Stability of performance: An interactionist perspective.

The stability of performance and the reliability of its measurement have long been sources of discussion and research in personnel psychology. In the present study, the long-term stability of performance was assessed within an interactionist framework. This framework indicates that an interaction between the person and the situation determines performance and, subsequently, its stability. Specifically, the stability of student ratings of faculty teaching were examined over a 6.5 yr (13 semester) interval. Results indicated that, consistent with the interactionist perspective, teaching ratings were most stable for faculty members teaching a particular course (i.e., more stable than ratings of faculty or ratings of courses). In additional analyses, the pattern of stability over time was explored; the results suggest that an asymptote is reached rapidly. Implications for criterion data collection in personnel studies are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adolescent personality as a prospective predictor of parenting: An interactionist perspective.

This study examined personality during adolescence as a predictor of later parenting of toddler-aged offspring. On the basis of empirical research on the timing of parenthood and the interactionist model (Conger & Donnellan, 2007), we examined age at parenthood and family socioeconomic status (SES) as mediators of the relation between personality and parenting. Participants were 228 emerging adults from an ongoing longitudinal study of the transition to adulthood. Later entry into parenthood and higher SES accounted for the association between personality characteristics and lower levels of harsh parenting and higher levels of positive parenting. Consistent with the interactionist model, both personality characteristics and SES-linked variables were related to interpersonal processes in families. The findings suggest that promoting adaptive personality traits during childhood and adolescence may help delay early entry into parenthood, promote higher SES, and, indirectly, foster more positive parenting of young children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adolescent classroom goals, standards for performance, and academic achievement: An interactionist perspective.

In the 1st study, correlational results from 203 high school students suggest that achievement, as indexed by grade point average (GPA), is positively related to efforts to be a successful student, be dependable and responsible, understand things, do one's very best, and get things done on time, and negatively related to trying to have fun. Student GPAs were also related to the number of goals and the unique sets of goals that students try to achieve. In the 2nd study, with a subsample of 107 students, the motivational characteristics of students that predicted GPAs did not predict Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. Findings of the 1st study suggest the potential relevance of motivation to achieve socially prescribed as well as cognitive outcomes for explaining academic performance in the classroom. The importance of studying motivation–performance relationships within context is suggested by the fact that the findings of Study 1 were not replicated when nonclassroom evaluations of performance were used as indices of academic achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An interactionist looks at the environment.

"The principle of interaction reflects… an adaptive process rather than a random encounter between inner and outer forces. This process involves a polarized accommodation of organism to environment, not only at the level of molar behavior, but in all biological functioning, of which molar behavior is one manifestation… . The most obvious need in evaluating the manifold encounter of organism and environment is a more satisfactory and systematic conceptualization of the environment." If behavior is to be "represented as a multidimensional interaction of the universes of person variables and environmental variables, psychology cannot advance productively until the environment universe is specified." Powerful analytic multivariate methods are necessary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of organizational insiders' developmental feedback and proactive personality on newcomers' performance: An interactionist perspective.

Drawing from an interactionist approach and feedback research, we examine the role of developmental feedback and proactive personality on newcomer task performance and helping behavior. Data were collected from 2 high-tech joint-ventures within the information technology and manufacturing industries located in Shanghai, China. Results based on 151 newcomer–manager dyads showed that supervisor developmental feedback (SDF) positively related to newcomer helping behavior and that SDF and coworker developmental feedback interactively predicted newcomer task performance. We also found differential moderating effects of proactive personality: SDF more strongly related to helping behavior when proactive personality was lower; conversely, coworker developmental feedback more strongly related to helping behavior when proactive personality was higher. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial asymmetry and attractiveness judgement in developmental perspective.

This study examined the role of facial symmetry in the judgment of physical attractiveness. Four experiments investigated people's preference for either somewhat asymmetrical portraits or their symmetrical chimeric composites when presented simultaneously. Experiment 1 found a higher selection rate for symmetrical faces with neutral expression for portraits of old people, and Experiment 2 indicated this may be because symmetry serves as cue for youth in old age. In Experiments 3 and 4 participants examined portraits with emotional expressions. Experiment 3 found a higher selection rate for asymmetrical faces, and Experiment 4 indicated this may be because observers perceived them as more genuine and natural. This study suggests that the low degree of facial asymmetry found in normal people does not affect attractiveness ratings (except for old age), probably because observers are not tuned to perceive it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Increasing the attractiveness of college cafeteria food: A reactance theory perspective.

