The psychology of procedural justice: A test of the group-value model.

Research on the psychology of procedural justice has been dominated by Thibaut and Walker's (1975) theory about the psychology of procedural preference. That theory suggests that people are concerned with their direct and indirect control over decisions. Lind and Tyler (1988) proposed a group-value theory that suggests that several noncontrol issues—the neutrality of the decision-making procedure, trust in the 3rd party, and the information the experience communicates about social standing—influence both procedural preferences and judgments of procedural justice. This study examines 3 issues. The first is whether judgments about neutrality, trust, and social standing have an independent impact on judgments of procedural justice. The results suggest that they do. The second is how Thibaut and Walker's control theory developed. The results suggest that control issues are central to the setting studied by Thibaut and Walker—disputes—but are less important in other situations. Finally, the implications of these findings for a group-value theory of procedural justice are examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing political group dynamics: A test of the groupthink model.

Used the Group Dynamics Q sort to explore the empirical underpinnings and theoretical logic of the groupthink model. Examination of 10 decision-making episodes revealed considerable historical support for I. L. Janis's (1982) classification of groups into groupthink and vigilant decision-making episodes. LISREL analysis, however, revealed less support for Janis's causal model of groupthink. Neither group cohesiveness nor situational stress emerged as independent predictors of symptoms of groupthink. Structural and procedural faults of the organization did, however, emerge as a potent predictor. Little support was found for Janis's suggestion that the ill-fated Mayaguez and Iran rescue decisions were the product of groupthink. The results illustrate the symbiotic relationship between social psychology and history. Historical case studies allow for testing theories of group dynamics; social-psychological concepts and research methods can inform interpretations of historical events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding the positive social psychological benefits of sport team identification: The team identification-social psychological health model.

This article presents a theoretical model designed to account for the positive relationship between identification with a local sport team and social psychological health. This model, labeled the Team Identification-Social Psychological Health Model, predicts that team identification facilitates well-being by increasing social connections for the fan. Two forms of social connections are developed through team identification: enduring and temporary. Although the enduring and temporary social connections are expected to result in improved well-being, it is predicted that this relationship will be moderated by threats to social identity and efforts to cope with the threats. The social connections resulting from team identification are expected to impact both state (via increases in temporary social connections) and trait well-being (via enduring connections). Finally, because research indicates that group and team identification are more closely related to social well-being than personal well-being, temporary and enduring social connections are predicted to have their greatest impact on social psychological health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of overall justice judgments in organizational justice research: A test of mediation.

Organizational justice research traditionally focuses on the unique predictability of different types of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional) and the relative importance of these types of justice on outcome variables. Recently, researchers have suggested shifting from this focus on specific types of justice to a consideration of overall justice. The authors hypothesize that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice facets and outcomes. They present 2 studies to test this hypothesis. Study 1 demonstrates that overall justice judgments mediate the relationship between specific justice judgments and employee attitudes. Study 2 demonstrates the mediating relationship holds for supervisor ratings of employee behavior. Implications for research on organizational justice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Studying group dynamics with the social relations model.

Although the interdependence of group members is one of the defining characteristics of group dynamics, most traditional statistical methods require each observation to be independent. D. Kenny's (1994) social relations model (SRM) provides a statistical technique for studying interdependence in groups. The components of the SRM (e.g., actor, partner, relationship) and the ways in which this model can be used to study interpersonal behavior and perception in groups are reviewed. Findings from social relations analyses of leadership and group therapy are discussed to demonstrate the ways in which the SRM can contribute to the study of group dynamics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of two group brainstorming procedures.

A modified brainstorming procedure that required Ss (male introductory psychology students) to identify psychologically with significant components of the task (called synectics) was compared to standard brainstorming over 3 sessions and 9 different problems. Each treatment condition was also divided into high- and low-interpersonal-effectiveness groups. The synectics groups were superior to the brainstorming groups on all 9 problems, but the differences were statistically significant for only 4. There were no significant main effects due to group composition, nor were there any interactions. It is concluded that synectics is a more effective group-problem-solving strategy than brainstorming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Co-therapists and the creation of a functional psychotherapy group: A group dynamics perspective.

