A Multi‐Source,Multi‐Study Investigation of Job Performance Prediction by Political Skill

Political skill is a social effectiveness construct with a demonstrated capacity to predict job performance. However, because performance prediction research in this area to date has made exclusive use of self‐reports of political skill, and due to frequent distrust of self‐ratings of constructs in important personnel decisions, there is a need to investigate how multiple alternative sources of political skill and job performance measures relate, thus raising both theoretical and methodological issues. In three studies, employing a triadic data collection methodology, and utilising both cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs, this research tested the hypotheses that employee political skill, measured from the perspective of employees' assessor A, will positively predict job performance rated by assessor B (i.e. Hypothesis 1a), and vice versa, that employee political skill measured by assessor B will predict job performance ratings measured by assessor A (i.e. Hypothesis 1b).     

Attributions restore consistency in bargaining with liked/disliked partners

The experiment deals with the impact of self-esteem and liking for the partner on the attribution of agreement and deadlock in bargaining. Fifty-eight male and 70 female students played the Harsanyi-Selten bargaining game with incomplete information eight times, allegedly each time with a randomly selected partner. In fact in four games a computer program simulated the partner. Combining an experimental variation of liking (liking—disliking), own costs (low, high), partner costs (low, high) the experiment followed a 2×2×2 repeated measures design. As predicted by a path model from balance theory (a) failure (deadlock) was attributed more to the partner and less to self than success (agreement), (b) success was attributed more to the liked than the disliked partner, whereas failure was attributed more to the disliked than the liked partner.     

Genetic Counseling Practices in Germany: A Comparison Between East German and West German Geneticists

As part of an international study of ethics and genetics, we present a comparison between survey responses of 43 East German and 212 West German geneticists to anonymous questionnaires. Both groups indicated that the experience of the Third Reich has impacted the genetics profession in Germany today. East German geneticists reported more directive counseling practices after prenatal diagnosis for 10 of 26 conditions than those from West Germany. When asked to give their personal opinions about pregnancy termination, East Germans were more accepting of abortion than their West German colleagues for 7 of 24 fetal indications. In addition, there were significant differences between the two sample groups for 8 questions on the perception of disability and society. Discussions with German geneticists suggest that, while both groups were affected by Germany's experience of Nazism, different abortion laws, political systems, and ideas about the doctor-patient relationship in former East and West Germany may account for discrepancies in reported genetic counseling practices and in attitudes toward abortion and disability.     

Recollecting events associated with victimization

Subjects first completed social desirability and anxiety personality scales and then read a story about a woman meeting her brother for lunch. Some subjects were then told that the story involved sexual abuse. A week later all subjects took a multiple-choice memory test over the story. The results indicated that subjects categorized as repressors based on the personality scales had a lower proportion of negative than positive errors than did the nonrepressors, but only when they believed the story was about sexual abuse. However, repressors answered correctly as many items as did nonrepressors. The results were consistent with the idea that repressors remember as much about victimization experiences as do nonrepressors but are more likely to fill in the missing details of victimization experiences with positive reconstructions designed to reduce the over-all negative quality associated with victimization.     

Formal paraphasias: A single case study

A case study is reported of an aphasic patient, RB, who showed frequent form-related whole-word substitutions in oral naming, writing to dictation, and reading aloud. In both written language tasks, the abstractness of the targets influenced the number of formal errors. In oral naming, a high proportion of formal paraphasias was related to the intended words in both form and meaning. A comparison between targets and formal paraphasias indicated a high agreement both in word class, number of syllables, stress pattern, and in basic (stressed) vowels. The agreement in consonants (including word-initial consonants), however, was low. It is argued that RB's formal substitutions are not caused solely by errors of lexical selection but that semantic, lexical, and segmental factors contribute to the error outcome.     

A family/systems approach to illness-maintaining behaviors in chronically ill adolescents

A distressingly significant number of chronic, seriously ill adolescents demonstrate poor medical management of their illnesses through "illness-maintaining behaviors." These behaviors are defined in this article as any action that compromises chronically ill adolescents' care and prevents them from functioning optimally. Current conceptualizations of illness-maintaining behaviors offer explanations that view these behaviors as individually focused, using either psychodynamic or behavioral models. This article, however, presents a family systems model of illness-maintaining behaviors. A therapeutic framework leading to specific intervention strategies is also developed.     

Life history correlates of ministerial success

Life history or biodata correlates of ministerial success were investigated for a group of 92 Seventh-Day Adventist ministers. The criterion data reflected their current level of success and the predictors reflected their status as seminarians between the years 1940 to 1950. Two significant bivariate correlations indicated that successful ministers chose their career later than less successful ones and that earning college expenses was predictive of success. A stepwise multiple regression process was used to develop a weighted prediction model, but the model did not hold when cross-validated.     

Recall memory for visually presented chess positions

A series of three experiments replicated and extended earlier research reported by Chase and Simon (1973), de Groot (1965), and Charness (Note 1). The first experiment demonstrated that the relationship between memory for chess positions and chess skill varies directly with the amount of chess-specific information in the stimulus display. The second experiment employed tachistoscopic displays to incrementally "build" tournament chess positions by meaningful or nonmeaningful chunks and demonstrated that meaningful piece groupings during presentation markedly enhance subsequent recall performance. The third experiment tested memory for one of two positions presented in immediate sequence and demonstrated that explanations based on a limited-capacity short-term memory (Chase & Simon, 1973) are not adequate for explaining performance on this memory task.