Repulsion or attraction?: Group membership and assumed attitude similarity.

Three studies investigated group membership effects on similarity-attraction and dissimilarity-repulsion. Membership in an in-group versus out-group was expected to create initially different levels of assumed attitude similarity. In 3 studies, ratings made after participants learned about the target's attitudes were compared with initial attraction based only on knowing target's group membership. Group membership was based on political affiliation in Study I and on sexual orientation in Study 2. Study 3 crossed political affiliation with target's obnoxiousness. Attitude dissimilarity produced stronger repulsion effects for in-group than for out-group members in all studies. Attitude similarity produced greater increments in attraction for political out-group members but not for targets with a stigmatic sexual orientation or personality characteristic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What do i think you're doing? Action identification and mind attribution.

The authors examined how a perceiver's identification of a target person's actions covaries with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target's action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3, they were reduced for a target suffering misfortune. In Study 4, it was again found that action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, but like that for the self or a liked other, positive actions were identified at higher levels than negative actions, with the reverse being true for disliked others. In Study 5, the authors found that instructing participants to adopt the target's perspective did not affect mind attribution but did lead to higher level identifications of the target's actions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of academic performance pattern on assigned grade and predicted performance.

Investigated how individuals use information about a target student's past academic performance to evaluate that performance and to predict future performance. 12 linear and nonlinear performance sequences, each ostensibly representing the performance of a different 1st-, 6th-, or 12th-grade student, were judged by 70 undergraduates. Results indicate that although the target's final performance was an important determinant of Ss' responses, a simple recency model did not adequately account for the data. In addition, differences emerged between Ss' evaluations of the target's past performance and predictions of the target's future performance. Contrary to expectations, the target's grade level did not significantly influence evaluations or predictions. The importance of observers' reactions to nonlinear as well as linear performance patterns is discussed in the context of clarifying teacher expectancy effects. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple discrepancies and pay satisfaction.

In this study, a mail survey was used to measure pay satisfaction, current salary, 4 personal standards of comparison, and basic demographics for 169 mental health professionals. As predicted, pay satisfaction was determined by the simultaneous appraisal of current salary against several personal standards of comparison. Explained variance in pay satisfaction rose from 26.1% when only salary and demographics were used as predictors to 46.7% when discrepancy-related variables associated with 4 standards of comparison also were used. Furthermore, R–2 for the combined discrepancy-related variables associated with all 4 standards of comparison was significantly greater than R–2 for the discrepancy-related variables associated with any single standard. These discrepancy effects took both additive and nonadditive forms. Discrepancy effects were stronger when deserved salary or minimum salary was the standard of comparison than when other's salary or average salary was. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of disability, gender, and job level on ratings of job applicants.

Objective: To examine the effects of applicant disability, gender, and job level on ratings of job applicants. Design and Participants: Full-time workers (n?=?88) and undergraduates (n?=?98) provided ratings of hypothetical job applicants who differed on the 3 factors of interest. Measures: Job applicants were evaluated on the basis of competence, overall recommendation, potency, activity, and starting salary. Results: Applicants with disabilities were generally rated significantly higher in activity and potency than the applicant without a disability. Additional analyses revealed a significant Gender X Job Level interaction for applicants with a disability. Conclusions: Consistent with D. T. Wegener and R. E. Petty's (1997) flexible correction model, the results of this study suggest that evaluations of job applicants with disabilities may depend on the amount of cognitive resources raters have available at the time the evaluations are made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incorporating If...Then...Personality Signatures in Person Perception: Beyond the Person-Situation Dichotomy.

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Managerial coping with organizational change: A dispositional perspective.

In a departure from the organizational development literature, this study hypothesized that managerial responses to organizational change are influenced by 7 dispositional traits (locus of control, generalized self-efficacy, self-esteem, positive affectivity, openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity, and risk aversion). Data were collected from 6 organizations (N?=?514) to test the hypotheses. The 7 traits were reduced to 2 factors: Positive Self-Concept and Risk Tolerance. Both of these trait factors significantly predicted self-reports and independent assessments of coping with change. Results also indicated that coping with organizational change was related to extrinsic (salary, job level, plateauing, job performance) and intrinsic (organizational commitment, job satisfaction) career outcomes and that coping mediated roughly half of the relationships between the dispositional factors and these career outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender and letters of recommendation for academia: Agentic and communal differences.

