A FURTHER TEST OF A MODEL OF SELF-REFLECTION WITH CHILDREN AGES 10 AND 11

The hypothesis that self and others will be assigned to the same poles of bipolar constructs (e.g., generous - stingy ) with a relative frequency of 0.625, and three related predictions derived from Adams-Webber's (1997) model of self-reflection, were tested with a sample of 163 children (88 girls, 75 boys) ranging in age from 10 to 11. All participants completed repertory grids in which they evaluated themselves and 11 personal acquaintances on the basis of 12 bipolar constructs. The results for children aged 11 were consistent with all of the predictions of the model and with previous findings for older participants; however, those for 10-year-old children showed several significant differences with possible developmental implications in terms of personal construct theory.     

PROTOTYPICALITY OF SELF AND EVALUATING OTHERS IN TERMS OF "FUZZY" CONSTRUCTS

A repertory grid was administered individually to 39 Canadian undergraduates in which they rated 11 personal acquaintances on a scale from 1 to 5 on each of 12 bipolar constructs (e.g., generous-stingy). The degree of confidence expressed by these participants concerning their own self-ratings across constructs correlated positively with the extent to which they differentiated among their acquaintances in terms of the same constructs ( r s = 0.49, p < 0.005) and also with how definitely they rated them ( r s = 0.42, p < 0.02). It was hypothesized that the contrasting poles of personal constructs represent "fuzzy sets" without distinct logical boundaries and the self can function as a prototype to which information about others is compared in evaluating them on the basis of each construct.     

PROTOTYPICALITY OF SELF AND DIFFERENTIATING AMONG OTHERS IN TERMS OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS

Bipolar constructs were elicited individually from each of 53 participants. They evaluated themselves dichotomously on every construct, and then indicated on a scale of 1 to 10 their degree of confidence in each of their self-evaluations. Participants also rated 10 personal acquaintances from 1 to 5 on every construct. Their degree of confidence concerning their own self-evaluations across constructs correlated significantly with the extent to which they differentiated among their acquaintances in terms of the same constructs (r = 0.53, p < 0.0001), and with how definitely (i.e., extremely) they rated them (r = 0.65, p < 0.0001). It was argued that the contrasting poles of personal constructs represent fuzzy sets without distinct logical boundaries and the self can function as a prototype to which information about others is compared in evaluating them on the basis of each construct.     

Positive-negative asymmetry and bipolar contrast

Abstract

Repertory grids in which personal acquaintances were evaluated on the basis of bipolar constructs (e.g., generous-stingy) were completed by 58 undergraduates. A “person format”, with all constructs applied to each acquaintance in turn, was assigned randomly to 29 students; a “construct format”, in which these acquaintances were evaluated successively on only 1 construct at a time, was assigned to the other 29. The relative frequency of positive evaluations in the construct format grids (0.62) was consistent with the golden section hypothesis, whereas that in the person format grids (0.66) was significantly higher. Theoretical implications of these findings were discussed in terms of H. Frank's (1964) theoretical definition of strikingness and V. A. Lefebvre's (1990) computational model of reflexion.     

Constructing and measuring self-esteem

Abstract

The concept of self-esteem is examined as it relates to the theory and practice of personal construct psychology (PCP). William James's two perspectives on the self, as a knower and as an object of knowledge, are related to two PCP perspectives, the self as a construct and the self as an element. Various PCP concepts, such as core role constructs, range of convenience, and emergent poles, are interpreted in regard to self-esteem. Methods for changing self-constructions to enhance self-esteem are also described. A modified repertory grid format is recommended for the study of self-esteem, one that uses positive experiences as grid elements instead of people who fit selected roles.     

Construct polysemy and the virtues of acquaintances

Empirical evidence and theoretical arguments seem to support the hypothesis that, on average, people assign aquaintances to the positive poles of constructs 62% of the time; these studies have focused on the mean proportion of positive judgments when collapsed across acquaintances and constructs. The present study examined the distribution of these virtues among acquaintances and constructs. Results indicated that: (a) closer acquaintances were assigned to the positive poles of constructs more frequently than comparatively distant acquaintances; (b) subjects assigned positive qualities to closer acquaintances more frequently on constructs with fewer alternative meanings, whereas the opposite relation was observed for distant acquaintances. These findings suggest that people are oriented toward formulating an unambiguous construction of the virtuous disposition of their closer acquaintances.     

