Test of the Korman hypothesis: performance, self-esteem, and job satisfaction among dentists

Contrary to the Korman hypothesis, this study of 416 dentists showed positive relationships between job satisfaction and productivity-based measures of performance for individuals of both low and high self-esteem.     

Competition, cooperation, and the effects of others on me

Four studies were conducted to test the notion that whether one competes against or cooperates with a comparison target can serve as an important determinant of the direction (contrast or assimilation) of self-evaluative social comparison effects. In Study 1, cooperative-competitive orientation was treated as an individual difference variable, and it was shown that social comparison led to contrast for individuals with a more competitive orientation, whereas assimilation occurred for individuals with a more cooperative orientation. Study 2 replicated this result, treating cooperative-competitive orientation as a contextual variable. In Study 3, it was demonstrated that to obtain this pattern of results it is not necessary for perceivers to believe that they will be either competing or cooperating with the comparison target. Simply activating the relevant concepts is sufficient. The final studies demonstrated that competition activates a "difference" focus and cooperation activates a "similarity" focus.     

A path analysis of stress appraisals, emotions, coping, and performance satisfaction among athletes

Objectives

In this study we examined athletes’ stress appraisals, emotions, coping, and performance satisfaction ratings using a path analysis model. This is the first study to explore all of these constructs in a single study and provides a more holistic examination of the overall stressful experience that athletes encounter.

Design

Cross-sectional.

Methods

Participants were 557 athletes, aged between 18 and 64 years (M age = 22.28 years, SD = 5.72), who completed a pre-competition measure of stress appraisals and emotions. Participants also completed a coping questionnaire and a subjective performance measure after competing, with regards to how they coped during competition and how satisfied they were with their performance.

Results

Path analysis revealed that appraisals of uncontrollable-by-self, stressfulness, and centrality were positively associated with the relational meaning threat appraisals. Threat appraisals were associated with unpleasant emotions, prior to competition, and pre-ceded distraction- and disengagement-oriented coping. The pre-competition appraisals of controllable-by-self, centrality, controllable-by-others, and stressfulness were associated with challenge relational meanings, which in turn were linked to task-oriented coping during competition. Task-oriented coping was positively related to superior subjective performance.

Conclusions

Our findings support the notion that stress appraisals, emotions, and coping are highly related constructs that are also associated with performance satisfaction.     

Contribution of strategy use to performance on complex and simple span tasks

Simple and complex span tasks are widely thought to measure related but separable memory constructs. Recently, however, research has demonstrated that simple and complex span tasks may tap, in part, the same construct because both similarly predict performance on measures of fluid intelligence (Gf) when the number of items retrieved from secondary memory (SM) is equated (Unsworth & Engle, Journal of Memory and Language 54:68–80 2006). Two studies (n = 105 and n = 152) evaluated whether retrieval from SM is influenced by individual differences in the use of encoding strategies during span tasks. Results demonstrated that, after equating the number of items retrieved from SM, simple and complex span performance similarly predicted Gf performance, but rates of effective strategy use did not mediate the span-Gf relationships. Moreover, at the level of individual differences, effective strategy use was more highly related to complex span performance than to simple span performance. Thus, even though individual differences in effective strategy use influenced span performance on trials that required retrieval from SM, strategic behavior at encoding cannot account for the similarities between simple and complex span tasks.     

Age,job complexity,satisfaction, and performance

Job complexity was measured for jobs in a Public Agency. Perceptions of job complexity were obtained from self-reports of 133 employees. Independent measures were obtained from interviews with the subjects. Career stages, based upon age groupings, were found to moderate the relationship between (1) job-satisfaction and perceived job complexity and (2) job-performance and independently rated job complexity. These results are discussed in light of the current literature.     

