Prediction of Entrepreneurial Success: The Development of a Rating Scale for Entrepreneurial Characteristics

Predicting entrepreneurial success is a complex task, which is performed more or less daily by consultants for small business firms. In this study, the development of an entrepreneurial rating scale designed to assist consultants in assessing the behavioural characteristics of starting entrepreneurs is reported. A model was formulated that incorporates two features of the prediction of entrepeneurial success: (a) entrepreneurial characteristics as well as aspects of the future job (present in the entrepreneurial plan) are appraised, (b) advising is part of the prediction issue, e.g. certain aspects of the entrepreneurial plan may be modified. The model is a variant of‘adaptive selection’, and is partly operationalized in the rating scale for entrepreneurial characteristics. Three studies were conducted with regard to the first feature: judgements on the relevance of situational and behavioural characteristics were obtained from several samples of consultants (N= 38, 23 and 48), and a sample of starting entrepreneurs (N= 61) was rated on behavioural characteristics. The findings indicate that consultants have a common opinion about the behavioural requirements for starting entrepreneurs and that some of these requirements covary with situational characteristics (i.e. general business features). Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the possible design of a validation study.     

Rated preference for musical compositions as it relates to complexity and exposure frequency

Subjects heard four piano compositions that were constructed to represent differing degrees of complexity, as defined by their chordal and rhythmic properties and corroborated by subjects’ complexity ratings. In line with the predictions of an optimal complexity model of musical preference, judged liking for the compositions was a unimodal function of their complexity. After each composition was rated for liking, one of the four compositions was presented and rated an additional 16 times. Also congruent with an optimal complexity model was the finding that the affective consequences of repeated exposure varied depending upon whether the repeatedly exposed composition was more or less complex than the subject’s preferred complexity level. The latter finding suggests that repeated exposure effects are a function of both situational and individual factors.     

How do people respond to health news? The role of personality traits

When a patient receives a health diagnosis, their response (e.g. changes in behaviour, seeking support) can have significant consequences for long-term health and well-being. Characteristics of health news are known to influence these responses, but personality traits have been omitted from this line of research. The current study examines the role of personality traits in predicting response to health news. Participants (N = 298) read scenarios in which they received health news that was manipulated to vary in severity, controllability and likelihood of outcomes. Participants then rated how likely they were to engage in a number of response behaviours. We examined the main effects and interaction of situational manipulations and personality traits on ratings of these behaviours. Both situations and personality traits influenced behavioural responses to health events. In particular, conscientiousness predicted taking action and seeking social support. Neuroticism predicted both maladaptive and adaptive behavioural responses, providing support for the ‘healthy neurotic’ hypothesis. Moreover, personality traits predicted best in weak (unlikely, controllable) situations. Both personality traits and situational characteristics contribute to behavioural responses to health news.     

The Social Value of Internal Explanations and the Norm of Internality

Since the 1970s, it has been agreed that ‘internal’ people, who explain what happens to them by internal explanations (their behaviors, their aptitudes, their efforts, their personality, etc.) were more likely to succeed than ‘external’ people, who explain the same outcomes by external explanations such as chance, situational difficulties, the power of others, or fate. The social superiority of internal people is explained in terms of their personality (locus of control). Looking further into the intuitions of American researchers, a French school of thought attempted to show that internal explanations are socially valued. It was suggested that there exists a social judgment norm that could be called the norm of internality and that, perhaps, the success of ‘internal’ people was more specifically due to the fact that social appraisers, whether in school, in organizations, in the courts of justice, prefer this type of person because such people adhere more easily to current social ways of functioning.     

