Christina Maslach, University of California, Berkeley, United States of America

Burnout and engagement in the workplace: New perspectives

Burnout and engagement have become important issues in the global workplace, given the increased focus on costs and benefits for both employees and organizations. Recent international research has provided new perspectives on the experience of burnout or engagement, the critical causes, and the important outcomes. As a result, researchers and practitioners are in a better position to develop effective interventions for reducing the risk of burnout and promoting better engagement with work. This presentation will discuss new developments in conceptual definitions and predictive indicators, and in strategies for change. It will also address the ongoing challenges of doing this kind of research in the workplace.

Alessandra Pokrajac-Bulian, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, Rijeka

Eating disorders: an illusion of slenderness in modern times

Eating disorders are very serious psychiatric disorders whose mortality rate ranges from 3% for bulimia nervosa to 1.8% for anorexia nervosa. They are characterized by increasing prevalence. The first description of the nervous atrophy was given in 1689 by the English physician Morton who described a case of an 18-year-old Miss Duke. Several centuries have passed since, and the expectations of slenderness created by the society are more widespread than ever. Each century had its specific ideals of beauty. The role of corset, which was used in shaping the female body in the 19th century, in modern times has been replaced by dieting. The ideal of slenderness is nowadays so common that women regardless of their age have accepted it. The efforts put into achieving it can be seen throughout their lives, from childhood to old age.

Eating disorders generate a great deal of interest, create dilemmas for researchers and pose major challenges for clinicians. The questions that need to be answered in both research studies and clinical work pertain to biological, psychological and socio-cultural factors, i.e. risk factors for developing eating disorders. Which factors are relevant to maintenance and what steps need to be taken in prevention and treatment? The biological propensity for eating disorders includes a wide range of factors, which vary from individual genetic profile to body mass index. The psychological propensity is evident in personality traits (e.g. perfectionism, negative self-image), family characteristics (e.g. specific communication patterns within a family, family psychopathology) and negative life events (e.g. sexual harassment, teasing). Predisposing factors generated by the environment epitomise the pressure put on women to achieve a slender figure at all costs. Internalisation of the slender ideal, present throughout a woman’s life, results in “normative discontent”. When it comes to reducing body dissatisfaction, dieting seems both logical and acceptable. It appears that, among all factors, the best predictor of eating disorders is dieting.

Even though the biological explanations for eating disorders can not be ignored, both socio-cultural environment that causes dieting and internalisation of the slender ideal are pitfalls, which we have to deal with when promoting healthy eating habits and body image acceptance.

Meri Tadinac, Department of Psychology, University of Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Strangers in the night or love forever: short-term and long-term mating strategies

Evolutionary perspective emphasizes two crucial variables affecting partner choice: sex of the chooser and the short-term vs. long-term context of mating. Based on Darwin's sexual selection theory and Trivers's theory of parental investment, numerous hypotheses have been proposed about different sexual strategies of women and men, and different strategies that both sexes apply when choosing a partner for a long-term or a short-term relationship. This lecture will present our studies in which we addressed some of those hypotheses. Firstly, are there sex differences in preferences for certain characteristics of the partner and do they differ in a short-term and long-term mating context? Secondly, how does the self-perceived mate value influence the preferences in mate choice? Thirdly, although the sex differences in pursuing short-term relationships are well documented, the individual differences within each sex have been neglected. Therefore we tried to establish whether there were differences in the tendency to pursue short-term relationships between groups of different age, income and educational level. Fourthly, as previous results indicate the correlation of women's reproductive behaviours with the levels of sex hormones, in a series of studies we tried to establish the variations in some of those behaviours in various phases of the menstrual cycle. Taken together, these results enable us to make some inferences and to propose new hypotheses about sex differences in mating strategies in short-term and long-term context, interindividual differences in those strategies within each sex, and the effect of hormonal variations during the menstrual cycle on women's mating behaviour.