Explication of the coping goal construct: Implications for coping and reemployment.

This longitudinal study developed a reemployment coping goal construct and examined its role in a job-loss context. Several predictors of displaced workers' reemployment coping goal intensity were examined: human capital, employment commitment, internal coping resources, and anticipation of job loss. Results show that human capital, employment commitment, internal coping resources, and anticipation of job loss positively predicted a reemployment coping goal. Human capital also directly predicted reemployment. Finally, unemployed individuals' reemployment coping goal intensity positively predicted job-search effort, which positively predicted reemployment. Implications for the process of coping with job loss and future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How leaders cultivate social capital and nurture employee vigor: Implications for job performance.

This study examined how leader relational behaviors (i.e., relational leadership) cultivate bonding social capital among organizational members and the way bonding social capital augments feelings of vigor at work. In addition, the authors examined how vigor enhances employee job performance. Using a sample of 209 participants in Israeli community centers, the results of structural equation modeling indicate a 2-stage mediation model in which leader relational behaviors are positively related to bonding social capital; this, in turn, results in feelings of vigor, which are positively associated with manager ratings of employee job performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Romantic partners' individual coping strategies and dyadic coping: Implications for relationship functioning.

Individual coping strategies and dyadic coping independently predict partner well-being and relationship functioning; however, it is unclear whether the coping processes are inter-related and whether they uniquely contribute to romantic relationship functioning. One hundred heterosexual dating couples rated the individual coping strategy of negative mood regulation as well as positive and negative dyadic coping. Relationship functioning was assessed via partners' reports of relationship satisfaction and observers' ratings of negative interaction in conflict. Actor-Partner Interdependence Models (APIMs; Cook & Kenny, 2005; Kashy & Kenny, 2000) revealed associations between individual coping and dyadic coping in the predicted directions. APIMs also indicated the unique contributions of positive and negative dyadic coping to relationship functioning, above and beyond contributions of individual coping strategies. Implications of dyadic coping as a target of efforts to prevent or treat partner and/or relational distress are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinctive late-life challenges: Implications for coping and well-being.

Two distinctive late-life challenges, community relocation and caring for an adult child with mental retardation, were studied to determine their influence on coping and well-being. These challenges differ in terms of their normativeness, duration, and whether they were expected. Data from 2 ongoing longitudinal studies (N?=?449) were used to test the hypotheses that women experiencing residential relocation would report higher well-being and use problem-focused coping more frequently than women with long-term caregiving responsibilities. As predicted, more positive changes in well-being across time were reported by the relocation sample, which also showed more problem-focused coping. Women in the caregiving sample, however, showed stronger relationships between coping and well-being, underscoring possible gains in expertise that accompany challenges of lengthy duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Laying the foundation for successful team performance trajectories: The roles of team charters and performance strategies.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 95(4) of Journal of Applied Psychology (see record 2010-13313-007). In the article “Laying the Foundation for Successful Team Performance Trajectories: The Roles of Team Charters and Performance Strategies,” by John E. Mathieu and Tammy L. Rapp (Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 90–103), the “High Chart–Low Strategy” and the “Low Chart–High Strategy” lines were inadvertently reversed in Figure 1. Below is the corrected version of Figure 1.] This study examined the influences of team charters and performance strategies on the performance trajectories of 32 teams of master's of business administration students competing in a business strategy simulation over time. The authors extended existing theory on team development by demonstrating that devoting time to laying a foundation for both teamwork (i.e., team charters) and taskwork (performance strategies) can pay dividends in terms of more effective team performance over time. Using random coefficients growth modeling techniques, they found that teams with high-quality performance strategies outperformed teams with poorer quality strategies. However, a significant interaction between quality of the charters of teams and their performance strategies was found, such that the highest sustained performances were exhibited by teams that were high on both features. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Styles of coping with threat: Implications for health.

We explored individual differences in health-seeking behavior and health status in a primary care population. Specifically, we compared high monitors (those who typically scan for threat-relevant information) with low monitors (those who typically ignore threat-relevant information), while controlling for depression. Overall, high monitors came to the physician with less severe medical problems than did low monitors. Nevertheless, high monitors reported equivalent levels of discomfort, dysfunction, and distress compared with low monitors. Furthermore, during the week following their visit, high monitors expressed less symptom improvement in both physical and psychological problems than did low monitors. Finally, high monitors demanded more tests, information, and counseling during their visit than did their low monitoring counterparts, yet desired a less active role in their own care. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implications for team focused stress management training.