Personality information: Does it influence attractiveness ratings of various body sizes?

In the present study, the influence of personality information on attractiveness ratings of different body sizes was examined. Specifically, participants were presented with either no personality information, negative information, or positive information about a hypothetical female target and asked to rate the smallest and largest figure that they would consider attractive for her using a figure rating scale. Consistent with the study hypotheses: (1) participants chose a wider range of figures as attractive for a female described to have a positive personality when compared to the range chosen when no personality information was provided; (2) females selected wider attractive ranges than males; and (3) other participant characteristics (i.e., physical appearance anxiety and body mass) were found to predict attractive ranges selected by participants. These findings may have implications for the treatment of body-image disturbance, as the findings suggest that personality, rather than appearance alone, may be a factor in perceptions of attractiveness of various body sizes.     

Using Drawings to Elicit Nonverbal Constructs in Experiential Personal Construct Psychotherapy

Clients who have experienced psychological wounds prior to the use of language frequently struggle to articulate and make sense of their core constructs around self and others. These early wounds can have a significant influence on future relational interactions, even though they may be experienced at a nonverbal level. While eliciting these preverbal constructs may be essential to the healing process, without verbal representation the therapeutic task can be difficult. In this article, we will discuss the use of symbolism within personal construct psychology as well as the use of drawings as representations of nonverbal constructs. We will then discuss experiential personal construct psychotherapy and its focus on the ways we both connect and disconnect from others. Finally, we will present Kristen, a therapy client who experienced early relational wounds and increasingly dissociated in response to relational stress as she matured. Kristen's work in therapy around her fragmented sense of self included drawing her internal self-parts. Only then was she able to wrap words around that which she previously experienced nonverbally. In this case study, Kristen's drawings and her core constructs as elicited during four years of therapy will be presented and discussed.     

Cookies,Disposition, and Job Attitudes: The Effects of Positive Mood-Inducing Events and Negative Affectivity on Job Satisfaction in a Field Experiment

Reasoning from findings in a variety of literatures, three hypotheses were advanced: (1) negative affectivity (NA), a disposition to experience aversive emotional states, is associated negatively with job satisfaction; (2) positive mood-inducing events at the time of questionnaire administration increases job satisfaction; and (3) NA and positive mood-inducing events interact such that the effects on job satisfaction of positive events are weaker among high NA individuals than it is among low NAs. Support was obtained for all three hypotheses among a sample of 57 hospital workers randomly assigned to attend on-site questionnaire administration sessions at which small gifts (e.g., cookies) were or were not distributed. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the need to broaden further theoretical perspectives on job satisfaction. More generally, they also are discussed in reference to the study of the effects of NA and mood on judgments.     

The Investment Model Scale: Measuring commitment level,satisfaction level,quality of alternatives,and investment size

Three studies evaluated the reliability and validity of the Investment Model Scale, an instrument designed to measure four constructs, including commitment level and three bases of dependence–satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size. In all three studies, reliability analyses revealed good internal consistency among items designed to measure each construct. Also, principal components analyses performed on scale items revealed evidence of four factors, with items designed to measure each construct loading on independent factors. Studies 2 and 3 examined associations of model variables with instruments measuring diverse qualities of relationships and assorted personal dispositions. As anticipated, Investment Model variables were moderately associated with other measures reflecting superior couple functioning (e.g., dyadic adjustment, trust level, inclusion of other in the self), and were essentially unrelated to measures assessing personal dispositions (e.g., need for cognition, self-esteem). In addition, Study 3 demonstrated that earlier measures of Investment Model variables predicted later levels of dyadic adjustment and later relationship status (persisted vs. ended). It is hoped that the existence of a reliable and valid Investment Model Scale will promote further research regarding commitment and interdependence in ongoing close relationships.     

