Help yourself by helping others: The joint impact of group member organizational citizenship behaviors and group cohesiveness on group member objective task performance change

This paper examines how a group member's individual‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBI) and organization‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBO) interact with a salient group‐level contextual variable, group cohesiveness, to foster positive change for that group member, starting with job self‐efficacy change, and followed by objective task performance change. Over a span of 6 months, we engaged in multilevel, multisource, multistage data collection and surveyed 587 members in 83 work groups. Our results indicate that a group member's OCBI, in comparison with OCBO, is more positively related to his or her job self‐efficacy change. Group cohesiveness was found to attenuate the relationship between a group member's OCBI and job self‐efficacy change, and conversely, to accentuate the relationship between a group member's OCBO and job self‐efficacy change. Furthermore, a group member's job self‐efficacy change mediated the interactive effects of the group member's OCBI and group cohesiveness (as well as the group member's OCBO and group cohesiveness) on his or her objective task performance change.     

The Tempo of Verbal Interaction in an Open Therapy Group Conducted in Rotation by Three Different Therapists

This article examines the experience of new members joining an ongoing psychotherapy group. The group's stage of development and the new member's personality development are suggested to be important variables in this significant event. The experience of joining is found to share some things in common with the beginning phase of group for the group as a whole, but also noted are some unique elements. The process of joining is viewed as a highly anxious event for the new member, with antecedents in the individual's life experience. The new member is compromised by not knowing the group members, nor their shared history, norms, and dynamics. Concurrently, the group may experience a range of fears, wishes, and anxieties about the new member. Developmental considerations for the new member and the stage of group help to inform intervention strategies.     

Why People Gossip: An Empirical Analysis of Social Motives,Antecedents, and Consequences

In 3 studies with student samples, we advance a social‐motivational approach to gossip. We developed the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire to distinguish negative influence, information gathering and validation, social enjoyment, and group protection as motives underlying gossip. Study 1 demonstrated that these motives can be distinguished empirically, and that the informational motive was the most prevalent reason to instigate gossip. Study 2 showed that group protection was especially important when the opportunity to gossip with a group member about another member's norm‐violating behavior was salient. Study 3 showed that when participants imagined someone gossiped to them about another group member's norm violation, and ascribed this to group protection, they rated the gossip as social and did not disapprove of it.     

Medical Research: A Midcentury Survey

This article proposes an integrative model for stress management groups for women, representing a biopsychosocial point of view and drawing on theories of psychodynamic group psychotherapy, self-psychology, female development, and stress management. The basis of the model is an eight week traditional stress management group. The novel aspects of this integrative model are that it aims to increase the power of stress management groups for women by providing an articulated frame, attending to group process, promoting curiosity regarding resistance to behavior changes, encouraging the elaboration of affect, and giving importance to the role of relationships in each member's quest for self care and healthy entitlement.     

The Lonely Crowd: A Study of Changing American Character by David Riesman; in collaboration with Reule Denny and Nathan Glazer

This paper describes a form of combined psychotherapy in which the individual sessions are used as an adjunct to group therapy. Each group member is seen regularly in individual sessions to focus primarily on the member's ongoing group work. The individual sessions are scheduled on a rotating basis. Typically, each group member is seen in an individual session once every four weeks. Additional individual sessions are available only when immediate attention is appropriate and necessary. The group is viewed as the primary therapeutic component. A cost-effective therapeutic approach that uses both individual and group methods, this modality lends itself well to a clinic and to a private practice setting.     

Psychoanalytic Education,Vol. V. Science and Psychoanalysis Edited by Jules H. Masserman

This article uses a psychoanalytic ego-psychological framework to examine the regression experienced by an individual group member and the defenses mobilized to counter it, focusing in particular on the defensive functions of constituting leadership somewhere in the group. The leader, regarded as an internal object in the member's object world, is hypothesized to be a combination of projected and personified part-objects and at the same time an integrating whole object. Various phenomena of group life are discussed from this viewpoint, notably the lability of the relationship with the leader, the externalization of various endopsychic regulations, and the conditions supporting the defensive utility of the leader for the group member. The foundation for the emergence of social roles and consensual perception of the group and its leadership becomes apparent. A strictly intrapsychic view is maintained throughout.     

