Emergent Power Hierarchies and Group Performance

In newly formed groups, informal hierarchies emerge automatically and readily. In this study, we argue that emergent group hierarchies enhance group performance (Hypothesis 1) and we assume that the more the power hierarchy within a group corresponds to the task‐competence differences of the individual group members, the better the group performs (Hypothesis 2). Twelve three‐person groups and 28 four‐person groups were investigated while solving the Winter Survival Task. Results show that emerging power hierarchies positively impact group performance but the alignment between task‐competence and power hierarchy did not affect group performance. Thus, emergent power hierarchies are beneficial for group performance and although they were on average created around individual group members' competence, this correspondence was not a prerequisite for better group performance.     

Making Teamwork Work: Team Knowledge for Team Effectiveness

This study examined the impact of two types of team knowledge on team effectiveness. The study assessed the impact of taskwork knowledge and teamwork knowledge on team satisfaction and performance. A longitudinal study was conducted with 27 service-management teams involving 178 students in a real-life restaurant setting. Teamwork knowledge was found to impact both team outcomes. Furthermore, team learning behavior was found to mediate the relationships between teamwork knowledge and team outcomes. Educators and managers should therefore ensure these types of knowledge are developed in teams along with learning behavior for maximum effectiveness.     

Navigating Power,Control, and Being Nice: Aggression in Adolescent Girls' Friendships

The relationship between gender role identity and relational aggression was examined. Fifty‐two girls (mean age = 15 years; 70% White, 30% non‐White) from the mid‐Atlantic U.S. completed the Relational Aggression Scale and the Bem Sex‐Role Inventory (S. L. Bem, 1981a). Use of relational aggression friendships among adolescent girls significantly predicted 9.9% of the variance for the high feminine variable. Focus group interviews were used to complement the quantitative study. Specific themes are identified and discussed.     

Dynamic Stereotypes of Power: Perceived Change and Stability in Gender Hierarchies

Despite widespread change in gender roles, women continue to have less power than men. From the perspective of social role theory, this gender difference in power should be perceived as eroding as women gain access to male-dominated roles typically associated with power. Study 1's open-ended reports nearly unanimously projected an increase in women's power over the next 50 years, whereas responses were equally split between projecting stability or a decrease in men's power. Study 2's quantitative findings illustrated that participants perceived women as gaining in political, economic, occupational, individual, and relational power from the past into the future. In contrast, men were perceived as decreasing in relational power but maintaining levels of other forms of power over time. Despite the projections of increases in women's power, women were not projected to reach parity with men by 2050. We examine the implications of these beliefs for future social change.     

Dark Webs: Tantra,Black Magic,and Cyberspace

International Journal of Hindu Studies - This article examines the changing nature of Tantra in the digital era by focusing on three online tāntrik practitioners from Assam. The region of...     

Resistance Revisited: Disillusionment,Hierarchies and the Brain

With the proliferation of new psychoanalytic theories and methods, some concepts, such as resistance and free association, have been cast aside. This paper looks at a pattern of forward motion and retreat that characterizes defense, but with a significant twist. The author maintains that there is an alternation between patients’ novel observations about themselves and their families and a logical sounding, authoritative dismissal of all they had just described. Considerations of left and right hemisphere functioning that echo this clinical pattern, the idea of powerful illusions being shed and the ubiquity of hierarchies are considered. A case for the importance of retaining the concept of resistance—that is, stopping the forward motion of treatment—is considered. Implications for the length of psychoanalytic treatment and the role of authority are discussed.

     

Components of Teamwork: Impact on Evaluations of Contributions to Work Team Effectiveness1

This study examined the relationship between Dickinson's (1993) components of teamwork and ratings of team members' contributions to team success. Undergraduate students (n= 179) each viewed 1 of 8 videotapes depicting a team interacting to solve the Winter Survival Problem. Participants then completed a 52-item questionnaire assessing the connection between teamwork components and perceptions of contributions to team productivity, team viability, teamwork, and overall team performance. With 1 exception, all of the teamwork components manipulated in the study significantly affected appraisals of several aspects of worker effectiveness. Furthermore, raters considered teamwork behaviors that provided direct assistance or direction to team members as being especially critical.     

