughout their collaboration.

Murder or not? Cold temperature makes criminals appear to be cold-blooded and warm temperature to be hot-headed.

Temperature-related words such as cold-blooded and hot-headed can be used to describe criminal behavior. Words associated with coldness describe premeditated behavior and words associated with heat describe impulsive behavior. Building on recent research about the close interplay between physical and interpersonal coldness and warmth, we examined in a lab experiment how ambient temperature within a comfort zone influences judgments of criminals. Participants in rooms with low temperature regarded criminals to be more cold-blooded than participants in rooms with high temperature. Specifically, they were more likely to attribute premeditated crimes, ascribed crimes resulting in higher degrees of penalty, and attributed more murders to criminals. Likewise, participants in rooms with high temperature regarded criminals to be more hot-headed than participants in rooms with low temperature: They were more likely to attribute impulsive crimes. Results imply that cognitive representations of temperature are closely related to representations of criminal behavior and attributions of intent.

The effects of temperature on service employees' customer orientation: an experimental approach.

Numerous studies have demonstrated how temperature can affect perceptual, cognitive and psychomotor performance (e.g. Hancock, P.A., Ross, J., and Szalma, J., 2007. A meta-analysis of performance response under thermal stressors. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 49 (5), 851-877). We extend this research to interpersonal aspects of performance, namely service employees' and salespeople's customer orientation. We combine ergonomics with recent research on social cognition linking physical with interpersonal warmth/coldness. In Experiment 1, a scenario study in the lab, we demonstrate that student participants in rooms with a low temperature showed more customer-oriented behaviour and gave higher customer discounts than participants in rooms with a high temperature - even in zones of thermal comfort. In Experiment 2, we show the existence of alternative possibilities to evoke positive temperature effects on customer orientation in a sample of 126 service and sales employees using a semantic priming procedure. Overall, our results confirm the existence of temperature effects on customer orientation. Furthermore, important implications for services, retail and other settings of interpersonal interactions are discussed. Practitioner Summary: Temperature effects on performance have emerged as a vital research topic. Owing to services' increasing economic importance, we transferred this research to the construct of customer orientation, focusing on performance in service and retail settings. The demonstrated temperature effects are transferable to services, retail and other settings of interpersonal interactions.

Chaos in the courtroom reconsidered: emotional bias and juror nullification.

A widespread presumption in the law is that giving jurors nullification instructions would result in "chaos"-jurors guided not by law but by their emotions and personal biases. We propose a model of juror nullification that posits an interaction between the nature of the trial (viz. whether the fairness of the law is at issue), nullification instructions, and emotional biases on juror decision-making. Mock jurors considered a trial online which varied the presence a nullification instructions, whether the trial raised issues of the law's fairness (murder for profit vs. euthanasia), and emotionally biasing information (that affected jurors' liking for the victim). Only when jurors were in receipt of nullification instructions in a nullification-relevant trial were they sensitive to emotionally biasing information. Emotional biases did not affect evidence processing but did affect emotional reactions and verdicts, providing the strongest support to date for the chaos theory.

Induction and recall of immune memory by mucosal immunization with a non-toxic recombinant enterotoxin-based chimeric protein.

Previous reports have suggested that peroral delivery of antigens chemically coupled to non-toxic recombinant enterotoxin B subunits, such as the cholera toxin B subunit (CTB), induces tolerance to the antigen that may be abrogated by the toxic enzyme activity of intact enterotoxins, such as cholera toxin (CT). The aim of this study was to examine the immunogenicity of a genetically coupled protein composed of the saliva-binding region (SBR) of the Streptococcus mutans surface antigen AgI/II and the non-toxic A2 and B subunits of CT (SBR-CTA2/B) compared with that of recombinant SBR admixed with CT (SBR + CT) and SBR chemically coupled to recombinant CTB (SBR-CTB) following peroral delivery by intragastric (i.g.) immunization. The results showed that i.g. immunization with SBR-CTA2/B, like SBR + CT, induced antigen-specific serum immunoglobulin G (IgG) and salivary IgA antibodies, and sensitized splenic T cells. Comparison studies with SBR-CTB produced serum IgG but not salivary IgA titres and failed to sensitize splenic cells. Immunization with SBR-CTA2/B via the intranasal route also primed for the recall of antigen-specific memory antibody responses 6 months later. These findings show that SBR-CTA2/B is an immunogenic, not tolerogenic, chimeric protein that can induce and recall antigen-specific memory responses upon mucosal immunization.