Examined attitudinal effects of the elimination of a free behavior in a field experiment employing 27 female college students. Ss completed a survey, giving a rating of their cafeteria food. 9 days later they randomly received 1 of 3 communications: (a) elimination condition-eliminating their cafeteria use for 2 wks; (b) control condition-eliminating carbonated beverages; or (c) control condition-announcing a movie presentation. 5 min after receiving the communication, the Ss again completed the survey rating the cafeteria food. Only the elimination condition showed a greater positive reevaluation of the food as reflected by difference scores for the pretest and posttest ratings. Results are discussed in terms of contradictory hypotheses of J. Brehm's (1972) reactance theory and R. A. Wicklund's (l972) concept of prior exercise of behavioral freedom. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An attributional approach to counselor attractiveness.

Two components of counselor attractiveness—perceived similarity and liking—were examined in a comparison of 2 theoretical approaches to attractiveness and influence in counseling. The referent power hypothesis links both similarity and liking to the counselor's ability to influence. An attributional approach specifies instances in which counselor dissimilarity may have more informational value than similarity and thus produce greater influence. 88 undergraduates viewed videotapes of 1 of 2 female counselors purportedly either similar or dissimilar to Ss and displaying either high or low liking in her nonverbal behavior. Effects of counselor agreement or disagreement with S's opinion were assessed on measures of S's subsequent opinion and confidence in that opinion. Results indicate that opinion change was a function of counselor disagreement, and confidence change was a function of counselor dissimilarity. The dissimilar counselor was as influential as the similar counselor but had a greater impact on Ss' confidence. Counselor nonverbal behavior produced differential perceptions but was unrelated to influence. Findings support the attributional approach over the reference power hypothesis. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational psychology in the 1980s: A Canadian perspective.

Reviews research in organizational psychology (OP) conducted by Canadians and/or at Canadian institutions. Some of the major issues faced by organizational psychologists are identified. Discussion focuses on 2 major themes. First, although Canadians have made substantial contributions to the field of OP, there is a need for more research focusing on issues unique to Canadian organizations and employees. Second, much of the research in OP is being conducted in schools of business. Only recently have programs in industrial/organizational psychology been developed in departments of psychology. Given the nature of OP, there may be many benefits to collaborative efforts in research and training. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissent: An intergroup perspective.

Dissent is an essential process in human groups and organizations, though one having received little attention in the social psychological and organizational literature. This paper proposes an intergroup perspective on dissent. Dissent is defined as the assertion by a lower power group that a higher power group has come to believe that its partial, bounded views of the world are complete and universal. It is a protest against the higher power group's isolation from the experience of the other groups in its organizational environment, groups on which it depends and who in turn depend upon it. Three case examples are presented to illustrate this perspective. The paper concludes with a set of principles for consulting to organization members on effectively expressing and working with dissent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Flexible leadership: An integrative perspective.

The notion that leaders are more effective if they can flex their leadership style to deal with shifting priorities, problems, and situations is receiving an increasing amount of attention from consulting psychologists and applied researchers alike. I discuss how flexible leadership is defined with a variety of concepts in the literature and emphasized in the articles in the special issue of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research on Developing Flexible and Adaptive Leaders for an Age of Uncertainty (Kaiser, 2010, this issue). By integrating the views of the previous authors, I present flexible leadership as a metacompetency that subsumes multiple, more narrowly defined, components (e.g., a wide behavioral repertoire, a learning orientation to develop it, an ability to remain open to learning in novel situations). A model for applying this conception of flexible leadership is discussed followed by suggestions for further research to help consulting psychologists use these ideas in their practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Human memory: An adaptive perspective.

