Personality and Situations in Co-worker Preference: Similarity and Complementarity in Worker Compatibility

Guided by fit-oriented personality theories, we asked with whom people prefer to work, given their own and others' personality traits and in light of trait-relevant work situations. Participants (N = 185) completed the Personality Research Form (Jackson, 1989) and rated preference for hypothetical co-workers at opposite poles of Dominance, Affiliation, Autonomy, Defendence, and Abasement in simulated job settings varying in work proximity and supervisory status. As expected, judges preferred co-workers providing opportunity for trait expression (e.g., affiliative judges preferred affiliative co-workers), especially when expecting to work together and in light of who would be in charge (e.g., low-autonomous judges preferred dominant supervisors). Use of personality data in team building is discussed.     

Social Identity and Corporate Mergers

Corporate mergers require proper human resources management to reach their financial and strategic objectives and minimize negative consequences for employee well‐being. Understanding the antecedents of employees’ identification with the merged organization during the corporate merger is crucial, because stronger post‐merger identification results in less conflict and higher levels of motivation. Unfortunately, employees often identify more strongly with their pre‐merger organizations than with the merged organization. One influential approach to understanding the processes underlying organizational identification is the social identity approach ( Tajfel & Turner, 1986 ; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987 ). Research applying this perspective to organizational mergers shows that levels of identification with the merged organization are partly explained by status and dominance differences of the involved organizations, by motivational threats and uncertainties during the merger, and by the representation of the post‐merger identity. Leaders and managers of corporate mergers are able to influence these processes and, thus, to provide a path for successful merger integration.     

The Effects of Differentiation and Attachment on Satisfaction and Acculturation in Asian-White American International Couple Relationships: Assessment With Chinese,South Korean,and Japanese Partners in Relationships With White American Partners in the United States

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of differentiation and attachment on acculturation and relational satisfaction in Asian partners in Asian-White American international couple relationships. Eighty-seven native-born Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese partners within an international couple relationship with a White American partner in the United States participated in this study. Regression results supported the hypotheses that differentiation and acculturation were significantly related to relationship satisfaction. Differentiation was also significantly associated with acculturation. Attachment style was not significantly associated with levels of relationship satisfaction or acculturation. Overall, the researchers found that differentiation and acculturation were important factors influencing the relationship satisfaction in Asian-White American international couples in the United States. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

Complementarity of interpersonal behaviors in dyadic interactions

An important assumption of interpersonal theory is that during social interactions the behavior of one person tends to invite complementary behavior from the other person. Past research examining complementarity has usually used either confederates or fictitious interaction partners in their designs and has produced inconsistent results. The current study used observational ratings of behaviors of 158 participants as they interacted with partners across three different dyadic social situations. Randomization tests of hypothesized order relations found that the behaviors exhibited during these interactions tended to occur in a circular pattern predicted by the interpersonal circumplex. These tests also indicated support for Leary's (1957) orientation of the control and affiliation dimensions of the interpersonal circumplex and Carson's (1969) notion that dominant behavior induces submissive responses and friendly behavior encourages friendly responses.     

Complementarity of Information and Quality of Relationship in Cooperative Learning

The effects of resource in(ter)dependence and quality of relationship with the partner on performance were studied during three sessions of cooperative dyadic work in order to examine the conditions under which cooperative learning can be more beneficial. This study was designed to test a hypothesis favouring the superiority of independence of resources (discussing identical information) against a hypothesis favouring the superiority of interdependence of resources (sharing complementary information). In each session, 64 students worked in dyads on two texts. Two roles were defined: summarizer and listener. Results showed that, though direct performance was higher when students discussed identical information, the quality and generality of information recalled a few months later did not differ between the two conditions. In the interdependence condition, listeners displayed poorer levels for direct performance. Participants were then dichotomized on the basis of their perceived quality of their relationship with the partner. With respect to direct performance, a more positive relationship allowed listeners in the interdependence condition to perform as well as summarizers, while a less positive relationship was detrimental for listeners. Conversely, as for recall, listeners in the interdependence condition who perceived a more positive relationship performed more poorly than summarizers, while listeners who perceived a less positive relationship performed as well as summarizers. When students shared identical information, neither roles nor quality of relationship affected recall. Results are discussed in terms of degree of partners' dependence and potential effects of socio-cognitive conflict (Doise & Mugny, 1984). This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cultural psychology and theology: Partners in dialogue

Cultural psychology stresses the importance of the historical and socio-cultural in the formation of the self, and, in its more sophisticated versions, acknowledges the importance of embodiment, emotions and intra-psychic factors too, making it a promising dialogue partner for theology. Following a brief summary of bridging issues between psychology and theology, Benson's recent cultural psychology framework is outlined. Its relevance for theology is considered under three headings: incarnational categories, self-knowing and God-knowing, and theological method. The essay concludes with a short reflection on the self in Eucharistic space, and the limits of cultural psychological accounts.     

