Ability and effort weights in pay level and pay increase decisions

It was hypothesized that ability, effort, and the interaction between ability and effort would influence pay level and pay increase decisions. An experiment was conducted with 66 human resource professionals to test this hypothesis. The results indicate that pay level decisions are influenced primarily by ability, and pay increase decisions are influenced primarily by the interaction between ability and effort. The results are discussed in the context of the traditional compensation model which suggests that ability should influence pay level, but not pay increase, and that effort should influence pay increase, but not pay level. It was concluded that the distinction currently being made between person and job based pay plans may not be meaningful.Portions of this paper were presented to the PHR division of the Southern Management Association, Atlanta, November, 1991.The authors wish to thank Marcia Miceli, Eileen Hogan, and Don Eskew, for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Forming attitudes that predict future behavior: a meta-analysis of the attitude-behavior relation

A meta-analysis (k of conditions = 128; N = 4,598) examined the influence of factors present at the time an attitude is formed on the degree to which this attitude guides future behavior. The findings indicated that attitudes correlated with a future behavior more strongly when they were easy to recall (accessible) and stable over time. Because of increased accessibility, attitudes more strongly predicted future behavior when participants had direct experience with the attitude object and reported their attitudes frequently. Because of the resulting attitude stability, the attitude-behavior association was strongest when attitudes were confident, when participants formed their attitude on the basis of behavior-relevant information, and when they received or were induced to think about one- rather than two-sided information about the attitude object.     

Self-rated performance and pay satisfaction,merit increase satisfaction,and instrumentality beliefs in a merit pay environment

The relationship of self-rated performance to pay level satisfaction, merit increase satisfaction, and instrumentality beliefs in a merit pay environment is investigated. Self-rated performance exhibited a significant negative relationship with all three variables beyond that accounted for by control variables. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

When autocratic leaders become an option--uncertainty and self-esteem predict implicit leadership preferences

We investigated the impact of uncertainty on leadership preferences and propose that the conjunction of self-esteem level and stability is an important moderator in this regard. Self-threatening uncertainty is aversive and activates the motivation to regain control. People with high and stable self-esteem should be confident of achieving this goal by self-determined amelioration of the situation and should therefore show a stronger preference for democratic leadership under conditions of uncertainty. By contrast, people with low and unstable self-esteem should place their trust and hope in the abilities of powerful others, resulting in a preference for autocratic leadership. Studies 1a and 1b validate explicit and implicit leadership measures and demonstrate a general prodemocratic default attitude under conditions of certainty. Studies 2 and 3 reveal a democratic reaction for individuals with stable high self-esteem and a submissive reaction for individuals with unstable low self-esteem under conditions of uncertainty. In Study 4, this pattern is cancelled out when individuals evaluate leadership styles from a leader instead of a follower perspective.     

Child care in rural areas: Needs,attitudes, and preferences

The purpose of this research was to assess the needs and preferences for child care services in rural areas. We examined data from interviews with 525 mothers of children up to 12 years of age in two southeastern states. Results indicated that, while rural mothers expressed a desire for more child care services, many were ambivalent about other-than-mother care. On the one hand, they had limited knowledge about and experience with a variety of child care arrangements; on the other hand, they could identify their preferences for types and specific features of day care they desired. These preferences were summarized to form a hypothetical "ideal type" of child care for rural mothers.     

Sweet taste preferences and experiences predict prosocial inferences, personalities, and behaviors

It is striking that prosocial people are considered "sweet" (e.g., "she's a sweetie") because they are unlikely to differentially taste this way. These metaphors aid communication, but theories of conceptual metaphor and embodiment led us to hypothesize that they can be used to derive novel insights about personality processes. Five studies converged on this idea. Study 1 revealed that people believed strangers who liked sweet foods (e.g., candy) were also higher in agreeableness. Studies 2 and 3 showed that individual differences in the preference for sweet foods predicted prosocial personalities, prosocial intentions, and prosocial behaviors. Studies 4 and 5 used experimental designs and showed that momentarily savoring a sweet food (vs. a nonsweet food or no food) increased participants' self-reports of agreeableness and helping behavior. The results reveal that an embodied metaphor approach provides a complementary but unique perspective to traditional trait views of personality.     

Help-seeking for mental health problems of children: preferences and attitudes in the United Arab Emirates

Parental attitudes, religious beliefs, and other sociocultural factors have all been recognized to influence help-seeking patterns in relation to child psychiatric morbidity. But few systematic studies have addressed this issue in the Arab region. In this study, we investigated the help-seeking preferences for mental health problems in a community sample. 325 parents contacted as part of a community-based study of child psychiatric disorders were surveyed using a semistructured interview schedule. Only 38% of those surveyed indicated they would seek help from mental health specialists in the event of psychiatric problems developing in a family member, including their children. Main reasons given for nonconsultation were reluctance to acknowledge that a member of their family has a mental illness, stigma attached to attending mental health services, and the skepticism about the usefulness of mental health services. Willingness to utilize psychiatric services was associated with better parental education, occupation, and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that sociocultural factors and parental perceptions may have a major effect on whether children with psychiatric disturbance receive professional help.     

