Use of pirated compact discs on four college campuses: a perspective from theory of planned behavior

The Theory of Planned Behavior was chosen as the framework, assuming that college students are rational decision makers seeking to maximize economic gains in purchasing compact discs. A questionnaire was given to 450 students from four college campuses in the Kaohsiung area of Taiwan. Analyses showed that the more positively rated the Behavioral Intention toward purchasing pirated music compact discs, the more likely the college students were to purchase them. Conversely, when Subjective Norms and Perceived Behavioral Control were higher, college students were less likely to make a purchase. Therefore, buying pirated compact discs was consistent with the premises for Attitude, Subjective Norms, and Behavioral Control.     

The effects of therapist turnover in a training clinic: The core group phenomenon

Group psychotherapy conducted in training settings presents the membership with a unique opportunity to experience and work through loss. This paper describes the potentially problematic influence of predictable therapist turnover in these clinical settings. The core group phenomenon which emerges as a function of this anticipatory grief is described, as are the dynamics of core group members who are particularly vulnerable to the comings and goings of therapists in training. Finally, the importance of therapist attention to the impact of the turnover process in group psychotherapy training programs is underscored.     

Infants' tracking of objects and collections

Recent research suggests that infants' understanding of the physical world is more complex and adult-like than previously believed. One of the most impressive discoveries has been infants' ability to reason about medium-sized, material objects. They are able to individuate objects in a scene, and to enumerate and reason about them. This article reports a series of experiments investigating 8-month-old infants' ability to reason about collections of objects. Experiment 1 shows a sharp contrast between infants' understanding of single objects versus collections. While infants detected the discontinuous ('Magical') disappearance of a single object, they did not detect the Magical Disappearance of a non-cohesive pile of objects. Experiments 2-4 found that infants' difficulty remained even when the distinct identity of each object in the collection was emphasized, but could be overcome if infants (a) first saw the individual objects clearly separated from each other prior to their being placed together in a pile, or (b) had prior experience with the objects making up the collection. Our findings suggest that infants' expectations about object behavior are highly specific regarding the entities they are applied to. They do not automatically apply to any and all portions of matter within the visual field. Both the behavior of an entity, and infants' prior experience play roles in determining whether infants will treat that entity as an object.     

Development of perceptual asymmetry for free viewing of chimeric stimuli

Free-viewing chimeric stimuli tasks have been used in a number of studies to assess perceptual asymmetries and draw inferences about hemispheric lateralization in children and adults. In order to determine whether perceptual asymmetries for nonverbal information are present in children, a free-viewing chimeric stimuli task was used in 63 normally developing 6- through 16-year-old children. Stimuli included affect (happy faces), gender, quantity, and shape. An overall left hemispace (LHS) advantage was present by 6 years of age. This LHS preference was more prominent by age 10 and then plateaued. No preference for shape was detected at any of the age ranges studied. These results suggest that perceptual asymmetries for visual stimuli develop during childhood and appear to reach a plateau by age 10. The observed specificity for certain types of nonverbal stimuli should be taken into account in future studies of perceptual asymmetry in both normal and neurologically impaired children.     

The Flexible Correction Model: Bias Correction Guided by Naïve Theories of Bias

Psychological researchers have examined a broad array of biases and shortcomings of social perceivers. Less attention has been paid to how people react when they become concerned about the possibility of bias and attempt to correct or overcome the potential for bias. An early approach was to think of bias correction as “subtracting” information or reactions that are identified as coming from the biasing factor instead of the target. An alternative approach is to conceptualize bias correction as guided by social perceivers' naïve theories or perceptions of the bias at work. The subtraction theories were designed to deal with the assimilative biases typical of early priming experiments, but theory‐based corrections can readily deal with either assimilative or contrastive biases. We describe both types of correction theories, with a focus on the empirical support for theory‐based correction (and especially for the Flexible Correction Model). We also identify future directions for research on theory‐based correction.     

Exploring the motivations of Facebook use in Taiwan

The current study explored the motivations of online social network use among a sample of the general population in Taiwan (N=4,346). It investigated how seven different motivations to use Facebook predicted the intensity of Facebook use and content-generation behaviors on Facebook. Results showed that the motivation to use Facebook for posting and viewing status updates was the strongest predictor of Facebook intensity, while the motivation to view and share photographs was the strongest predictor of content-generation behavior on the site. Results are discussed in terms of expanding motivations to use Facebook to the study of social networking sites and other new and social media.     

Gender makes the difference: The moderating role of leader gender on the relationship between leadership styles and subordinate performance

Using a predominantly male research and development (R&D) sample and a predominantly female customer service personnel sample, we investigated how authoritarian and benevolent leadership styles interact with leader gender to influence subordinate performance (i.e., task performance, citizenship behavior, and creativity). Our research extends role congruity theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) by adopting  and  attribution principles to offer a more comprehensive framework for explaining how leader gender affects the impact of leadership styles on subordinate performance. Our results suggest that the negative relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinate performance is stronger for female than for male leaders and that the positive relationship between benevolent leadership and subordinate performance is stronger for male than for female leaders. Accordingly, in addition to leaders’ engaging in gender-role congruent behaviors, a useful strategy is to adopt behaviors that are perceived as a positive deviation from their gender role.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Person–Organization Fit,Person–Job Fit,and Contextual Performance: The Mediating Role of Psychological Ownership

In this study we present new insights into the relationships surrounding employees’ feelings of psychological ownership (PO) at work and the resulting effects on contextual performance. Characterized by a feeling of possession, PO has been theorized to have positive influences on the attitudes and behaviors of employees. To explore PO’s effects, we conducted a three-stage questionnaire survey of employees and their supervisors at a multinational pharmaceutical company in Taiwan. To help attenuate the errors associated with common method variance that trouble most studies using simultaneous data, a longitudinal approach was taken to investigate the relationships between person–organization fit, person–job fit, and PO. During the first stage of data collection, 330 questionnaires were sent to employees, and 168 (51%) valid questionnaires were returned. During the second stage, questionnaires were sent to the 168 employees who had responded to the first-stage survey. There were 134 (80%) valid questionnaires returned. Finally, during the third stage, questionnaires were sent to the supervisors of all 134 employees who had responded to the second-stage survey. There were 88 (66%) valid questionnaires returned. Findings reveal that person–job fit was significantly related to PO, and PO was significantly related to contextual performance. However, contrary to predictions, person–organization fit was positively, but not significantly, related to PO. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for both academics and practitioners and make suggestions for future research.     

Lexical Association and False Memory for Words in Two Cultures

This study examined the relationship between language experience and false memory produced by the DRM paradigm. The word lists used in Stadler, et al. (Memory & Cognition, 27, 494–500, 1999) were first translated into Chinese. False recall and false recognition for critical non-presented targets were then tested on a group of Chinese users. The average co-occurrence rate of the list word and the critical word was calculated based on two large Chinese corpuses. List–level analyses revealed that the correlation between the American and Taiwanese participants was significant only in false recognition. More importantly, the co-occurrence rate was significantly correlated with false recall and recognition of Taiwanese participants, and not of American participants. In addition, the backward association strength based on Nelson et al. (The University of South Florida word association, rhyme and word fragment norms, 1999) was significantly correlated with false recall of American participants and not of Taiwanese participants. Results are discussed in terms of the relationship between language experiences and lexical association in creating false memory for word lists.