Green with envy and nerves of steel: Moderated mediation between distributive justice and theft

The relationship between distributive justice and theft is well established, but the underlying mechanism for this relationship is not yet well understood. We expect that the discrete emotions that individuals experience when they have been paid unfairly may influence how they behave and their personality traits help them cope with unfair pay. In the present study, we therefore use the appraisal model to examine which discrete emotion (i.e., anger, disappointment, and envy) mediates the relationship between distributive justice and theft and conservation of resources theory to examine how emotionality is a personal resource that varies among individuals to help them cope with unfair pay. Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental condition where we manipulated the fairness of the pay that they received, measured the discrete emotions that they felt after being informed of their pay, and objectively measured how much they stole. The results indicate that envy mediates the relationship between distributive justice and theft and there is a moderating effect of emotionality on distributive justice and envy; and envy and theft. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

How do constraints on leaving a marriage affect behavior within the marriage?

Like relationship satisfaction, constraints on leaving a relationship have been described as a component of global commitment. But do constraints increase or decrease efforts to maintain the relationship? To address this question, the authors of the current article describe 3 independent studies of spouses and married couples. Across all studies, wives who perceived more constraints on leaving the marriage exhibited lower levels of negative behavior only when their husbands were relatively unconstrained. In Study 3, this association was especially pronounced among less satisfied wives. In Study 2, spouses' perceived constraint also interacted to predict husbands' behavior, but in the opposite direction: Husbands who perceived more constraints behaved less negatively when their wives were similarly constrained but more negatively when their wives were less constrained. These results highlight differences in behavior between couples who persist in marriage because they desire to and those who endure because they have to, raising questions about measures of global commitment that obscure these distinctions. They also highlight the need for a dyadic perspective on the forces that keep relationships together.     

Perceived supervisor support: contributions to perceived organizational support and employee retention

Three studies investigated the relationships among employees' perception of supervisor support (PSS), perceived organizational support (POS), and employee turnover. Study 1 found, with 314 employees drawn from a variety of organizations, that PSS was positively related to temporal change in POS, suggesting that PSS leads to POS. Study 2 established, with 300 retail sales employees, that the PSS-POS relationship increased with perceived supervisor status in the organization. Study 3 found, with 493 retail sales employees, evidence consistent with the view that POS completely mediated a negative relationship between PSS and employee turnover. These studies suggest that supervisors, to the extent that they are identified with the organization, contribute to POS and, ultimately, to job retention.     

Jealousy and commitment: Perceived threat and the effect of relationship alternatives

Most research on jealousy has focused on the correlation between one psychological factor and jealousy. In contrast, the current work examined how the link between relationship commitment and jealousy depends on the interplay of two situational factors: attractiveness of relationship alternatives and receiving threatening information about the self and the romantic relationship. In two studies, participants completed measures of relationship commitment for their current relationship and then received feedback that manipulated their perceptions of relationship alternatives (Study 1) or their perceptions of relationship compatibility (Study 2). Participants' jealousy was assessed by their responses to a mildly threatening relationship situation (Studies 1 and 2) and on a jealousy scale (Study 2). Study 1 showed that those in more committed relationships experienced greater jealousy when they were induced to consider having unattractive relationship alternatives. Study 2 showed that those with greater relationship commitment reported more jealousy when they received negative information about their relationship compatibility. Implications for how threat plays a causal role in experiencing jealousy are discussed.     

Territorial Defense in Parking Lots: Retaliation Against Waiting Drivers

Three studies showed that drivers leaving a public parking space are territorial even when such behavior is contrary to their goal of leaving. In Study 1 (observations of 200 departing cars), intruded-upon drivers took longer to leave than nonintruded-upon drivers. In Study 2, an experiment involving 240 drivers in which level of intrusion and status of intruder were manipulated, drivers took longer to leave when another car was present and when the intruder honked. Males left significantly sooner when intruded upon by a higher rather than lower status car, whereas females' departure times did not differ as a function of the status of the car. There was evidence that distraction might explain some of this effect. In Study 3, individuals who had parked at a mall were asked about how they would react to intruders. Compared to what they believed other people would do, respondents said they would leave faster if the car were just waiting for them to leave but they would take longer to leave if the driver in the car honked at them.     

