Antecedents of Goal Commitment: An Empirical Examination of Personal and Situational Factors1

The purpose of this study was to provide a partial test of the Hollenbeck and Klein (1987) model of goal commitment. Four variables from that model (reward structure, social influence, type-A behavior, and self-esteem) were examined as to their relationships with the expectancy and attractiveness of goal attainment and goal commitment. The results, based on 88 college students performing an anagram task, were generally supportive. Significant person by situation interactions were also observed.     

Emotional Intelligence and Career Decision‐Making Self‐Efficacy: Mediating Roles of Goal Commitment and Professional Commitment

This study is the first to examine the mechanism of the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and career decision‐making self‐efficacy (CDMSE) and the moderating role of gender in relevant mechanisms. Analyses of 185 Chinese university students showed that EI could influence CDMSE through goal commitment (GC) and professional commitment, and male students exhibited a stronger relationship between EI and GC compared with female students. This study introduces a new perspective for career development research by establishing a mediation‐based emotion–career framework and provides deeper insights for career counselors to assist clients in career decision processes.     

Role‐Induced Bias in Court: An Experimental Analysis

Criminal procedure is organized as a tournament with predefined roles. We show that assuming the role of a defense counsel or a prosecutor leads to role‐induced bias even if participants are asked to predict a court ruling after they have ceased to act in that role and if they expect a substantial financial incentive for being accurate. The bias is not removed either if participants are instructed to predict the court ruling in preparation of plea bargaining. In line with parallel constraint satisfaction models for legal decision making, findings indicate that role‐induced bias is driven by coherence effects, that is, systematic information distortions in support of the favored option. This is mainly achieved by downplaying the importance of conflicting evidence. These distortions seem to stabilize interpretations, and people do not correct for this bias. Implications for legal procedure are briefly discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effects of Goal Publicity and Self‐Monitoring on Escalation of Goal Commitment

The current research examines whether the public or private nature of consumer goals affects goal‐commitment escalation following initial goal failure. In particular, the authors explore the moderating role of self‐monitoring. Across three experiments, the authors demonstrate that high self‐monitors are more likely to persist following a public failure than a private failure. However, the public versus private nature of the goal failure does not affect low self‐monitors’ persistence. The authors also explore two boundary conditions for this effect by manipulating the timing of feedback and by testing the role of the perceived value of the incentive for achieving the goal. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial insights from this work.     

Role‐Playing and Religion: Using Games to Educate Millennials

Abstract. I have been experimenting with using role‐playing and games in my religion classes for several years and have found that students respond well to these pedagogical tools and methods. After reviewing my experiences, I explore the reasons for students' positive response. I argue that role‐playing games capitalize on our students' educational expectations and fondness for game‐play, by drawing them into exploring significant texts and ideas. Of particular interest for religion and theology professors, these sorts of games also encourage empathy towards other viewpoints.     

The Effects of Participation in Goal Setting and Goal Rationales on Goal Commitment: An Exploration of Justice Mediators

The interactive effect of participation in goal setting and goal rationales on goal commitment was examined in the present study. Two justice mediation models that might explain these effects were also hypothesized. The results of a laboratory study demonstrated that goal rationales were especially important for increasing goal commitment when goals were assigned rather than participatively set. Support was also found for the role of interactional justice in mediating the effect of goal rationales on goal commitment; however, the hypothesis that procedural justice would mediate the effect of goal participation on goal commitment was not supported.     

An Empirical Investigation of Interaction and Relationship Patterns in Functional and Dysfunctional Nuclear Families and Stepfamilies

This study identifies key variables that distinguish nuclear families from stepfamilies, and functional from dysfunctional stepfamilies. Sixty-three family triads (mother, father, child) were studied using five instruments: Family Concept Test, Locke-Wallace Marital Inventory, Family Relations Test, Family Interaction Task, and background questionnaire. Results indicated that functional stepfamilies are similar to functional nuclear families in that both exhibit good marital adjustment, strong, positive bonds between biological parent and child, disinclination to exclude family members, and ability to make mutually compromised family decisions. The key differences were less intense interpersonal involvement between the stepfather and child and a stronger tendency toward the existence of parent-child coalitions in stepfamilies. Similarities between dysfunctional stepfamilies and dysfunctional nuclear families include stronger parent-child coalitions compared to their functional counterparts and lack of mutual decision-making skills that fulfill the choices of individual members. Unexpectedly, marital adjustment was better in dysfunctional stepfamilies than in dysfunctional nuclear families. Relationship patterns were similar in functional stepfamilies and in dysfunctional stepfamilies except that they were more extreme in the dysfunctional stepfamilies. Results are discussed in terms of theoretical implications for understanding stepfamilies, and clinical implications in terms of how dysfunctional stepfamilies might best be treated.     