Stress management training typically emphasizes strategies to help individuals alleviate sources of stress and to reduce or compensate for their experience of stress-induced symptoms. This paper addresses making the intact work unit a focal target for stress management training. A pilot test of such training is reported, highlighting expected requirements for team-focused stress management above and beyond programs directed at individuals. Facilitators and inhibitors of the transfer of training are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonverbal affect responses to male and female leaders: Implications for leadership evaluations.

It was hypothesized that female leaders would elicit more negative nonverbal affect responses from other group members than male leaders offering the same initiatives. Male and female subjects participated in 4-person discussions in which male or female confederates assumed leadership. During the discussion subjects' nonverbal affect responses to the confederates were coded from behind one-way mirrors. Female leaders received more negative affect responses and fewer positive responses than men offering the same suggestions and arguments. Female leaders received more negative than positive responses, in contrast to men, who received at least as many positive as negative responses. The data demonstrate a concrete social mechanism known to cause devaluation of leadership, and thus support a more social interpretation of female leadership evaluations, in contrast to previous interpretations based on private perceptual bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring team knowledge: A window to the cognitive underpinnings of team performance.

The authors report an effort aimed at developing and evaluating measures of taskwork and teamwork team knowledge for teams in which members differ in knowledge backgrounds. These measures were used in a study with 36 teams to explore the cognitive underpinnings of team performance variations due to cross-training regime. The authors demonstrate that these measures are valid and provide team performance information that complements outcome and behavioral measures. Teams exposed to full cross-training acquired more taskwork and teamwork knowledge than control teams or teams exposed to a conceptual version of cross-training. Measures of team knowledge provide information regarding team task performance critical for system design and training programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Person versus process praise and criticism: Implications for contingent self-worth and coping.

Conventional wisdom suggests that praising a child as a whole or praising his or her traits is beneficial. Two studies tested the hypothesis that both criticism and praise that conveyed person or trait judgments could send a message of contingent worth and undermine subsequent coping. In Study 1, 67 children (ages 5–6 years) role-played tasks involving a setback and received 1 of 3 forms of criticism after each task: person, outcome, or process criticism. In Study 2, 64 children role-played successful tasks and received either person, outcome, or process praise. In both studies, self-assessments, affect, and persistence were measured on a subsequent task involving a setback. Results indicated that children displayed significantly more "helpless" responses (including self-blame) on all dependent measures after person criticism or praise than after process criticism or praise. Thus person feedback, even when positive, can create vulnerability and a sense of contingent self-worth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and management team performance.

180 male managers participated as age-homogeneous 4-person teams in a validated all-day decision-making simulation. 15 teams consisted of 28–35 yr old participants (young), 15 teams were in the 45–55 yrs age range (middle-aged), and 15 teams consisted of 65–75 yr old (older) persons. More than 40 objective performance measures (loading on 12–25 factors) were calculated on the basis of team decision making, planning, and other indicators. Performance by young and middle-aged teams was generally similar. Older teams made fewer decisions and were less strategic and less responsive to incoming information. Their overview of the task was less broad; action diversity and information search was reduced. However, older teams used opportunities and handled a simulated emergency as effectively as their younger and middle-aged counterparts. Alternative explanations for the obtained differences are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Information sharing and team performance: A meta-analysis.

Information sharing is a central process through which team members collectively utilize their available informational resources. The authors used meta-analysis to synthesize extant research on team information sharing. Meta-analytic results from 72 independent studies (total groups = 4,795; total N = 17,279) demonstrate the importance of information sharing to team performance, cohesion, decision satisfaction, and knowledge integration. Although moderators were identified, information sharing positively predicted team performance across all levels of moderators. The information sharing–team performance relationship was moderated by the representation of information sharing (as uniqueness or openness), performance criteria, task type, and discussion structure by uniqueness (a 3-way interaction). Three factors affecting team information processing were found to enhance team information sharing: task demonstrability, discussion structure, and cooperation. Three factors representing decreasing degrees of member redundancy were found to detract from team information sharing: information distribution, informational interdependence, and member heterogeneity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships among team ability composition, team mental models, and team performance.

This study examined the relationship between the similarity and accuracy of team mental models and compared the extent to which each predicted team performance. The relationship between team ability composition and team mental models was also investigated. Eighty-three dyadic teams worked on a complex skill task in a 2-week training protocol. Results indicated that although similarity and accuracy of team mental models were significantly related, accuracy was a stronger predictor of team performance. In addition, team ability was more strongly related to the accuracy than to the similarity of team mental models and accuracy partially mediated the relationship between team ability and team performance, but similarity did not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: A meta-analysis.

