Performance of an unpleasant task: Effects of over- vs under-payment on perception of adequacy of rewards and task attractiveness

Subjects who came to an experiment expecting to receive a moderate amount of money for performing a task were then told, either before or after performing it, that their pay would be higher than, equal to, or less than they had expected. When the actual payment was announced after the task was performed, subjects' evaluations of the task increased with the amount they were paid; however, they estimated a higher rate of pay to be appropriate if they received either more or less than they expected than if they received what they expected. When the actual payment was announced before the task was performed (and before subjects made their decision to perform it), a different pattern emerged. Subjects rated the task more attractive when they were offered either more or less than the expected amount, while their judgments of the appropriateness of the pay offered increased with the amount of the offer. Implications of the results for incentive and dissonance theories as well as self-perception and equity theories are discussed.     

The effect of negative feedback about oneself and cost of information on preferences for information about the source of this feedback

The present paper reports an experiment in which different amounts of negative self-discrepant information were induced and its effects on information seeking were tested. In addition, the monetary cost of the information available was manipulated. Subjects received fictitious intelligence test results that were negatively discrepant from their self-evaluation. They were then given the opportunity to choose among several articles containing information that either derogated intelligence tests (test-disparaging information) or argued for their validity (test-supporting information). The relative preference for test-disparaging over test-supporting information increased with feedback discrepancy up to a point, but then decreased as this discrepancy became more extreme. The relative preference in reading desirability for test-disparaging over test-supporting articles was also higher when the information cost money than when it did not. In addition, the difference between the desire for the two types of information was greater under cost than under no cost conditions, particularly at the extreme levels of feedback discrepancy.     

Philosophy and politics: On Fred Dallmayr's “Critical Encounters”

This is the slightly revised text of a paper given at the annual meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences held at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 14 October 1989.     

Natural categorization through multiple feature learning in pigeons

Recently (Troje, Huber, Loidolt, Aust, & Fieder 1999), we found that pigeons discriminated between large sets of photorealistic frontal images of human faces on the basis of sex. This ability was predominantly based on information contained in the visual texture of those images rather than in their configural properties. The pigeons could learn the distinction even when differences of shape and average intensity were completely removed. Here, we proved more specifically the pigeons' flexibility and efficiency to utilize the class-distinguishing information contained in complex natural classes. First, we used principal component as well as discriminant function analysis in order to determine which aspects of the male and female images could support successful categorization. We then conducted various tests involving systematic transformations and reduction of the feature content to examine whether or not the pigeons' categorization behaviour comes under the control of categorylevel feature dimensions-that is, those stimulus aspects that most accurately divide the stimulus classes into the experimenter-defined categories of 'Male' and 'Female'. Enhanced classification ability in the presence of impoverished test faces that varied only along one of the first three principal components provided evidence that the pigeons used these class-distinguishing stimulus aspects as a basis for generalization to new instances.     

The influence of mood on the search for supporting versus conflicting information: dissonance reduction as a means of mood regulation?

Focusing on similarities between the mood regulation approach and dissonance theory, this article addresses the interplay between dissonance and mood by examining how individuals search for information after making a decision while under the influence of positive versus negative mood. Study 1 suggested that negative mood increased the preference for consonant over dissonant information after decisions, whereas positive mood led to a more balanced information search. In Study 2, participants in negative mood rated consonant information as more pleasant and dissonant information as more annoying than participants in positive mood. In addition, the results suggested that mood regulation processes took place. In Study 3, the findings from Study 1 were replicated with a paradigm in which higher stakes were involved.     

On the association of interparental conflict with developing behavioral inhibition and behavior problems in early childhood.

Associations between interparental conflict and the development of temperament characteristics have seldom been addressed; moreover, studies on the impact of interparental conflict on developing behavior problems in infancy and early childhood are relatively rare. The authors therefore aimed to contribute to the study of these issues. A sample of 64 families was investigated longitudinally. At the infant age of 4 months, negative emotionality was measured with a laboratory routine. When infants were 4, 8, and 12 months old, maternal sensitivity was assessed during home observations, and interparental conflict was measured by means of questionnaires. When infants were 30 months old, behavioral inhibition was measured in 2 laboratory fear episodes, and behavior problems were assessed with a structured clinical interview of the primary caregiver. Interparental conflict and infant negative emotionality were significantly and independently associated with subsequent behavioral inhibition. The association of interparental conflict with behavior problems was moderated by infant negative emotionality. Infants high in negative emotionality developed more serious behavior problems when exposed to high interparental conflict, whereas the association was not significant in infants low in negative emotionality.     

Terrorist threat and employees' perceived ability to cope with organizational change

This study investigated the impact of the perceived threat of terrorism on employees' ability to cope with organizational change as well as potentially underlying psychological mechanisms related to work satisfaction and initiative. Three days after the 2006 thwarted terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom, participants were reminded of terrorist threat (by pictures of terrorist attacks) reported lower levels in their ability to cope with organizational change, as well as lower levels of work satisfaction, than did participants who were not reminded of terrorist threat. Three months later, the same terror salience manipulation had no differential effect on these variables. Mediation analyses revealed that work satisfaction mediated the impact of terror salience on employees' ability to cope with organizational change.