CONFORMING BEHAVIOR AND PERSONALITY VARIABLES IN CONGOLESE STUDENTS1

Etude de la tendance au conformisme et de sa relation avec quelques traits de caractère chez des étudiants congolais. — Le but principal de cette étude était d'aboutir à une comparaison interculturelle de la tendance au conformisme se manifestant dans une situation de laboratoire. A L'aide d'une technique qui coïncide, à quelques modifications près, avec celle de Crutchfield, nous avons exposé 92 étudiants congolais de première année de L'Institut Facultaire de Psychologie et de Pédagogie à L'Université Lovanium (Kinshasa) à une pression sociale pendant L'exécution d'une tâche d'estimation de la longueur de lignes (stimuli de Asch). L'enregistrement des erreurs de perception d'un groupe contrôle de 38 étudiants permettait d'isoler L'influence du facteur expérimental. Les résultats obtenus sont sensiblement les mêmes que ceux qui ont été communiqués par Levy et par Gerard et Deutsch à L'occasion d'expériences sur des sujets américains d'âge et de niveau intellectuel comparables, dans des conditions expérimentales semblables. Nous avons fait intervenir dans notre comparaison le pourcentage de réponses fautives dues à L'introduction de la pression sociale, ainsi que la forme et L'étendue de variation de la distribution des erreurs. Posant la question de la relation possible entre la tendance au conformisme et certains traits de caractère, nous avons comparé un groupe de “conformistes” avec un groupe d' “indépendants” sur la base de leurs résultats au “Maudsley Personality Inventory” et de certains indices dérivés de leurs réponses au test de Rorschach, et nous avons pu conclure que: — 1. les conformistes supportent moins facilement une situation de “stress” que les indépendants; — 2. aucune différence significative n'apparaît entre les deux groupes en ce qui concerne le trait d'extraversion et le besoin d'approbation sociale; — 3. les indépendants sont caractérisés par un sens critique plus prononcé que les conformistes.     

KNOWLEDGE WORKER TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: THE ROLE OF AUTONOMY, INTERDEPENDENCE, TEAM DEVELOPMENT, AND CONTEXTUAL SUPPORT VARIABLES

This study investigated how autonomy, interdependence, and team development, along with process and contextual support variables, were related to the effectiveness of teams of "knowledge workers." The sample included 231 knowledge workers from 27 work teams. Team members completed surveys measuring the design, process, and contextual factors. Effectiveness measures included multiple key stakeholder evaluations of team performance and self-report measures of attitudinal outcomes. The results suggest that interactions among design, process, and contextual support factors have important implications for team effectiveness. In particular, the positive relationship between team autonomy and team job motivation was reduced as teams worked under more interdependent conditions. This interaction effect also varied across the types of autonomy (e.g., planning-related, product-related, and people-related) the team was given. Results also demonstrated that the relationship between job motivation and team process behaviors (helping, sharing, and innovating) was more positive in teams who were developmental mature. Process behaviors were positively related to effectiveness, but those relationships became more positive in the presence of certain contextual factors (high-quality goals and efficient information transmission), and less positive in the presence of others (feedback and time pressure). Future research needs and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

GENDER-RELATED PERSONALITY ATTRIBUTES AND REACTION TO SUCCESS/FAILURE: AN EXAMINATION OF MEDIATING VARIABLES

The effects of success and failure on task performance, and attributions about performance, were compared for high and low instrumental college women. For the high instrumental group, success facilitated task performance, whereas failure, had no debilitating effect; for the low instrumental group, success had no effect on subsequent performance, whereas failure interfered with it. High instrumental women attributed their success primarily, to internal factors and their failures to external factors (the "egotistical" attribution profile) whereas low instrumental women revealed the opposite profile. The gender-appropriateness of the task had little effect on performance or attribution. Four potential mediators of these differences were investigated: self-esteem, perceived ability, expectancy of success, and attainment value. High-instrumental women's higher perceived ability and performance expectations accounted for their superior task performance, but none of the four mediators accounted for the relationship of instrumentality to attributions.     

