Maintaining an open mind to closed individuals: The effect of resource availability and leadership style on the association between openness to experience and organizational commitment

This paper examines whether workplace characteristics, particularly resource availability and transformational leadership, moderate the association between openness to experience and organizational commitment. In Study 1, 205 employees completed a questionnaire that assessed their openness, organizational commitment, and perceived availability of resources at their organization. Openness reduced the extent to which individuals felt obliged to remain loyal to the organization, although this association diminished as resources became more accessible. In Study 2, 312 employees completed a similar questionnaire that also gauged the perceived leadership style of their supervisors. Transformational leadership amplified the positive relationship between openness and organizational commitment. These findings align with the proposition that individuals are more committed in work environments that facilitate the expression of their traits.     

Inequality as ingroup privilege or outgroup disadvantage: the impact of group focus on collective guilt and interracial attitudes

Among members of privileged groups, social inequality is often thought of in terms of the disadvantages associated with outgroup membership. Yet inequality also can be validly framed in terms of ingroup privilege. These different framings have important psychological and social implications. In Experiment 1 (N = 110), White American participants assessed 24 statements about racial inequality framed as either White privileges or Black disadvantages. In Experiment 2 (N = 122), White participants generated examples of White privileges or Black disadvantages. In both experiments, a White privilege framing resulted in greater collective guilt and lower racism compared to a Black disadvantage framing. Collective guilt mediated the manipulation's effect on racism. In addition, in Experiment 2, a White privilege framing decreased White racial identification compared to a Black disadvantage framing. These findings suggest that representing inequality in terms of outgroup disadvantage allows privileged group members to avoid the negative psychological implications of inequality and supports prejudicial attitudes.     

When openness to experience and conscientiousness are related to creative behavior: an interactional approach.

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behavior when the situation allows for the manifestation of the trait influences. More specifically, the authors hypothesized that openness to experience would result in high levels of creative behavior if feedback valence were positive and job holders were presented with a heuristic task that allowed them to be creative. The authors also hypothesized that conscientiousness would result in low levels of creative behavior if supervisors engaged in close monitoring and coworkers were unsupportive. The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of office workers, and 5 out of the 6 hypotheses were supported.     

An affirmed self and an open mind: Self-affirmation and sensitivity to argument strength

Self-affirmation seems to enable an individual to objectively evaluate information that would otherwise evoke a defensive reaction. If this objectivity reflects freedom from self-evaluative concerns, affirmation should sensitize people to central cues of a persuasive message, like argument strength. If affirmation simply induces agreeableness or trivializes the issue, affirmed participants should not particularly heed argument strength. Affirmed and non-affirmed participants rated the persuasiveness of pro- and counterattitudinal arguments that varied in strength. Among participants who rated their attitudes as personally important, self-affirmation decreased bias and increased sensitivity to argument strength, as predicted by self-affirmation theory.     

The impact of college experience on political and social attitudes

In the last two decades a considerable volume of research has focused on how the college experience affects students. The purpose of the research reported here was to investigate to what extent students (predominantly Caucasian) at a highly selective university on the East coast changed their political and social attitudes during college. In particular, the influences of religious background, gender, membership in a fraternity or sorority, and time in college on attitudes were examined. Results indicated that students as seniors scored higher on measures of liberalism, social conscience, homosexuality tolerance and feminist attitudes and lower on male-dominant attitudes than they did as first year students. Given the lack of previous studies of change in attitudes toward homosexuality in college and the current political debate about issues relating to sexual orientation, an important finding was the substantial increase in tolerance of homosexuality by all subgroups. Results are discussed with respect to the special characteristics and potential influence of Ivy League students.Research for this paper was funded in part by grants from the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation and the National Institute of Justice (Grant NIJ 89-IJ-CX-0048, Assessment and Evaluation of SMART and Related Programs, Robert Boruch, PI). Opinions expressed in it are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent official views of the University of Pennsylvania or NIJ.     

Why most people disapprove of me: experience sampling in impression formation

Individuals are typically more likely to continue to interact with people if they have a positive impression of them. This article shows how this sequential sampling feature of impression formation can explain several biases in impression formation. The underlying mechanism is the sample bias generated when the probability of interaction depends on current impressions. Because negative experiences decrease the probability of interaction, negative initial impressions are more stable than positive impressions. Negative initial impressions, however, are more likely to change for individuals who are frequently exposed to others. As a result, systematic differences in interaction patterns, due to social similarity or proximity, will produce systematic differences in impressions. This mechanism suggests an alternative explanation of several regularities in impression formation, including a negativity bias in impressions of outgroup members, systematic differences in performance evaluations, and more positive evaluations of proximate others.     