Relation of Type A behavior to performance and satisfaction among sales personnel

Many of the personal characteristics frequently associated with successful sales performance are very similar to behaviors which are a part of the Type A coronary-prone behavior pattern. This study investigated the relationship between Type A behavior and sales performance, as well as job satisfaction, among a sample of 355 life insurance agents. No significant differences were found between Type A and B agents and three measures of sales performance and one measure of general job satisfaction. Type A behavior among the sample was associated with measures of stress and number of health complaints. Possible explanations for the lack of Type A-performance and Type A-satisfaction relationships are discussed as is the importance of the association with stress and health complaints.     

On the relationship between peak force and peak force variability in isometric tasks

An experiment is reported documenting the relationship between peak force and peak force variability with a fixed criterion time to peak force for an isometric task requiring activation of the elbow flexors. The results show that maximum peak force increases with increments in time to peak force and that peak force variability increases with increments of peak force in an exponential type function. Furthermore, despite the presence of peak force and time to peak force feedback, subjects systematically shifted time to peak force as a function of the percentage of peak force being produced. This temporal modulation changes the percentage of peak force represented by any given peak force criterion. When peak force is made proportional to the degree of departure from the criterion time to peak force, a linear relationship is found between peak force and peak force variability. These findings suggest that time to peak force and rate of force production are parameters that influence veridical estimates of the force variability function.     

Technology and the structuring of jobs: Employee satisfaction,performance, and influence

This research investigated the relationships between technology, interdependence, job characteristics, and employee satisfaction, performance, and influence. Technology was operationalized at the individual level of analysis to include the dimensions of input uncertainty, conversion uncertainty, and output uncertainty. Pooled, sequential, and reciprocal interdependence was assessed. The results indicated that input and conversion uncertainty and interdependence were strongly related to such job characteristics as autonomy, skill variety, task identity, task significance, and task feedback. While the job characteristics related positively to employee satisfaction, input and conversion uncertainty related negatively to satisfaction, thus creating a mutual suppression effect. Although the uncertainty dimensions did not relate significantly to performance, there is some evidence that this negative relationship was being suppressed by the positive relationship between job characteristics and performance. Both the job characteristics and the technology dimensions related positively to influence. Results were discussed in terms of appropriate matches between technology and job characteristics.     

Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: an ethological study of the NBA

Tactile communication, or physical touch, promotes cooperation between people, communicates distinct emotions, soothes in times of stress, and is used to make inferences of warmth and trust. Based on this conceptual analysis, we predicted that in group competition, physical touch would predict increases in both individual and group performance. In an ethological study, we coded the touch behavior of players from the National Basketball Association (NBA) during the 2008-2009 regular season. Consistent with hypotheses, early season touch predicted greater performance for individuals as well as teams later in the season. Additional analyses confirmed that touch predicted improved performance even after accounting for player status, preseason expectations, and early season performance. Moreover, coded cooperative behaviors between teammates explained the association between touch and team performance. Discussion focused on the contributions touch makes to cooperative groups and the potential implications for other group settings.     

Predicting employee turnover from performance,satisfaction, and leader-member exchange

As part of a study of the role of supervision in, predicting turnover, 105 nurses provided confidential data on leader-member exchange and satisfaction with supervision, while their supervisors provided performance evaluation information. Although results reaffirmed an inverse correlation between employee performance and turnover (r=–.23p<.05), only directional support was obtained for the hypothesis that performance moderates the relationship between satisfaction with supervision and turnover. Turnover was also not found to be curvilinearly related to performance. Additionally, the, results did not replicate an earlier finding that leader-member exchange is a strong predictor of empolyee turnover. The results are interpreted as underscoring the difficulty of predicting turnover from affect, and the need to, develop refined theoretical models that specifically link these constructs.     

Competition and cooperation among similar representations: toward a unified account of facilitative and inhibitory effects of lexical neighbors

One of the core principles of how the mind works is the graded, parallel activation of multiple related or similar representations. Parallel activation of multiple representations has been particularly important in the development of theories and models of language processing, where coactivated representations (neighbors) have been shown to exhibit both facilitative and inhibitory effects on word recognition and production. Researchers generally ascribe these effects to interactive activation and competition, but there is no unified explanation for why the effects are facilitative in some cases and inhibitory in others. We present a series of simulations of a simple domain-general interactive activation and competition model that is broadly consistent with more specialized domain-specific models of lexical processing. The results showed that interactive activation and competition can indeed account for the complex pattern of reversals. Critically, the simulations revealed a core computational principle that determines whether neighbor effects are facilitative or inhibitory: strongly active neighbors exert a net inhibitory effect, and weakly active neighbors exert a net facilitative effect.     

