Perceptions of intergenerational communication across cultures: an Italian case

406 Anglo-American, Italian-American, and Italian (Northern and Southern Italy) students were asked to evaluate past conversations with same-age peers, i.e., 17 to 30 years, and older adults, i.e., 65 years and older. While according older adults more deference, all cultural groups perceived older adults as more rigid and nonaccommodating than younger adults. Exchanges with older adults were reported as having more negative affect than were those with other young adults, and were also more likely to he avoided.     

Effects of taking conflict personally on conflict management styles across cultures

The concept of taking conflict personally is largely underexplored by dominant conflict literature. The purpose of this study was to test the cross-cultural predictions of the associations between self-construal, the tendency to personalize conflict, and subsequent outcome variables such as negative feelings of being criticized and motivation to improve. The participants were 457 undergraduates, of which 185 were studying in Japan, and 272 were studying in the United States. The results indicated the significant negative relation between independent self-construal and taking conflict personally. On the contrary, interdependent self and taking conflict personally showed positive relation. In turn, taking conflict personally indicated positive relation with participants’ conflict management style, such as motivation to improve one’s own behaviors. Discussion of these results and their implications is provided.     

Employee well-being: A multilevel model linking work and nonwork domains

In this article, we review recent methodological developments that have enabled conceptual advances addressing intraindividual processes leading to psychological well-being. We contend that the introduction of dynamic assessment methodologies for sampling experiences, feelings, and behaviours on and off the job, together with the implementation of multilevel modelling strategies in organizational research on well-being, should lead to the development of richer models of employee well-being (compared to existing theoretical models). Accordingly, we develop a model of employee well-being that considers both personal and situational predictors, and both work and nonwork well-being indicators, as well as the real-time relationships between well-being antecedents and indicators across these two life spheres.     

Different perceptions of self‐handicapping across college and work contexts

We investigated the effectiveness of self‐handicapping as an impression management strategy in college and work contexts. In contrast to past research in which college students are both targets and perceivers, we tested whether target status and perceiver status moderate perceptions of self‐handicappers. To this end, we manipulated whether the target was a college student or an adult worker, and we recruited as perceivers both college students (Study 1) and adult workers (Study 2). We additionally manipulated the target's behavior (self‐handicapping vs. control) and outcome (success vs. failure). The results revealed that self‐handicapping protected a student target (but not a worker) from negative evaluations (e.g., ability attributions) in the eyes of college students, particularly males. However, adult workers consistently judged self‐handicapping negatively.     

Blurring boundaries: Correlates of integration and segmentation between work and nonwork

This study investigates the interrelations among role integration-segmentation, role identification, reactions to interruptions, and work-life conflict. Results from a field survey of university staff employees suggest that as highly identified roles are integrated into other domains, high role integration is related to less negative reactions to interruptions, and employees who integrate work into nonwork set fewer boundaries for using communication technologies during nonwork time and report higher work-life conflict. Findings from this research provide insight into how individuals integrate their work and life domains and the consequences of such integration to work-life conflict.     

Recovery,work engagement,and proactive behavior: a new look at the interface between nonwork and work

This study examined work-related outcomes of recovery during leisure time. A total of 147 employees completed a questionnaire and a daily survey over a period of 5 consecutive work days. Multilevel analyses showed that day-level recovery was positively related to day-level work engagement and day-level proactive behavior (personal initiative, pursuit of learning) during the subsequent work day. The data suggest considerable daily fluctuations in behavior and attitudes at work, with evidence that these are related to prior experience and opportunity for recovery in the nonwork domain.     

Behavioral change and consistency across contexts

The degree to which behavior changes across situations is often conflated with the cross-situational consistency of individual differences. The current study assesses the extent of behavioral change and consistency, the relationship between them, and variables associated with behaviors’ differing patterns of change and consistency. Two hundred fifty-six participants were observed in three different, three-person interactions. In line with previous research, behaviors showed a great deal of both change and consistency. Behavioral change across situations was unrelated to the degree to which individual differences in these same behaviors were maintained, demonstrating that behavioral consistency does not imply lack of situational adaptation. Behaviors rated as relatively broad and as relatively automatic showed more consistency; behaviors rated as relatively controlled showed more change.     