Effects of relational transgressions on idealization of and disillusionment with one's romantic partner: A three‐wave longitudinal study

In this three‐wave study (n = 121 couples), we tested whether one couple‐member's relational transgressions (high and low severity) at Wave 1 predicted less idealization on warmth and competence traits and greater disillusionment by the partner at the next two waves. It was hypothesized that (a) greater frequency of the target partner's severe transgressions in 1 month would be needed to reduce how much the other partner idealized the target in the competence domain, (b) higher frequency of even relatively less severe transgressions would lower the partner's idealization of the target in the warmth domain, and (c) any transgressions would raise perceivers' disillusionment. Longitudinal analyses (controlling for earlier idealization and disillusionment) substantially supported predictions.     

Encouraging children to mentalise about a perceived outgroup increases prosocial behaviour towards outgroup members

We investigated whether encouraging young children to discuss the mental states of an immigrant group would elicit more prosocial behaviour towards them and impact on their perception of a group member's emotional experience. Five‐ and 6‐year‐old children were either prompted to talk about the thoughts and feelings of this social group or to talk about their actions. Across two studies, we found that this manipulation increased the extent to which children shared with a novel member of the immigrant group who was the victim of a minor transgression. The manipulation did not lead to greater sharing towards a victim from the children's own culture and did not influence their perception of a victim's negative emotions. These results may ultimately have implications for interventions aimed at fostering positive intergroup relations within the context of immigration.     

Perspective taking and member‐to‐group generalization of implicit racial attitudes: The role of target prototypicality

Actively considering an individual outgroup member's thoughts, feelings, and other subjective experiences —perspective taking— can improve attitudes toward that person's group. Here, we tested whether such member‐to‐group generalization of implicit racial attitudes is more likely when perspective‐taking targets are viewed as prototypical of their racial group. Results supported a gendered‐race‐prototype hypothesis: The positive effect of perspective taking on implicit attitudes toward Black people and Asian people, respectively, was stronger when the perspective‐taking target was a Black man or Asian woman (gender–race prototypical) versus a Black woman or Asian man (gender–race nonprototypical). These findings identify a boundary condition under which perspective taking may not improve intergroup attitudes and add to a growing literature on social cognition at the intersection of multiple social categories.     

Opposing effects of personal and collective self-esteem on interpersonal and intergroup comparisons

The relationship between self-esteem deriving from both personal and social identity and comparisons at both interpersonal and intergroup level was examined. Participants took part in individual and group brainstorming tasks which they later had the opportunity to evaluate. In the case of the individual task, participants' own solutions were judged in conjunction with solutions provided by a member of their ingroup and a member of the outgroup. For the group task, the ingroup solution was compared with an outgroup solution. Both personal and collective self-esteem were found to influence these ratings, but in different ways. In terms of intergroup comparisons, participants with high personal self-esteem (PSE) showed greatest ingroup bias. In contrast, this same effect was associated with low public collective-self esteem (CSE), that is, people who felt that their group was viewed negatively differentiated most strongly. Furthermore, this opposition of the effects of PSE and CSE also applied to the interpersonal comparisons. Participants with high PSE self-enhanced relative to participants with low PSE, while the reverse pertained for CSE scores. Participants with low private CSE rated both their own and the ingroup member's solution more positively than the outgroup solution. An analysis is presented which explains these effects in terms of threat experienced as a result of incongruency between comparative context and optimal identity enhancement strategies. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Defining the term new in new employee research

Researchers and managers use the term ‘new’ to describe organizational members who have recently joined an organization, but how long are arriving recruits considered ‘new employees’, and what factors drive this new‐to‐old transition? In this paper I hypothesize that co‐worker perceptions of an individual's ‘newness’ in the organization are a function of (1) the individual's relative position in the firm's tenure distribution and (2) the frequency of interaction between the rater and the individual. To evaluate these hypotheses I conducted a sociometric survey among four entrepreneurial organizations (N = 200), asking respondents to evaluate the newness of their co‐workers. The results support both hypotheses, but suggest that relative tenure (defined as a member's percentile rank in the firm's tenure distribution) is the strongest predictor of organizational newness perceptions. More specifically, ‘new employees’ are the 30% of the organization with the lowest tenure. This means that organizational growth and turnover have a major effect on how long arriving recruits are considered new employees, which in turn has implications for new employee research in areas like socialization, mentoring, training and career development.     

Native Amazonian children forego egalitarianism in merit‐based tasks when they learn to count

Cooperation often results in a final material resource that must be shared, but deciding how to distribute that resource is not straightforward. A distribution could count as fair if all members receive an equal reward (egalitarian distributions), or if each member's reward is proportional to their merit (merit‐based distributions). Here, we propose that the acquisition of numerical concepts influences how we reason about fairness. We explore this possibility in the Tsimane’, a farming‐foraging group who live in the Bolivian rainforest. The Tsimane’ learn to count in the same way children from industrialized countries do, but at a delayed and more variable timeline, allowing us to de‐confound number knowledge from age and years in school. We find that Tsimane’ children who can count produce merit‐based distributions, while children who cannot count produce both merit‐based and egalitarian distributions. Our findings establish that the ability to count – a non‐universal, language‐dependent, cultural invention – can influence social cognition.     

