A comparison of job performance and disciplinary records of smokers and nonsmokers

The authors compared job performance and receipt of disciplinary action among smoking and nonsmoking hotel employees using organizational records and observation. Although smokers and nonsmokers did not differ on 3 measures of discipline, there were significant differences on a guest relations performance dimension and a summated overall job performance measure. Smokers received higher ratings than did nonsmokers. Implications of these findings for the management of smoking behavior in the workplace are discussed.     

Taste thresholds in college-age smokers and nonsmokers

Taste detection thresholds were measured for NaCl and Dulcin and recognition thresholds for NaCl, sucrose, HCl, and QSO₄ in college-age smokers and nonsmokers. There were no consistent differences in thresholds for any compound between smokers and nonsmokers.     

Electroencephalographic responses to photic stimulation in habitual smokers and nonsmokers.

Two studies are reported in which electroencephalograms (EEGs) of habitual cigarette smokers and of nonsmokers were taken before and after they were required to smoke a cigarette. The EEGs were scored for incidence of EEG "driving" responses to photic stimulation, an index that appears to reflect the balance between central adrenergic and cholinergic nervous systems. The findings suggest that smokers tend to have a central autonomic balance less in favor of adrenergic functioning than do nonsmokers. Cigarette smoking may alleviate a possible central adrenergic insufficiency of smokers. These findings suggest a solution to "Nesbitt's paradox," which has reference to the fact that while nicotine is a central adrenergic stimulant, smokers describe the effect of smoking in sedational terms (i.e., as relaxing or calming).     

Differences in generosity between smokers and nonsmokers in an upcoming smoking ban

The stigmatization of smokers has become a social norm as new information about its health effects continues to be uncovered. This study investigated smokers in terms of their generosity as a means of stigma management. A field study was undertaken in which the experimenters frequented local establishments in the eight days prior to the 2010 Michigan antismoking legislation taking effect. Experimenters, sometimes while smoking and sometimes while not smoking, approached patrons of the establishments who were either smokers or nonsmokers and asked them for a dollar. Results indicated smokers were more likely to give a dollar than nonsmokers, regardless of whether or not the experimenters were smoking. This was interpreted as a strategy smokers use to combat social stigma.     

A comparison of three measures of the motive to avoid failure:

Individual's motive to avoid failure has typically been assessed by one of three different measures, the Hostile Press scoring system, the Test Anxiety Questionnaire, and Resultant Achievement Motivation. The present research tested the ability of these three measures to predict the two major behavioral criteria of the motive to avoid failure: defensiveness on level of aspiration tasks, and choice of extreme (high or low) probability of success tasks rather than intermediate level of difficulty tasks. Subjects completed the Thematic Apperception Test, which was scored for need for Achievement and the Hostile Press measure of fear of failure. Subjects also completed the Test Anxiety Questionnaire, the Achievement Test Preference Questionnaire, and an anagram level of aspiration task. The results demonstrated that only the Hostile Press measure was significantly related to the two behavioral criteria, and led the authors to conclude that the Hostile Press measure should be used in future assessment of the fear-of-failure motive.     

Attitudes, perceptions, and risk-taking behaviors of smokers, ex-smokers, and nonsmokers.

A sample of American adults completed questionnaires relevant to cigarette smoking. The questions were related to three areas: risk, perceptions of their or others' smoking, and satisfaction with life and health. The results revealed that smokers were greater risk-takers, that they perceived their smoking to be due to both physical and psychological addictions, and that they expressed less satisfaction and control. Results also indicated that smokers who saw their smoking as being addictive tended to be less satisfied with their health and felt less control over their lives. On the other hand, those smokers who were more likely to deny the health risks did not differ from either non- or ex-smokers on any of the satisfaction or control questions.     

Social-cognitive processing and depressive symptoms in children: A comparison of measures

We assessed aspects of the reliability and validity of three measures of socialcognitive processing in children that have been developed to investigate the relations of such processes to childhood depression: the Children's Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ), the Children's Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), and the Common Beliefs Inventory for Students (CBIS). In an unselected sample of 61 children, aged 8 to 12, the internal consistencies of the total scores on the CNCEQ and the CBIS were good; for the CASQ, it was only moderate. Internal consistencies of all subscale scores were inadequate. Despite this, several subscale and total scores were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, and the measures were generally correlated with each other. Although these data are encouraging concerning the role of social-cognitive processing in childhood depression, the field needs to develop psychometrically stronger measures and to test the role of social cognition in prospective studies of depression.This study was supported in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation Awards to Young Scholars Program to the first author. The authors would like to express their thanks to Deborah Long for secretarial assistance, and to W. Edward Craighead, John Curry, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this article.     

