Article archive / July 1, 2010
Originally published: . Volume 1, No. 11. Source pages: 12, 13.
Research teams from Louisiana Tech University presented their findings at the American Psychological Society convention in Boston, May 27-30. Drs. Walt Buboltz, Kevin Mahoney, Jeffrey Walczyk, and graduate students in the LaTech program presented papers with topics about eating and sleep patterns of college students, deception cues and lying research, and the factors relating to jobs with “emotional labor.”
Drs. Walter Buboltz and Janelle McDaniel along with graduate student researchers Rebecca Hoffmann, Eric Robbins, and Barbara Calvert, investigated patterns of food choices and sleep in college students. The researchers gathered data through food diaries and sleep scales, finding that college-age students have erratic eating patterns, with higher fat and lower calories consumed than recommended. They also found a mild relationship between sleep patterns and types of food consumed, and concluded that interactions between sleep and eating may be more complex than initially believed. Their research may help to shed light on eating, sleep and obesity.
Drs. Kevin Mahoney and Walter Buboltz and graduate student John Buckner investigated individual differences having to do with emotional labor and its consequences for job satisfaction.
In this study the LaTech researchers measured emotional labor, service motivation, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction and organizational commitment, in 233 employees holding a variety of jobs in two Southern cities. The investigators found that emotional labor was meaningfully related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment and emotional exhaustion. “Employees are differentially inclined to engage in emotional labor and the individual differences in this study emerge as new possible reasons why.”
Consequences of emotional labor, such as emotional exhaustion, vary by individual. Also those high in proactive personality “were more likely to display genuine positive emotion and suppress negative emotion.” And, “Compassionate individuals were more likely to give genuine positive expressions.” Women expressed genuine positive emotion a few times a day and men a few times a week.
Dr. Jeffery Walczyk and graduate students Rachel Yates and Shelley Visconte presented findings in about “cues of deception” in a mock crime situation.
The researchers tested “Time Restricted Integrity-Confirmation” in the context of a mock crime. They measured response time, wordiness, consistency, eye movement and pupil dilation using an infrared eye scanner. “Compared to truths, lies took longer, were wordier, and entailed more eye movements, but not more pupil dilation,” they found. The results were strong and could classify “liars and truth tellers with up to 84% accuracy and with a 1% false positive rate, [a rate] far below that of the polygraph.”
In another presentation on the cognitive cues of lying, Dr. Walczyk and graduate student Bryon Simoneaux investigated the expanded “Activation-Decision-Construction Model” (Walczyk et al. 2003).
Analyses showed that “unrehearsed liars had longer response times, more contradictions, and less eye movements,” and that “rehearsal lowered cognitive load.”
The researchers concluded, “Response times, answer inconsistencies, and eye movements offer the best cues to deception.”
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