Navigating the Workplace: The Costs and Benefits of Shifting Identities at Work among Early Career U.S. Black Women

Although much progress has been made in race relations in the United States, discrimination still persists in the workplace. As a result, Black women, among individuals from other underrepresented groups, develop coping strategies, such as identity shifting, to diminish the negative consequences of discrimination. We used the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory to examine shifting racial, gender, and class identities among early career (recent college graduates) U.S. Black women working in predominantly White environments. Drawing on ten semi-structured interviews with college-educated Black women, data were analyzed with an interpretative phenomenological analysis. The results revealed two major themes: (a) benefits of identity shifting and (b) the costs of identity shifting, the latter with five subthemes: (a) managing interpersonal rejection: frozen effect, (b) assimilation to the dominant culture and inauthenticity, (c) confronting and dismantling stereotypes, (d) model Black citizen, and (c) mixed feelings toward identity shifting. The findings indicate that Black women vacillate between the benefits and costs of identity shifting, altering their dialect and behavior to meet social norms. Our study’s implications suggest the necessity of a multicultural approach by employers to affirm their workers’ social identities, strengthen employee relationships, and lessen the need for shifting identities.     

Navigating Critical Theory and Postmodernism: Social Justice and Therapist Power in Family Therapy

The family therapy field encourages commitment to diversity and social justice, but offers varying ideas about how to attentively consider these issues. Critical informed models advocate activism, whereas postmodern informed models encourage multiple perspectives. It is often not clear how activism and an emphasis on multiple perspectives connect, engendering the sense that critical and postmodern practices may be disparate. To understand how therapists negotiate these perspectives in practice, this qualitative grounded theory analysis drew on interviews with 11 therapists, each known for their work from both critical and postmodern perspectives. We found that these therapists generally engage in a set of shared constructionist practices while also demonstrating two distinct forms of activism: activism through countering and activism through collaborating. Ultimately, decisions made about how to navigate critical and postmodern influences were connected to how therapists viewed ethics and the ways they were comfortable using their therapeutic power. The findings illustrate practice strategies through which therapists apply each approach.     

Hierarchies,Networks, and Causality: The Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach

Applied Evolutionary Epistemology is a scientific-philosophical theory that defines evolution as the set of phenomena whereby units evolve at levels of ontological hierarchies by mechanisms and processes. This theory also provides a methodology to study evolution, namely, studying evolution involves identifying the units that evolve, the levels at which they evolve, and the mechanisms and processes whereby they evolve. Identifying units and levels of evolution in turn requires the development of ontological hierarchy theories, and examining mechanisms and processes necessitates theorizing about causality. Together, hierarchy and causality theories explain how biorealities form and diversify with time. This paper analyzes how Applied EE redefines both hierarchy and causality theories in the light of the recent explosion of network approaches to causal reasoning associated with studies on reticulate and macroevolution. Causality theories have often been framed from within a rigid, ladder-like hierarchy theory where the rungs of the ladder represent the different levels, and the elements on the rungs represent the evolving units. Causality then is either defined reductionistically as an upward movement along the strands of a singular hierarchy, or holistically as a downward movement along that same hierarchy. Upward causation theories thereby analyze causal processes in time, i.e. over the course of natural history or phylogenetically, as Darwin and the founders of the Modern Synthesis intended. Downward causation theories analyze causal processes in space, ontogenetically or ecologically, as the current eco-evo-devo schools are evidencing. This work demonstrates how macroevolution and reticulate evolution theories add to the complexity by examining reticulate causal processes in space–time, and the interactional hierarchies that such studies bring forth introduce a new form of causation that is here called reticulate causation. Reticulate causation occurs between units and levels belonging to different as well as to the same ontological hierarchies. This article concludes that beyond recognizing the existence of multiple units, levels, and mechanisms or processes of evolution, also the existence of multiple kinds of evolutionary causation as well as the existence of multiple evolutionary hierarchies needs to be acknowledged. This furthermore implies that evolution is a pluralistic process divisible into different kinds.

     

Dominance Hierarchies and Health: Constructing Personal Zones of Spiritual Power and Healing in Modern Medicine

Ethological studies of animals in groups and sociobiology indicate that hierarchies of dominance amongst some species ensure the survival of the group. When transferred to human groups, dominance hierarchies suggest a crucial role played by recasting the scope of such hierarchies of dominant and subordinate members to included “hyper-dominant beings.” A recognition of such beings as even more dominant than the socially dominant members of a hierarchy facilitates the empowerment of the socially subordinate members. Religious belief and practice works to establish such hyper-dominant beings (“gods,” “goddesses,” and so forth) as superior members of human groups. Doing so is a means of ensuring the survival of the species and, thus, enhancing healing and human health. The “doctor–patient” relationship is examined from such a point of view, with an emphasis on whether the hierarchy created by the relationship allows consideration of alternative and complementary forms of medical treatment.     