Similarity and Alignment in Choice

Research in decision making often assumes that corresponding dimensions or features of choices are compared. At the same time, recent models of similarity comparison stress the importance of structural alignment and associated inference processes. The present studies integrate these perspectives by examining feature listings and choices for pairs of video games varying in their comparability. In the first study, one group of participants simply compared pairs of games and listed commonalities and differences. Another group made selections between games and provided justifications for their decisions. We observed close correspondences between justifications and feature listings across wide variation in comparability. In addition, the justifications systematically favored comparable over noncomparable properties. Features also seemed to be created or inferred to promote alignability. The second study manipulated the comparability of individual properties. Here, justifications were more likely to include a property when it was comparable than when it was noncomparable. These observations suggest a constructive alignment process common to similarity and choice.     

Complementarity of Linguistic and Prosodic Processes in the Intact Brain

Despite considerable speculation in the research literature regarding the complementarity of functional lateralization of prosodic and linguistic processes in the normal intact brain, few studies have directly addressed this issue. In the present study, behavioral laterality indices of emotional prosodic and traditional linguistic speech functions were obtained for a sample of healthy young adults, using the dichotic listening method. After screening for adequate emotional prosody and linguistic recognition abilities, participants completed the Fused Rhymed Words Test (FRWT; Wexler & Halwes, 1983) and the Dichotic Emotion Recognition Test (DERT; McNeely & Netley, 1998). Examination of the difference in ear asymmetries for these measures within individuals revealed a complementary pattern in 78% of the sample. However, the correlation between laterality quotients for the FRWT and DERT was near zero, supporting Bryden's model of "statistical" complementarity (e.g., Bryden, 1990).     

Complementarity in relationships of couples affected by HIV

Psychological interventions with patients with HIV infection may affect the stability of the patient's relationship with others. Two clinical cases are described to illustrate this. Both the impact of AIDS on patients and their relationships, and the impact of psychological interventions on the index patient and others, should always be considered when HIV-infected patients are referred to psychiatrists and other mental health care workers.     

Similarity in context

Similarity comparisons are highly sensitive to judgment context. Three experiments explore context effects that occur within a single comparison rather than across several trials. Experiment 1 shows reliable intransitivities in which a target is judged to be more similar to stimulus A than to stimulus B, more similar to B than to stimulus C, and more similar to C than to A. Experiment 2 explores the locus of Tversky’s (1977) diagnosticity effect in which the relative similarity of two alternatives to a target is influenced by a third alternative. Experiment 3 demonstrates a new violation of choice independence which is explained by object dimensions’ becoming foregrounded or backgrounded, depending upon the set of displayed objects. The observed violations of common assumptions to many models of similarity and choice can be accommodated in terms of a dynamic property-weighting process based on the variability and diagnosticity of dimensions.     

Similarity and cotenability

In this paper I present some difficulties for Lewis’s and similar theories of counterfactuals, and suggest that the problem lies in the notion of absolute similarity. In order to explain the problem, I discuss the relation between Lewis’s and Goodman’s theory, and show that the two theories are not related in the way Lewis thought they were.     

Constitution and Similarity

Whenever an object constitutes, makes up orcomposes another object, the objects inquestion share a striking number of properties. This paper is addressed to the question of whatmight account for the intimate relation andstriking similarity between constitutionallyrelated objects. According to my account, thesimilarities between constitutionally relatedobjects are captured at least in part by meansof a principle akin to that of strongsupervenience. My paper addresses two mainissues. First, I propose independentlyplausible principles by means of which todelineate, in a non-ad-hoc, non-stipulative andnon-circular fashion, those properties whichcan be expected to be shared amongconstitutionally related objects in virtue oftheir being so related from those which ingeneral cannot be expected to be shared, orwhich are shared for other reasons. Secondly,I spell out in detail the nature of thesupervenience-principle at work in thiscontext. My account thus aims at isolating, ina methodologically responsible fashion, theparticular sort of restricted indiscernibilityprinciple which is a component of theconstitution-relation.     

汉语短时序列回忆中的语音相似性和视觉相似性效应

语音相似性效应和视觉相似性效应是短时序列回忆中的两个典型性效应, 但前人很少探讨这两种效应的交互作用。本研究利用汉语字形和语音的属性, 观察汉字短时序列回忆中语音相似性效应、视觉相似性效应及两者的交互作用。研究结果发现当回忆项目在语音或视觉上单纯相似或不相似时, 视觉相似性效应及其与语音相似性的交互作用与混合词表条件下所发现的结果有很大的不同。这个研究结果为丰富和补充相关理论模型提供了进一步实证依据。