A comparison of two measures of egocentrism

This study examined the relationship between two prominent measures of egocentrism, Enright's Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES) and Elkind's Imaginary Audience Scale (IAS), in a sample of 458 adolescents, between 10 and 15 years old. Both correlational and factor analyses indicated that the two measures assess distinctly different phenomena. As predicted, IAS scores were correlated with self-reported levels of shyness, nervousness, and social skills. These results provide partial evidence for the validity of the IAS as a measure of self-consciousness, though not necessarily egocentrism per se. The validity of the AES was not examined.     

A psychometric comparison of anxiety-relevant attention measures

Background and Objectives: Preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control each purportedly play a key role in anxiety disorders. Divergent psychometric properties among attention measures may produce differential detection of anxiety-related associations and treatment-related changes. However, no studies have directly compared the psychometric properties of these attention measures in the same sample.

Design: Eighty-five young adults (M?=?19.41 years, SD?=?1.47, 48 Females) completed a cognitive task battery and a subset of 60 participants (M?=?19.42 years, SD?=?1.48, 33 Females) completed the task battery again approximately two weeks later.

Method: To assess preferential attention to threat, emotional response inhibition, and attentional control, the cognitive task battery included a dot-probe task, emotion and gender Stroop tasks, and a flanker task. Tasks varied in how attention was directed and if emotional stimuli were included. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were compared across measures.

Results: Within the same sample, internal consistency and reliability differed across attention measures. Explicit attention measures (emotional Stroop and flanker) exhibited stronger internal consistency and greater test-retest reliability compared to implicit measures (dot-probe and gender Stroop).

Conclusions: These results inform clinical research using attention measures to assess anxiety-related differences and treatment response.     

A comparison of methods to combine speed and accuracy measures of performance: A rejoinder on the binning procedure

In cognitive research, speed and accuracy are two important aspects of performance. When analyzed separately, these performance variables sometimes lead to contradictory conclusions about the effect of a manipulation. To avoid such conflicts, several measures that integrate speed and accuracy have been proposed, but the added value of using such measures remains unclear. The present paper compares the relative utility of seven integrated performance measures, namely four variations on a binning procedure that weights response times of correct and incorrect trials differently, and three measures that combine averaged speed and accuracy scores. The properties of these integrated measures were explored in three simulation studies. The first study compared three binning measures and showed that one measure failed to grasp the performance difference between two conditions. The second study showed that the sampling distributions of the measures were symmetric, except for a strong skewness on the rate correct score. The third study varied the trade-off and the effect sizes of speed and accuracy in four different combinations of size and direction of speed and accuracy effects. These studies highlighted some further shortcomings of the binning measures. The combination measures performed well, but linear integration of speed and accuracy and rate correct score were most efficient in detecting effects and accounting for a larger proportion of the variance. The paper concludes that these combination measures are useful provided that the speed and accuracy data are also inspected.     

A comparison of four measures of self-control skills

This study compares the psychometric characteristics of four questionnaires designed to assess self-control skills: the Self-Control Questionnaire, the Frequency of Self-Reinforcement Questionnaire, the Cognitive Self-Management Test, and the Lifestyle Approaches Inventory. Content validity was judged to be fairly comparable by three raters in Study 1. In Study 2, convergent and divergent validity support was obtained for all four questionnaires when administered to 369 multiethnic college students, but the relative degree of support varied across constructs. Hence, selection of a self-control instrument may be guided by the target behavior of interest.     

A comparison of general and work-specific measures of core self-evaluations

During the past decade, considerable research attention has been given to core self-evaluations (CSEs). Although this research has found that CSE is related to several important work-related outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction, job performance), we believe that researchers’ reliance on general rather than work-specific CSE has resulted in underestimates of the importance of CSE. Based on the literature on frame-of-reference effects in personality assessment, we predict that work-related CSE will yield stronger relationships with work-related criteria than general CSE will and that work-specific CSE will be related to work-specific criteria after general CSE has been controlled. Using two independent samples, we found that when compared with general CSE, work-specific CSE generally failed to yield significantly stronger zero-order relationships with work-related criteria. However, we found several instances in which work-specific CSE predicted incremental variance in work-related criteria after the effects of general CSE were controlled.     

