Attributional Style and Engagement/Disengagement Responses in the Chinese Workforce

Internal attribution for bad events, along with stable and global attributions, has been regarded as a component of pessimism, a precursor of negative work outcomes. Most evidence in support of this conceptualisation has come from research conducted in individualist cultures. We questioned if internal attribution has the same pessimistic implication in a collectivist culture. Findings from two studies conducted on Chinese employees supported our expectations that the stability and globality dimensions (but not the internality dimension) would predict disengagement responses (such as quitting and being neglectful at work) and lack of engagement responses (such as voicing suggestions and being loyal to the organisation). A reconceptualisation of pessimism in the workplace is therefore necessary. A dimensional, rather than a composite, scoring method is proposed for maintaining the predictive and construct validities of attributional style as an indicator of pessimism.     

Audience Design in Multiparty Conversation

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3–4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group.     

Social Cognition in Paediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Recent evidence suggests social cognitive deficits may be among the most profound and disabling consequences of childhood traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, it is only...     

The phenomenon of the tip of the tongue in aging

This paper presents new data on the tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon and its resolution in aging. 140 volunteers ranging from 19 to 82 years participated in an experiment using definitions about common names, proper names, adjectives and verbs to elicit TOTs. We studied the resolution of the TOTs introducing a free word-recall task and a priming task. Older adults experienced more TOTs than younger adults regardless of the level of vocabulary. Phonological priming, and not free recall of words, improved resolution for the older adults. The results are discussed in relation to the theory of the transmission deficit.     

Ruin,Repair, and Responsibility

'Ruin, Repair, and Responsibility' explores and Arendtean conceptualization of the three and their interrelations. At issue is how to understand (a) ruin in its socio-historical specificity but also in terms of what it is that breaks down in the weave of human relations, (b) the possibility or impossibility of repair, and (c) what responsibility may mean when repair is impossible since the very conditions for its possibility have been destroyed.     

Contextual Integration in Multiparty Audience Design

Communicating with multiple addressees poses a problem for speakers: Each addressee necessarily comes to the conversation with a different perspective—different knowledge, different beliefs, and a distinct physical context. Despite the ubiquity of multiparty conversation in everyday life, little is known about the processes by which speakers design language in multiparty conversation. While prior evidence demonstrates that speakers design utterances to accommodate addressee knowledge in multiparty conversation, it is unknown if and how speakers encode and combine different types of perspective information. Here we test whether speakers encode the perspective of multiple addressees, and then simultaneously consider their knowledge and physical context during referential design in a three‐party conversation. Analyses of referential form—expression length, disfluency, and elaboration rate—in an interactive multiparty conversation demonstrate that speakers do take into consideration both addressee knowledge and physical context when designing utterances, consistent with a knowledge‐scene integration view. These findings point to an audience design process that takes as input multiple types of representations about the perspectives of multiple addressees, and that bases the informational content of the to‐be‐designed utterance on a combination of the perspectives of the intended addressees.     

Politics and Prioritization of Evil

In this essay I question an assumption of Card's, which seems to place the (Kantian'style) ethical in a directive relationship with respect to the political. I call attention to the rupture between the two as a marker of modernity and suggest that the political is not only a sphere of power but also a value‐sedimented field, with the values in question developing historically as in the case of liberal democracy.     

Resting on laurels: the effects of discrete progress markers as subgoals on task performance and preferences

This article investigates the influence of progress certainty and discrete progress markers (DPMs) on performance and preferences. The authors suggest that the effects of DPMs depend on whether progress certainty is high or low. When the distance to the goal is uncertain, DPMs can help reduce uncertainty and thus improve performance and increase preference. However, when the distance to the goal is certain, DPMs may generate complacency, sway motivation away from the end goal, and decrease performance in the task, as well as its appeal. Therefore, the addition of more information, feedback, or progress indicators may not always improve task performance and preference for the task. The authors validate these claims in 4 experiments.     

Effects of varying numbers of Likert scale points on factor structure of the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale

Likert‐type rating scales are among the most widely used tools in psychological research. Different numbers of response categories would likely affect response style, data distribution, reliability, and construct validity. There is a lack of research in factor structure invariance under Likert scales with different numbers of categories. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of varying numbers of Likert points (4–11) on scale properties such as factor structure, external validity, and latent means based on the Rosenberg Self‐Esteem Scale (M. Rosenberg, 1989 ). The sample consists of 1,807 students from secondary schools in Macau. Confirmatory factor analysis shows that the correlated two‐factor model is the most appropriate one; longitudinal invariance analysis reveals that measurement invariance across Likert scales was satisfied at the scalar level. In addition, latent mean scores on the two factors as well as observed means on the subscales are comparable across Likert scales. Moreover, the measurement model across Likert scales exhibit similar external validity. Although psychometric properties are mostly similar among a different number of points, the 4‐point Likert scale is not recommended for its higher skewness and lower loadings; the 11‐point Likert scale from 0 to 10 is slightly preferred for its higher loadings and composite reliability.