Social status as a cue for tacit coordination

The present paper investigates how and when social status may serve as a cue for tacit coordination. In three experimental studies, we demonstrate that low status individuals are inclined to defer to the preferences of high status individuals, thereby facilitating coordination success. Furthermore, we investigate the boundary conditions of this effect. More specifically, we show that social status only facilitates coordination success when the people involved have asymmetric (or conflicting) preferences (Study 2), and when there is a clear social hierarchy (Study 3). In the general discussion, we relate these findings to earlier research on dominance hierarchies, social power, deference and perspective-taking and we provide suggestions for future research.     

Power of the Circumplex: Incremental validity of intersection traits in predicting counterproductive work behaviors

This study examines the role of the circumplex model of personality in predicting counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs). Drawing on the fidelity‐bandwidth principle, we investigate the hypotheses that each of the three sets of circumplex traits representing the intersections of conscientiousness–agreeableness, conscientiousness–emotional stability, and agreeableness–emotional stability will account for significant incremental variance over five‐factor model (FFM) traits in predicting CWBs. Results indicated the circumplex traits contribute incremental variance over the FFM traits, are relatively more important than the FFM traits, and account for 1.5–2.0 times more variance in the total R² associated with CWBs. Collectively, these findings show that circumplex traits capture unique information not explained by FFM traits, and this information leads to a better understanding of the dispositional nature of CWBs.     

Asymmetries in ethics

Ethical notions such as good and bad, are often treated as though they were ‘symmetric’ in the sense of having the same moral ‘weight’, one in a positive the other in a negative sense. I argue that they are in fact ‘asymmetric’ and that the negative members of such pairs of notions are more fundamental and definite, logically speaking, and operationally more important than the positive members. Detailed arguments are given to show this for some non‐moral notions, such as life and death, health and illness; some semi‐moral notions such as pleasure and pain; and finally for the moral notions of happiness, benevolence, right, and good and their negative counterparts. One of the intentions of the article is to show that a systematic view of such asymmetries may have consequences for one's view of the proper or desirable structure of a general theory of ethics: norms stating prohibitions and norms stating permissions will be seen to be, in a sense defined in the text, more fundamental and important than norms stating ('positive') obligations.     

Sensuality and venality in Bangkok: The dynamics of cross‐cultural mapping of prostitution

The dynamics of cross‐cultural cognitive mapping is examined, from a Schuetzian perspective, on the example of the changing images formed by farangs (white foreigners) of Thai girls engaged in “open‐ended” tourist‐oriented prostitution, a vaguely‐defined, gray area lying between “full‐fledged prostitution” and “straight” sexuality. The newcomer farang, unable to grasp this culture‐specific category, initially tends to refuse to label the girls as “prostitutes,” but, with growing experience, tends to apply that label to them, without, however, thereby resetting the boundaries of his cognitive map. He thus fails to make the transition from strangeness to familiarity with the host culture, as conceived by Schuetz—since he continues to impose the crisp categorizations prevalent in his culture of origin, on a situation which is fuzzily conceived in different categories by the hosts. The case study exemplifies the difficulties of a cross‐cultural definition and identification of prostitution.     

Revisions and Regret: The Cost of Changing your Mind

Decision reversals often imply improved decisions. Yet, people show a strong resistance against changing their minds. These are well‐established findings, which suggest that changed decisions carry a subjective cost, perhaps by being more strongly regretted. Three studies were conducted to explore participants' regret when making reversible decisions and to test the hypothesis that changing one's mind will increase post‐outcome regret. The first two studies employed the Ultimatum game and the Trust game. The third study used a variant of the Monty Hall problem. All games were conducted by individual participants playing interactively against a computer. The outcomes were designed to capture a common characteristic of real‐life decisions: they varied from rather negative to fairly positive, and for every outcome, it was possible to imagine both more and less profitable outcomes. In all experiments, those who changed their minds reported much stronger post‐outcome regret than those who did not change, even if the final outcomes were equally good (Experiments 2 and 3) or better (Experiment 1).This finding was not because of individual differences with respect to gender, tendency to regret, or tendency to maximize. Previous studies have found that those who change from a correct to wrong option regret more than those who select a wrong option directly. This study indicates that this finding is a special case of a more general phenomenon: changing one's mind seems to come with a cost, even when one ends up with favorable outcomes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prospective and concurrent correlates of emotion perception in psychotic disorders: A naturalistic,longitudinal study of neurocognition,affective blunting and avolition

This naturalistic study investigated longitudinal and cross‐sectional symptomatic and neurocognitive correlates of social cognition indexed by emotion perception. Participants were 31 persons admitted to a psychiatric emergency ward due to acute psychosis. Positive and negative (i.e., affective blunting and avolition) symptoms were assessed at baseline and 12‐month follow‐up using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. Participants completed neuropsychological assessments with alternative versions of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status at baseline and at 12‐month follow‐up. Emotion perception was measured using the Face/Voice Emotion Test at 12‐month follow‐up. Correlational analyses (Spearman's rho) revealed strong and statistically significant associations between neurocognition and emotion perception (baseline r = 0.58, follow‐up r = 0.43). Associations between positive symptoms and emotion perception were weak or non‐existent (baseline r = 0.13, follow‐up r  =  –0.01). Emotion perception was moderately, but not significantly, associated with affective blunting at follow‐up (r = 0.33), but not at baseline (r = 0.21). The association with avolition was non‐existent (baseline r  =  –0.05, follow‐up r = 0.01). This study supports the notion that emotion perception has neurocognitive correlates. The cross‐sectional trend level association with affective blunting suggests that the ability to perceive emotions might be related to, but dissociable from the ability to express emotions.     

Personal values and prosocial behaviour in strategic interactions: Distinguishing value‐expressive from value‐ambivalent behaviours

Relying on the framework provided by Schwartz's theory of personal values, we investigated whether values can help explain prosocial behaviour. We first distinguished value‐expressive behaviours from value‐ambivalent behaviours. The former are compatible with primarily one value or with congruent values, the latter with mutually conflicting values. In Study 1, an analysis over all 41 (39 unpublished) samples in which we measured personal values and prosocial behaviour in monetarily incentivized strategic interactions (N = 1289; data collected between 2007 and 2010 in China, Finland, Germany, Israel, and the West Bank) supported our idea that personal values, universalism in particular, predict value‐expressive (prisoner's dilemma cooperation and trust game back‐transfers) but not value‐ambivalent behaviours (trust game transfers and ultimatum game proposals and responses). Study 2 (N = 56) focused on dictator game behaviours, which we expected and found to be strongly value‐expressive. The findings contribute to the ongoing discussion on whether and under which circumstances values shape behaviour. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do core self-evaluations and coping style influence the perception of job insecurity?

Over the last few decades, increased flexibility and lack of stability in employment has made job insecurity a work stressor that affects more and more employees. Since worrying about potential job loss (quantitative job insecurity) or possible loss of valued job features (qualitative job insecurity) constitutes a subjective perception, it has been claimed that personality factors may be decisive for job insecurity perceptions. Furthermore, the perception of a stressor, in this case job insecurity, could be argued to be dependent on appraisals of available coping resources. This study investigates whether core self-evaluations predict job insecurity perceptions, and whether coping mediates this relationship, in a two-wave data set from a Swedish sample of white-collar workers (N = 425). The results show that core self-evaluations had a negative total effect on both qualitative and quantitative job insecurity. Core self-evaluations were positively related to problem-focused coping but not to emotion-focused coping. However, there was no mediating effect of coping style on the association between core self-evaluations and job insecurity.