The Effects of Salesperson Need for Achievement and Sales Manager Leader Reward Behavior

A sample of 312 salespeople from diverse industries was used to develop a model that examined the influence of salesperson need for achievement and sales manager positive leader reward behavior on several key organizational outcomes. The organizational outcome variables examined were goal acceptance, sales performance, and organizational commitment. The results suggest that a salesperson’s need for achievement may lead to higher performance, but not necessarily commitment to the organization. However, positive leader reward behavior may strengthen a salesperson’s organizational commitment. The findings, along with suggestions for sales managers, are discussed.     

Book Review of Health and the Construction of the Individual. J. Ogden. London: Routledge, 2002. i–viii + 130 pages ISBN 0415233070

Abstract

Recent theoretical and empirical research has challenged the assumption of health psychologists employing social cognitive models that beliefs can confidently be inferred on the basis of questionnaire responses. It is charged that responses to questionnaires are a function of the intelligibility of the items, constructs and theoretical framework to survey participants. To investigate this contention, cognitions specified by Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) were measured with respect to intentions to use a condom and intentions to use dental floss. Three alternative formats of a questionnaire which varied the order of presentation of PMT items were distributed to student samples. Analyses showed that while questionnaire format did not affect the reliability of cognition measures, there was some variation in the significance and strength of correlations between PMT cognitions across formats. Individual differences in social desirability and salience of the target behaviour had small and predictable effects upon reliabilities and intercorrelations. Implications for the measurement of health beliefs and the status of questionnaire responses are outlined and suggestions are made for controlling bias associated with respondents' capacity to “read” a questionnaire.     

Perception and corrigibility

Timothy Williamson, in various places, has put forward an argument that is supposed to show that denying bivalence is absurd. This paper is an examination of the logical force of this argument, which is found wanting.     

PEOPLE OF GOD,CHILDREN OF HAM

Taxonomies inherited from the nineteenth century have shaped the discourse surrounding the racial identity and supposed roots of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel. Through their interactions with just a few colonial actors, some of whom were Christian missionaries, others who were Jewish Zionists, a small group of young Falashas developed an elite status in Ethiopia as the true lost Jews in Africa. While most historians specializing in the history of Ethiopia do not believe the Beta Israel are a “lost tribe” of the ancient Israelites, Ethiopian immigrants have altered their self‐conceptions over the past hundred years and come to see themselves as both black and Jewish. This essay offers an alternative reading of the Beta Israel narrative, and asserts that the transformation of their social identities are embedded in a political process of racialization tied to racial ideology, and both secular and religious institutions and the State. In the process of incorporation into western society, their social identities have been transmogrified from religious others in Ethiopia to co‐religionists yet racial others in Israel.     

SPSS and SAS programs for comparing Pearson correlations and OLS regression coefficients

Several procedures that use summary data to test hypotheses about Pearson correlations and ordinary least squares regression coefficients have been described in various books and articles. To our knowledge, however, no single resource describes all of the most common tests. Furthermore, many of these tests have not yet been implemented in popular statistical software packages such as SPSS and SAS. In this article, we describe all of the most common tests and provide SPSS and SAS programs to perform them. When they are applicable, our code also computes 100 × (1 ? α)% confidence intervals corresponding to the tests. For testing hypotheses about independent regression coefficients, we demonstrate one method that uses summary data and another that uses raw data (i.e., Potthoff analysis). When the raw data are available, the latter method is preferred, because use of summary data entails some loss of precision due to rounding.     

Depotentiation of Symptom-Producing Implicit Memory in Coherence Therapy

In this second of three articles, we suggest criteria defining the optimal use of neuroplasticity (synaptic change) in psychotherapy and provide a detailed examination of the use of neuroplasticity in coherence therapy. We delineate a model of how coherence therapy engages native mental processes that (a) efficiently reveal specific, symptom-generating, unconscious personal constructs in implicit emotional memory and then (b) selectively depotentiate these constructs, ending symptom production. Both the psychological and the neural operation of this methodology are described, particularly how it defines and follows the built-in rules of change of the brain–mind–body system. On neuroscientific grounds, we suggest a fundamental distinction between transformative change, which permanently eliminates symptom-generating constructs and neural circuits, and counteractive change, which creates new constructs and circuits that compete against the symptom-generating ones and is inherently susceptible to relapse. We propose that coherence therapy achieves transformative change through the reconsolidation of memory, a recently discovered form of neuroplasticity, and present evidence consistent with this hypothesis. Subjective attention emerges as a critical agent of change in both the phenomenological and neural viewpoints, profoundly connecting these two domains.     

Childhood Abuse,Head Injuries,and Use of Medical Emergency Services in People with Severe Mental Illness

People with severe mental illness (SMI) report high rates of traumatic experiences. This study analyzes data collected from 183 people diagnosed with SMI on reports of childhood trauma, head injuries, and emergency room (ER) services. More than half the cohort (56.7%) reported 3 to 7 cooccurring categories of childhood abuse (CAB). People who reported 6 and 7 categories of CAB had a 5-fold risk of experiencing a head injury. If they have used the ER for reasons other than psychiatric illness they endorse more traumatic experiences in their childhood when compared to those who did not. People with SMI and cooccurring CAB experiences might be predisposed to a higher risk of head injuries and more frequent use of the ER.     

Batterer Program Directors' Views on Substance Abuse and Domestic Violence

This article reports on a national survey of batterer intervention program (BIP) directors (N?=?150). The beliefs of these directors on the relationship of substance abuse and domestic violence is reported and discussed. BIP director's opinions are important because they make programmatic and treatment decisions. Most BIP directors believe that for many of their clients, both men and women, perpetrator and victim, violence and substance abuse is related. Treatment and methodological considerations are discussed.     

Understanding the multiframe caricature advantage for recognizing facial composites

Eyewitnesses often construct a “composite” face of a person they saw commit a crime, a picture that police use to identify suspects. We described a technique (Frowd, Bruce, Ross, McIntyre, & Hancock, 2007) based on facial caricature to facilitate recognition of these images: Correct naming substantially improves when composites are seen with progressive positive caricature, where distinctive information is enhanced, and then with progressive negative caricature, the opposite. Over the course of four experiments, the underpinnings of this mechanism were explored. Positive-caricature levels were found to be largely responsible for improving naming of composites, with some benefit from negative-caricature levels. Also, different frame-presentation orders (forward, reverse, random, repeated) facilitated equivalent naming benefit relative to static composites. Overall, the data indicate that composites are usually constructed as negative caricatures.     

The role of motion in learning new faces

Four experiments are reported that investigate the usefulness of rigid (head nodding, shaking) and nonrigid (talking, expressions) motion for establishing new face representations of previously unfamiliar faces. Results show that viewing a face in motion leads to more accurate face learning, compared with viewing a single static image (Experiment 1). The advantage for viewing the face moving rigidly seems to be due to the different angles of view contained in these sequences (Experiment 2). However, the advantage for nonrigid motion is not simply due to multiple images (Experiment 3) and is not specifically linked to forwards motion but extends to reversed sequences (Experiment 4). Thus, although we have demonstrated beneficial effects of motion for face learning, they do not seem to be due to the specific dynamic properties of the sequences shown. Instead, the advantage for nonrigid motion may reflect increased attention to faces moving in a socially important manner.