Altruistic behavior and the bidimensional just world belief

Thirty participants were sampled after donating charity to a street beggar and were compared by means of 2 short scales of belief in ajust world for self (BJWS) and belief in a just world for others (BJWO) with 30 randomly selected people who passed the beggar by without donating charity. We assumed that BJWO would be negatively related to altruistic behavior, whereas BJWS would be positively linked with it. A logistic regression analysis introducing BJWS, BJWO, and participants' age and gender as predictors showed that BJWO was negatively related to altruistic behavior, whereas the BJWS tended to be positively associated to it. No effects were observed for age or gender.     

Protean attitude and career success: The mediating role of self-management

A protean career attitude is considered as an important determinant of career success in the contemporary career era. In this article we test a model in which we specify the relationships between protean career attitude, career self-management behaviors, career insight, and career success outcomes (career satisfaction and perceived employability). A survey was conducted among a sample of 289 employees. The results support the idea that a protean career attitude is a significant antecedent of career success and that this relationship is fully mediated by the development of career insight. The implications of these findings for understanding the process through which career attitude affects individuals’ career success are discussed.     

The SNARC effect in the processing of second-language number words: further evidence for strong lexico-semantic connections

We present new evidence that word translation involves semantic mediation. It has been shown that participants react faster to small numbers with their left hand and to large numbers with their right hand. This SNARC (spatial-numerical association of response codes) effect is due to the fact that in Western cultures the semantic number line is oriented from left (small) to right (large). We obtained a SNARC effect when participants had to indicate the parity of second-language (L2) number words, but not when they had to indicate whether L2 number words contained a particular sound. Crucially, the SNARC effect was also obtained in a translation verification task, indicating that this task involved the activation of number magnitude.     

Word associations: Network and semantic properties

A number of properties of word associations, generated in a continuous task, were investigated. First, we investigated the correspondence of word class in association cues and responses. Nouns were the modal word class response, regardless of the word class of the cue, indicating a dominant paradigmatic response style. Next, the word association data were used to build an associative network to investigate the centrality of nodes. The study of node centrality showed that central nodes in the network tended to be highly frequent and acquired early. Small-world properties of the association network were investigated and compared with a large English association network (Steyvers & Tenenbaum, 2005). Networks based on a multiple association procedure showed small-world properties despitebeing denser than networks based on a discrete task. Finally, a semantic taxonomy was used to investigate the composition of semantic types in association responses. The majority of responses were thematically related situation responses and entity responses referring to parts, shape, or color. Since the association task required multiple responses per cue, the interaction between generation position and semantic role could be investigated and discussed in the framework of recent theories of natural concept representations (Barsalou, Santos, Simmons, & Wilson, in press).     

Word associations: Norms for 1,424 Dutch words in a continuous task

This study describes the collection of a large set of word association norms. In a continuous word association task, norms for 1,424 Dutch words were gathered. For each cue, three association responses were obtained per participant. In total, an average of 268 responses were collected for each cue. We investigated the relationship with similar procedures, such as discrete association tasks and exemplar generation tasks. The results show that the use of a continuous task allows the study of weaker associations in comparison with a discrete task. The effects of the continuous tasks were investigated for set size and the availability characteristics of the responses, measured through word frequency, age of acquisition, and imageability. Finally, we compared our findings to those of a semantically constrained version of the association task in which participants generated responses within the domain of a semantic category. Results of this comparison are discussed. The Appendix cited in this article is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Scaffolding the design of accessible eLearning content: a user-centered approach and cognitive perspective

There exist various guidelines for facilitating the design, preparation, and deployment of accessible eLearning applications and contents. However, such guidelines prevalently address accessibility in a rather technical sense, without giving sufficient consideration to the cognitive aspects and issues related to the use of eLearning materials by learners with disabilities. In this paper we describe how a user-centered design process was applied to develop a method and set of guidelines for didactical experts to scaffold their creation of accessible eLearning content, based on a more sound approach to accessibility. The paper also discusses possible design solutions for tools supporting eLearning content authors in the adoption and application of the proposed approach.     

Cooperating If One's Goals Are Collective‐Based: Social Identification Effects in Social Dilemmas as a Function of Goal Transformation1

Prior studies of the effect of group identification on cooperation in social dilemmas have advanced 2 competing accounts: the goal‐transformation hypothesis, which holds that identification makes personal and collective goals interchangeable; and the goal‐amplification hypothesis, which states that identification induces positive expectations about others’ cooperative behavior. However, prior studies have neglected to assess the process measures necessary to pit the one account against the other. The present study showed that the effect of identification was moderated by participants’ social value orientation. Identification influenced proselfs’ cooperation more than prosocials’ cooperation. Mediational analyses further showed that the effect of our identification manipulation was mediated by participants’ sense of collective self, and not by their expectations.     

In search of a comprehensive value model for assessing supplementary person-organization fit

In this study, the authors tested the comprehensiveness of the S. H. Schwartz (1992) value model as a conceptual framework for assessing supplementary person-organization fit. They conducted an extensive literature search in which they identified 42 value instruments or typologies that are used to measure life, work, or organizational values. Experts judged whether each of 1,578 items from these 42 instruments could be regarded as an indicator of 1 of the 10 value types identified by S. H. Schwartz (1992). The authors found that (a) 92.5% of the items could be classified into 1 of the 10 value types and (b) the remaining items suggested 2 possible new types (goal orientedness and relations). The authors also found indications that 2 value types could be split to obtain a more univocal meaning. Overall, these findings suggest that the S. H. Schwartz (1992) value model might be an appropriate comprehensive framework for studying supplementary person-organization fit.     

Less power or powerless? Egocentric empathy gaps and the irony of having little versus no power in social decision making

The authors investigate the effect of power differences and associated expectations in social decision making. Using a modified ultimatum game, the authors show that allocators lower their offers to recipients when the power difference shifts in favor of the allocator. Remarkably, however, when recipients are completely powerless, offers increase. This effect is mediated by a change in framing of the situation: When the opponent is without power, feelings of social responsibility are evoked. On the recipient side, the authors show that recipients do not anticipate these higher outcomes resulting from powerlessness. They prefer more power over less, expecting higher outcomes when they are more powerful, especially when less power entails powerlessness. Results are discussed in relation to empathy gaps and social responsibility.