Deep-level composition variables as predictors of team performance: a meta-analysis

This study sought to unify the team composition literature by using meta-analytic techniques to estimate the relationships between specified deep-level team composition variables (i.e., personality factors, values, abilities) and team performance. The strength of the team composition variable and team performance relationships was moderated by the study setting (lab or field) and the operationalization of the team composition variable. In lab settings, team minimum and maximum general mental ability and team mean emotional intelligence were related to team performance. Only negligible effects were observed in lab settings for the personality factor and team performance relationships, as well as the value and team performance relationships. In contrast, team minimum agreeableness and team mean conscientiousness, openness to experience, collectivism, and preference for teamwork emerged as strong predictors of team performance in field studies. Results can be used to effectively compose teams in organizations and guide future team composition research.     

Who Do We Tell and Whom Do We Tell On? Gossip as a Strategy for Status Enhancement1

College students ranked the interest value of 12 different gossip scenarios; likelihood of spreading the gossip; and the people to whom they would be most likely to tell the gossip, depending on whether the gossip was about male or female professors, relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers, or a same‐sex rival or a romantic partner. Damaging, negative news about rivals and positive news about friends and lovers was especially prized and likely to be passed on. Aside from romantic partners, males and females were more interested in information about same‐sex others than about opposite‐sex others. Overall, men were most likely to confide in their romantic partners, but females were equally likely to share gossip with their lovers and their same‐sex friends.     

The relationship between counterfactual thinking and emotional reactions to event outcomes: Does one account fit all?

By enabling a comparison between what is and what might have been, counterfactual thoughts amplify our emotional responses to bad outcomes. Well-known demonstrations such as the action effect (the tendency to attribute most regret to a character whose actions brought about a bad outcome) and the temporal order effect (the tendency to undo the last in a series of events leading up to a bad outcome) are often explained in this way. An important difference between these effects is that outcomes are due to decisions in the action effect, whereas in the temporal order effect outcomes are achieved by chance. In Experiment 1, we showed that imposing time pressure leads to a significant reduction in the action but not in the temporal order effect. In Experiment 2, we found that asking participants to evaluate the protagonists (“who ought to feel worse?”) led to a significant reduction in the temporal order but not in the action effect. The results suggest that the action and temporal order effects require different explanations and are consistent with other work that suggests that when decisions lead to bad outcomes a comparison of decision quality is an important determinant of the emotional response attributed to the protagonists. The stimulus materials used in our experiments may be downloaded from pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Modeling development of frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) asymmetry: Sex differences and links with temperament

Asymmetric patterns of frontal brain electrical activity reflect approach and avoidance tendencies, with stability of relative right activation associated with withdrawal emotions/motivation and left hemisphere activation linked with approach and positive affect. However, considerable shifts in approach/avoidance‐related lateralization have been reported for children not targeted because of extreme temperament. In this study, dynamic effects of frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) power within and across hemispheres were examined throughout early childhood. Specifically, EEG indicators at 5, 10, 24, 36, 48, and 72 months‐of‐age (n = 410) were analyzed via a hybrid of difference score and panel design models, with baseline measures and subsequent time‐to‐time differences modeled as potentially influencing all subsequent amounts of time‐to‐time change (i.e., predictively saturated). Infant sex was considered as a moderator of dynamic developmental effects, with temperament attributes measured at 5 months examined as predictors of EEG hemisphere development. Overall, change in left and right frontal EEG power predicted declining subsequent change in the same hemisphere, with effects on the opposing neurobehavioral system enhancing later growth. Infant sex moderated the pattern of within and across‐hemisphere effects, wherein for girls more prominent left hemisphere influences on the right hemisphere EEG changes were noted and right hemisphere effects were more salient for boys. Largely similar patterns of temperament prediction were observed for the left and the right EEG power changes, with limited sex differences in links between temperament and growth parameters. Results were interpreted in the context of comparable analyses using parietal power values, which provided evidence for unique frontal effects.     

Home literacy activities and their influence on early literacy skills.

The relationship between the home environments of 66 children and their language and literacy development was examined. After accounting for child age, parent education, and child ability as indexed by scores on a rapid automatized naming task and Block Design of the WPPSI-R, shared book reading at home made no contribution to the prediction of the literacy skills of letter name and letter sound knowledge in kindergarten. In contrast, home activities involving letters predicted modest and statistically significant amounts of variance. For the areas of receptive vocabulary and phonological sensitivity, neither shared book reading nor letter activities were predictive. Follow-up to mid-Grade 2 underscored the importance of letter name/sound knowledge and phonological sensitivity in kindergarten in accounting for individual differences in later achievement in reading comprehension, phonological spelling, and conventional spelling.     

Developing occupational standards for the advice, guidance, counselling and psychotherapy sector

The context to the development of national standards in advice, guidance and counselling is outlined. The definitions of national occupational standards are reviewed and issues arising front the model explored The approach to writing generic standards across the advice, guidance and counselling fields is explained, together with the role of specialist function units. The treatmeni of ethics and equality is examined in detail, as is the role of generic standards imported from elsewhere. The role of evidence routes linked to the standards is discussed. The article concludes ztrith a review of the standards development process and the tensions inherent in it, and with a brief outline of the process by which qualifications will emerge.