reality checks

I’m Back; Organizational Justice and Cynicism

Catherine T. Kwantes & Michael H. Bond, Organizational justice and autonomy as moderators of the relationship between social and organizational cynicism, Personality and Individual Differences, v. 151, Dec. 2019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.04.046.

Well, it has been more than two months since I blogged about an article. During that absence from the blog, classes started here at the law school. Between individual research consults, library research classes, and lecturing in legal research and writing, I have been so busy with teaching and getting to know our students that there hasn’t been time for much else.

Yes, this is the life of a reference librarian during the late summer and early fall in an academic law library.

The important thing, of course, is getting back on the horse after you fall off. It is also important to internalize lessons learned through lived experience. I wanted to read and blog daily, but that is just not possible.

So the name of this blog has been changed to “Jennifer’s Occasional Read.” The word “occasional” will mean different things depending on the time of year. Today, it means I have an empty calendar for the first time in a long time, and an article I really want to dig into. So blogging starts again today. Will I blog again tomorrow? Who knows? Today is what matters.

Today’s article discusses social cynicism and organizational justice in the workplace and how they contribute to employees’ organizational cynicism and the health of the organization in general.

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Most of Your Worries Are Probably Irrational

Citation:
L.S. LaFreniere and M.G. Newman, Exposing Worry’s Deceit: Percentage of Untrue Worries in Generalized Anxiety Disorder Treatment, Behavior Therapy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2019.07.003.

So I decided to change it up a little bit today, and read an article about what is probably my truest nemesis: worrying. This article has been making the rounds on Twitter over the last few days, so I rearranged some stuff to fit it into my Daily Read schedule for today.

The authors undertook a study in which people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) recorded their worries and then reported on whether or not they came true in a therapeutic device called a Worry Outcome Journal (WOJ). Their hypothesis? At least 75% of the worries these people experience will not come true, and the more this happens, the better the persons therapeutic treatment outcome will be.

The participants in this study were 29 undergraduates with GAD, 26 of whom were women and over 75% of whom were white. The authors do note that this means that there will be “restricted generalizability” of study results, given that the participants were “largely white, female, young adult undergraduate students.”

(I’m glad they said that, because seriously? And note that I am a white female too, albeit not so young anymore.)

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