In 2 studies that draw from the social role theory of sex differences (A. H. Eagly, W. Wood, & A. B. Diekman, 2000), the authors investigated differences in agentic and communal characteristics in letters of recommendation for men and women for academic positions and whether such differences influenced selection decisions in academia. The results supported the hypotheses, indicating (a) that women were described as more communal and less agentic than men (Study 1) and (b) that communal characteristics have a negative relationship with hiring decisions in academia that are based on letters of recommendation (Study 2). Such results are particularly important because letters of recommendation continue to be heavily weighted and commonly used selection tools (R. D. Arvey & T. E. Campion, 1982; R. M. Guion, 1998), particularly in academia (E. P. Sheehan, T. M. McDevitt, & H. C. Ross, 1998). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional priming and visual search in pigeons.

Advance information about a target's identity improved visual search efficiency in pigeons. Experiments 1 and 2 compared information supplied by visual cues with information supplied by trial sequences. Reaction times (RTs) were lower when visual cues signaled a single target rather than two. RTs were lower (Experiment 1) or accuracy improved (Experiment 2) when a sequence of trials presented a single target rather than a mixture of 2. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 considered the selectivity of visual priming by introducing probe trials that reversed the usual cue–target relationship. RT was higher following such miscues than following the usual 1- or 2-target cuing relationships (Experiment 3); the miscuing effect persisted over variations in the target's concealment (Experiments 4 and 5), but did not occur when the target was presented alone (Experiment 4). Findings indicate that priming modifies an attentional mechanism and suggest that this effect accounts for search images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stereotypes and social judgment: The effects of typicality and group heterogeneity.

Two experiments showed that when subjects believed a group to be heterogeneous, they based their liking for a particular group member on their liking for the group as a whole, independently of and in addition to the target's behavior, and regardless of the target's typicality. When they believed the group to be homogeneous, however, they treated the target's typicality as a favorable or unfavorable attribute, which affected their evaluation. The latter subjects used their group stereotype as a standard of comparison in judging the implications of the target's behavior for a trait to which it was relevant. All subjects' stereotypes had a positive influence on judgments of stereotype-related traits for which the target's behavior was uninformative. A conceptualization is proposed to account for these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Instantiation, interference, and the change of standard effect: Context functions in reconstructive memory.

Exp 1 manipulated the personality test scores and reactions of context students (high vs low) both at encoding and retrieval 1 wk later. A change of standard effect was replicated for memory of the target's scores but not the reactions. Behavioral reactions or expressions appear to be more strongly instantiated in terms of a concept activated by the Time 1 context than are numerical scores themselves. Exps 2 and 3 showed evidence of retroactive interference, in the form of response competition, as an additional influence of context on reconstructive memory. Exp 2 used a situation in which an a priori standard was assumed. Exp 3 used the original E. T. Higgins and L. Lurie (see record 1984-05807-001) materials but changed Time 2 context so that the information could not possibly be used as a standard. Both studies showed that Ss still biased their memory of the target in a manner that assimilated memory of the target's decisions toward the numbers presented at Time 2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceiving choice and constraint: The effects of contextual and behavioral cues on attitude attribution.

We examined how features of the situation and the target's behavior in the attitude-attribution paradigm may lead observers to infer that the behavior was performed purposefully and how these perceptions may contribute to correspondence bias. Experiment 1 demonstrated that cues suggesting that essay assignment resulted from the target's purposeful action lead to correspondent inferences. When these cues were absent, observers' inferences were not correspondent. Experiment 2 demonstrated that observers are sensitive to cues emitted by the target (facial expressions of delight and disappointment) and that those cues' meaning depends on the context in which they take place. When the essay was freely chosen, the expression had little effect; observers judged that the essay accurately reflected the target's attitudes. When the essay assignment was constrained, observers used the expressions to discount the essay when judging the target's attitudes. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of correspondent inferences and correspondence bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empathic accuracy in a clinically relevant setting.

This study addressed 3 questions regarding empathic accuracy in a clinically relevant setting. First, does the empathic accuracy of a perceiver improve with increased exposure to a target individual? Second, can empathic accuracy be enhanced by providing the perceiver with feedback about the target's actual thoughts and feelings? Third, are there stable individual differences in empathic accuracy that generalize across different targets? The results indicated that although absolute performance levels varied from 1 target to another, empathic accuracy generally improved with increased exposure to the target. In addition, feedback concerning the target's actual thoughts and feelings accelerated the rate at which the perceivers' empathic accuracy improved. Finally, cross-target consistency in responding (α?=?.86) revealed stable individual differences in the perceivers' empathic ability. Implications of these findings for clinical training and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A linear model of job satisfaction.

