Information Load: A Test of an Inverted-U Hypothesis with Hourly and Salaried Employees

We surveyed 714 hourly and 516 salaried employees of a midwestern telephone company to test the effects of information load on work-related outcomes. Using curvilinear regression analyses, we found support for our hypothesis that employees are less satisfied with outcomes as the load of information deviates positively or negatively from some level. We also predicted, and found, that this quadratic function was more prevalent in the hourly group than in the salaried group. Implications, future research directions, and limitations of the present study are discussed.     

Stability/Instability of Cognitive Strategies Across Tasks Determine Whether Stress Will Affect Judgmental Processes'

Previous research indicates that individuals employ various cognitive heuristics and decision modes in making decisions and judgmental tasks that do not follow an expected value model. It further indicates that several cognitive faculties are affected by stress. The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to examine whether individual differences exist in the use of cognitive heuristics and risk-assessment decision modes; second, to examine whether stress would affect the use of these cognitive strategies. Three versions of a questionnaire measuring the representativeness and availability heuristics, and risk-seeking and risk-aversion decision modes were administered to three different groups of subjects. Consistent individual differences were only observed in the subscales measuring risk-seeking and risk-aversion modes, but not in the use of the heuristics. In a different group of subjects, exposure to noise and task overload stress increased the use of the representativeness heuristic, but did not alter the use of risk-seeking and risk-aversion decision modes. These results indicate that the existence of individual differences in cognitive strategies may determine, in part, whether stress will modify judgmental processes.     

Declines in Major League Batting Performance as a Function of Game Pressure: A Drive Theory Analysis1

Zajonc's (1965) drive theory explanation argues that greater arousal tends to impair performance on difficult tasks. The hypothesis that arousal generated by “pressure situations” during major league baseball games would hinder batting performance—a difficult task—was tested by examining such performance during the 1989 season. Six “pressure situations” were identified, some occurring during the late innings of close games and others occurring throughout the game when there were two outs. Two measures of batting performance (batting average and slugging average) were employed. Results indicated broad support for the hypothesis. Reasons for this pattern are discussed, as are possible alternative explanations for these findings.     

Integration of the big five and circumplex approaches to trait structure.

To integrate the 5-dimensional simple-structure and circumplex models of personality, the Abridged Big Five Dimensional Circumplex (AB5C) taxonomy of personality traits was developed, consisting of the 10 circumplexes that can be formed by pitting each of the Big Five factors against one another. The model maps facets of the Big Five dimensions as blends of 2 factors. An application to data consisting of 636 self-ratings and peer ratings on 540 personality trait adjectives yielded 34 well-defined facets out of a possible 45. The AB5C solution is compared with simple-structure and lower dimensional circumplex solutions, and its integrative and corrective potential are discussed, as well as its limitations.     

Postural requirements and progression velocity in young walkers

This article describes developmental changes in gait velocity and relates these changes to gait parameters that index postural stability (step width and lateral acceleration) and two components of velocity (cadence and step length). Five children were observed longitudinally over a 2-year period after onset of independent walking. Their range of speed increased threefold in the first 6 months of independent walking and then remained constant. In contrast, step width decreased approximately twofold. Whereas in adults, cadence and step length contribute approximately equally to speed, when infants first begin to walk independently, increase in velocity is due mostly to increased step length. After 5 months of independent walking, the pattern reverses, and increase in velocity is due primarily to increased cadence. The pattern remains constant over the next 18 months. From a developmental point of view, the data lead us to interpret early walking (the first 5 months) as a process of integration of postural constraints into the dynamic necessities of gait movement. A second phase, beginning after 4 to 5 months of independent walking, is considered to be a tuning phase characterized by a more precise adjustment of the gait parameters.     

Mood effects on attitude judgments: independent effects of mood before and after message elaboration.

This study investigated the independent effects of induced mood on the encoding of persuasive messages and on the assessment of attitude judgments. In Experiment 1, positive or negative mood was induced either before the encoding of a counterattitudinal message or before the assessment of attitude judgments. When mood was induced before message presentation, Ss in a bad mood were more persuaded by strong than by weak arguments, whereas Ss in a good mood were equally persuaded by strong and by weak arguments. When Ss encoded the message in a neutral mood, however, the advantage of strong over weak arguments was more pronounced when Ss were in a good rather than in a bad mood at the time of attitude assessment. In Experiment 2, Ss exposed to a counterattitudinal message composed of either strong or weak arguments formed either a global evaluation or a detailed representation of the message. Positive, negative, or neutral mood was then induced. Ss in a good mood were most likely and Ss in a negative mood least likely to base their reported attitudes on global evaluations.     

Repression at encoding: discrete appraisals of emotional stimuli.

In previous research, the emotions associated with repressors' memorial representations were found to be more discrete than those associated with nonrepressors'. In each of the 3 experiments reported here, repressive discreteness was apparent in repressors' appraisals of emotional stimuli at the time they were encoded. In 1 experiment, Ss appraised individual facial expressions of emotion. Repressors judged the dominant emotions in these faces as no less intense than did nonrepressors, but they appraised the blend of nondominant emotions as less intense than did nonrepressors. In the remaining 2 experiments, Ss appraised crowds of emotional faces as well as crowds of geometric shapes. In both crowd experiments, the repressive discreteness was evident in appraisals of crowds of emotional faces but not in appraisals of crowds of geometric shapes. The repressive discreteness effect did not appear to reflect a general repressor-nonrepressor difference in the appraisal of stimulus features. Rather, the results suggested that repressive discreteness may be constrained to appraisals of emotions.     

Effects of real gender and labeled gender on adults' perceptions of infants.

Three experiments were conducted to discover factors mediating adults' perceptions of male and female infants. In the first experiment, college students were shown 30-s videotapes of four male and four female babies, each of whom was randomly labeled with a male or a female name. Infants labeled as male were perceived as significantly more masculine and stronger than those labeled as female. Discriminant analyses revealed that both rated masculinity and the combination of ratings on male stereotyped traits differentiated infants labeled as male or female. Analyses of real gender revealed that boys were rated as less sensitive and stronger than girls. Discriminant analyses suggested that the combination of less sensitive, more of a problem, more mature, and more playful best differentiated real males from real females. In Experiment 2, the findings of Experiment 1 were confirmed with a sample of mothers of young infants. In Experiment 3 college students' judgments of the sex of the eight babies were correctly predicted from the sensitivity ratings of these babies in Experiment 1. It appears that there is a complex of cues from which adults make judgments of infants' gender and inferences about their characteristics: Boys may appear stronger, more playful, and more of a problem, and girls seem to look more sensitive. Implications for further studies of gender labeling and for sex typing are discussed.     

Concrete operational thought in children with learning disabilities and children with normal achievement.

This study compared Piagetian cognitive development in normal achieving children and two groups of children with learning disabilities designated as either auditory-linguistic or visual-spatial on the basis of Verbal-Performance IQ differences on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R; 1974). The two groups with learning disabilities were matched with normal achieving controls on intelligence, socioeconomic status, sex, race, and age. Piagetian tasks measuring conservation, seriation, and classification were administered to each child to determine level of operative thought. The auditory-linguistic group scored significantly below normal controls in operativity, and significantly fewer were at a concrete operational level on a conservation of length task than were normal achieving children. The visual-spatial group did not differ significantly from normal controls. These results suggest that auditory-linguistic disabilities may be more detrimental than visual-spatial disabilities to development of operativity.