Socioprofessional and psychological variables that predict job finding

The predictive power of socioprofessional and psychological variables on job finding was investigated with a cohort of 384 unemployed people in Luxembourg. The aim was to assess whether, in statistical profiling, some psychological variables have incremental validity over and above the more commonly used socioprofessional dimensions. For the period from 0 to 6 months and the period from 0 to 12 months, socioprofessional variables measured at the beginning of the unemployment period, allowed classification of three quarters of the subjects. Adding significant psychological dimensions did not improve the prediction in either case. Further analysis was done on persons still unemployed at 6 months (i.e. those who found it more difficult to find a job). For the period from 6 to 12 months, age and sex allowed correct classification of 62.6% of the subjects. Adding five psychological variables (openness, self-efficacy, social anxiety, symptom reduction coping, intelligence) significantly improves this percentage by 12.1 points. In the proposed model, psychological factors therefore only play a role in job finding for unemployed people who have more difficulty in finding a job. Results are discussed in terms of labour market mechanisms.     

Body size preferences and sociocultural influences on attitudes towards obesity among Moroccan Sahraoui women

The purpose of this investigation was to study body size preferences and to examine the influence of sociocultural factors on obesity among 249 Moroccan Sahraoui women. Participants rated their ideal body size and the size they thought to be “healthy,” using a figural scale consisting of nine images ranging from thin to obese. They also noted which particular sociocultural influences affected their body size ratings. The results indicated that women's rating of ideal body size (4.88) was significantly larger than their rating of healthy body size (4.33). The desire to lose weight was very low even among the majority of obese women, and educational level did not affect desire to lose weight. Women not satisfied with their body size were more likely to report trying to gain weight rather than to lose it. The major factors reported to influence body size ideal were mothers, men, and traditional clothing. It is an enormous challenge for the health institutions of Morocco to prevent obesity and its complications. Prevention programs should include teenagers and key family members.     

The role of immigrant acculturation preferences and generational status in determining majority intergroup attitudes

Two experiments (Ns = 220, 135) investigated the role of first and second generation immigrants' desire for Culture Maintenance and Intercultural Contact in affecting majority members' intergroup attitudes (2 × 2 × 2 design). Participants were presented with fictitious interviews through which immigrants' acculturation preferences and generational status were manipulated. Immigrants' desire for contact strongly affected host members' attitudes: those who were perceived to want contact elicited more favourable intergroup attitudes than those who did not. Desire for contact also moderated the relationship between immigrants' desire for culture maintenance and attitudes towards them: culture maintenance only stimulated favourable attitudes if the immigrant also expressed desire for contact. Immigrants' generational status and their desire for Culture Maintenance were found to interact, such that less favourable attitudes were shown towards second generation immigrants refusing their heritage culture. Psychological processes mediating these effects were investigated, finding evidence for symbolic threat, appreciation for multiculturalism and metastereotypes. Overall, the results suggest that both immigrants' generational status and acculturation attitudes should be taken into account when studying intergroup attitudes of dominant groups and in planning interventions for the improvement of intercultural relations.     

Implicit and explicit attitudes toward ex‐partners differentially predict breakup adjustment

The present research examined the hypothesis that positive implicit attitudes toward a former romantic partner might be detrimental to well‐being as these attitudes lead to more suffering. In a cross‐sectional study (N = 144), implicit ex‐partner attitudes measured with an Affect Misattribution Procedure were negatively related to well‐being only for those participants who had not found a new partner after breakup. In contrast, positive explicit ex‐partner attitudes were related to greater well‐being, again only for those who were still alone. Contrary to the view that time will heal all wounds, the current research suggests that engaging with a new partner will make both implicit and explicit ex‐partner attitudes irrelevant.     

Blind spots in the search for happiness: Implicit attitudes and nonverbal leakage predict affective forecasting errors

We investigated implicit knowledge and affective forecasting, reasoning that although conscious evaluations are available to people when predicting their future emotional responses, nonconscious evaluations are not. However, these automatically-activated evaluations should contribute to in-the-moment emotional experiences, and thus they should account for misforecasts (i.e., discrepancies between affective forecasts and actual experiences). We conducted two studies to explore affective misforecasts, using food items as stimuli. In Study 1, participants' implicit attitudes (but not their explicit attitudes) predicted misforecasts of food enjoyment, supporting the role of nonconscious evaluations in affective forecasting errors. In Study 2, we examined participants' facial expressions (another index of nonconscious evaluation) upon the presentation of food items, and we found that these nonverbal behaviors predicted affective misforecasts as well. In sum, although nonconscious evaluations are unavailable when anticipating the future, they may contribute to one's in-the-moment experiences and thus serve as blind spots in affective forecasting.     

