Effects of availability of feature changes on behavior segmentation

Thirty-five subjects segmented one of two videotapes of an actor methodically assembling 20 five-page questionnaires. In one sequence, the completion of each questionnaire resulted in a highly visible change in the stimulus fields: The top page of the stack changed from black to white or from white to black with the completion of each questionnaire. In a second sequence the action was identical, but the changing feature was concealed from view. Results disclosed that subjects viewing the tape with the visible change segmented the action on the basis of that change. Subjects viewing the same action without the visible change segmented the behavior into its fine-unit components, despite the fact that the higher-level organization in the behavior was readily understood.     

The interaction of social skill and organizational support on job performance

The present study examined the moderating effect of perceived organizational support (POS) on the relationship between social skill and supervisor-rated job performance. On the basis of regulatory and activation models of behavior, the authors argue that low-POS environments activate social skill because they reflect situations in which interpersonal acuity is required to demonstrate effective job performance. Accordingly, the authors hypothesize that social skill is more strongly related to performance among workers reporting low rather than high levels of organizational support. Results of hierarchical moderated multiple regression analyses on data gathered from 2 samples support the hypothesis. These results suggest that the relevance of social skill to job performance may be dependent on contextual cues. Implications for substantive research, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are offered.     

The role of age in the perceptions of politics--job performance relationship: a three-study constructive replication

This research examined the interaction of organizational politics perceptions and employee age on job performance in 3 studies. On the basis of conservation of resources theory, the authors predicted that perceptions of politics would demonstrate their most detrimental effects on job performance for older workers. Results across the 3 studies provided strong support for the hypothesis that increases in politics perceptions are associated with decreases in job performance for older employees and that perceptions of politics do not affect younger employees' performance. Implications of these results, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

The relation between feelings of knowing and the number of neighboring concepts linked to the test cue

We investigated whether feeling-of-knowing judgments are influenced by the number of different neighboring concepts linked to the test cue in long-term memory as measured using association norms. The purpose was to evaluate contrasting predictions made by the partial-retrieval hypothesis and the competition hypothesis. The partial-retrieval hypothesis assumes the more neighboring concepts activated by the test cue, the higher the feeling of knowing. In contrast, the competition hypothesis assumes that feelings of knowing are sensitive to competition between neighboring concepts, and it predicts that the fewer neighboring concepts activated by the cue, the higher the feeling of knowing. The findings were compatible with the competition hypothesis showing that both feeling-of-knowing and prediction-of-knowing ratings always were higher, the fewer different concepts were linked to the test cue. We obtained an identical pattern of results using different kinds of cues including taxonomic category names, ending sounds, and meaningfully related associates. We consider different ways that these findings could be reconciled with the partial-retrieval hypothesis, and we also discuss implications for other explanations of feeling-of-knowing effects.     

Television Exposure and Children's Decoding of Nonverbal Behavior1

Two studies considered the way in which the magnitude of exposure to television relates to children's understanding and interpretation of others' nonverbal behavior. In the first study, 6th graders made judgments regarding other children whose nonverbal facial behavior did not match their internal emotional state. Results showed that heavier television viewers held a less differentiated, more simplistic view of the consequences of nonverbal self-presentation strategies. In the second study, children in Grades 2 through 6 made judgments of others' nonverbal expressions of emotion. As predicted, heavier television viewers were better at decoding others' nonverbal expressions than lighter viewers, presumably because of their greater exposure to nonverbal displays of emotion on television. In addition, nonverbal decoding skills improved with age.     

Experiences of lecturers helping distressed students in higher education

Lecturers in higher education frequently attempt to support distressed students, yet most lecturers have no training in counselling. In order to gauge the extent to which lecturers are called upon to help distressed students, a survey was conducted of the experiences and opinions of lecturers in a British higher education institution. The incidence of helping students in distress appeared to be very high, almost all respondents (97%) having advised one or more distressed students during the twelve-month period preceding the survey. Further findings and implications of the survey are discussed.     

Emotional inhibition: a discourse analysis of disclosure

Evidence generated within the emotional disclosure paradigm (EDP) suggests that talking or writing about emotional experiences produces health benefits, but recent meta-analyses have questioned its efficacy. Studies within the EDP typically rely upon a unidimensional and relatively unsophisticated notion of emotional inhibition, and tend to use quantitative forms of content analysis to identify associations between percentages of word types and positive or negative health outcomes. In this article, we use a case study to show how a qualitative discourse analysis has the potential to identify more of the complexity linking the disclosure practices and styles that may be associated with emotional inhibition. This may illuminate the apparent lack of evidence for efficacy of the EDP by enabling more comprehensive theorisations of the variations within it.     

A new viewpoint on the evolution of sexually dimorphic human faces

Human faces show marked sexual shape dimorphism, and this affects their attractiveness. Humans also show marked height dimorphism, which means that men typically view women's faces from slightly above and women typically view men's faces from slightly below. We tested the idea that this perspective difference may be the evolutionary origin of the face shape dimorphism by having males and females rate the masculinity/femininity and attractiveness of male and female faces that had been manipulated in pitch (forward or backward tilt), simulating viewing the face from slightly above or below. As predicted, tilting female faces upwards decreased their perceived femininity and attractiveness, whereas tilting them downwards increased their perceived femininity and attractiveness. Male faces tilted up were judged to be more masculine, and tilted down judged to be less masculine. This suggests that sexual selection may have embodied this viewpoint difference into the actual facial proportions of men and women.     

Organizational identification and perceived organizational support as mediators of the procedural justice–citizenship behaviour relationship: A cross-cultural constructive replication

This study examined the psychological processes that might underlie the relationship between procedural justice and organizational citizenship behaviour using an integrative approach. In doing so, we focused on the mediating effects of perceived organizational support and organizational identification in the relationship simultaneously. Framed as an integrated test of social exchange and social identity predictions, the hypotheses were tested using two cross-cultural samples (i.e., South Korea and the United States) as well as different operationalizations of the constructs of interest, which meets the criterion of a constructive replication (Lykken, 1968 Lykken, D. 1968. Statistical significance in psychological research. Psychological Bulletin, 70: 151–159. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) by two samples (N = 130, 135). Interestingly, the results showed convergence in support of the mediating role of organizational identification, but not perceived organizational support, when the two mediators were included in the model concurrently. These findings indicate that social identity may be the dominant psychological mechanism underlying the relationship between procedural justice and organizational citizenship behaviour in workplaces.