This study provides a meta-analysis of research on the associations between relationship conflict, task conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. Consistent with past theorizing, results revealed strong and negative correlations between relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. In contrast to what has been suggested in both academic research and introductory textbooks, however, results also revealed strong and negative (instead of the predicted positive) correlations between task conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. As predicted, conflict had stronger negative relations with team performance in highly complex (decision making, project, mixed) than in less complex (production) tasks. Finally, task conflict was less negatively related to team performance when task conflict and relationship conflict were weakly, rather than strongly, correlated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on the stability of team performance.

Yearly winning percentages of 23 professional basketball teams over a 10-year period were used to evaluate the stability of team performance. The intercorrelation matrix produced by these data is characterized by strong, positive correlations in adjacent time periods. As the number of intervening time periods increased, however, the observed correlations systematically decreased and ultimately became negative. Significant negative correlations of earlier performance with later performance are almost never observed with typical time-related performance data. Possible explanations and boundary conditions for these atypical results are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trust in leadership and team performance: Evidence from NCAA basketball.

This study empirically examined the relationship between trust, leadership, and team performance with 2 objectives. The 1st objective was to empirically examine an assumption found in several literatures—that a team's trust in its leader has a significant effect on the team's performance. The 2nd objective was to explore a more complex and dynamic relationship between trust and team performance whereby trust in leadership mediates the relationship between past team performance and future team performance. This relationship is derived by combining theories of trust with an attributional theory of leadership. Survey and archival data from a sample of men's college basketball teams provides support for both hypotheses, indicating that trust in leadership is both a product and a determinant of team performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Management team learning orientation and business unit performance.

Although research has suggested that teams can differ in the extent to which they encourage proactive learning and competence development among their members (a team learning orientation), the performance consequences of these differences are not well understood. Drawing from research on goal orientation and team learning, this article suggests that, although a team learning orientation can encourage adaptive behaviors that lead to improved performance, it is also possible for teams to compromise performance in the near term by overemphasizing learning, particularly when they have been performing well. A test of this proposition in a sample of business unit management teams provides strong support. The results confirm that an appropriate emphasis on learning can have positive consequences for team effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional capture and aging: Implications for visual search performance and oculomotor control.

Two studies examined potential age-related differences in attentional capture. Subjects were instructed to move their eyes as quickly as possible to a color singleton target and to identify a small letter located inside it. On half the trials, a new stimulus (i.e., a sudden onset) appeared simultaneously with the presentation of the color singleton target. The onset was always a task-irrelevant distractor. Response times were lengthened, for both young and old adults, whenever an onset distractor appeared, despite the fact that Ss reported being unaware of the appearance of the abrupt onset. Eye scan strategies were also disrupted by the appearance of the onset distractors. On about 40% of the trials on which an onset appeared, Ss made an eye movement to the task-irrelevant onset before moving their eyes to the target. Fixations close to the onset were brief, suggesting parallel programming of a reflexive eye movement to the onset and goal-directed eye movement to the target. Results are discussed in terms of age-related sparing of the attentional and oculomotor processes that underlie attentional capture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inspecting the emperor's clothes: Evidence that random selection of leaders can enhance group performance.

This article tests the hypothesis that group performance might be superior when leaders are randomly rather than systematically selected. In Experiment 1 groups with randomly selected leaders performed a survival task better than groups whose leaders were systematically selected. This effect was replicated in Experiment 2: Groups with a random leader also performed better than groups with no appointed leader and followers adhered more strongly to the group decision. In Experiment 3, naive participants' experimental expectations confirmed the counterintuitive nature of these findings. Results suggest that systematically selected leaders can undermine group goals and group maintenance. The possibility that this occurs because leaders assert their personal superiority at the expense of shared social identity is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between individual proficiency and team performance and efficiency.

Using 64 pairs of college students doing jigsaw puzzles, team and individual performance was compared. They could work the puzzles better alone than when doing it in pairs cooperatively, however, relatively poor prediction is obtained from measures of individual proficiency. The performance of the most efficient member of a team, however, predicted slightly better both team performance and team efficiency. "The more similar the two members of a team were in individual proficiency, the more likely they were to form a proficient and effective team." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)