The Effect of Commitment to a Learning Goal,Self-Efficacy,and the Interaction Between Learning Goal Difficulty and Commitment on Performance in a Business Simulation

The effect of commitment to a learning goal, self-efficacy, and the interaction between learning goal difficulty and goal commitment with performance was investigated using a highly complex business simulation. Participants (n?=?128) needed to acquire knowledge in order to perform the task effectively. The correlation between commitment to the learning goal and performance was positive and significant (r = .47, p < .001). Commitment was also a moderator of the learning goal–task performance effect. The relationship between self-efficacy and performance was partially mediated by commitment to the learning goal. Performance was a partial mediator of the relationship between goal commitment and self-efficacy. Seventy-five percent of the participants self-set a performance goal. The correlation between self-set performance goals and performance was positive and significant (r = .31, p < .001).     

供应链伙伴间的信任、承诺对合作绩效的影响

本文通过问卷调查的方式探讨供应链伙伴间的信任、关系承诺对合作绩效的影响。研究结果显示组织信任、个人信任与合作绩效存在正相关关系,组织信任通过关系承诺对合作绩效的间接影响明显高于其直接影响,个人信任通过关系承诺对合作绩效的间接影响明显不及其直接影响。     

Escalation of Commitment and the Framing Effect: An Empirical Investigation

Research and theory are reviewed which consider two decision biases: escalation of commitment and decision framing. Some authors (Bazerman, 1986; Whyte, 1986) have suggested that escalation of commitment may be explained by the decision framing used in the research paradigms. A study was conducted which simultaneously manipulated both responsibility for a prior decision and decision frame. Results show a main effect on resource allocation for responsibility and no effect for decision frame. A follow-up study found that amount of information provided systematically affected the framing bias, and that when responsibility was added to a large amount of contextual information, the framing effect became nonsignificant. These results suggest a need to further examine the boundary conditions of framing.     

Heroic Leaders as White‐Collar Criminals: An Empirical Study

In an empirical study of 179 white‐collar criminals, we identify a subset of 28 who may be called having a ‘heroic’ status, having received official recognition for contributions to society and fame prior to their being exposed and convicted as white‐collar criminals. We argue that these people are close to the classical picture of the white‐collar criminal, which implies that they are more likely not to be suspected of crimes. They are older, richer, and more powerful than the regular criminals. They also commit crimes assuming the roles of leaders in the crime. Most importantly, it seems as if the combination of heroic status and executive positions induces people to commit large‐scale opportunistic crimes late in their lives. The apparent onset of criminal behaviour late in life may be triggered by latent narcissistic traits. Our study contributes to a differentiated view on the profile of white‐collar criminals and derailed leadership. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Goal Difficulty and Creative Performance: The Mediating Role of Stress Appraisal

We investigated whether the effect of goal difficulty on creativity may be clarified by examining how people appraise their working conditions. In an experiment, 157 undergraduate students completed a divergent thinking task for which goal difficulty was manipulated. Stress appraisals were assessed through self-reports, and creativity was evaluated by independent judges. Results indicated that difficult goals, although categorized as a challenge stressor, can also be appraised as a hindrance and/or a threat. Although there was a direct positive effect of difficult goals on creative performance, hindrance appraisals partially mediated a negative relationship between goal difficulty and creative performance. Results highlight that stress appraisals can help clarify inconsistent effects of stressors, with implications for managing creativity.     

Sexuality and Religious Commitment in the United States: An Empirical Examination

I provide an empirical assessment of the religious commitments of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in the United States. I compare the religiosity of gay men and lesbians and bisexuals to each other and to male and female heterosexuals, while controlling for a host of sociodemographic factors that may contribute to differences across the gender/sexuality groups. To accomplish this, I examine data from the 1991–2000 General Social Surveys (GSS). During this period, the GSS asked respondents for the sex of their sex partners over the last five years. The GSS finds that 4.3 percent of men and 3.1 percent of women report same-sex sexual partners in the five years preceding the interview—this is a larger proportion than members of "other" races, Episcopalians, or Jews. I find that gay men have high rates of religious participation, while lesbians and bisexuals have significantly lower rates of participation. Nonheterosexuals are more likely to become apostates when compared to female heterosexuals, but no more so than are heterosexual men. My findings are at odds with religious pundits who suggest that alternative sexuality mixes with religion more often for females than for males. The results are in concert with contemporary theories regarding the formation of religious preferences, and risk preferences and religiosity.     

