Changing Attitude and Moral Obligation: Their Independent Effects on Behavior

It was hypothesized that the study of religion should distinguish between attitudes and religious values/moral obligations such that both aid in predicting religiously relevant behavior and changing either will change behavior. However, if they are distinct, then changing one will not necessarily change the other. For the 195 religious participants, attitudes predicted a church-sponsored blood donation and moral obligations increased that prediction. Using both posttest only and pre-post control group designs, an intervention to shift the effect underlying the attitude increased participants' attitude and donating behavior while a religious values intervention increased moral obligations and behavior. Zero to 4 percent of the control groups donated blood, while 13 to 48 percent of the intervention groups donated blood. Results confirm that psychology of religion should distinguish moral obligations from attitude because (1) additional prediction, (2) changing one does not necessarily change the other, and (3) changes based on religious values impact moral obligations.     

Impact and the art of motivation maintenance: The effects of contact with beneficiaries on persistence behavior

We tested the hypothesis that employees are willing to maintain their motivation when their work is relationally designed to provide opportunities for respectful contact with the beneficiaries of their efforts. In Experiment 1, a longitudinal field experiment in a fundraising organization, callers in an intervention group briefly interacted with a beneficiary; callers in two control groups read a letter from the beneficiary and discussed it amongst themselves or had no exposure to him. One month later, the intervention group displayed significantly greater persistence and job performance than the control groups. The intervention group increased significantly in persistence (142% more phone time) and job performance (171% more money raised); the control groups did not. Experiments 2 and 3 used a laboratory editing task to examine mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions. In Experiment 2, respectful contact with beneficiaries increased persistence, mediated by perceived impact. In Experiment 3, mere contact with beneficiaries and task significance interacted to increase persistence, mediated by affective commitment to beneficiaries. Implications for job design and work motivation are discussed.     

Assessment of age-related changes in inhibition and binding using eye movement monitoring

Age-related memory deficits may result from attending to too much information (inhibition deficit) and/or storing too little information (binding deficit). The present study evaluated the inhibition and binding accounts by exploiting a situation in which deficits of inhibition should benefit relational memory binding. Older adults directed more viewing toward abrupt onsets in scenes compared with younger adults under instructions to ignore any such onsets, providing evidence for age-related inhibitory deficits, which were ameliorated with additional practice. Subsequently, objects that served as abrupt onsets underwent changes in their spatial relations. Despite successful inhibition of the onsets, eye movements of younger adults were attracted to manipulated objects. In contrast, the eye movements of older adults, who directed more viewing to the late onsets compared with younger adults, were not attracted toward manipulated regions. Similar differences between younger and older adults in viewing of manipulated regions were observed under free viewing conditions. These findings provide evidence for concurrent inhibition and binding deficits in older adults and demonstrate that age-related declines in inhibitory processing do not lead to enhanced relational memory for extraneous information.     

Expectations of obese trainees: how stigmatized trainee characteristics influence training effectiveness

This study identifies stigma as a potential precursor to self-fulfilling prophecies in training interactions. Expectations held by leaders often result in actions that elicit expectancy-confirming behaviors from their subordinates. The results of the present study suggest that trainee weight (manipulated with a photograph depicting the trainee as either obese or average weight for height) influenced female trainer expectations and evaluations of the training and trainee. Furthermore, the results suggest that negative expectations held by trainers were related to trainee evaluations of the training and the trainer and, for less flexible trainers, to decrements in trainee performance on the trained task. Overall, the results suggest that trainer expectations can be influenced by stereotypes held about trainee characteristics, thus undermining training effectiveness.     

Dissemination of psychoactive substance information by innovative drug users.

Internet-based drug information may be relayed by innovative drug users, a group of individuals who use the web to learn about a new drug, experiment with that substance, and then disseminate their knowledge and experiences to others. We investigated the mechanisms adopted by innovative drug-using adolescents to distribute Internet drug information and experiences to peers, the size and geographic distribution of the receiving group, and the age at which innovative drug users began to disseminate drug information. Method: Cross-sectional survey of adolescents recruited by a respondent-driven sampling method. Of 18 innovative drug users, 17 reported using instant messaging (IM) to disseminate drug information and experiences to peers. The average age at which respondents adopted IM for this purpose was 16 years. Fifteen of 17 described using a distribution list with as many as 200 individuals who received only drug information. Ten respondents instant messaged drug information to online peers greater than 250 miles distant; nine respondents attached links to online drug resources (including www.erowid.org). This study has identified that IM plays an important role in the dissemination of Internet-based drug information by individual innovative drug users into larger social networks. Pediatricians should consider assessing IM use in drug abuse evaluations and recommending that parents of children with drug abuse problems should consider suspending IM services as a means of truncating the delivery of reinforcing drug information.     

Work, Family, and Organizational Advancement: Does Balance Support the Perceived Advancement of Mothers?

Following expansionist (Barnett and Hyde 2001) and enrichment (Greenhaus and Powell 2006) theories of work and family, the current study explores the beneficial effects of work-family balance. Survey responses from a nationally representative U.S. sample (N?=?3,504; 53.5% male, 46.5% female) indicate that the extent to which individuals’ home lives positively affect their work lives is positively related to their perceived advancement. Contrary to hypotheses, these effects were similar for women and men suggesting that men benefit from work-family balance as much as women. However, compared to fathers, mothers who experienced positive spillover did not perceive greater opportunities for advancement, suggesting that positive aspects of the work-family interface may not overcome all the challenges to mothers’ perceived advancement.     

RESPONSE ALLOCATION IN CONCURRENT CHAINS WHEN TERMINAL‐LINK DELAYS FOLLOW AN ASCENDING AND DESCENDING SERIES

Eight pigeons were trained in a concurrent‐chains procedure in which the terminal‐link immediacy ratio followed an ascending or descending series. Across sessions, one terminal‐link delay changed from 2 s to 32 s to 2 s or from 32 s to 2 s to 32 s, while the other was always 8 s. For all pigeons, response allocation tracked changes in delay and was biased towards the 8‐s alternative on the descending series, indicating a hysteresis effect, and was more sensitive to changes in the terminal‐link delay ratio for relatively long (> 8 s) than short (< 8 s) delays. Both the hysteresis and effect of delay duration were predicted by an extended version of Grace and McLean's (2006) decision model. The extended decision model provided an overall better account of the results than a simple linear‐operator model (Grace, 2002), and holds promise for an integrated account of choice in concurrent chains for both acquisition and steady‐state conditions.