Self-rated performance and pay satisfaction,merit increase satisfaction,and instrumentality beliefs in a merit pay environment

The relationship of self-rated performance to pay level satisfaction, merit increase satisfaction, and instrumentality beliefs in a merit pay environment is investigated. Self-rated performance exhibited a significant negative relationship with all three variables beyond that accounted for by control variables. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Characteristics of finger force production during one- and two-hand tasks

Relations among finger forces were studied during one-hand and two-hand isometric maximal force production tasks in right- and left-handers. We particularly focused on the phenomena of force deficit during one-hand multi-finger tasks and of bilateral force deficit during two-hand tasks. Ten healthy subjects (five of them left-handed) performed maximal voluntary force production tasks with different finger combinations involving fingers of one of the hands or of both hands together. In one-hand tasks, finger enslaving (forces produced by fingers that were not instructed to produce force) was larger in the dominant hand, while force deficit (drop in individual finger peak force during multi-finger tasks) showed no differences between the hands. An additional drop in finger forces was seen in two-hand tests (bilateral deficit). The magnitude of the bilateral deficit for a hand was larger for tasks involving fewer fingers within the hand and more fingers in the other hand, with a ceiling effect. Smaller bilateral deficit was seen in tasks involving symmetrical finger combinations. In two-hand tasks that could potentially lead to the generation of large total moments in the frontal plane, the hand that was expected to generate larger moments showed larger bilateral deficit, so that the magnitude of the total moment was reduced. These observations suggest that force deficit within a hand and bilateral deficit have different origins but their effects are combined at a certain level of the multi-finger control hierarchy. Bilateral deficit may display task dependence reflecting, in particular, the principle of minimization of secondary moments. A double-representation, mirror-image hypothesis is suggested to provide a neurophysiological basis for the observed patterns of bilateral deficit.     

Age,marital status,and labor force participation as related to life satisfaction

This paper replicates and extends a survey research tradition concerning correlates of life satisfaction. The focus is on sex roles, marital status, and labor force participation as predictors of life satisfaction. The data were obtained from a 1973 nationwide, probability-sample survey of the United States population. Cross-tabulations were used as the mode of statistical analysis. Several significant associations were observed between the independent and dependent variables. One of the findings showed that the impact of employment status on the life satisfaction of women varies with level of education.     

Job attachment,satisfaction, and turnover among public sector employees

This study sought (1) to compare the relative predictive powers of job attachment and job satisfaction with respect to turnover among a sample of public employees; and (2) to examine individual and job-related influences on both attitudes. It was found that attachment was a more effective predictor of turnover than overall satisfaction (or any facet of satisfaction), even when the alternative attitude was partialled out. In addition, it was found that individual employee characteristics were more strongly related to attachment than were job characteristics, while the opposite was found for satisfaction. The findings are discussed in the light of previous evidence, and implications are drawn for research in vocational behavior.     

Competition among auditory streaming,dichotic fusion,and diotic fusion

When a component of a complex tone is captured into a stream by other events that precede and follow it, it does not fuse with the other components of the complex tone but tends to to be heard as a separate event. The current study examined the ability of elements of a stream to resist becoming fused with other synchronous events, heard either in the same ear or at the opposite ear. The general finding was that events in one ear fuse strongly with elements of an auditory stream in the other ear only when they are spectrally very similar. In this case, the fusion of simultaneous components at opposite ears is stronger than of simultaneous components heard in the same ear. However, when the spectra of the synchronous events are mismatched even slightly, components in the same ear fuse more strongly than components at opposite ears. These results are accounted for by a theory that assumes that decisions that perceptually integrate sequential events, synchronous events, and events at opposite ears are interdependent.