The Impact of Goal‐Performance Discrepancies,Self‐Efficacy,and Goal Orientation on Upward Goal Revision1

The present study examined the role of positive goal‐performance discrepancies (GPDs), self‐efficacy beliefs, and dispositional goal orientation on goal revision processes following performance feedback in a sample of 129 Icelandic job applicants. The results indicated that goal revision was primarily a function of the positive GPD encountered by individuals. However, this relationship was moderated by self‐efficacy, performance goal orientation, and learning goal orientation. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Supervisors' Instrumental and Emotional Influences on Subordinate Help‐Seeking Behavior: An Exploratory Study

Research on subordinate help‐seeking in the workplace is limited. In the present research, we hypothesize that subordinates' help‐seeking behaviors will be influenced by 3 supervisor influences that are instrumentally and emotionally related to the subordinate: providing direct job‐related assistance and emotional support, and socializing with the supervisor outside of work. The results indicate that providing job‐related assistance and socializing are significant predictors of subordinates' help‐seeking behaviors. Dominance analysis reveals that socializing outside of work is the dominant factor influencing subordinates' help‐seeking behaviors. Implications from the findings and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Simone de Beauvoir and Confucian Role Ethics: Role‐Relational Ambiguity and Confucian Mystification

This article argues that there has been a general misunderstanding of the nature of role relations in Confucian role ethics. Recasting constitutive role relations in light of Beauvoir's ethics of ambiguity will aid in developing Confucian role ethics as a contemporary vision of human flourishing that can internally accommodate the need for a feminist transformation.     

Sensitivity to Affective Information and Investors' Evaluation of Past Performance: An Eye‐tracking Study

In the present work, we used the eye‐tracking methodology to investigate how affective reactions influence investment decision making. In addition, we looked at individual differences in terms of people's sensitivity to affective information and how efficiently they regulate it, that is, trait emotional intelligence. We demonstrated that people who are more sensitive to affective information have larger pupil dilation when looking at the past performance of a stock fund. In addition, we also found that participants' larger pupil dilation had an impact on their investment decisions (whether people were more likely to sell their shares, hold on to the investment, or buy more shares). A larger pupil dilation led people to be more consistent and willing to invest more money on a fund regardless from its past performance (positive or negative). We also tested the hypothesis that individuals with a larger pupil dilation should be more influenced by a fund's past performance (e.g., selling their shares more often when the past performance of the fund was negative and buying additional shares more often when the past performance was positive). However, results did not support this explanation. Finally, our data revealed that the effect of individual differences in trait emotional intelligence on investment decisions was significantly mediated by pupil dilation. In the discussion, we explored the relationship between our results and previous evidence on the role of pupil dilation in processing information under uncertainty and the role of affect in decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's Representation and Imitation of Events: How Goal Organization Influences 3‐Year‐Old Children's Memory for Action Sequences

Children's imitation of adults plays a prominent role in human cognitive development. However, few studies have investigated how children represent the complex structure of observed actions which underlies their imitation. We integrate theories of action segmentation, memory, and imitation to investigate whether children's event representation is organized according to veridical serial order or a higher level goal structure. Children were randomly assigned to learn novel event sequences either through interactive hands‐on experience (Study 1) or via storybook (Study 2). Results demonstrate that children's representation of observed actions is organized according to higher level goals, even at the cost of representing the veridical temporal ordering of the sequence. We argue that prioritizing goal structure enhances event memory, and that this mental organization is a key mechanism of social‐cognitive development in real‐world, dynamic environments. It supports cultural learning and imitation in ecologically valid settings when social agents are multitasking and not demonstrating one isolated goal at a time.     

Bonhoeffer's Non‐Commitment to Nonviolence: A Response to Stanley Hauerwas

Stanley Hauerwas's claim that Bonhoeffer had a “commitment to nonviolence” runs aground on Bonhoeffer's own statements about peace, war, violence, and nonviolence. The fact that Hauerwas and others have asserted Bonhoeffer's commitment to nonviolence despite abundant evidence to the contrary reveals a blind spot that develops from reading Bonhoeffer's thinking in general and his statements about peace in particular as if they were part of an Anabaptist theological framework rather than his own Lutheran one. This essay shows that Bonhoeffer's understanding of peace as “concrete commandment” and “order of preservation” relies on Lutheran concepts and is articulated with explicit contrast to an Anabaptist account of peace. The interpretation developed here can account for the range of statements Bonhoeffer makes about peace, war, violence, and nonviolence, many of which must be misconstrued or ignored to claim his “commitment to nonviolence.”     

Commitment in relationships: An updated meta‐analysis of the Investment Model

This article provides a systematic review and updated meta‐analysis of the extant literature on Rusbult's Investment Model of Commitment. This meta‐analysis aimed to determine the strength of the associations between commitment and its antecedents and to investigate potential moderators of these associations. This meta‐analysis included 50,427 participants from 202 independent samples (collected between 1980 and early 2016) that had examined the intercorrelations between satisfaction, investment size, quality of alternatives, and commitment. Across all studies, satisfaction had the largest aggregate association with commitment (r = 0.65), followed by investments (r = 0.53) and quality of alternatives (r = ?0.43). Several significant moderators of the relationships between the antecedents and commitment were also identified. Implications and future research directions are discussed.