Individual Differences in the Interpretation of Commitment in Argumentation

The present study explored several dispositional factors associated with individual differences in lay adult’s interpretation of when an arguer is, or is not, committed to a statement. College students were presented with several two-person arguments in which the proponent of a thesis conceded a key point in the last turn. Participants were then asked to indicate the extent to which that concession implied a change in the proponent’s attitude toward any of the previous statements in the argument. Participants designated as ‘liberal’ used the concession to infer substantial change in commitment to earlier statements in the argument. A group designated as ‘conservative’ were reluctant to make any such inferences. A discriminant analysis indicated that variables assessing participants’ attitudes toward argument as well as their cognitive and communication styles jointly predicted their liberal or conservative status. The discriminant function and follow-up group comparisons indicated that liberals were more likely than conservatives to engage in argument. This included a greater tendency to use argument as a source of knowledge. Liberals also employed a more sophisticated message design logic than conservatives on a communication task. The groups did not clearly differ with respect to participants’ implicit theory of argument, though trends were present that merit attention in future research. Implications of these findings for future research on lay interpretations of commitment are discussed.     

The Role of Perceived Demographic Dissimilarity and Interaction in Customer‐Service Satisfaction1

The purpose of the current study was to examine the influence of perceived demographic dissimilarity and interaction on customer‐service satisfaction. Data were collected from 301 spectators at a professional men's tennis tournament. Results indicate that perceived demographic dissimilarity was negatively associated with customer service satisfaction. Further, this relationship was moderated by the amount of interaction between the employee and customer, such that the negative relationship was strongest when interaction was high. Results are discussed in terms of the theoretical implications related to relational demography and practical implications in terms of the “business case” for diversity.     

Goal Commitment Buffers the Negative Effects of Perceived Abusive Supervision

Abstract

The effects of abusive supervision may be more intricate than what reason would suggest. To examine why individuals may respond differently to perceptions of supervisor abusive, this study relies on goal-setting theory to present a model that accounts for the influence of abusive supervision on job performance and organizational deviance. To be precise, motivation control and self-defeating cognition are proposed to mediate the interaction of perceived abusive supervision with goal commitment in predicting organizational deviance and job performance. In particular, the extent to which goal commitment alleviates the deleterious effects of abusive supervision is examined such that when goal commitment is high, the indirect effects of perceived abusive supervision on job performance and organizational deviance via motivation control and self-defeating cognition were predicted to be weaker. The proposed model was supported by multisource and multiwave data. The understanding of when the deleterious effects of supervisor abuse as perceived by followers are likely might help the human resource personnel to adopt measures that buffer against such outcomes.     

Individual Differences in Susceptibility to Misinformation Effects and Hindsight Bias

The present study examined individual differences in susceptibility to two similar forms of memory distortion: the misinformation effect and hindsight bias. The misinformation effect occurs when individuals witness an event, are provided with misinformation, and recall the original event as containing elements of the misinformation. Hindsight bias occurs when individuals make judgments, are provided with feedback, and recall their original judgments as being more similar to the feedback than they actually were. Seventy-five participants completed a misinformation task, a hindsight bias task, and several individual difference measures related to memory distortions. Working memory capacity was negatively correlated with the misinformation effect and hindsight bias, and the misinformation effect and hindsight bias were negatively correlated with one another. Although the misinformation effect and hindsight bias are measured with similar designs, and both are predicted by working memory capacity, the negative correlation between them suggests these phenomena result from somewhat different processes.     

Weight Halo Effects: Individual Differences in Perceived Life Success as a Function of Women's Race and Weight

The question of whether or not life success halo effects occur for weight for Black and White women was examined in an experiment using a 2 (race of woman) × 2 (weight of woman) × 2 (sex of participant) design and measures of perceived life success, attractiveness, and personality. The thinner White woman was expected to receive higher life success, attractiveness, and personality ratings than the heavy White woman. However, the heavy Black woman was expected to receive higher ratings than the thinner Black woman. The results were consistent with expectations. These results are discussed in terms of prior research on beauty, weight, and stereotyping.     

Addressing Value‐Based Conflicts Within the Counseling Relationship: A Decision‐Making Model

A growing number of legal and ethical cases have involved value conflicts between counselors, or counselors‐in‐training, and their clients. The authors examine considerations that professional counselors are encouraged to take into account when value conflicts arise within the therapeutic relationship. The authors present a strategy known as ethical bracketing and the Counselor Values‐Based Conflict Model as tools to use when facing conflicts that arise between personal and professional values.     

Professionalism,Ethics, and Value‐Based Conflicts in Counseling: An Introduction to the Special Section

This introduction to this special section of the Journal of Counseling & Development explores the importance of a code of ethics to the establishment and maintenance of a profession. Recognizing a code of ethics as a communication of a profession's collective values and expectations, the editors of this special section acknowledge the dilemmas that arise when a counselor's personal values do not align with the profession's collective values. The authors of each article address value‐based conflicts in counseling.     

