Job performance ratings: The relative importance of mental ability,conscientiousness, and career adaptability

According to career construction theory, continuous adaptation to the work environment is crucial to achieve work and career success. In this study, we examined the relative importance of career adaptability for job performance ratings using an experimental policy-capturing design. Employees (N = 135) from different vocational backgrounds rated the overall job performance of fictitious employees in 40 scenarios based on information about their career adaptability, mental ability, conscientiousness, and job complexity. We used multilevel modeling to investigate the relative importance of each factor. Consistent with expectations, career adaptability positively predicted job performance ratings, and this effect was relatively smaller than the effects of conscientiousness and mental ability. Job complexity did not moderate the effect of career adaptability on job performance ratings, suggesting that career adaptability predicts job performance ratings in high-, medium-, and low-complexity jobs. Consistent with previous research, the effect of mental ability on job performance ratings was stronger in high- compared to low-complexity jobs. Overall, our findings provide initial evidence for the predictive validity of employees' career adaptability with regard to other people's ratings of job performance.     

Improved Perceptions of Emotion Regulation and Reflective Functioning in Parents: Two Additional Positive Outcomes of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy

The purpose of this study was to test whether Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a widely used effective therapy for children’s externalizing behaviors and parenting problems, was associated with improvements in parents’ emotion regulation and reflective functioning. We also investigated whether these improvements had unique associations with children’s improvements in externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Participants were 139 Australian children aged 29 to 83 months and their caregivers; all were referred for child externalizing behavior problems coupled with parenting skill deficits or high parent stress. All data were gathered via a questionnaire completed prior to and after completion of PCIT. Significant improvements were found in parents’ self-reported emotion dysregulation and capacity to use cognitive reappraisal for emotion regulation. There was also improvement in parents’ self-report of children’s symptoms, parenting practices, and reflective functioning in the form of prementalizing, which measured a low capacity to understand the emotional world of the child. Multiple regression showed that improvements in cognitive reappraisal, prementalizing, and negative parenting practices were associated with improvement in children’s symptoms. The findings extend the existing evidence for PCIT as an effective parenting intervention, adding parents’ perceived emotion regulation and reflective functioning to the list of positive outcomes from PCIT. Improved emotion regulation and reflective functioning, unique from changes in parenting practices, could be mechanisms that help explain why PCIT has been associated with improvements in children’s externalizing behaviors.     

Gay and lesbian coaches' teams: differences in liking by male and female former sport participants

Previous literature suggests that men, more than women, both adhere to traditional gender beliefs and evaluate violators more harshly. Thus, within the heteronormative sport environment it was hypothesized that men's liking of a team coached by a gay or lesbian may be influenced more than women's liking. Respondents were college-age men (n=130) and women (n=98), former sport participants. Multivariate analysis of covariance (controlling for the presence of gay and lesbian friends and acquaintances) supported the hypothesis. Findings are discussed in terms of sports' heterosexual environment, adherence to gender-role norms, and motivational sexual prejudice.     

Traits and trade-offs are insufficient for evolutionary personality psychology

Comments on the article by D. Nettle, who has clearly shown that evolutionary psychologists need to focus more attention on individual differences, not just species-typical universals. Such differences are not mere "noise," and evolutionary theory will gain by understanding how they are produced and maintained. However, by focusing on personality traits and the five-factor personality model, Nettle left unaddressed many of the most important aspects of human personality. An evolutionary psychology of personality must ultimately explain not just trait differences but also differences in personal goals, values, motives, identities, and life narratives--essential elements of human individuality and functionality. K. M. Sheldon et al suggest four reasons why traits and the five-factor personality model do not provide an optimal approach for explaining the evolution of personality: (a) As constructs, traits provide little purchase for explaining the causes of behavior; (b) trait concepts do not acknowledge or explain people's variations around their own baselines, variations that are likely crucial for adaptation; (c) traits do not explain or even describe true human uniqueness, i.e. the ways in which a person is different from everybody else; and (d) traits do not explain personality from the inside, by considering what people are trying to do in their lives. In raising these issues Sheldon et al are suggesting that the important question for evolutionary personality study is not why people fall at different points on a continuum regarding traits x, y, and z, but rather why each person is inevitably unique while still sharing the same evolved psychology.     

Children's Social and Moral Reasoning About Exclusion

ABSTRACT— Developmental research on social and moral reasoning about exclusion has utilized a social-domain theory, in contrast to a global stage theory, to investigate children's evaluations of gender- and race-based peer exclusion. The social-domain model postulates that moral, social-conventional, and personal reasoning coexist in children's evaluations of inclusion and exclusion, and that the priority given to these forms of judgments varies by the age of the child, the context, and the target of exclusion. Findings from developmental intergroup research studies disconfirm a general-stage-model approach to morality in the child, and provide empirical data on the developmental origins and emergence of intergroup attitudes regarding prejudice, bias, and exclusion.     