Setting things straight: A comparison of measures of saccade trajectory deviation

In eye movements, saccade trajectory deviation has often been used as a physiological operationalization of visual attention, distraction, or the visual system’s prioritization of different sources of information. However, there are many ways to measure saccade trajectories and to quantify their deviation. This may lead to noncomparable results and poses the problem of choosing a method that will maximize statistical power. Using data from existing studies and from our own experiments, we used principal components analysis to carry out a systematic quantification of the relationships among eight different measures of saccade trajectory deviation and their power to detect the effects of experimental manipulations, as measured by standardized effect size. We concluded that (1) the saccade deviation measure is a good default measure of saccade trajectory deviation, because it is somewhat correlated with all other measures and shows relatively high effect sizes for two well-known experimental effects; (2) more generally, measures made relative to the position of the saccade target are more powerful; and (3) measures of deviation based on the early part of the saccade are made more stable when they are based on data from an eyetracker with a high sampling rate. Our recommendations may be of use to future eye movement researchers seeking to optimize the designs of their studies.     

Dimensions of perfectionism and goal commitment: A further comparison of two perfectionism measures

Research on perfectionism has suggested that a strong association exists between the setting and striving for excessively high standards. However, the motivational aspects of perfectionism have yet to be empirically identified. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness and psychometric properties of a new goal commitment scale by assessing commitment to perfection in seven content areas. In addition to identifying individual differences in perfectionism goal commitment, the current research also investigated the association between commitment to perfectionism and trait indices of perfectionism. A sample of 261 students rated degree of commitment to perfectionistic goals and completed two multidimensional perfectionism scales that assess the personal and social aspects of perfectionism. Analyses confirmed the presence of individual differences in perfectionism goal commitment. Correlational tests revealed that the trait perfectionism dimensions were correlated with the goal commitment measure, but the findings varied as a function of the specific perfectionism goal. Overall, the current data are consistent with the view that the perfectionism construct has a salient motivational component. Our findings suggest that the assessment of goal commitment is a useful means of examining specific facets of the perfectionism construct.     

A comparison of measures of responding under fixed-interval schedules

Average response rate, post-reinforcement pause, elapsed time to the fourth response, average quarter-life, and running rate were examined to see how they reflected changes in fixed-interval performance. Rats were exposed to a mixed schedule of water presentation comprising fixed-interval schedules of two durations. Changes in responding were produced by varying the duration of the shorter component. The five measures were derived only from the longer schedule component. Post-reinforcement pause, elapsed time to the fourth response in the interval, and quarter-life all showed high, positive inter-correlations (0.78<r<0.99). Running rate and post-reinforcement pause were not as highly correlated. Quarter-life reliably reflected changes in fixed-interval performance but changes in the quarter-life value did not necessarily result from similar changes in fixed-interval response pattern. The two measures that adequately described changes in response patterning were post-reinforcement pause and running rate. These two measures also had the advantage of being simple both computationally and in terms of the instrumentation involved in their recording.     

Narcissism and Sensitivity to Criticism: A Preliminary Investigation

Two studies investigated the connection between narcissism and sensitivity to criticism. In study 1, participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) and the Sensitivity to Criticism Scale (SCS) and were asked to construct and deliver speeches to be rated by performance judges. They were then asked whether they would like to receive evaluative feedback. Narcissism and sensitivity to criticism were mildly, but not significantly, negatively correlated and had contrasting relationships with choices regarding feedback. Highly narcissistic participants tended to seek (rather than avoid) feedback, whereas highly sensitive participants tended to reject feedback opportunities. Study 2 examined the relationship between sensitivity to criticism and both overt and covert narcissism. Those scoring high on the trait narcissism, as measured by the NPI, tended to be less sensitive to criticism, sought (rather than avoided) feedback opportunities, experienced little internalized negative emotions in response to “extreme” feedback conditions, and did not expect to ruminate over their performance. By contrast, participants scoring high on a measure of “covert narcissism” were high in sensitivity to criticism, tended to avoid feedback opportunities, experienced high levels of internalized negative emotions, and showed high levels of expected rumination. These findings suggest that the relationship between narcissism and sensitivity to criticism is highly dependent upon the definition or “form” of narcissism considered.