Stereotype threat and female communication styles

A large body of research has documented the performance-debilitating effects of stereotype threat for individuals, but there is a paucity of research exploring interpersonal consequences of stereotype threat. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that stereotype threat would change the style in which women communicate. Results indicate that women who experience stereotype threat regarding leadership abilities react against the stereotype by adopting a more masculine communication style. Study 2 provides evidence that self-affirmation eliminates this effect of stereotype threat on women's communication styles. A third study demonstrates an ironic consequence of this effect of stereotype threat on women's communication--when women under stereotype threat adopt a more masculine communication style, they are rated as less warm and likeable, and evaluators indicate less willingness to comply with their requests. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Religious cultures and gender cultures: tracing gender differences across religious cultures

This special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Religion focuses on varying empirical connections and theoretical relations between ‘religion’ and ‘gender’. The introduction to this special issue suggests a theoretical approach which is sensitive to culture by drawing on a phenomenological understanding of culture that is based on knowledge and meaning production and sense making. At first sight, this may not sound convincing because ‘culture’ is a category that is most notably used in combination with religion and gender in culturalist ways. In the migration societies of contemporary Europe, religion has become a metaphor for cultural difference and symbolic boundary-making. The core element of this approach is the conceptualisation of culture as a social web consisting of symbolic forms based on signs of meaning that shape social action, orientation, and experience in the world, including the religious sphere. This entails an understanding of religion as a distinct province of meaning that is structured by processes of social symbolisation just like any other sphere of life. This approach reveals that culturalist conceptions of both religion and gender have specific social meanings as meaningful signs in the symbolic order of secular modernity.     

Objective work–nonwork conflict: From incompatible demands to decreased work role performance

Research on work–nonwork conflict (WNC) is based on the assumption that incompatible demands from the work and the nonwork domain hamper role performance. This assumption implies that role demands from both domains interact in predicting role performance, but research has been largely limited to main effects. In this multi-source study, we analyze the incompatibility of demands by testing the interaction of work and nonwork demands on task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The sample consisted of 61 employees of a German hospital and we used three independent sources of data: self-ratings of work demands, partner-ratings of nonwork demands, and colleague-ratings of performance. Results from hierarchical regression analyses revealed an interaction effect of work and nonwork demands on OCB, but not on task performance. We conclude that people maintain their effort invested in task-related aspects of the job even when conflicts between work and nonwork demands exist, but that they reduce their investment in activities that are perceived as more marginal and extra-role.     

Cooperation and coordination across cultures and contexts: Individual,sociocultural, and contextual factors jointly influence decision making in the volunteer's dilemma game

What factors promote or hinder volunteering within organizations and groups? This paper simultaneously explores the impact of individual, contextual, and sociocultural variables on decision making in a special type of social dilemma: the volunteer's dilemma game (VDG). The VDG provides a controlled experimental method for studying volunteering behaviors in an anonymous interactive environment. We developed six variations of the VDG and administered them to economics students in five different cultures (N_total = 603). Among other things, these VDGs varied whether the potential benefits of volunteering were certain or uncertain. Although the overall level of volunteering did not vary substantially across most cultural groups, we found that culture interacted with the size and (un)certainty of the benefits associated with volunteering, to influence volunteering decisions. We also found that religiosity (but not religious affiliation per se) increases volunteering and that men are less likely to volunteer when the returns to doing so are certain. These results extend our knowledge of behaviors in the VDG, and their potential drivers, with clear implications for understanding how culture, individual characteristics, and context jointly influence prosocial behavior and coordination.     

Career transitions within organizations: an exploratory study of work, nonwork, and coping strategies

This paper examines career transitions within organizations. An integrative model was developed and evaluated which views career transitions as a stress-coping process influenced by work and nonwork factors. Data supported the model in that individuals experiencing a large number of personal life transitions were more likely to adopt a symptom-management coping strategy (as contrasted with a situation-focused strategy) for dealing with job stress during the transition. However, neither the magnitude of the career transition nor intervening role variables in the model contributed to explanation of the career transition process. Major career transitions were associated with major transitions in personal life and data suggested that a career transition could act as a "trigger" event for personal life instability. Implications of both supportive and disconfirming findings are discussed. Future directions are suggested for research on careers and for career management in organizations.     