It was argued that the basic principles of operation of human memory can be understood as an optimization to the information-retrieval task that human memory faces. Basically, memory is using the statistics derived from past experience to predict what memories are currently relevant. It was shown that the effects of frequency, recency, and spacing of practice can be predicted from the statistical properties of information use. The effects of memory prompts, cues, and primes can be predicted on the assumption that memory is estimating which knowledge will be needed from past statistics about interitem associations. This analysis was extended to account for fan effects. Memory strategies were analyzed as external to the process of statistical optimization. Memory strategies are attempts to manipulate the statistics of information presentation to influence the optimal solution derived from memory. The classic buffer-rehearsal model for free recall is analyzed as a strategy to manipulate the statistics of information presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An additional perspective.

Comments on the multifemale-authored article by G. M. Pion et al (see record 83-32706) concerning the shifting gender composition within the discipline of psychology. The author argues that although the analysis by Pion et al is a formidable accumulation of data, its analysis ignored earlier influences. Hewes offers an additional perspective from her personal experience as to why the majority of tenured professors have been men, and states that only in the last 2 decades, when these positions opened up, have women been able to move into the system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward an interactionist taxonomy of personality and situations: An integrative situational—dispositional representation of personality traits.

This article has 2 goals: first, to present and test a hierarchical representation of personality that jointly incorporates both situational and personality (e.g., Big Five) factors into a trait conception, and second, to explicate the dimensions along which situations differ in their effect on responses, providing the conceptual and empirical groundwork for the development of a joint taxonomy of traits and situations. A study of the effects of situational differences on trait self-reports indicated that conscientiousness and agreeableness can be represented hierarchically, with lower levels jointly constrained by both personality content and situational breadth. This representation establishes a methodological framework allowing for the explanation of the ways that situations interact with personality to affect responses. Implications of this representation for personality theory and prediction to and from personality inventories are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Symbolic interactionist view of self-concept: Through the looking glass darkly.

Reviews research on the relationship between self-perceptions and evaluations from other people. Studies of naturalistic interactions indicate that people's self-perceptions agree substantially with the way they perceive themselves as being viewed by others. However, there is no consistent agreement between people's self-perceptions and how they are actually viewed by others. There is no clear indication that self-evaluations are influenced by the feedback received from others in naturally occurring situations. When feedback from others is manipulated experimentally, self-perceptions are usually changed. However, methodological limitations such as the questionable external validity and strong demand characteristics of the experimental situations employed make the significance of these findings unclear. The available evidence is examined within a framework that considers the transmission, processing, and evaluation of judgments from others. Other means by which interaction may influence self-perceptions aside from direct evaluative feedback are considered. (4? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Love and work: An attachment-theoretical perspective.

The possibility that love and work in adulthood are functionally similar to attachment and exploration in infancy and early childhood was investigated. Key components of attachment theory were translated into terms appropriate to adult love and work. The translation centered on the 3 major types of infant attachment and exploration identified by M. D. S. Ainsworth et al (1978): secure, anxious/ambivalent, and avoidant. Two questionnaire studies indicated that relations between adult attachment type and work orientation are similar to attachment/exploration dynamics in infancy and early childhood, suggesting that the dynamics may be similar across the life span. Implications for research on the link between love and work are discussed, as are measurement problems and other issues related to future tests of an attachment-theoretical approach to the study of adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Women and psychology: An international perspective.

This article examines the status of women in psychology internationally. Earlier research is reviewed and compared with recent findings, including a survey responded to by 40 individuals from countries around the world. Although improvements for women have been noted in many areas, problem of sexism and antifeminism still exist. The importance of comparative analyses across countries because of increasing worldwide interaction among psychologists is noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A personality trait-based interactionist model of job performance.

Evidence for situational specificity of personality job performance relations calls for better understanding of how personality is expressed as valued work behavior. On the basis of an interactionist principle of trait activation (R. P. Tett & H. A. Guterman, 2000), a model is proposed that distinguishes among 5 situational features relevant to trait expression (job demands, distracters, constraints, releasers, and facilitators), operating at task, social, and organizational levels. Trait-expressive work behavior is distinguished from (valued) job performance in clarifying the conditions favoring personality use in selection efforts. The model frames linkages between situational taxonomies (e.g., J. L. Holland's [1985] RIASEC model) and the Big Five and promotes useful discussion of critical issues, including situational specificity, personality-oriented job analysis, team building, and work motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)