Transcutaneous immunization with combined cholera toxin and CpG adjuvant protects against Chlamydia muridarum genital tract infection.

Chlamydia trachomatis is a pathogen of the genital tract and ocular epithelium. Infection is established by the binding of the metabolically inert elementary body (EB) to epithelial cells. These are taken up by endocytosis into a membrane-bound vesicle termed an inclusion. The inclusion avoids fusion with host lysosomes, and the EBs differentiate into the metabolically active reticulate body (RB), which replicates by binary fission within the protected environment of the inclusion. During the extracellular EB stage of the C. trachomatis life cycle, antibody present in genital tract or ocular secretions can inhibit infection both in vivo and in tissue culture. The RB, residing within the intracellular inclusion, is not accessible to antibody, and resolution of infection at this stage requires a cell-mediated immune response mediated by gamma interferon-secreting Th1 cells. Thus, an ideal vaccine to protect against C. trachomatis genital tract infection should induce both antibody (immunoglobulin A [IgA] and IgG) responses in mucosal secretions to prevent infection by chlamydial EB and a strong Th1 response to limit ascending infection to the uterus and fallopian tubes. In the present study we show that transcutaneous immunization with major outer membrane protein (MOMP) in combination with both cholera toxin and CpG oligodeoxynucleotides elicits MOMP-specific IgG and IgA in vaginal and uterine lavage fluid, MOMP-specific IgG in serum, and gamma interferon-secreting T cells in reproductive tract-draining caudal and lumbar lymph nodes. This immunization protocol resulted in enhanced clearance of C. muridarum (C. trachomatis, mouse pneumonitis strain) following intravaginal challenge of BALB/c mice.

Regulation of innate and adaptive immunity by the female sex hormones oestradiol and progesterone.

Women mount more vigorous antibody- and cell-mediated immune responses following either infection or vaccination than men. The incidence of most autoimmune diseases is also higher in women than in men; however, during pregnancy many autoimmune diseases go into remission, only to flare again in the early post-partum period. Successful pregnancy requires that the female immune system tolerate the presence of a semi-allogeneic graft for 9 months. Oral contraceptive use can increase susceptibility to certain genital tract infections and sexually transmitted diseases in women. Moreover, treatment of mice and rats with female sex hormones is required to establish animal models of genital tract Chlamydia, Neisseria and Mycoplasma infection. This review describes what is currently known about the effects of the female sex hormones oestradiol and progesterone on innate and adaptive immune responses in order to provide a framework for understanding these sex differences. Data from both human and animal studies will be reviewed.

Influence of the murine oestrous cycle on the induction of mucosal immunity.

PROBLEM: To determine if the stage of oestrous cycle, at the time of immunization, affects the magnitude of mucosal and systemic immunity. METHOD OF STUDY: Female BALB/c mice were immunized with tetanus toxoid and cholera toxin by the oral, intranasal and transcutaneous routes. Groups of mice were immunized at proestrus, oestrus, postestrus and diestrus. Antibodies in serum and mucosal secretions were determined by ELISA and T cell responses by lymphocyte proliferation assay. RESULTS: Oral immunization at the oestradiol dominant stage of cycle (oestrus and proestrus) significantly enhanced TT-specific IgG and IgA levels in female reproductive tract (FRT) secretions and TT-specific IgA levels in faecal extracts. Transcutaneous immunization at diestrus enhanced TT-specific IgG in faecal extracts. TT-specific T cell proliferation is greatest following intranasal immunization at proestrus and transcutaneous immunization at diestrus, particularly in the caudal and lumbar lymph nodes draining the FRT and colon. CONCLUSIONS: Reproductive cycle-associated changes in the endogenous sex hormones oestradiol and progesterone influence the levels of vaccine-induced immunity in the FRT and distal colon following oral and transcutaneous immunization.