Effects of Individual Differences on the Perceived Job Relatedness of a Cognitive Ability Test and a Multimedia Situational Judgment Test

Although there is a growing number of publications concerning applicant reactions to different selection instruments, the relationships between individual differences and applicant reactions have largely remained unexplored. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of several testing‐related and general individual differences (anxiety, self‐evaluations, and personality) on the most commonly studied dimension of applicant reactions, namely the perceived job relatedness of selection instruments. Participants were 153 psychology students, who completed a cognitive ability test and a multimedia situational judgment test as part of their educational program. Our results indicated that computer anxiety negatively affected perceived job relatedness and core self‐evaluations, subjective well‐being, agreeableness, emotional stability, and openness to experience positively affected perceived job relatedness. Openness to experience was the most consistent predictor of perceived job relatedness. The results of our study suggest that certain individuals may be more predisposed to react positively to selection instruments. Therefore, we concluded that the nature of the applicant pool should be carefully considered when designing interventions to improve applicant reactions.     

Individual Differences in Self‐Enhancement and Self‐Protection Strategies: An Integrative Analysis

ABSTRACT Research has identified a large number of strategies that people use to self‐enhance or self‐protect. We aimed for an empirical integration of these strategies. Two studies used self‐report items to assess all commonly recognized self‐enhancement or self‐protection strategies. In Study 1 (N=345), exploratory factor analysis identified 4 reliable factors. In Study 2 (N=416), this model was validated using confirmatory factor analysis. The factors related differentially to the key personality variables of regulatory focus, self‐esteem, and narcissism. Expanding this integrative approach in the future can reveal a great deal about the structure and dynamics of self‐enhancement and self‐protection motivation.     

Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Disempowering Acts: A Comparison of Gender and Identity-Based Explanations for Perceived Offensiveness

Policy-makers, courts, employers, and individuals must understand perceptual differences among individuals when managing workplace behaviors. Offensive acts that lead to employee disempowerment require particular attention as these behaviors are related to several negative organizational consequences. Women tend to be more sensitive to offensive behavior, but it is unknown whether gender or other factors explain this higher sensitivity. In this study, sensitivity to disempowering acts was assessed by measuring perceived offensiveness reported by male and female observers of videotaped segments of highly confrontive verbal exchanges. Competing hypotheses tested gender and identification with the target of disempowering acts as the underlying reason for women's higher sensitivity. Findings indicated that women reported higher perceived offensiveness regardless of the gender of the target of disempowerment.     

Combining Value‐focused Thinking and Balanced Scorecard to Improve Decision‐making in Strategic Management

Goal orientation is key to strategic management. In this field, the Balanced Scorecard is one of the most widely used management tools. It structures a company's main objectives from different perspectives based on the strategy of the firm and uses performance indicators to measure the achievement of objectives and strategy. However, its method of creation is not theoretically sound. Value‐focused thinking is a decision‐making philosophy that fits perfectly with Balanced Scorecard creation. It provides methods and techniques for the identification and structuring of objectives that are suitable to systematically derive a scorecard from a means‐ends network. However, such a means‐ends network is often too complex for enduring use in strategic management. By adapting the network's structure to the Balanced Scorecard's layout, the profound and clear set of derived objectives and their measures serve as a reasonable basis for applying methods of multi‐criteria decision‐making in an organization. This paper aimed to outline a procedure that merges the Balanced Scorecard and value‐focused thinking by preserving each concept's strengths while eliminating their weaknesses. A six‐step process was developed theoretically and employed empirically in a case study. This process included (1) identifying objectives; (2) structuring objectives; (3) characterizing clusters of objectives; (4) formulating mission, vision, and strategy; (5) designing the scorecard; and (6) monitoring and adapting to change. On the basis of this approach, a Management Scorecard was produced that enabled strategy development and execution, put forth a clear and comprehensive means‐ends network, and visualized a company's most important objectives and their relationships structured through perspectives roughly following the Balanced Scorecard. It acts as a foundation for research to generalize and compare findings regarding goals of organizations. Our procedure demonstrates how scientific methods, such as value‐focused thinking, can yield benefits to practitioners' instruments, like the Balanced Scorecard, and how management tools can likewise improve scientific methods. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive versus Non‐Cognitive Individual Differences and the Dynamics of Career Success

We examine the effects of cognitive and non‐cognitive individual differences on the dynamics of career success (i.e. pay, occupational status) by comparing temporal changes in the validities of two measures of personality—Core Self Evaluations and the Big Five personality dimensions—to temporal changes in the validities of two standard intelligence tests. The main finding of two studies based on large representative samples is that the validity of intelligence clearly increases over time, whereas the validity of personality tends to be stable, indicating that intelligence, but not personality, drives career success.     