Making sense of agency: Belief in free will as a unique and important construct

Belief in free will is the general belief that human behavior is free from internal and external constraints across situations for both self and others. In the last decade, scholars in social‐cognitive psychology and experimental philosophy have made progress in defining free will terms, exploring how laypersons think of free will, discovering related cognitive processes and biases, and examining the behavioral outcomes of believing in free will. The growing interest in this construct raises the need for a discussion of what is new about free will beliefs, and how this construct differs from and relates to other well‐known agency constructs in the literature. In this review, we integrate conceptual discussions and empirical findings in the existing literature to highlight the belief in free will as a separate and important construct, different from existing constructs in the literature, and capturing unique aspects of agency. We conclude by calling researchers to recognize these differences and to leverage the potential in the construct of the belief in free will as a predictor of cognition and behavior.     

CONTINGENCIES IN THE EFFECTS OF PAY RANGE ON ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

The degree of pay spread can influence many organizational level outcomes (e.g., workforce productivity and organizational performance), but empirical studies are inconsistent about the directionality of the effect. We argue that it is not simply the width of the pay range but also the factors responsible for the width that explain the effects of the pay range on employee and organizational outcomes. We expect that when wider pay ranges are attributable to the use of performance-based pay, the effects of the pay range on performance are positive, but narrower pay ranges attributable to performance-based pay reduce this effect substantially. By contrast, wider pay ranges attributable to politically based pay should have negative effects on performance, and this effect should be weakened when the pay ranges are narrower. Data from a sample of motor carriers generally support our predictions. Although wider pay ranges have positive effects, the results reveal a complex pattern of relationships among the basis of pay allocations and pay range width on the one hand and workforce productivity and organizational performance on the other. Implications for future compensation and strategic human resource management research are discussed.     

THE "RANGE OF CONVENIENCE" OF PERSONAL CONSTRUCTS AND CONFIDENCE IN EVALUATING SELF

In two independent experiments, participants evaluated themselves dichotomously on bipolar constructs, and also indicated on a scale of 1 to 10 their degree of confidence in the validity of each of their own self-evaluations. They also rank-ordered the constructs in terms of their relative "usefulness for understanding people." The same 12 constructs were supplied to all 40 participants in the first experiment (e.g., generous-stingy), whereas 10 constructs were elicited individually from each of 53 participants in the second one. A significant correlation was found between construct rankings and participants' degree of confidence in their own self-evaluations across both elicited (r = 0.76) and supplied (r = 0.80) constructs. Participants using elicited constructs expressed significantly more confidence in their self-evaluations than did participants using supplied constructs. These findings were interpreted within the framework of Kelly's (1955) personal construct theory.     

Understanding and using the implicit association test: V. measuring semantic aspects of trait self‐concepts

Implicit Association Tests (IATs) often reveal strong associations of self with positive rather than negative attributes. This poses a problem in using the IAT to measure associations involving traits with either positive or negative evaluative content. In two studies, we employed non‐bipolar but evaluatively balanced Big Five traits as attribute contrasts and explored correlations of IATs with positive (e.g. sociable vs. conscientious) or negative (e.g. reserved vs. chaotic) attributes. Results showed (a) satisfactory internal consistencies for all IATs, (b) explicit–explicit and implicit–implicit correlations that were moderate to high and comparable in strength after both were corrected for attenuation and (c) better model fit for latent variable models that linked the implicit and explicit measures to distinct latent factors rather to the same factor. Together, the results suggest that IATs can validly assess the semantic aspect of trait self‐concepts and that implicit and explicit self‐representations are, although correlated, also distinct constructs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Antecedents of consumers' citizenship behaviour towards organic foods

Within the consumer behaviour literature, there has been little research on factors that influence customers' choices for organic foods. This study investigates three aspects of the Taiwanese organic food market. The first aspect considers how argument quality, source credibility, and social comparison affect consumer‐social venture identification. The second aspect examines how identity attractiveness, social media engagement, and self‐determination affect personal relevance. The third and final aspect investigates how consumer‐social venture identification and personal relevance influence customer citizenship behaviour. The results show that consumer‐social venture identification and personal relevance have significant and positive effects on customer citizenship behaviour. Furthermore, argument quality, source credibility, and social comparison all have significant and positive effects on consumer‐social venture identification. Finally, identity attractiveness, social media engagement, and self‐determination have significant and positive effects on personal relevance. This study makes three contributions regarding consumers' behaviour of purchasing organic foods. First, it explores whether consumer‐social venture identification and personal relevance are antecedents of customer citizenship behaviour. Second, it investigates whether argument quality, source credibility, and social comparison are antecedents of consumer‐social venture identification. Last, it examines whether identity attractiveness, social media engagement, and self‐determination are antecedents of personal relevance. The practical implications of this study indicate that firms must pay more attention to consumers' information search/sharing and perceptions of a credible environment for sharing information and their awareness about healthy items and personal images on social networking sites.     