Dynamics of perceived social network support for same‐sex versus mixed‐sex relationships

Individuals in mixed‐sex (n = 248) and same‐sex (n = 159) romantic relationships completed several online questions for each member of their social network, including the member's perceived support for their romantic relationship. Those in same‐sex relationships perceived less support for their relationship, but only from family members, not from friends. Levels of relationship support were lower among subjectively more distant network members than among closer network members. As hypothesized, associations between perceived support for the relationship and relationship, mental, and physical well‐being were weaker for those in same‐sex compared to mixed‐sex relationships. Principles of social network management and attributional ambiguity were used to explain the findings.     

Individual Pooling for Group-Based Modeling Under the Assumption of Ergodicity

Psychology principally utilizes nomothetic, interindividual approaches to model phenomena of interest. However, it is the case that these approaches do not always capture the processes for each individual in the sample. If the research is focused on individual processes, confining analysis to the idiographic level may be more appropriate. One way to overcome the nomothetic inability to capture idiographic processes is to identify those participants who meet the criteria of ergodicity and restrict analysis to the resulting sample. Under these conditions it is quantitatively justifiable to create a group model without concern that it may fail to represent each member's idiographic process. In this study we explore the utility of such a method by (a) applying an ergodic pooling test to a sample of dyads (N = 128) who provided daily (T = 50) self-reports of affect, (b) applying an ergodic pooling test to samples (N = 4) of simulated ergodic time series data (T = 50, 250, and 1,000), (c) modeling dyads and simulated subgroups identified as ergodic, and (d) comparing the results from a model specified at the group level with those from models specified at the individual level.     

ONGOING CONSULTATION AS A METHOD OF IMPROVING PERFORMANCE OF STAFF MEMBERS IN A GROUP HOME

A model of ongoing consultation was implemented in a community group home for 8 adults with severe and profound mental retardation. Two consultants, highly experienced in working with people with mental retardation and in the procedures used in group homes, taught staff members to use a token reinforcement system, to engage the adults in a variety of activities, and to improve the content and style of the staff members' interactions with the adults. The consultants taught skills to 9 staff members through brief mini-workshops, direct observation of the staff members' use of the skills during regular activities in the group home, and individual verbal feedback regarding a staff member's performance of the skills. Evaluation of the ongoing consultation process by the 2 consultants showed it to be effective in improving the performance of the staff members and in changing the behaviors of the adults who lived in the home. Continued implementation of the process, however, appeared to be necessary for the behavior changes of staff members to be maintained at high levels.     

Hope and Burden among Latino Families of Adults with Schizophrenia

This study examined hope and family burden among Latino families of individuals with schizophrenia. The sample consisted of 54 family members, one family member per outpatient adult recruited from public mental health programs in a diverse urban community. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were used to test the hypothesis that the family member's increased hope for the patient's future would be associated with decreased family burden beyond effects explained by the patient's length of illness and severity of symptoms. Results supported the study hypothesis. Family hope for the patient's future was associated with four of five types of family burden. Findings point to the prominent role of hope as a source of resilience for Latino families dealing with severe mental illness of a loved one.     

Confucian dynamism work values and team performance: A multiple‐level analysis

In this study we clarified the multiple‐level effects of Confucian‐related work values, including self‐discipline and interpersonal ethics, on the performance of individuals and the team. Empirical data of 70 work teams with 472 team members from Taiwanese enterprises were collected to test our hypotheses. Results showed that, at the group level, shared team values of interpersonal ethics were positively related to team performance through the partial mediation of team cooperation. For cross‐level effect, shared team values of interpersonal ethics and individual member's self‐discipline values were both positively related to individual performance. The implications of Confucian dynamism work values on contemporary organizational management and indigenous Chinese team theories were provided.     

Death in the Family: Adapting a Family Systems Framework to the Grief Process

This paper presents a framework for adapting a family systems approach to the grief process. The framework places the bereaved and therapist in the larger context. The therapist builds a relationship around each family member's unique experience with death, and uses the grief timeline to facilitate timely systemic interventions. This perspective helps the therapist navigate pitfalls and remainstrategically positioned to address grief sensitively and effectively in psychotherapy.