Importing social preferences across contexts and the pitfall of over-generalization across theories

Claims regarding negative strong reciprocity do indeed rest on experiments lacking established external validity, often without even a small "menu of options." Guala's review should prompt strong reciprocity proponents to extend the real-world validity of their work, exploring the preferences participants bring to experiments. That said, Guala's approach fails to differentiate among group selection approaches and glosses over cross-cultural variability.     

Nature and nurture: Williams syndrome across cultures

This study is concerned with ways in which children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder arising from a hemizygous deletion in chromosome band 7q11.23 including the gene for elastin (ELN) and approximately 20 surrounding genes, are affected by social mores of vastly differing cultures: the United States and Japan. WS presents a compelling model for the investigation because its genetic phenotype is well defined and results in an uneven cognitive profile as well as a social phenotype typical of the syndrome including overt over-friendliness toward strangers. While a number of research groups have been studying the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of individuals with WS in various countries, there have not been studies to date that explore the social phenotype in WS across different cultures. This study examines the ways in which social behavior in WS, stemming from specific genetic underpinnings, might be mediated by cultural expectations. We conducted a cross-cultural study using an instrument that measures aspects of sociability commonly found among people with WS. Quantitative analyses revealed a significant effect of diagnostic category in that in both countries, children with WS were rated as significantly higher in global sociability and more likely to approach strangers than were their normal counterparts. There was also an effect of culture, in that regardless of category, WS and normal children in Japan were rated lower than their counterparts in the US. We suggest that the excessively social phenotype of children with Williams syndrome, although markedly present across cultures, appears to vary in its intensity by culture. This is an intriguing illustration of interactions between nature and nurture.     

Therapist specific communication styles and patient resistance: An analogue study

Two contrasting pairs of verbal therapist communication styles were covaried with three areas of communication loci and were studied in relation to subjects' choices of resistant or resonant ‘patient responses’. Thirty medical students, serving as vicarious patients, observed a videotape of a simulated psychotherapy session and made response choices in relation to 12 therapists' well-specified communications. Contrary to expectations, subjects chose fewer resistant responses following engaged styles of communication than with disengaged styles. Collaborative style of communication, as hypothesized, was followed by less resistant responses than was unidirectional style. Communications that were cast in terms of transferential relationships were generally followed by significantly lower resistant choices than were those relating to past and current relationship loci. No gender differences were observed. Rationale, findings and possible inferences were in relation to dyadic interpersonal influences. Experimental manipulation of variables within psychotherapy sessions is encouraged.     

Personality assessment across selection and development contexts: insights into response distortion

Insight into applicant intentional distortion on personality measures was obtained by comparing individual responses provided in an organizational context with high motivation to distort (selection) and those provided in an organizational context with low motivation to distort (development). An assessment firm database containing responses to the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) was searched for within-subject data. Seven hundred and thirteen individuals were identified as having completed the CPI twice: once for selection purposes and once for development purposes or twice for the same purpose. Scale-score analyses both within and across contexts revealed a limited degree of response distortion.     

Inter-individual differences in intra-individual variability in personality within and across contexts

This study focuses on intra-individual variability in personality at work, and how it relates to job performance. 288 professionals completed contextualised adjective-based personality assessments in work and non-work contexts, and a non-contextualised personality measure. Ratings of their personality were also obtained from colleagues, family members and friends. Supervisors provided performance ratings for 130 participants. Results indicate that personality is context- and source-dependent, and varies systematically within contexts intra-individually regardless of source. Whilst this variability was predictive of some performance criteria when based on other-ratings, overall predictive effects were small in number and size. This study adds to the relatively small body of research on personality variability and performance and contributes to the conceptualisation of personality as a dynamic construct.