Hypnosis versus relaxation: accuracy and confidence in dating international news events

This study compared participants who were administered either a hypnosis (n=50) or a relaxation (n=44) recall priming procedure in terms of the ability to estimate the dates of 20 relatively memorable (‘easy’) vs. less memorable (‘difficult’) international news events. The hypnosis and relaxation groups performed comparably in terms of the accuracy of estimates of when the events occurred, self‐reported confidence in estimates, and the memorability and emotionality of the events that were reported during hypnosis and relaxation. After these initial ratings, participants were informed that ‘at least one’ of their estimates was incorrect, and they were given the opportunity to change their estimates of the date of when one or more of the events occurred. Participants who generated their initial estimates during hypnosis were less likely to change their previous estimates of both easy and difficult events, than were participants in the relaxation condition. The measure of self‐reported confidence and a behavioural measure of willingness to change initial reports were largely dissociated from one another. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mothers' Perceptions of Infants Labelled ‘Depressed’

Forty-four depressed and non-depressed mothers participated in a videotaped interaction with their own infant and then rated the videotape using the Infant Stereotyping Scale and the Interaction Rating Scale. In addition, one half of the mothers rated a videotape of an unfamiliar infant who was labelled psychologically ‘depressed’ and the other half rated a videotape of the same infant with no label given. Both the depressed and non-depressed mothers rated the ‘depressed’ labelled infant more negatively than the non-labelled infant on the attributes of physical potency, cognitive competence, sociability and difficult behaviour. Physical appearance was the only rating that was not biased by the ‘depressed’ label. Mothers' ratings of their own infants were more positive than their ratings of the non-labelled stimulus infant. Depressed mothers did not see their infants more negatively except on one rating. They rated the physical appearance of their own infant more negatively than non-depressed mothers.     

IMPLICATIONS OF TRAIT-ACTIVATION THEORY FOR EVALUATING THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF ASSESSMENT CENTER RATINGS

Assessment centers have often been criticized for lacking evidence supporting the construct validity of dimension ratings. This study examines whether the poor convergence of assessment center ratings is a result of correlating ratings from exercises that differ in the extent that behavior relevant to personality traits can be observed. Using data from a promotional assessment center for law enforcement officers ( n = 79), the convergence of assessment center ratings was evaluated within the context of the five factor model by comparing the average within-dimension correlation of ratings from exercises that allowed for more opportunity to observe trait-relevant behavior to the average of those involving exercises where there was less opportunity. For each personality trait, ratings from exercises judged by experts to be high in trait-activation potential displayed stronger convergence (mean r = .30) than did ratings from exercises that were low in activation potential for that trait (mean r = .15). Implications for evaluating the construct validity of assessment centers are discussed along with future directions for classifying exercises based on situational similarity.     

Online measurement of mental representations of complex spatial decision problems: Comparison of CNET and hard laddering

This paper introduces the online Causal Network Elicitation Technique (CNET), as a technique for measuring components of mental representations of choice tasks and compares it with the more common technique of online ‘hard’ laddering (HL). While CNET works in basically two phases, one in open question format and one as guided linking of attributes and benefits, HL works completely structured with revealed attributes and benefits. Mental representations of two activity travel tasks were collected with both techniques among members of a nationwide Dutch household panel. The results confirm the hypothesis that the revealed format of variables in HL has an effect on the indication of variables as the elicited mental representations are almost twice as big for HL than for CNET. Furthermore, it turned out that CNET is more sensitive in measuring shifts among attributes in the mental representations for situational changes of the activity-travel task.     

The relationship between personal philosophy and effectiveness in counsellors

This study investigates the relationship between the effectiveness of counsellors and their personal philosophy, beliefs and attitudes. There is a review of the relevant literature concerning the qualities and attributes of effective counsellors, with a detailed examination of studies of counsellor philosophy. Two groups (n = 14 and n = 19) of counsellors on training courses were studied. Each participant wrote an account of a ‘Helping Relationship Incident’ which was rated on the 12 dimensions of counsellor ‘perceptual organization’ developed by Combs & Soper (1963). Course tutors gave ratings of the counselling effectiveness of their students. Rank order correlations between judgements of counsellor effectiveness and ratings of perceptual organization/philosophy were made. In both groups statistically significant results were found, adding weight to the hypothesis that a ‘person-centred’ perceptual organization or belief system is an important factor in counsellor effectiveness. The implications for counsellor selection and training are discussed, and suggestions are made for further research on this topic.     