Webs, cell assemblies, and chunking in neural nets: introduction.

This introduction to Wickelgren (1992), describes a theory of idea representation and learning in the cerebral cortex and seven properties of Hebb's (1949) formulation of cell assemblies that have played a major role in all such neural net models. Ideas are represented in the cerebral cortex by webs (innate cell assemblies), using sparse coding with sparse, all-or-none, innate linking. Recruiting a web to represent a new idea is called chunking. The innate links that bind the neurons of a web are basal dendritic synapses. Learning modifies the apical dendritic synapses that associate neurons in one web to neurons in another web.     

工作幸福感：概念、测量水平与因果模型

工作幸福感是个体工作目标和潜能充分实现的心理感受及愉悦体验, 是一个需要组织和个人持久努力和投资的动态过程, 包括工作投入、心流体验、工作旺盛感、工作满意度、工作积极情感等宽泛的结构。有必要从暂时、个体和单元三个水平对工作幸福感进行研究。随着研究方法的进展, 工作幸福感的研究呈现出个体差异和个体内波动结合的趋势。工作幸福感多水平动态形成机制模型整合了组织和工作环境因素、个人特征以及人与环境的交互作用, 体现了工作幸福感的动态特征, 解释了人类基本心理需要的满足是工作幸福感形成的心理机制。外溢?交叉动态模型解释了幸福感在不同生活领域的外溢以及在工作团队成员或家庭配偶之间的传递, 有助于推动工作幸福感不同测量水平的效应研究。未来需要通过实证研究检验工作幸福感的动态因果模型, 探讨不同水平的工作幸福感对绩效的影响机制, 更多地研究心流体验、心理旺盛感、高兴和自豪等工作幸福感指标, 加强对工作幸福感的干预研究。     

Authenticity at Work: Development and Validation of an Individual Authenticity Measure at Work

Building on the work by Barrett-Lennard (Carl Rogers’ helping system: Journey & substance. Sage, London 1998) and Wood et al. (J Couns Psychol 55:385–399 2008), this study describes the development and validation of a theory-based measure of state authenticity at work, the Individual Authenticity Measure at Work (IAM Work). Even though this construct is obviously relevant to the work context (e.g., as regards issues of work relations, leadership and well-being), none of the instruments currently available focuses on authenticity in the area of work and organizational psychology. A total sample of 646 participants was divided in two equal sized subsamples. Exploratory factor analysis supported the underlying tripartite construct of authenticity at work, resulting in the subscales authentic living, self-alienation, and accepting external influences. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the tripartite construct and showed good psychometric properties of the state-focused measure of authenticity at work. Finally, correlation analysis showed that each subscale and the total score of authenticity was positively related to commonly used work outcomes such as job satisfaction, in-role performance, and work engagement. This study concludes that the IAM Work is a reliable and valid measure of state authenticity at work. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Generation and Gender: Normative and Covert Hierarchies

This essay argues that gender is an irreducible category of clinical observation and theorizing, as crucial to the family therapy paradigm as the concept of "generation." Gender, therefore, is not a secondary, mediating variable like race, class, or ethnicity, but, rather, a fundamental, organizing principle of all family systems. The author analyzes the history and politics of family therapy in order to explicate how gender, as a co-equal concept, was erased as a universal principle of family organization, leaving only generation. The theoretical and clinical implications of situating gender at the center of family therapy are then discussed.     

Trust,Connectivity, and Thriving: Implications for Innovative Behaviors at Work

This study examines how trust, connectivity and thriving drive employees' innovative behaviors in the workplace. Using a sample of one hundred and seventy two employees across a variety of jobs and industries, we investigated the relationship between trust, connectivity (both measured at Time 1), thriving and innovative work behaviors (both measured at Time 2). Trust and connectivity were hypothesized to create a nurturing environment that enables people to thrive and be innovative in their work. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate a sequential mediation model in which connectivity mediates the relationship between trust and thriving, and thriving mediates the relationship between connectivity and innovative behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications for employee thriving and innovative behaviors at work are discussed.     

工作情景中差错概念与差错取向因素分析

研究一调查了解我国工作差错概念以及对待差错的基本态度与行为。研究二通过问卷调查,分析差错取向因素结构及其影响因素,结果发现,差错是一种目标导向的行为;差错取向由差错处理、差错掩盖、差错压力和差错预防四个因素组成,并且管理层次和文化程度对差错取向有较大的影响。