Do you get what you pay for? Sales incentives and implications for motivation and changes in turnover intention and work effort

This study investigated relations between pay-for-performance incentives designed to vary in instrumentality (annual pay-for-performance, quarterly pay-for-performance, and base pay level) and employee outcomes (self-reported work effort and turnover intention) in a longitudinal study spanning more than 2 years. After controlling for perceived instrumentality, merit pay increase, and the initial values of the dependent variables, the amount of base pay was positively related to work effort and negatively related to turnover intention, where both relationships were mediated by autonomous motivation. The amounts of quarterly and annual pay-for-performance were both positively related to controlled motivation, but were differently related to the dependent variables due to different relations with autonomous motivation.     

Why individuals want money is what matters: Using self-determination theory to explain the differential relationship between motives for making money and employee psychological health

Researchers have debated for years whether money can lead to happiness. Indeed, the findings to date are contradictory in regard to the impact of individuals’ motives for making money on their psychological well-being. This study aimed to reconcile these findings and show that certain motives for making money can be beneficial to individuals’ psychological health, while others can be detrimental, not only by reducing well-being, but also by increasing ill-being. Based on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) were hypothesized to be the psychological mechanism explaining these differential effects. More precisely, need satisfaction and need frustration were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between employees’ money motives and psychological health (well-being and ill-being). Our findings suggest that self-integrated motives for making money lead to greater well-being and lesser ill-being by positively predicting need satisfaction and negatively predicting need frustration. On the other hand, non-integrated motives for making money appear to result in lesser well-being and greater ill-being by being negatively associated with need satisfaction and positively associated with need frustration. Together, these findings suggest that money motives can have differential effects on employees’ psychological health depending on whether these underlying reasons are need-satisfying or need-frustrating life goals.     

Applying self-determination theory to understand the motivational impact of cash rewards: New evidence from lab experiments

We investigated, based on self-determination theory (SDT), the impact of the functional meaning of monetary rewards on individuals' motivation and performance and further tested the role of the psychological needs as the underlying mechanism. In two experimental studies, we show that when presented in an autonomy-supportive way, rewards lead participants to experience greater intrinsic motivation, which leads them to perform better, than when monetary rewards are presented in a controlling way. This is mediated by greater psychological need satisfaction, indicating that through greater feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, individuals experience greater intrinsic motivation for the task at hand. Our findings suggest that rewards can have a distinct effect on individuals' motivation and performance depending on whether they take on an autonomy-supportive or controlling meaning, thus providing empirical evidence for the theoretical and practical implications of SDT's concept of functional meaning of rewards. By highlighting the importance of this concept, this research contributes to our understanding of the effectiveness of such rewards in the workplace, suggesting that they can foster employee motivation and performance if organisations present them to employees in an autonomy-supportive way to convey an informational meaning and positively contribute to their psychological need stisfaction.     

THE EFFECTS OF CHILDHOOD FAMILY STRESS ON WOMEN'S DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS:

This study uses a life course approach to observe the interaction between stressful childhood events and recent undesirable events to predict depressive symptoms in women. Data are from a community sample ( N = 205) of adult daughters from the Cornell Women's Roles Project, aged 26–58 years. Results indicate that women who experienced mild stressors during childhood are less likely to have depressive responses to undesirable events than are those who did not have stressful family backgrounds. This buffering influence appears to be partially mediated through a woman's belief in her control over external events. In the absence of childhood strains, a close father–daughter relationship during childhood may also teach women protective mastery skills. Overall, findings suggest that women's differing depressive responses to undesirable events follow a developmental pathway beginning with early childhood experiences. We suggest that the milder childhood stressors measured in this study stimulated an adaptive family environment from which these women were able to garner life course coping strategies.     

WHEN THINKING HESITATES: PHILOSOPHY AS PROSTHESIS AND TRANSFORMATIVE VISION

In this essay, I draw on Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty to interrogate what philosophy is and how it can continue to think. Though my answer is not reducible to the views of either philosopher, what joins them is an attempt to elaborate philosophy as a different way of seeing. In this light, I propose a view of philosophy as prosthesis—as a means and a way for seeing differently. Rather than a simple tool, philosophy as prosthesis is a transformative supplement, one that our bodily perception calls for and wherein that perception is recast. Rather than a fixed or assured view, this prosthesis holds open the interval in which thinking can take place. Philosophy, I argue, must wait. It sees and thinks hesitatingly, for the temporality it inscribes is not a foreseeable development but the unfolding of life as tendency, as that which creates its own possibility as it comes into existence.     

Passion at work and workers' evaluations of job demands and resources: a longitudinal study

Vallerand et al. developed a dualistic model of passion where two types of passion are proposed: harmonious and obsessive passion. They generally predict adaptive and less adaptive outcomes, respectively. In this study, we examine whether the type of passion that employees hold toward work influences their evaluations of job demands and resources. We hypothesized that a harmonious passion for work would lead to positive evaluations of job control and support in the workplace as well as to low levels of work overload. In contrast, we hypothesized that an obsessive passion for work would lead to evaluations of work overload and to low levels of job control and support. The results of a longitudinal study supported our hypothesis.     

Acting, behaving, and the selfless basis of metaperception.

The desire to create a particular impression of oneself to others is a fundamental interpersonal motive that should be followed by an assessment of the success of the self-presentation. The authors integrate the areas of self-presentation and metaperception in the present research by assigning participants to enact roles during 2 dyadic interactions and measuring the actors' metaperceptions and their partners' trait judgments. They found a high level of accuracy in actors' metaperceptions but no accuracy in partners' trait judgments of the actors. Instead, partners' trait judgments corresponded closely to the actors interpersonal behavior, indicating that there was little or no "personality leakage" in the actors' behavior. Random assignment to role created a situation in which private self was uncorrelated with public self. Results indicate that actors were able to disregard their self-concepts when determining the impressions they created.     

Effects of sleep deprivation on performance and EEG spectral analysis in young adults

Nine totally sleep deprived (TSD) and nine control subjects were evaluated with a complete battery for attention and memory performance. Frontal and temporal EEGs (5 min, eyes closed) were also recorded before and after the night. TSD subjects exhibited three performance deficits: learning the Pursuit Rotor Task, implicit recall of paired words, and distractibility on the Brown-Peterson Test. Relative to evening recordings, control subjects showed decreased morning absolute powers in all electrodes for all frequencies except for Frontal delta; TSD subjects showed increased Frontal and Temporal theta and Frontal beta. These results show that motor procedural, implicit memory, and working memory are sensitive to one night of TSD, and that Frontal and Temporal theta spectral power seem to discriminate between a night with sleep from a night without.     

Psychometric Properties of the Cultural Intelligence Scale in a Saudi Arabian Context

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the cultural intelligence scale (CQS) in a Saudi Arabian context. The CQS was administered to a random sample of 553 undergraduate students at Hail University. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the four‐factor structure of the CQS: cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral. In addition, the results of a second‐order CFA indicated that these four factors can be further collapsed into one general factor. The CQS showed adequate internal consistency and test–retest reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity. The results further revealed no significant differences between males and females. In sum, results suggest that the Arabic version of the CQS is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring an individual's intercultural intelligence.