This article supports Dugo and Beck's (1997) proposal that co-therapy teams should move through the early phases of their own development as a team before meeting with a therapy group. Effective leaders facilitate group development by meeting the needs of the group at various stages. To do this, co-therapists must agree on the nature of those needs. Co-therapists need to develop a united front, a shared purpose, and a shared action plan. If these are lacking, the chances of successful outcomes are diminished. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Supervision of psychological assessment: A developmental model.

The supervision of assessment has been greatly neglected in the literature. A model of supervisee development, from novice to master assessor, is presented. The model focuses on the development of the ability to integrate data into a coherent formulation of the person being tested. Appropriate supervision depends on a matching of the supervisor's behavior to the supervisee's needs, as specified by the supervisee's current level of development. This development is dramatized by improvements in interpreting specific data points and in the recognition of larger patterns in the data. This skill acquisition occurs within the affective context of the supervisor–supervisee relationship as the interaction elicits both inter- and intrapersonal issues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A laboratory approach to the dynamics of psychological stress.

"This paper undertakes 2 somewhat limited tasks: (a) an analysis of some of the key problems in experimentation, and (b) the presentation of a brief account of some research from the author's own laboratory which was designed to throw light on some of the psychological mechanisms underlying stress reactions." Original research is summarized in 4 figures presenting the effect on skinconductance pattern of various conditions. The theoretical and methodological problems inherent in the field of psychological stress require attention to psychological processes (as well as the physiological) and the empirical conditions which identify these processes. "In the experimental laboratory what we need are more carefully thought out analogues of these psychological processes." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The group matters: A review of processes and outcomes in intelligence analysis.

The work of intelligence analysts is fundamentally cognitive in nature. Intelligence analysis consists largely of identifying problems, generating and evaluating hypotheses, identifying and assessing open source and classified information, recognizing patterns in large sets of data, aggregating information, and providing results in the form of judgments, forecasts, and insights to policymakers. These activities are often conducted by individuals; however, intelligence agencies and experts have called increasingly for the use of teams in intelligence analysis. This article reviews the research literature on group-level phenomena (that is, process losses) that are most relevant to the work of intelligence analysts, including productivity losses in brainstorming, the common knowledge effect, group polarization, confirmation bias, overconfidence, and pressures toward uniformity. We describe how features of intelligence analysis teams' tasks, context, and structure affect these processes, present methods to minimize these process losses and increase process gains, and discuss directions for future research. Although our focus is on intelligence analysis teams, these processes and interventions are relevant to a range of analytical teams that share common characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on the use of simultaneous test procedures.

Simultaneous test procedures have been found to be very conservative with respect to Type I errors. The present article emphasizes that simultaneous test procedures are defined for all hypotheses implied by the overall hypothesis and demonstrates that the conservativeness of simultaneous test procedures is most often due to their application to single-variable hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Caregiving outcomes for older mothers of adults with mental retardation: A test of the two-factor model of psychological well-being.

A two-factor model of caregiving appraisal and psychological well-being, based on previous findings with caregiving spouses (M. P. Lawton et al; see record 1991-34214-001) was tested with 225 older mothers who provided care at home to an offspring with mental retardation The effects of objective caregiving stressors, caregiver resources, and subjective appraisals (caregiving satisfaction and burden) on the positive and negative dimensions of psychological well-being were examined. LISREL 8 analyses revealed that the model differed in two key ways for caregiving mothers: (a) Positive psychological well-being appeared to diminish subjective burden, and (b) both objective stressors and resources were unrelated to subjective burden. These findings suggest the need for future research into how caregiving dynamics are influenced by the specific nature of the relationship between the caregiver and the recipient. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychological reality of the body schema: A test with normal participants.

Neuropsychological dissociations suggest the existence of a body schema, a representation of the spatial relations among body parts, not used for other spatial stimuli. Four experiments verify the psychological reality of the body schema in normal participants. In Experiments 1 and 2, proprioceptive information concerning one's own body position influences visual perception of others' body positions. Contrary to expectations, facilitation is observed rather than interference in the dual-performance task. Experiment 3 eliminates the possibility that the effect is due to a particular mnemonic strategy. In Experiment 4, this effect is shown to be specific to the perception of bodies, as opposed to other complex 3-dimensional forms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Increasing citizenship behavior within a labor union: A test of organizational justice theory.