Contribution of stimulus attributes to errors in duration and distance judgments--a developmental study

In Matsuda's 1996 study, 4- to 11-yr.-old children (N = 133) watched two cars running on two parallel tracks on a CRT display and judged whether their durations and distances were equal and, if not, which was larger. In the present paper, the relative contributions of the four critical stimulus attributes (whether temporal starting points, temporal stopping points, spatial starting points, and spatial stopping points were the same or different between two cars) to the production of errors were quantitatively estimated based on the data for rates of errors obtained by Matsuda. The present analyses made it possible not only to understand numerically the findings about qualitative characteristics of the critical attributes described by Matsuda, but also to add more detailed findings about them.     

Multivariate pattern analysis of event-related potentials predicts the subjective relevance of everyday objects

Potentially decision-relevant stimuli have been proposed to undergo immediate semantic processing. The current study investigated whether information regarding the general desirability (‘Wanting’) of visually presented ‘everyday’ objects was rapidly and automatically processed. Participants completed a foreground task while their electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded, and task-irrelevant images were presented in the background. Following this, participants rated the images with regards to Wanting and the potentially related attributes of Relevance, Familiarity, Aesthetic Pleasantness and Time Reference. Multivariate pattern classification was used to predict the ratings from patterns of EEG data. Prediction of Wanting and Relevance was possible between 100 and 150 ms following stimulus presentation. The other dimensions could not be predicted. Wanting and Relevance ratings were highly correlated and displayed similar feature weight maps. The current results suggest that the general desirability and subjective relevance of everyday objects is rapidly and automatically processed for a wide range of visual stimuli.     

The paradox of ‘freedom’ and the social function of psychiatry

This paper considers the concept of ‘freedom’ in behavioural terms, defining it in relation to ‘freedom of action’. This notion is applied to psychiatric abnormalities, and it is suggested that this new way of looking at the problem may go some way to surmount the philosophical difficulties normally attaching to the notion of ‘freedom’.     

Modelling courage: The role of dissent in fostering independence

While dissent has been construed in terms of social support and informational influence, this paper hypothesizes that exposure to dissenting minority views, even when they are wrong, stimulates resistance to conformity and increased adherence to one's own views. In this study, individuals in groups of four judged the colour of a series of blue stimuli and were exposed to one individual who consistently judged the stimuli to be ‘green: inconsistently judged them to be 'green' or expressed no dissent. In a subsequent setting, when judging a series of red slides; subjects were exposed to a majority who repeatedly judged them as 'orange’. Exposure to dissent, whether it was consistent or inconsistent, substantially reduced the level of conformity. In fact, exposure to the consistent dissent led to almost complete independence.     

AFFIRMATION AND DENIAL IN EVALUATIVE DESCRIPTIONS

Children made a series of evaluative judgements of 20 nonsense words, which they were told to imagine were people's names. Each subject judged half the names in terms of two-category rating scales containing an affirmative (A) response category which was evaluatively positive (E +) and a negative (n) category which was evaluatively negative (E -), e.g. ‘happy-not happy’, the other half were judged in terms of scales where the A category was E -, and the N category E +, e.g. ‘rude - not rude’. The main finding was a highly significant tendency for subjects to give more A than N responses, irrespective of evaluative content: in addition, a tendency for subjects to give more E - than E + responses, irrespective of grammatical form, approached significance.     

Personality,Intelligence and Assessment Centre Expert Ratings

Just under 3000 middle managers were rated on seven dimensions/competencies by consultants after a 1‐day assessment centre and structured interview. They also completed two cognitive ability tests and two well‐established personality tests (NEO PI‐R; MBTI). Correlational analysis showed that the rated dimensions of ‘drive to achieve’, ‘internal locus of control’ and ‘resilience’ all modestly negatively correlated with Neuroticism. All seven ratings were significantly correlated with Extraversion and three each with Openness and Agreeableness. There were few significant correlations with the MBTI but the Thinking–Feeling dimension correlated significantly with combined ratings. Correlations with the intelligence test scores were mostly non‐significant. The seven ratings factored into three identifiable factors: labelled personal assertiveness, toughness and determination and curiosity. Regressions using both a total, overall computed rating of general aptitude, as well as the three scores as criterion variables and ability, personality, participant‐gender and management level as predictor variables demonstrated that they accounted for between a quarter and a third of the variance. Predictors varied considerably as a function of the different criteria measures but ability and gender accounted for little of the variance.     