Warm,but Maybe Not So Competent?—Contemporary Implicit Stereotypes of Women and Men in Germany

A fundamental model of stereotypes, the stereotype content model (SCM, Fiske et al. 2002), postulates that stereotypes of many social groups vary on two core dimensions: warmth and competence. In line with traditional gender stereotypes, the SCM predicts women to be perceived as warmer than men, and men to be perceived as more competent than women. Research on implicit measurement of stereotypes suggests that, next to people’s underlying beliefs, a major predictor is the tendency to favor one’s own group (Rudman et al. 2001). We examined gender stereotypes concerning warmth and competence, using implicit association tests (IATs, Greenwald et al. 1998) and drawing on diverse samples of women and men in eastern and western Germany (i.e., students and non-students; total N?=?384). On the warmth dimension, an overall women-warmth stereotype was found, confirming predictions of the SCM. On the competence dimension, associations of own gender and competence were observed for both men and women, suggesting the impact of self-favoring processes. Findings are discussed with respect to social role theory (Eagly 1987) and the changing roles of women.     

Youth’s Responses to Peer Provocation: Links to Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression

Youth experiencing anxiety and depression are more likely to be targeted aggressively by peers, making it critical that we understand how they respond to these challenging interpersonal situations. We addressed this issue by recruiting a school-based sample of lower-income youth (N?=?327) in grades 6, 7, and 8 (M age =13.10, SD =0.99) to complete a multiple-choice measure asking them to select responses to 11 scenarios describing physical, relational, and verbal provocation by a peer. We found that increasing anxiety was negatively associated with endorsement of aggressive behaviors, whereas greater levels of depressive symptoms were linked to higher rates of aggressive responding, and, for girls, decreased endorsement of assertive strategies. Implications for understanding and intervening on social competence and psychopathology are discussed.     

Career barriers and reading ability as correlates of career aspirations and expectations of parents and their children

Data were obtained from 176 Year 7 children (mean age = 12.2 years) on career status aspirations and expectations, career barriers, academic engagement, academic control beliefs, general ability and literacy; and from parents, mainly mothers, on aspirations, expectations and career barriers. Discrepancy scores between aspirations and expectations were calculated for both children and parents. Children differed from parents on career status aspirations and expectations; boys did not differ from girls, and parents did not differentiate between boys and girls. Parents’ and children’s aspirations were both associated with reading ability, although the association was weak for the children. Children’s expectations were associated with perceptions of career barriers, and a trend towards reading abilities, while parents’ expectations were associated with general ability and reading.     

The Influence of Thought Suppression and Cognitive Load on Intrusions and Memory Processes Following an Analogue Stressor

Ironic Process Theory and the role of thought suppression have been used in part to explain the phenomenon of intrusive memories in various disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder. How thought suppression interacts with other cognitive processes believed to be instrumental in the development of traumatic intrusive memory is unclear. In an analogue study, thought suppression and cognitive processing was manipulated in 4 experimental groups after participants (n = 80) viewed a trauma film. The impact of suppression was examined in relation to self-reported intrusive experiences as well as via more objective methods (word stem and dot probe tasks) to assess potential preferential encoding of negative material. Cognitive load appeared to undermine thought suppression ability, with these participants experiencing more intrusions over the week relative to participants in all other conditions. This group also showed greater priming to negative film-related words, and both suppression groups demonstrated enhanced memory for film-related content on recognition testing. Thought suppression mediated the relationship between negative interpretations of initial intrusions and later intrusions experienced over the week. The findings are discussed in the context of ironic process theory and cognitive models of posttraumatic stress.     

Use of an analogue method to examine children’s appraisals of threat and emotion in response to stressful events

An analogue methodology was used to present a set of realistic, salient stressors to children in grades 3, 5, and 7. Children (N = 146) viewed eight videotaped vignettes depicting interpersonal and non-interpersonal stressors; these were expected to differentially threaten psychological needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy and provoke different emotional reactions. Analyses showed that scenarios portrayed stressors that were commonly experienced by children and evoked a differentiated profile of appraisals and emotions. When tenets of the motivational theory of stress and coping were tested, scenarios more threatening to needs were more distressing, sadness was linked to relatedness and competence threat appraisals, and fear was a more common reaction to parent stressors that involved dyadic conflict. After accounting for threat appraisals and previous experience of stressors, younger children and girls appraised events as more distressing than older children and boys. Future research could use the analogue procedure to focus on children’s development of regulation and coping with stress.