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors as a Function of Empathy,Consideration of Future Consequences,and Employee Time Horizon: An Initial Exploration Using an In‐Basket Simulation of OCBs1

We hypothesized that organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) represent a social dilemma. Two studies supported this hypothesis. In Study 1, participants rated OCBs as costly to an employee in the short run, and beneficial to an organization in the long run. In Study 2, likelihood of engaging in OCBs was higher among those high in empathy and concern with future consequences; and less likely among those instructed to imagine they would be leaving the company in 3 months for another job. Empathy showed a stronger relationship with OCBs when respondents imagined they would soon leave an organization and that individuals high in concern with future consequences were less likely to engage in OCBs when faced with a short‐term time horizon.     

When conveying a message may hurt the relationship: Cultural differences in the difficulty of using an answering machine

Cultures differ in their emphasis on the two core functions of communication, conveying information and maintaining the relationship. Because answering machines primarily serve the former function, their use may show cultural differences. Leaving a message is cognitively more taxing for Japanese than Americans, as indicated by poorer performance on a secondary task (Study 1). This performance decrement reflects that Japanese allocated more cognitive resources to tailoring the message to the recipient, consistent with their culture’s higher emphasis on relationship goals. Such cross-cultural differences were not restricted to the laboratory situation. Although equally likely to own an answering machine, Japanese reported a higher rate of hanging up when reaching an answering machine than Americans (Study 2). The difficulties that Japanese experience when leaving a message on an answering machine are partly due to the lack of feedback channel. Theoretical implications are discussed.     

Sex differences in the effects of visual contact and eye contact in negotiations

Previous research has proposed that the ability to see others would benefit negotiations. We argue that this view is too narrow and that the impact of visual contact on negotiated agreements depends on the meaning individuals ascribe to either its presence or absence. Based on previous research showing that females are more likely to understand others in the presence of visual contact while males understand others better in the absence of visual contact, we explore how visual contact, eye contact, and sex affect the quality of negotiated agreements in a meta-analysis (Study 1) and a laboratory experiment (Study 2). The two studies combined show that because direct communication via the face facilitates a shared understanding for two unacquainted females, their agreements are of higher quality when they have visual contact compared to when they do not (Study 1), and if they have visual contact, their agreements are better when they have eye contact than when they do not (Study 2). Because communication via the face increases discomfort between two unacquainted males, their agreements are of higher quality when they do not have visual contact (Study 1), and if they do have visual contact, their agreements are better when they have no eye contact than when they do (Study 2).     

Understanding money's limits: People's beliefs about the income – Happiness correlation

It is claimed that the correlation between income and happiness is considerably weaker than people expect and recent research supports that contention. However, an important lesson from judgment and decision-making research is that judgments are constructed in response to the prevailing context, leaving open the possibility that some elicitation procedures may reveal accurate intuitions about income and happiness. We examined whether this is so. Study 1 participants ranked a set of empirical relationships according to the strength of correlation and we examined whether they ranked the income–happiness link where it actually falls in the set. In Studies 2 and 3, participants estimated the probability that someone with a higher income than another is also the happier of the two. The estimates of the participants were then compared to the actual probability based on the documented income–happiness relationship. Results indicate that, using these elicitation procedures, people have an accurate understanding of the relationship between income and happiness.     

Social Closeness and Decision Making: Moral, Attributive and Emotional Reactions to Third Party Transgressions

Decisions involving moral vectors are inherently social. This paper investigates social closeness to others as one of the important factors that mediate our evaluations of moral infractions. The influence of social closeness on participants?? third-party evaluations of moral transgressions was measured across development. Participants?? intentional attributions, punitive sentiments, moral judgments, and emotional reactions were measured using responses to hypothetical vignettes that describe socio-moral transgressions involving theft. Participants?? attribution judgments, punitive decisions, and emotional reactions differed when their social relationship with the perpetrator (Study One), and alternatively with the victim (Study Two), of the transgression was varied. Evidence is provided for the supposition that morality is a construct of social cooperative exchange and that social closeness influences socio-moral evaluations and judgments.     

Forgetting having denied: The “amnesic” consequences of denial

The concept of denial has its roots in psychoanalysis. Denial has been assumed to be effective in blocking unwanted memories. In two experiments, we report that denial has unique consequences for remembering. In our two experiments, participants viewed a video of a theft, and half of the participants had to deny seeing certain details in the video, whereas the other half had to tell the truth. One day later, all participants were given either a source-monitoring recognition or a recall task. In these tasks, they were instructed to indicate (1) whether they could remember talking about certain details and (2) whether they could recollect seeing those details in the video. In both experiments, we found that denial made participants forget that they had talked about these details, while leaving memory for the video itself unaffected. This denial-induced forgetting was evident for both the source-monitoring recognition and recall tests. Furthermore, when we asked participants after the experiment whether they could still not remember talking about these details, those who had to deny were most likely to report that they had forgotten talking about the details. In contrast to a widely held belief, we show that denial does not impair memory for the experienced stimuli, but that it has a unique ability to undermine memory for what has been talked about.     