A quasi-experiment was used to determine whether training union officers in the skills necessary for implementing principles of organizational justice would increase citizenship behavior on the part of members of a labor union in Canada. The results showed that 3 months after training, the perceptions of union fairness among members (n?=?83) whose leaders were in the training group were significantly higher than among members (n?=?69) whose leaders were in the control group. Factor analysis found that citizenship behavior had 2 dimensions: behavior supporting the union as an organization (OCBO) and behavior supporting union brothers and sisters (OCBI). Peer assessments revealed that citizenship behavior on both dimensions was significantly higher among union members whose leaders were trained than among members whose leaders were not trained. Perceptions of fairness were found to mediate the relationship between training and OCBO but not OCBI. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A test of two refinements in procedures for meta-analysis.

This study used Monte Carlo simulation to examine the increase in accuracy resulting from 2 statistical refinements of the interactive Schmidt-Hunter procedures for meta-analysis: the use of the mean correlation instead of individual correlations in the estimation of sampling error variance, and a procedure that takes into account the nonlinear nature of the range-restriction correction. In all of the cases examined, these refinements increased the accuracy of the interactive procedure in estimating the variance of population correlations and resulted in more accuracy than other procedures examined. The use of the mean correlation in the sampling error variance formula also increased the accuracy of variance estimates for the multiplicative and Taylor Series procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding team adaptation: A conceptual analysis and model.

This endeavor provides a multidisciplinary, multilevel, and multiphasic conceptualization of team adaptation with theoretical roots in the cognitive, human factors, and industrial-organizational psychology literature. Team adaptation and the emergent nature of adaptive team performance are defined from a multilevel, theoretical standpoint. An input-throughput-output model is advanced to illustrate a series of phases unfolding over time that constitute the core processes and emergent states underlying adaptive team performance and contributing to team adaptation. The cross-level mixed-determinants model highlights team adaptation in a nomological network of lawful relations. Testable propositions, practical implications, and directions for further research in this area are also advanced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A scientific problem-solving model of psychological assessment.

Comments that much of the current controversy in psychodiagnostics is a result of the failure to differentiate between assessment as a process of problem solving and testing as one set of methods for problem solving. One solution to this problem is for practice and training to shift away from their current emphasis on knowledge and technical expertise and toward a conceptual approach to psychological assessment. A scientific, problem-solving model of psychological practice is described in detail as it applies to the process of assessment. The model consists of 3 basic elements: The problem-solving process, levels of organizational action, and methods. The problem-solving process itself is broken down into 6 steps: problem clarification, planning, development, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination. Implications of the model for the improvement of practice, for the determination of assessment competency, and for training are discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disclosure and anxiety: A test of the fever model.

According to the fever model of Disclosure, the relationship of Disclosure (utterances that reveal subjective information) to psychological distress is analogous to the relationship of fever to physical infection: Both are indicators of some underlying disturbance and part of a restorative process. High and moderate trait anxious university students (but not the low trait anxious students) used higher percentage of Disclosure when speaking about an anxiety-arousing topic than when speaking about a happy topic. With topic order counterbalanced, students tended to use more Disclosure during their 1st presentation than during their 2nd. These results support the fever model's suggestion that people tend to Disclose when they are distressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distributive justice, procedural justice, and psychological distress: The moderating effect of coworker support and work autonomy.

Recent research has demonstrated that the perception of injustice at work may increase psychological health-related problems. The purpose of this study is to examine the moderating effect of coworker support and work autonomy on the relationships between both distributive and procedural justice and psychological distress. Results, on the basis of responses to questionnaires given to 248 prison employees, show that coworker support moderates the relationships between both forms of justice and psychological distress. Specifically, these relationships are weakened when employees benefit from a high level of coworker support. Furthermore, work autonomy moderates the relationship between procedural justice and psychological distress but not the relationship between distributive justice and psychological distress. Thus, procedural injustice is less likely to increase psychological distress when the level of work autonomy is high. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)