WOMEN, MEN, AND INTIMACY MOTIVATION

Using a projective method with college students, this study assessed sex differences in the motivation to share personal concerns in a friendship context. As expected, women were found to be significantly more likely than men to imagine that they would confide worries to a friend (Intimacy Imagery). Women's Intimacy Imagery stories included positive outcomes significantly more often than did men's Intimacy Imagery stories, and the theme of self-enhancement as a consequence of confiding occurred in one-quarter of the women's Intimacy Imagery stories and in none of the men's. For men, Intimacy Imagery was associated with high social confidence and a strong preference for confiding in women. For women, stories suggesting avoidance of confiding or anxiety around confiding were associated with low social confidence.     

PREDICTING ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS FROM COMMUNICATION ACTIVITIES: A MULTIPLE INDICATOR MODEL

This study examines the effects of certain communication variables (member integration, boundary communication, environmental uncertainty, and system autonomy) on organizational effectiveness. While often discussed in the literature, these variables have not been precisely defined. As a result, a multiple indicator model using maximum likelihood estimates for each variable was created. Interviews with managers from 82 different organizations from a variety of industries are used to test the model. The results suggest that member integration and environmental uncertainty, when the latter is mediated by boundary communication, provide an excellent predictor of organizational effectiveness (R= .64). The results are discussed in light of the proposed theory along with implications for future research using intertypical sampling methods and LISREL analysis.     

DEPRESSION,LISTLESSNESS, AND MORAL MOTIVATION

Motivational internalism (MI) holds that, necessarily, if an agent judges that she is morally obligated to ø, then, that agent is, to at least some minimal extent, motivated to ø. Opponents of MI sometimes invoke depression as a counterexample on the grounds that depressed individuals appear to sincerely affirm moral judgments but are ‘listless’ and unmotivated by such judgments. Such listlessness is a credible counterexample to MI, I argue, only if the actual clinical disorder of depression, rather than a merely hypothetical example of such listlessness, is the source of this listlessness. However, empirical evidence concerning depression shows that, to the extent that the depressed are motivationally listless at all, they are abnormally listless only with respect to an important class of non‐moral judgments, namely, their prudential normative judgments (i.e., those concerning their own happiness and well‐being), not their moral judgments. Hence, depressed individuals do not constitute a counterexample to MI. This conclusion has important methodological implications concerning how supporters and opponents of MI can best defend their respective theses.     

PERSONALITY AND PERCEPTUAL EXPERTISE:

Abstract— We hypothesized that people become expert at perceiving information that is related to concepts they think about a great deal, because of their extensive perceptual experience with this material To test this idea, we manipulated the capitalization of a series of briefly exposed words If expertise emerges because of perceptual experience, then people should show facilitation identifying words that they think about a great deal, but only when capitalization of these words is consistent with prior perceptual experience with these words Support for this hypothesis was found in two experiments–one in which trait words were presented to depressed and nondepressed subjects, and one in which food words were presented to anorexic and nonanorexic subjects Thus, these experiments demonstrated that personality, as well as personality disorder, has the potential to change the nature of the input people receive from the perceptual system     

快速书写条件下硬笔笔迹变量与认知及个性特征的关系

以圆珠笔为书写工具．北京市某中学高一学生为被试,有效数据169人．探讨了在快速抄写条件下,笔迹书写特征与认知及个性的关系：18个笔迹变量可抽取笔压、结构、特征、字体和空间五个反映字的书写特征的因素;书写特征与认知因素间,横、竖笔压与概念形成速度。整篇压与视力追踪、字位与眼手协调相关显著;横笔压与16PF测验中的畏缩退怯——冒险敢为有正相关;竖笔压与艾森克个性因素的N有高相关。     

DEVELOPING EXECUTIVE LEADERS: THE RELATIVE CONTRIBUTION OF COGNITIVE ABILITY,PERSONALITY, AND THE ACCUMULATION OF WORK EXPERIENCE IN PREDICTING STRATEGIC THINKING COMPETENCY