Negativity in psychotherapists' evaluations of clients and personal acquaintances

Forty-seven psychotherapists were studied to determine if they construed their clients more negatively than personal acquaintances. The sample included personal construct therapists, psychoanalytic candidates, and therapists from a community mental health center; they varied in terms of sex, age, years of experience, and clinical discipline. Subjects chose six personal acquaintances and six nonpsychotic individual-therapy clients who were then used as elements in a repertory grid. Constructs were elicited by comparing pairs of elements; all elements were rated on the constructs. Elements were also directly rated on several dimensions, including liking and similarity to self. Results indicated that therapists selectively focused on clients' negative characteristics and acquaintances' positive characteristics. Clients were liked less than acquaintances and were judged to be less like the self. The correlations between valuative variables tended to be higher in the construing of clients than in the construing of acquaintances, whereas expected improvement with therapy was not related to affective evaluation. There were no gender differences in these effects. Although there were no differences in degree of negative construal of clients among the therapist subgroups, the psychoanalytic candidates construed acquaintances less positively than did other therapists. The results suggest that deviancy may be a major dimension distinguishing therapists' construal of clients from their construal of acquaintances. This dimension may result from both therapeutic ideology and the fact that clients selectively present negative aspects of themselves in therapy, producing a bias in the information therapists receive. Possible negative implications for the therapeutic relationship are discussed.     

个人自立与自我图式、他人图式

根据前期系列研究的结果提出了高个人自立者的自我图式、他人图式均比低个人自立者积极的假设, 从外显和内隐两个方面分别设计实验对个人自立高分组和低分组各30名大学生进行了研究, 以检验该假设。研究1采用形容词4级评定任务, 结果发现：①在反应时指标上, 高、低个人自立组的差异不显著; ②在评价等级指标上, 个人自立高分组对积极词的评价等级显著高于低分组, 对消极词的评价等级边缘显著的低于低分组。研究2采用外来情绪Simon任务(extrinsic affective Simon task, EAST), 结果发现：①在反应时指标上, 在过去自我和将来自我条件下, 高、低个人自立组的EAST分数没有显著差异, 在现在自我条件下, 个人自立高分组的EAST分数显著高于低分组; 在过去、现在和将来他人条件下, 个人自立高分组的EAST分数均显著高于低分组。②在错误率指标上, 高、低个人自立组的差异不显著。总的来看, 两个子研究的结果均支持了研究假设。     

Differentiation and Sociality in Terms of Elicited and Provided Constructs

Previously unacquainted undergraduates (15 men, 15 women) interacted briefly in randomly assigned pairs, and subsequently attempted to infer the self-evaluations of their partners in terms of both personal constructs elicited from the latter and a set of supplied constructs. Inferences based on elicited constructs were significantly more accurate (p < .005) than were those based on supplied ones. Also, the self-evaluations of participants with relatively less differentiated personal-construct systems, as assessed by the repertory-grid procedure, were inferred by their partners significantly more accurately (p < .01) in terms of elicited constructs than were those of participants with relatively more differentiated personal-construct systems. These findings are interpreted within the framework of personal-construct theory.     

A Multi‐Source,Multi‐Study Investigation of Job Performance Prediction by Political Skill

Political skill is a social effectiveness construct with a demonstrated capacity to predict job performance. However, because performance prediction research in this area to date has made exclusive use of self‐reports of political skill, and due to frequent distrust of self‐ratings of constructs in important personnel decisions, there is a need to investigate how multiple alternative sources of political skill and job performance measures relate, thus raising both theoretical and methodological issues. In three studies, employing a triadic data collection methodology, and utilising both cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs, this research tested the hypotheses that employee political skill, measured from the perspective of employees' assessor A, will positively predict job performance rated by assessor B (i.e. Hypothesis 1a), and vice versa, that employee political skill measured by assessor B will predict job performance ratings measured by assessor A (i.e. Hypothesis 1b).