INFLUENCES ON MANAGERIAL PAY ALLOCATIONS: A DEPENDENCY PERSPECTIVE

This paper reviews evidence and presents arguments for the view that managerial pay allocations are influenced by the degree of dependence on subordinates and by threats to that dependence. In assessing this view, the issues of managerial discretion in pay allocation and pay as a means of managing dependencies are explored. Major sources of objective and subjective dependence on subordinates are identified. Predictions are made regarding managerial pay allocations under various conditions of dependence and dependency threat. Finally, research and practical implications of the dependency perspective are discussed.     

Perceptions of speakers with minimal eye contact: Implications for stutterers

One hundred and thirty-three college students responded to percentage definitions of “good,” “minimal,” and “no” eye contact. They also judged their perceptions of a speaker with “little or no eye contact” on a semantic differential scale containing 60 polarized adjective pairs regarding personality traits. The majority of the student respondents defined an individual with “good” eye contact as looking at his/her audience/listener 90–100% of the time. This is a more stringent definition than other literature has indicated. Furthermore, speakers with little or no eye contact were judged less favorably on 70% of the items, which indicates that low eye contact adversely affects perceptions of a speaker's personality. Therefore, stutterers need to be made aware of the importance of and determinants of effective eye contact in communication. Also, the development of effective eye contact needs to be incorporated as a major goal in stuttering therapy.     

Cerebral hemispheric mechanisms in the retrieval of ambiguous word meanings

Targets related to ambiguous primes were projected to the left and right visual fields in a lexical priming experiment with stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 35 and 750 msec. Right visual field results were similar to our earlier results with central projection (G. B. Simpson & C. Burgess, 1985, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 11, 28-39). Facilitation was found for the more frequent meaning at both SOAs and a decrease in facilitation for the less frequent meaning at the longer SOA. In contrast, left visual field results indicated a decay of facilitation for the more frequent meaning at the longer SOA, while activation for the subordinate meaning increased. Results suggest that, while automatic processing occurs in both hemispheres, only the left hemisphere engages in controlled processing of ambiguous word meanings. In addition, the present results support the idea that the right hemisphere has a special role in ambiguity resolution and that the right hemisphere lexicon possesses a richer endowment than earlier thought.     

S-R compatibility between response position and destination of apparent motion: evidence of the detection of affordances

In choice reaction time, stimuli and responses in some combinations (e.g., based on spatial arrangement) are faster than in other combinations. To test whether motion toward a position yields faster responses at that position, a computer-generated square in front of one hand appeared to move either toward that hand or toward the other hand. Compatible responses (e.g., motion toward left hand/left response) were faster than incompatible responses, even when that opposed traditional positional compatibility. In Experiment 2, subjects responded to the same stimuli but with both hands left, right, or on the body midline. Medial responses were the fastest, showing that destination, rather than mere relative position, was a critical variable. It was suggested that spatial compatibility effects are not unique to position but apply to a variety of task situations, describable by J.J. Gibson's theory of affordances, in which he claims that one perceives the actions (e.g., catching) permitted in a situation.