You're getting warmer: Level of construal affects the impact of central traits on impression formation

Construal Level Theory argues that psychologically distant information will be processed conceptually, while psychologically near information will be processed concretely. Such theorizing implies that in the classic Asch (1946) paradigm in which participants make trait judgments of targets after viewing lists of trait words describing the targets, the words “warm” and “cold” should have more impact on impressions when targets are psychologically distant than when they are psychologically near. Results from two studies, indeed, found that the “warm–cold” effect reported by Asch was moderated by psychological distance. We interpret these findings as providing support both for the idea that the processes used to form impression of others can vary across situations and they do so in accord with the tenets of Construal Level Theory.     

Learning social attitudes: children's sensitivity to the nonverbal behaviors of adult models during interracial interactions

White children show marked ingroup race preferences and a relative devaluation of Black people. The origin of these early interracial attitudes is to a large extent still unclear. The studies here test the possibility that preschool-aged children are particularly sensitive to the nonverbal behaviors performed by White adults during interracial interactions. In Study 1, children were shown a video displaying an interaction between a White and a Black adult. Across conditions, the White adult's verbal behaviors were either friendly or neutral, whereas his nonverbal behaviors showed either easiness (e.g., closeness, high eye contact) or uneasiness (e.g., distance, avoidance of eye contact). Results revealed that participants shaped their attitudes toward the Black target accordingly, independently from the White adults' verbal behaviors. Study 2 replicated the basic findings and demonstrated that the observed effects generalized to other Black targets. Results are discussed in relation to current approaches to understanding the formation of racial attitudes among children.     

Dream recall frequency and openness to experience: a negative finding

The question of whether personality dimensions explain the interindividual differences in dream recall frequency has often been investigated by dream researchers. Previous research has shown that traits such as absorption, hypnotic susceptibility and thin boundaries which are related to the openness-to-experience factor of the Five-Factor-Model of personality correlate substantially with dream recall frequency. The present study, however, was unable to demonstrate a relationship between openness and the six facet scales and dream recall frequency. It may be hypothesized that other factors such as visual memory, sleep behavior or creativity explain the interindividual differences in dream recall.     

Computer-assisted communication and team decision-making performance: the moderating effect of openness to experience

This study examined the effects of computer-assisted communication on team decision-making performance as a function of the team's openness to experience. Seventy-nine teams performing a multiple-cue probability learning task were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 experimental conditions: (a) verbal communication or (b) computer-assisted communication (which combined verbal and computerized communication). The results indicated that access to computer-assisted communication improved the decision-making performance of teams, but only when the teams were high in openness to experience. This effect was observed using both global openness and more specific openness facets, as well as a variety of team-level aggregation strategies. Moreover, the beneficial effects of openness in computer-assisted conditions were mediated by the efficiency with which teams integrated verbal and computerized forms of communication.     

The closed mind: ‘Experience’ and ‘cognition’ aspects of openness to experience and need for closure as psychological bases for right‐wing attitudes

Openness to Experience and Need for Closure (NFC) are dispositional variables related to social‐cultural right‐wing attitudes. The present study investigated their joint effects. Factor analysis revealed an ‘experiential’ dimension with high loading openness items, and a ‘cognition’ dimension with high loadings for most NFC items and about a quarter of the openness item set. The experiential openness items were weakly related to right‐wing attitudes, demonstrating little predictive value. Conversely, the cognitive openness and NFC items were powerful predictors of right‐wing attitudes, and also played an important role in integrative models, both as a predictor of authoritarianism‐based racism and as a mediator of age related increments in right‐wing attitudes. It is concluded that right‐wing attitudes should be primarily understood in terms of (motivated) cognition, and to a smaller extent in terms of experiential openness. The distinction between ‘experiential’ and ‘cognitive’ openness is critically assessed, and it is asserted that because cognition is a multifaceted construct openness contains more than one cognitive dimension. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When beauty isn't talent: The influence of physical attractiveness,attitudes toward women,and competence on impression formation