Rich contexts do not always enrich the accuracy of personality judgments

We test the common assumption that information ‘rich’ contexts lead to more accurate personality judgments than information ‘lean’ contexts. Pairs of unacquainted students rendered judgments of one another's personalities after interacting in one of three, increasingly rich, contexts: Internet ‘chat’, telephone, or face-to-face. Accuracy was assessed by correlating participants' judgments with a measure of targets' personalities that averaged self and informant ratings. As predicted, the visible traits of extraversion and conscientiousness were judged more accurately than the less visible traits of neuroticism and openness. However, judgment accuracy also depended on context. Judgments of extraversion and neuroticism improved as context richness increased (i.e., from Internet ‘chat’ to face-to-face), whereas judgments of conscientiousness and openness improved as context richness decreased (i.e., from face-to-face to Internet ‘chat’). Our findings suggest that context richness shapes not only the availability of personality cues but also the relevance of cues in any given context.     

How Do You Assess a Manager’s Decision-Making Abilities? The Use of Situational Inventories

Decision-making capabilities are absolutely crucial to a manager. Unfortunately, existing methods of assessing managers in this area for selection and development purposes (in-tray exercises, situational interviews, ability tests, etc.) leave a lot to be desired. This article focuses on an alternative for assessing managerial decision making – the situational inventory – and presents research findings and information on practical applications. Detailed findings are also presented for ‘Scenarios’, the UK’s first published situational measure of managerial judgement. Situational inventories work by presenting participants with realistic but difficult real-life management scenarios. Each scenario is accompanied by a number of possible responses which participants rate for effectiveness in dealing with the scenario. Participants’ ratings are then scored against a set of ideal answers, producing an assessment of current decision-making ability. Decision-making ability can be developed in individuals, making feedback invaluable to participants. Evidence that has been accumulating in the United States and the UK for at least 15 years is presented to support the general situational inventory approach. Additionally, specific evidence is presented for ‘Scenarios’. It was found to correlate significantly with a number of managerial performance and responsibility indicators while appearing to be largely separate from existing psychometric (ability and personality) tests.     

Re-Reading the Declaration of Independence as Perlocutionary Performative

This paper addresses the question of the constitution of ‘the people’. It argues that J.L. Austin’s concept of the ‘perlocutionary’ speech act gives us a framework for understanding the constitutive force of a specific constitutional document: the American Declaration of Independence. It does so through responding to Derrida’s analysis of the Declaration, which itself draws on Austin’s work. Derrida argues that the Declaration’s constitutive force lies in the fact that it cannot be simply understood as either ‘performative’ or ‘constative’, in Austin’s terminology. According to Derrida, ‘the people’ do not pre-exist the Declaration, but are constituted in the act of declaration itself. In response, I argue that while Derrida’s insight regarding the constitution of ‘the people’ is sound, his analysis misses two key aspects of the Declaration. These two lacunae point the way to an understanding of the constitutive force of the Declaration in terms of Austin’s ‘perlocutionary’ speech act.     

The Human Species Origin: Views of Biology Teachers from Three Latin American Countries

This paper intends to investigate whether the differences in country religiosity can influence biology teachers’ views about biological evolution, especially the human origin. Since Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have differences in religiosity, teachers from these countries were asked to answer to the question of the European questionnaire BIOHEAD-CITIZEN: “The emergence of the human species (Homo sapiens) was just as improbable as the emergence of any other species.” From their answers, it was possible to estimate how biology teachers conceive the origin of the humankind, whether they perceive it as a natural phenomenon or a special event. The four Barbour’s categories concerning the relationship between science and religion (Conflict, Independence, Dialogue and Integration) were used to analyze the results in these three countries. Results showed that, in general, teachers of Uruguay (a secular country) and Argentina (a constitutional Catholic country) had a clearer position of separation between science and religion whereas the teachers of Brazil (with a relative secularism), tended to do not make a separation between science and religion. It could be concluded that the type of the teachers’ religion rather than the secularism of state is more influencial on building teachers’ views about human origin.