Personality types and motivational characteristics of academics versus professionals in industry in the same occupational discipline

The present study suggests that individuals belonging to different job categories—academics versus professionals in industry—differ in personality types and in motivational characteristics even though they are of the same occupational discipline. Subjects were 49 academics and 45 professionals in industry of two disciplines: engineering and management sciences. Holland's 6 personality types and 18 motivational characteristics measured in terms of Vroom's expectancy theory of motivation were used as the discriminant variables. Results indicate that academics are discriminated from professionals in industry by scoring significantly higher on the Artistic type and significantly lower on the Enterprising type even when the discipline is controlled. The distinction between the two groups is much deeper when motivational factors are examined: Academics are motivated by the opportunity for scientific contribution, for autonomy, and for the high status attained in their job. By contrast, professionals in industry are highly motivated by the opportunity for exercising power.     

Core self-evaluations and job and life satisfaction: the role of self-concordance and goal attainment

The present study tested a model explaining how the core self-evaluations (i.e., positive self-regard) concept is linked to job and life satisfaction. The self-concordance model, which focuses on motives underlying goal pursuit, was used as an explanatory framework. Data were collected from 2 samples: (a) 183 university students (longitudinal measures of goal attainment and life satisfaction were used) and (b) 251 employees (longitudinal measures of goal attainment and job satisfaction were utilized). In both studies, the core self-evaluations concept was positively related to goal self-concordance, meaning that individuals with positive self-regard were more likely to pursue goals for intrinsic and identified (value-congruent) reasons. Furthermore, in both studies, goal self-concordance was related to satisfaction (job satisfaction in Study 1 and life satisfaction in Study 2).     

Reactions to Repeated Unpredictable Terror Attacks: Relationships Among Exposure,Posttraumatic Distress,Mood, and Intensity of Coping1

We hypothesized that exposure to Type IV trauma (involving alteration in a person's basic relation to the environment), associated with prolonged terrorist threats, would impact posttraumatic distress and that exposure to terrorism would impact the intensity of coping. The relationships revealed by the data proved to be in line with this model. Our data suggested that the relationship of exposure and coping was not direct, but seemed to be mediated by posttraumatic distress, that demoralization at the height of an unrelenting terror campaign was unrelated to trauma exposure, and that acceptance was a distinct way of coping adopted by targeted Israelis. Acceptance showed the weakest association with posttraumatic distress and was related inversely to our index of low morale.     

Resources required for processing ambiguous complex features in vision and audition are modality specific

Processing multiple complex features to create cohesive representations of objects is an essential aspect of both the visual and auditory systems. It is currently unclear whether these processes are entirely modality specific or whether there are amodal processes that contribute to complex object processing in both vision and audition. We investigated this using a dual-stream target detection task in which two concurrent streams of novel visual or auditory stimuli were presented. We manipulated the degree to which each stream taxed processing conjunctions of complex features. In two experiments, we found that concurrent visual tasks that both taxed conjunctive processing strongly interfered with each other but that concurrent auditory and visual tasks that both taxed conjunctive processing did not. These results suggest that resources for processing conjunctions of complex features within vision and audition are modality specific.     

Predictive Validity of the MMPI–2 Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales in a Batterers' Intervention Program

Summary: The test-retest reliability of the Hutt Adaptation of the Bender-Gestalt Test was explored with a population of 40 process schizophrenics over a two-week interval. The total Psychopathology Scale Score was found to have high retest reliability for both male and female patients (rho = .87 for males and .83 for females). Moreover the three major components of the Scale were found to have high reliability, and fairly high reliabilities were obtained for patients scoring high as well as low on the Scale. Interjudge reliability was also found to be very high (rho = .895), confirming previous studies in this respect. On these grounds, the Scale offers promise both for clinical and research purposes.     

Stirring the hearts of followers: charismatic leadership as the transferal of affect

In 2 studies, the authors found that leader charisma was positively associated with followers' positive affect and negatively associated with followers' negative affect. The authors hypothesized that leaders' positive affect, positive expression, and aroused behavior will mediate these relationships. The results of their lab study suggest that leaders' positive expression and aroused behavior mediated these relationships. A field study showed that firefighters under the command of a charismatic officer were happier than those under the command of a non-charismatic officer and that these relationships were mediated by the leader's positive affect and a tendency to express positivity.     

Liking and attributions of motives as mediators of the relationships between individuals' reputations,helpful behaviors,and raters' reward decisions

Two studies investigated the mediating effects of liking and attributions of motives on the relationship between a ratee's reputation and helpful behaviors and raters' reward decisions. During managerial simulations, raters evaluated individuals after watching videotapes in which the individual's reputation and helpful behaviors were manipulated. Results indicated an interaction effect between reputation and helpful behaviors such that a helpful person with a good reputation received more rewards than did a helpful person with a bad reputation. In contrast, an unhelpful person with a good reputation did not receive better rewards than an unhelpful person with a bad reputation. Moreover, raters' liking of ratees and the motives raters attributed to ratees' helpful behaviors mediated the relationship between the manipulations and raters' reward decisions.     

Lexical input as related to children's vocabulary acquisition: effects of sophisticated exposure and support for meaning

A corpus of nearly 150,000 maternal word-tokens used by 53 low-income mothers in 263 mother-child conversations in 5 settings (e.g., play, mealtime, and book readings) was studied. Ninety-nine percent of maternal lexical input consisted of the 3,000 most frequent words. Children's vocabulary performance in kindergarten and later in 2nd grade related more to the occurrence of sophisticated lexical items than to quantity of lexical input overall. Density of sophisticated words heard and the density with which such words were embedded in helpful or instructive interactions, at age 5 at home, independently predicted over a third of the variance in children's vocabulary performance in both kindergarten and 2nd grade. These two variables, with controls for maternal education, child nonverbal IQ, and amount of child's talk produced during the interactive settings, at age 5, predicted 50% of the variance in children's 2nd-grade vocabulary.