INTEGRITY TESTING FOR PERSONNEL SELECTION: AN UPDATE

Sackett and M. M. Harris (1984) reviewed published and unpublished literature on the use of commercially available paper-and-pencil integrity tests for employee selection. This paper reviews recent developments in this area. Legal issues related to the use of the polygraph, and integrity tests are discussed. Empirical research on the reliability, criterion-related validity, construct validity, fakability, and adverse impact of integrity tests is reviewed. Major changes since the previous review include (1) the emergence of two distinct types of tests, labeled overt integrity tests and personality-oriented measures, (2) a broadening of the criteria used for test validation to include global performance, absence, turnover, and forms of counterproductivity other than theft, and (3) an increase in the use of external criteria (e.g., detected theft, turnover) rather than self-report criteria (e.g., admissions of theft) in validation research. Difficulties in interpreting research findings and practical constraints on the use of integrity tests are discussed.     

Socially oriented values and reciprocity norm predict organizational commitment

The current research concerns the predictors and organizational outcomes of normative commitment in Chinese companies. In Study 1, using a semi-structured interview, we identified internalization of socially oriented value and reciprocity norm as two possible predictors of normative commitment. Survey results confirm the factorial independence of these two predictors. Study 2 examined the predictive relationship of these predictors with employee job satisfaction, turnover intention, in-role performance, and organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). The results showed that value internalization predicts higher job satisfaction and weaker turnover intentions via normative commitment, whereas reciprocity predicts higher job satisfaction, weaker turnover intention, and more frequent display of OCB via normative commitment. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and management practices.     

Three-component commitment and turnover: An examination of temporal aspects

SEM (N = 182) was employed to examine implied temporal aspects of three-component commitment theory as they relate to turnover. Consistent with expectations, affective commitment predicted subsequent turnover in an immediate and relatively short interval of 4 months, but failed to do in a much longer but outlying interval of 5–12 months. Side bet commitment failed to predict turnover in the short, immediate interval, but did so robustly over the longer albeit more distant interval. Normative commitment predicted turnover in neither the near term nor outmonths. Turnover rates for employees with low affective commitment were much higher than those with high affective commitment in the first quarter of a 1-year monitoring period, but subsequent turnover rates were roughly the same for the two groups. In contrast, turnover for employees with low side bet commitment was only slightly higher than the high side bet group in the first quarter, but over the remainder of the year cumulative turnover for the low side bet group exceeded that for the high side bet group by increasingly large margins. These results are consistent with theory suggesting that decrements in affective commitment (1) often occur suddenly and just prior to employees' leaving and (2) reflect general disaffection and an impetus to leave that is already exists at the point of attitude measurement. Results comport with theory describing side bet commitment as (1) an appraisal of leaving costs that, in the aggregate, are unlikely to change suddenly and (2) a relatively stable attitude that serves primarily to prevent turnover should some independent motivation to leave arise.     

Evolving informational credentials: the (mis)attribution of believable facts to credible sources

Three studies demonstrate that individuals often rely on a "belief force equals credible source" heuristic to make source judgments, wherein they assume that statements they believe originate from credible sources. In Study 1, participants who were exposed to a statement many times (and hence believed it) were more likely to attribute it to Consumer Reports than to the National Enquirer. In Study 2, participants read a murder investigation article containing evidence against two suspects from credible and noncredible sources. When participants believed a particular suspect to be guilty, they misattributed evidence incriminating that suspect to the high-credibility source. Study 3 demonstrated that this phenomenon occurs because individuals assume their beliefs are true and that true beliefs come from credible sources; when participants were given feedback that their beliefs were incorrect, the relationship between beliefs and source inferences did not occur.     

Altruistic or selfish? Responses when safety is threatened depend on childhood socioeconomic status

Altruism is an effective method of coping with threats. This research explored the relationship between childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and altruism under different situations. The results of five studies provided reliable evidence that safety-threat conditions moderated the relationship between childhood SES and altruism. Individuals with higher childhood SES exhibited higher altruistic intentions (Studies 1 and 2) and behaviors (Study 3) when they were manipulated to imagine a safety threat scenario (Study 1), when viewing pictures of disasters (Study 2), and when they were manipulated to believe that their health was under threat (Study 3). However, their childhood SES had no significant impact on their altruistic intentions and behaviors in relatively safe environments (Studies 1–3). This effect was again tested in more realistic environmental conditions using a large-scale survey in Study 4. In Study 5, we explored the underlying mechanism behind the earlier findings (i.e., temporal discounting).     

