Behavioral Sciences

Workplace ostracism, a form of workplace harassment, delineates the experience of being excluded or ignored at work. Despite its covert nature, workplace ostracism elicits a unique pain that distinguishes it from other overt forms of harassment, such as bullying or undermining. While a growing body of literature has examined harassment directed at leaders (e.g., upward bullying), follower ostracism, in which leaders are excluded by their followers, has received relatively little attention. Drawing on Power-Dependence Theory, we conducted a multi-wave, time-lagged study (N = 137) to examine follower ostracism as an antecedent to destructive leadership, specifically micromanagement. The findings indicate that follower ostracism threatened leaders’ power, which subsequently motivated leaders to engage in micromanagement as a means to reestablish their influence and authority. Moreover, female leaders experience greater power threats, and exhibit more micromanaging behaviors than their male counterparts. This study advances the theoretical understanding of workplace ostracism, destructive leadership, and gender roles. It also offers practical solutions for organizations and leaders to prevent and cope with the detrimental effects of exclusion by subordinates.

This study examined the associations between parental psychological control and real-life social avoidance among college students, focusing on the chain mediating roles of basic psychological needs and problematic smartphone use, as well as the moderating role of interpersonal sensitivity. A total of 1879 college students participated in the study. The results revealed that parental psychological control is positively associated with college students’ social avoidance behavior. Furthermore, basic psychological needs and problematic smartphone use played significant sequential mediating roles in this association. Moreover, a sequential mediation pathway was found through basic psychological needs and problematic smartphone use. Additionally, interpersonal sensitivity was identified as a significant moderator, moderating the strength of the association between parental psychological control, and basic psychological needs. These findings provide important evidence for understanding the correlational mechanisms associated with real-life social avoidance among college students and offer practical insights for the development of intervention strategies.

This study addresses specific gaps in current research on user-experience interface design for news and information apps targeted at elderly users, particularly in the context of human factors and ergonomics. To investigate how interface design features of mobile news clients affect the cognitive load of elderly users, an in-depth analysis was conducted using a combination of objective eye movement tests and subjective evaluation scales. Mobile news client interfaces with systematically varied visual complexity were designed by orthogonally manipulating three core elements identified from top-ranked Chinese news apps and prior literature, and within-subject repeated experiments were performed to collect subjective cognitive load data, objective eye movement data, and behavioral data, validating the proposed hypothesis model. The results indicate that the visual complexity of mobile news client interfaces significantly impacts the cognitive load of elderly users, with keyword color substantially modulating this effect. These findings contribute to the knowledge base on mobile news client interface design for elderly users and provide practical recommendations for designers to create more equitable interfaces, enhancing usability for this demographic.