Data relevant to 5 separate areas of a worker's job satisfaction (satisfaction with: work, pay, promotion opportunities, co-workers, and supervision) and 6 independent variables (age, tenure on the job, tenure with the company, job level, salary, and salary desired minus salary received) were gathered from a sample of 185 male workers and 75 female workers employed in 2 plants of an electronics manufacturing firm in New England. Multiple-regression analyses were done on these data to determine the validity of two hypotheses of Herzberg that age and tenure bear U-shaped relationships to job satisfaction. No support was found for these hypotheses. For the male workers a linear model of job satisfaction predicted work and pay satisfaction. None of the other dependent variables for the male or female workers could be predicted significantly and consistently. An explanation based on discrepancies between expectations and environmental return is offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The measurement of executive success.

The definitions and criteria of executive success which have been used in the past show little consistency across studies. The central problem of this investigation was the empirical determination of the relationship between different measures of executive success. 3 measures of success based on absolute salary, salary increase, and levels promoted were developed. The data gathered from a sample of 50 executives indicated that had one of these measures been used rather than the others, quite different conclusions would have been drawn from the data. A rigorous analysis of the various criteria of executive success is suggested as a solution to the problem of "What is executive success?" (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived equity of salary policies.

Three systems for distributing yearly salary raises to faculty according to merit were studied to determine which system is judged to be most equitable. In the relative system, persons with equal merit receive equal percentage raises. In the absolute system, persons with equal merit receive equal raises. In the adjustment system, persons who are equally underpaid receive equal raises. In Exp I, 20 faculty and 85 undergraduate judges were asked to assign raises to hypothetical faculty from a fixed raise pool. It was found that the assigned raises were greater for the lower paid of 2 people of equal merit, consistent with the adjustment system. In Exp II, 22 faculty and 103 undergraduate judges examined future salaries produced by the 3 different systems. Both groups judged the raises given by the adjustment system to be the most "equitable, just, and fair" and raises given by the relative system to be the least fair. In Exp III, 20 faculty members judged salary deserved as a function of merit and years of experience. This deservingness function was used to develop a specific policy for a particular situation in which raises are proportional to the deviations between actual salary and salary deserved. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Masked repetition and phonological priming in picture naming

We report a series of picture naming experiments in which target pictures were primed by briefly presented masked words. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the prior presentation of the same word prime (e.g., rose-ROSE) facilitates picture naming independently of the target's name frequency. In Experiment 2, primes that were homophones of picture targets (e.g., rows-ROSE) also produced facilitatory effects compared with unrelated controls, but priming was significantly larger for targets with low-frequency names relative to targets with high-frequency names. In Experiment 3, primes that were higher frequency homophones of picture targets produced facilitatory effects compared with identical primes. These results are discussed in relation to different accounts of the effects of masked priming in current models of picture naming.     

All the right stuff: A comparison of female and male managers' career progression.

Examined the career progression of male and female managers employed by 20 Fortune 500 corporations. All study participants had been geographically transferred for career advancement during the 2 yrs preceding the study. Nevertheless, the women lagged behind the men with respect to salary progression and frequency of job transfers. Although the women had done "all the right stuff" (getting a similar education as the men, maintaining similar levels of family power, working in similar industries, not moving in and out of the work force, not removing their names from consideration for a transfer more often) it was still not enough. There were still significant disparities in men's and women's salary progression and geographic mobility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition blindness between words: Nature of the orthographic and phonological representations involved.

Repetition Blindness (RB) is the failure to recall the 2nd instance of a rapidly presented word. Five experiments investigated the orthographic and phonological representations involved in RB. Exps 1 and 2 found that the RB effect between orthographic neighbors is modulated by the relative frequency of the words, but not their absolute frequency. Exp 3 showed that the reduced RB effect between neighbors as compared with identical words is due to the reduced orthographic overlap, not to a lack of morphological or semantic overlap. Exps 4 and 5 showed that the RB effect occurs between phonologically related items, and that phonological and frequency properties of the target's orthographic neighbors affect the size of the effect. It is concluded that orthographic RB and phonological RB are sensitive to the target's neighborhood organization and arise from similar mechanisms, but at different stages of processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)