Single‐limit interval estimates as reference points

People often describe uncertain quantities by suggesting a lower or upper limit of an uncertainty interval, rather than the complete range. Five studies are reported, which demonstrate how interval limits function as provisional reference points (PRP), conferring evaluative meanings to the target objects, by suggesting downward or upward comparisons. Thus, a price above X appears expensive, whereas a price below Y appears cheap, even when Y > X. This can give rise to framing effects: a purchase can appear to be recommended or advised against, and a seller can appear as optimistic or pessimistic, and, more generally, an estimate can indicate abundance or scarcity, depending upon which boundary (upper or lower) that is selected. Furthermore, inclusive lower bounds (minimum, at least) and upper bounds (maximum, at most) differ from exclusive lower (more than, above) and upper bounds (less than, below), by suggesting possible (likely) rather than implausible (unlikely) values. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Personality traits and anxiety symptoms: the multilevel trait predictor model

Investigation of relations between personality traits and mental disorders can inform key issues in psychopathology research. However, it has been hindered by extensive correlations among the traits. Building on studies of affect-psychopathology relations (e.g., the tripartite model), an organizational framework is proposed to solve this problem with respect to anxiety pathology. To test the resulting model, associations between four traits (negative emotionality, positive emotionality, anxiety sensitivity, and negative evaluation sensitivity) and four anxiety symptoms (chronic worry, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, panic, and social anxiety) were examined in an undergraduate sample (N=907). Confirmatory factor analyses supported operationalizations of the constructs in this study. Examination of the trait-symptom links using hierarchical multiple regression analyses supported most of the predicted relations. Specifically, negative emotionality emerged as a general predictor that was significantly related to all four symptom dimensions. In contrast, anxiety sensitivity was specific to panic and worry, whereas negative evaluation sensitivity was specific to social anxiety and worry. Finally, positive emotionality was uniquely related to social anxiety. The model accounted for a substantial amount of variance in the symptoms and almost all of the covariation among them.     

The Role of Job Challenge and Organizational Identification in Enhancing Creative Behavior among Employees in the Workplace

Organizations recognize the importance of creative employees and constantly explore ways to enhance their employees' creative behavior. Creativity research has directed substantial efforts to understanding how work environment fosters creativity. Yet, this research has paid little attention to the importance of specific characteristics of the work environment and organizational identification in augmenting creative behavior in employees at work. The present study examines the influence of job challenge on employees' creative behavior, arguing that organizational identification plays a mediating role in this relationship. The results show that organizational identification mediates the relationship between job challenge and employees' creative behavior.     

Deriving auditory features from triadic comparisons

A feature-based representation of auditory stimuli is proposed and tested experimentally. Within a measurement-theoretical framework, it is possible to decide whether a representation of subjective judgments with a set of auditory features is possible and how unique such a representation is. Furthermore, the method avoids confounding listeners' perceptual and verbal abilities, in that it strictly separates the process of identifying auditory features from labeling them. The approach was applied to simple synthetic sounds with well-defined physical properties (narrow-band noises and complex tones). For each stimulus triad, listeners had to judge whether the first two sounds displayed a common feature that was not shared by the third, by responding with a simple "yes" or "no." Because of the high degree of consistency in the responses, feature structures could be obtained for most of the subjects. In summary, the proposed procedure constitutes a supplement to the arsenal of psychometric methods with the main focus of identifying the type of sensation itself, rather than of measuring its threshold or magnitude.     

Approach‐Avoidance Motivation and the Use of Affect as Information

Individuals often rely on their affect for information. However, positive or negative affect may not be informative for individuals who are more prone to feel affect of this particular valence in general, unless they chronically monitor their internal states. A series of studies demonstrates that differences in individuals’ internal versus external focus of attention and in trait affective valence associated with their approach versus avoidance motivation determine reliance on affect as information. Specifically, our findings show that while positive affect is used as an input in product satisfaction judgments regardless of individuals’ approach versus avoidance motivation, negative affect is used only by individuals with a predominant approach motivation.     

Empathic accuracy of intimate partners in violent versus nonviolent relationships

This study compared the empathic accuracy of men and women who had perpetrated physical intimate partner violence with that of partners in nonviolent but distressed and nonviolent and nondistressed relationships. Examined was the empathic accuracy (a) of partners for one another’s thoughts and feelings during a relationship problem discussion in the laboratory, (b) of partners’ empathic accuracy for each other with the empathic accuracy of objective observers who watched the couples’ interactions, and (c) the males’ empathic accuracy for their female partner to their empathic accuracy for female strangers. No significant group differences were found among women’s empathic accuracy, but the data suggest that violent men exhibit poor empathic accuracy when attempting to understand their female partner’s thoughts and feelings.     

Self‐regulation of Group Members: The Case of Regulatory Focus

For a long time, research on motivation and (inter)group behaviour mainly focused on needs and motives, but did not take self‐regulation (i.e., the processes underlying motivated action) into account. Similarly, self‐regulation research concentrated on the regulation of the personal self, but did not study the regulation of the social self. The current article summarizes work applying self‐regulation approaches to intergroup behaviour. Within this approach, it has been shown (a) that the social self is regulated based on the same mechanisms as the personal self, (b) that intergroup contexts impact on group members’ self‐regulation strategies, and (c) that the fit between an individual's self‐regulation strategy and the behavioural options provided by the group impact on group liking and potentially also on the integration of the group into the self‐concept. The relation between current and earlier approaches to motivation in groups and further avenues for research on group‐based self‐regulation are discussed.