Individual Differences in Applicant Reactions: A Job‐Search Perspective

This study used three variables from a self‐regulatory job‐search framework to investigate individual differences in the relationship between applicants' perceived procedural fairness of selection tests and job‐pursuit intentions. Employment commitment, job‐search self‐efficacy, and motivational control were hypothesized to moderate the procedural fairness – job‐pursuit intentions relationship while controlling for pretest attitudes and perceived performance. Applicants (N=291) for entry‐level clerical jobs with large federal agencies completed pretest and posttest surveys. Results suggested that only job‐search self‐efficacy and motivational control moderated the relationship between perceived procedural fairness and job‐pursuit intentions. The relationship was stronger for applicants with higher levels of job‐search self‐efficacy and lower levels of motivational control.     

Financial Commitment Within Federations of Small Groups: The Effect of Cell‐Based Congregational Structure on Individual Giving

According to available research, congregations with strict rules and dense social networks are better able to screen out free‐riders (“selection”) and encourage greater levels of commitment among members (“production”). Both selection and production raise levels of individual giving. Research testing these processes generally utilizes a measure of network density. This study examines whether organizations that are a “federation of small groups” are better able to monitor members and hold them accountable, thus assuring acceptable levels of commitment on the part of members. Results of multilevel modeling using data from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey indicate that cell‐based congregations elicit higher levels of financial giving among congregants, net of all other effects, including network density. Moreover, cross‐level interactions between the cell‐based congregation variable and theological exclusivity as well as attendance are significant and positive. Cell‐based congregations provide a context in which individual‐level predictors of giving become more robust.     

Perceived Accuracy of Fortune Telling and Belief in the Paranormal

Abstract

(Seashore, C. E. Psychology of Music. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1938. Pp. 408.) Reviewed by Paul R. Farnsworth

(Brown, J. F. Psychology and the Social Order. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936. Pp. 529.) Reviewed by L. A. Pennington     

Reaction Time‐based Detection of Concealed Information in Relation to Individual Differences in Executive Functioning

Executive functioning has been shown to play an essential role in a person's ability to accurately and efficiently execute deceptive responses. The present study relates individual differences in executive functions and anxiety to the accuracy and latency of deceptive responses in a reaction time (RT)‐based Concealed Information Test with pictorial stimuli extracted from a mock crime scenario. Results indicated that the pictorial RT‐based Concealed Information Test successfully differentiated between guilty and innocent participants. In terms of executive functions, set‐shifting and inhibition were directly related to deception accuracy and speed, respectively. However, enhanced underlying working memory skills (both verbal and spatial) were associated with longer RTs for item classification. No strong associations were noted with anxiety dimensions. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to neurocognitive models of deception and to the process of deception detection. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender Differences in Managers' Conceptions and Perceptions of Commitment to the Organization

This study explored the effect of gender on managers' conceptions and perceptions of those behaviors seen as demonstrating commitment to the organization. Three major findings are reported: (1) female managers and male managers with families evaluated traditional commitment behaviors as less indicative of commitment than their single male counterparts; (2) managers' conceptions of behaviors indicative of commitment conformed to the views of the majority gender within their work-group; and (3) managers' perceptions of commitment were not affected by gender-based in-group biases.     

The Relationships of Role Clarity and Organization‐Based Self‐Esteem to Commitment to Supervisors and Organizations and Turnover Intentions

We examined the relationships of role clarity and organization‐based self‐esteem with 4 dimensions of commitment to supervisors and organizations (affective, normative, perceived high sacrifice, perceived lack of alternatives) and turnover intentions. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the hypothesized 8‐factor model of commitment. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that role clarity was positively related to affective, normative, and perceived high sacrifice supervisory commitment; while it was not related to organizational commitments. Organization‐based self‐esteem was positively associated with affective commitment to organizations and supervisors; it was also negatively associated with the lack of alternatives component of supervisory and organizational commitment. Finally, the affective and high‐sacrifice dimensions of supervisory commitment related to turnover intentions via parallel forms of organizational commitment.     

Perceived Organisational Support as a Mediator of the Relationship of Perceived Situational Factors to Affective Organisational Commitment

This paper examines the role of perceived organisational support as a mediator of the relationship between perceived situational factors and affective organisational commitment. Perceived situational factors examined were: procedural justice, distributive justice, communication satisfaction with supervisor, and labor–management relationship climate. Analysis of data from a sample of 185 pharmaceutical sales representatives from India indicated that perceived organisational support fully mediates the relationship between each of these perceived situational variables and affective commitment to the organisation.