The performance implications of ambivalent initiative: The interplay of autonomous and controlled motivations

Although initiative is thought to contribute to higher performance, researchers have called for a more comprehensive understanding of the contingencies for this relationship. Building on self-determination theory, we propose that initiative is more likely to predict performance when individuals experience autonomous and not controlled motivation. Across two studies, we find support for a hypothesized three-way interaction between initiative, autonomous motivation, and controlled motivation in predicting individual performance. In Study 1, the personal initiative reported by job applicants was most positively related to the number of job offers that they received several months later when they experienced high autonomous motivation and low controlled motivation. In Study 2, the objective initiative taken by call center employees was most positively related to the revenue that they generated in subsequent months when they reported high autonomous motivation and low controlled motivation. We discuss theoretical implications for motivation, initiative, proactivity, and performance.     

Does it take one to know one? Endorsement of conspiracy theories is influenced by personal willingness to conspire

We advance a new account of why people endorse conspiracy theories, arguing that individuals use the social-cognitive tool of projection when making social judgements about others. In two studies, we found that individuals were more likely to endorse conspiracy theories if they thought they would be willing, personally, to participate in the alleged conspiracies. Study 1 established an association between conspiracy beliefs and personal willingness to conspire, which fully mediated a relationship between Machiavellianism and conspiracy beliefs. In Study 2, participants primed with their own morality were less inclined than controls to endorse conspiracy theories - a finding fully mediated by personal willingness to conspire. These results suggest that some people think 'they conspired' because they think 'I would conspire'.     

Charismatic leadership and organizational outcomes: The mediating role of employees' work-group identification

This research examines the degree of employees' identification with the work-group as a function of charismatic leadership (e.g., Conger & Kanungo, 1998 1998) and the mediating role of work-group identification (Van Knippenberg & Van Shie, 2000 2000) in the relationship between charismatic style and different work outcomes. Thus, the general aim was to analyse leadership and work outcomes as they are associated to social identification processes, referring both to recent developments of charismatic leadership models and to the recent developments of the social identity analysis applied to the workplace (see Abrams & Hogg, 2001 2001). Two field surveys were conducted using 200 Italian public and private sector employees (two different working organizations). Two questionnaires were designed in order to collect data. They included different measures of charismatic leadership derived by the literature (e.g., the Conger-Kanungo Charismatic Leadership Questionnaire; Conger & Kanungo, 1994 1994, 1998 1998, for Study 2), a scale to assess the degree of identification with the work-group (Van Knippenberg & Van Shie, 2000 2000), and some scales to measure the different outcomes considered (e.g., Brown and Leigh's effort measure, 1996 1996; Mobley's turnover intention measure, 1977 1977). As predicted, results of Study 1 revealed that charismatic leadership was positively related to work-group identification, and employees' work effort was positively related to work-group identification. Work-group identification also mediates relationship between charismatic leadership and work effort. Results of Study 2 replicated the positive association between charismatic leadership and employees' work-group identification; work-group identification is also associated with their job involvement, job satisfaction, performance, and turnover intention. The same mediating role of work-group identification between charismatic leadership and the criteria mentioned above was found. Underlying mechanisms as well as implications are discussed.     

When relationships do not live up to benevolent ideals: Women's benevolent sexism and sensitivity to relationship problems

Benevolent sexism promises women a revered place within intimate relationships, which should lead to greater dissatisfaction when they face relationship difficulties. We collected self‐reports of relationship problems and relationship satisfaction (Study 1; N = 91 heterosexual couples), relationship problems and relationship evaluations daily over 3 weeks (Study 1), and hurtful partner behaviour and relationship evaluations over 10 days (Study 2; N = 86 women). Women's endorsement of benevolent sexism predicted sharper declines in relationship satisfaction when they faced greater relationship problems (Study 1) and hurtful partner behaviour (Study 2). These effects were magnified in longer relationships (Studies 1 and 2), indicating that the sensitivity to relationship problems associated with women's endorsement of benevolent sexism is particularly pronounced when women have more invested in their relationship role being revered and cherished. The results suggest that women who endorse benevolent sexism are vulnerable within their relationships because their satisfaction is contingent upon the fulfilment of the promises of benevolent sexism. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.