Logical dynamics of some speech acts that affect obligations and preferences

In this paper, illocutionary acts of commanding will be differentiated from perlocutionary acts that affect preferences of addressees in a new dynamic logic which combines the preference upgrade introduced in DEUL (dynamic epistemic upgrade logic) by van Benthem and Liu with the deontic update introduced in ECL II (eliminative command logic II) by Yamada. The resulting logic will incorporate J. L. Austin’s distinction between illocutionary acts as acts having mere conventional effects and perlocutionary acts as acts having real effects upon attitudes and actions of agents, and help us understand why saying so can make it so in explicit performative utterances. We will also discuss how acts of commanding give rise to so-called “deontic dilemmas” and how we can accommodate most deontic dilemmas without triggering so-called “deontic explosion”.     

Employment discrimination: the role of implicit attitudes, motivation, and a climate for racial bias

This study is an attempt to replicate and extend research on employment discrimination by A. P. Brief and colleagues (A. P. Brief, J. Dietz, R. R. Cohen, S. D. Pugh, & J. B. Vaslow, 2000). More specifically, the authors attempted (a) to constructively replicate the prior finding that an explicit measure of modern racism would interact with a corporate climate for racial bias to predict discrimination in a hiring context and (b) to extend this finding through the measurement of implicit racist attitudes and motivation to control prejudice. Although the authors were unable to replicate the earlier interaction, they did illustrate that implicit racist attitudes interacted with a climate for racial bias to predict discrimination. Further, results partially illustrate that motivation to control prejudice moderates the relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes. Taken together, the findings illustrate the differences between implicit and explicit racial attitudes in predicting discriminatory behavior.     

Motivating political preferences: Concerns with promotion and prevention as predictors of public policy attitudes

Motivation is an important component of many political decision making theories. However, different definitions of motivation have led to different conclusions as to how influential motivation is on political attitudes. When motivation has been defined in terms of personal interest, its predictive value has been questioned (Sears and Funk in Advances in experimental social psychology, vol 24. Academic Press, New York, pp. 1–91, 1991); however, other motivational variables like Schwartz’ (Advances in experimental social psychology, vol 25, Academic Press, New York, pp. 1–65, 1992) values have been found to be strong predictors of such attitudes. This article investigates the influence of another type of motivational variable. Specifically, two studies examined how chronic concerns with fundamental needs for security (i.e., prevention) and growth (i.e., promotion) relate to public policy attitudes. In samples of both college students and nationally representative US households and across a variety of policy areas, stronger prevention concerns predicted support for government intervention to maintain public and personal safety, whereas stronger promotion concerns predicted support for government intervention to ensure opportunities for growth and enrichment.     

Choice and the dependability of stimuli that predict shock and safety

This study assessed whether choosing a signalled shock condition over an unsignalled one is controlled by a stimulus that predicts the presence of shock (Experiment I), or by a stimulus that predicts the absence of shock (Experiment II). The dependability of these stimuli as predictors of either the presence or the absence of shock was parametrically varied over a wide range, and subjects (rats) were given an option to change from an unsignalled to a signalled condition. In the first experiment, all shocks were preceded by signals; however, the probability of a signal being followed by shock varied from 1.0 to 0.02. The data obtained indicate that the dependability of the signal as a predictor of shock is unimportant. Rats changed to the signalled condition when the signal was completely dependable (all signals followed by shock) and when the dependability of the signal was systematically degraded. In the second experiment, all signals were followed by shock; however, some shocks were not preceded by a signal. The data show that the dependability of a stimulus predicting the absence of shock is important in that, as dependability decreases, changing to the signalled condition also decreases.     

Biological explanations and stigmatizing attitudes: using essentialism and perceived dangerousness to predict antistigma intervention effectiveness

The theory of essentialism suggests that biological explanations of stigmatized behavior may not be effective at decreasing stigmatizing attitudes. The effects of biological explanations on stigmatizing attitudes were the topic of two experiments. In the first experiment, participants (N = 243) perceived a biological explanation as a less effective in relation to dangerousness and social distancing attitudes about mental illness than about homosexuality. The second experiment (N = 113) compared the effect of biological and free choice explanations on stigmatizing attitudes about abnormal sexual and eating behaviors. The results indicated that a biological explanation increased belief in essentialism and was most effective for attitudes related to anger and blame. These results suggest that the effectiveness of biological explanations as an antistigma tool varies according to the attitude and stigmatized group.