The present study investigated the effect of attitudes toward women, physical attractiveness, and competence on impression formation of women. Male and female undergraduates read a competent or incompetent essay allegedly written by a physically attractive or unattractive female and responded to questions about the essay and its writer. Subjects were classified as traditionals, moderates, or liberals on the basis of their scores on the Attitudes Toward Women Scale. Female subjects' impressions were affected by the competence of the stimulus person and by their sex-role attitudes, but were not influenced by the physical attractiveness of the writer. Males, however, were influenced by all three variables. Evidence was found for a reversal of the physical attractiveness stereotype for liberal males with reference to incompetent women. The implications of these findings for physical attractiveness research are discussed.The authors wish to express their appreciation to Walter Stephan, Judith Langlois, Janet Spence, and Richard Archer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Thanks are also due to Richard Roberson for assistance in data collection.     

Effects of guided immune-imagery: The moderating influence of openness to experience

It is widely believed that personality has an important role in determining the effectiveness of guided imagery (GI) interventions. The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether the effect of GI on several outcome measures was dependent upon openness to experience, a theoretically relevant variable previously unexplored as a potential moderator. Thirty-five healthy participants were randomised to an animated imagery, verbal imagery or no-intervention control group, with imagery groups receiving 10 × 20 min sessions. Pre/post-assessments of cortisol, sleep, stress and creativity were administered along with the openness to experience scale. Regression analysis indicated a significant increase in cortisol and decrease in tiredness following verbal GI, but only for those high in openness. The efficacy of GI interventions may be dependent upon openness to experience and this variable should be accounted for in future studies.     

Influence of profession on impression formation: Polarization and contrast

In the present study it was investigated how information about the profession affects the judgment of a person characterized by traits. Two main effects in judgments of likeability were found. More responsible professions produce a lower overall mean of judgments (contrast effect) and more polarized judgments than less responsible professions do. Additionally, an interaction of these effects with the scale value of the traits could be found. For higher scale values a striking difference between the polarization scores for more and less responsible professions was obtained, whereas for lower scale values this difference was small. To obtain more insight into the process underlying the influence of profession response probabilities were analysed using psychometric functions. Two mechanisms seem to mediate this influence: Firstly, the acceptability of the person to be judged is integrated as a peripheral dimension together with the likeability as a focal dimension into a decision continuum. Secondly, a neutral point of the function representing the relation between acceptability and likeability is integrated into an internal standard the value of the decision continuum is to be compared with. The analogy of findings in attitude research is discussed.     

Joint factors in self-reports and ratings: Neuroticism,extraversion and openness to experience

Although most dimensional theories of personality assume that the same traits can be assessed in either ratings or self-reports, joint factor analyses of data from these two methods have seldom provided clear evidence in support of this position. Previous analyses have found a preponderance of within-method factors, or have had to transform variables or use unorthodox rotational procedures in order to control the effects of method variance. The present study argues that recent conceptual and technical advances should now make it possible to show joint factors at the second-order level using standard factor techniques. The NEO Inventory and NEO Rating Form, which measure 18 traits in the domains of Neuroticism, Extraversion and Openness to Experience, were administered to a sample of 281 men and women. Varimax rotation of three principal components clearly showed the hypothesized structure within and across self-reports and spouse ratings. Convergent and discriminant validity of the joint factors with the EPI scales was also shown. The results suggest that the effects of method variance can be minimized if well-qualified raters use psychometrically adequate instruments to provide ratings of clearly conceptualized traits. In addition, they provide strong evidence for the validity of the proposed three-domain model of personality.     

Why schema-violations are sometimes preferable to schema-consistencies: The role of interest and openness to experience

We investigated the appraisal processes and personality antecedents that regulate people’s attraction to schema-violations - targets and objects that disconfirm schema- and stereotype-based expectancies. In two studies a preference for schema-violations (vs. consistencies) correlated positively with openness to experience, and negatively with the need for structure. In the second study, schema-violations were seen as more surprising (by all individuals), decreasing intentions to approach schema-violations, but were also seen as more interesting (by those higher in openness to experience), increasing intentions to approach and accept schema-violations. This suggests that two opposing processes - appraisals of surprise and appraisals of interest - regulate reactions to schema-violations, and that these processes are bounded by individual differences in openness to experience.