We conceptually define and empirically investigate the accumulation of work experience—a concept that refers to the extent to which executives have amassed varied levels of roles and responsibilities (i.e., contributor, manager, lead strategist) in each of the key work activities that they have encountered over the course of their careers. In studying executives’ work experience accumulation, we consider key antecedents such as executives’ cognitive ability and personality traits, namely Extraversion and Openness to Experience, and examine the value of work experience accumulation on executives’ strategic thinking competency. Analyses of multisource data from 703 executives revealed 3 key findings: (a) accumulated work experience positively relates to executives’ strategic thinking competency after controlling for individual characteristics and other measures of work experience; (b) executives’ cognitive ability demonstrates the strongest and most positive relationship to executives’ strategic thinking competency; and (c) extraverted executives tend to achieve higher levels of work experience accumulation. Relative weight analyses also indicated that cognitive ability and accumulated work experience are the 2 most important predictors for executives’ strategic thinking competency among the other predictors. These findings are discussed in light of their practical implications.     

超常与常态儿童的兴趣、动机与创造性思维的比较研究

在超常儿童研究领域存在着许多争议的问题,超常儿童的智力与创造力的关系问题就是其中的一个。为了更好地解释超常儿童的创造力与智力的本质关系,我们曾提出了“创造性系统模型”。本研究的主要目的是进一步证实模型提出的假设。本研究以超常和常态儿童为被试对儿童的兴趣、动机与创造性思维的关系作了进一步的考察。结果发现：（１）超常儿童的图形、数字和实用创造性思维的流畅性和独创性成绩都明显高于常态儿童;（２）超常和常态儿童的创造性思维与兴趣、动机之间存在显著的相关;（３）兴趣和动机得分较高的被拭的创造性思维得分显著高于兴趣和动机得分较低的被试;（４）超常儿童中有相当部分处于低兴趣和低动机水平,而常态儿童中却有相当部分处于高兴趣和高动机水平。因此,本研究从一个侧面进一步支持了系统模型中提出的有关儿童创造性的假设     

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES,MORAL REQUIREMENTS,AND MORAL MOTIVATION

Abstract: Kant has argued that moral requirements are categorical. Kant's claim has been challenged by some contemporary philosophers; this article defends Kant's doctrine. I argue that Kant's claim captures the unique feature of moral requirements. The main arguments against Kant's claim focus on one condition that a categorical imperative must meet: to be independent of desires. I argue that there is another important, but often ignored, condition that a categorical imperative must meet, and this second condition is crucial to understanding why moral requirements are not hypothetical. I also argue that the claim that moral requirements are not categorical because they depend on desires for motivation is beside the point. The issue of whether moral requirements are categorical is not an issue about whether moral desires or feelings are necessary for moral motivation but are rather an issue about the ground of moral desires or moral feelings. Moral requirements are categorical because they are requirements of reason, and reason makes moral desires or feelings possible.     

SOCIAL-COGNITIVE MECHANISMS AND PERSONALITY COHERENCE:

Abstract— This article presents a social-cognitive analysts of cross-situational coherence in personality functioning. Social-cognitive analyses are contrasted with those of trait approaches in personality psychology. Rather than attributing coherence to high-level constructs that correspond directly to observed patterns of social behavior, social-cognitive theory pursues a "bottom-up" analytic strategy in which coherence derives from interactions among multiple underlying causal mechanisms, no one of which corresponds directly to a broad set of responses. Research investigating social and self-knowledge underlying cross-situational coherence in a central social-cognitive mechanism, perceived self-efficacy, is presented. Idiographic analyses revealed that individuals' schematic self-knowledge and situational beliefs give rise to patterns of high and low self-efficacy appraisal across diverse, idiosyncratic sets of situations that do not, in general, correspond to traditional high-level trait categories Bottom-up analyses in personality psychology are related to other disciplines' analyses of organization in complex, adaptive systems.