The Impact of Organizational Culture on Attraction and Recruitment of Job Applicants

Purpose  

This research examined how job pursuit and application decisions of male and female job applicants are impacted by beliefs about the organization’s culture.     

Is early word-form processing stress-full? How natural variability supports recognition

In a series of studies, we examined how mothers naturally stress words across multiple mentions in speech to their infants and how this marking influences infants’ recognition of words in fluent speech. We first collected samples of mothers’ infant-directed speech using a technique that induced multiple repetitions of target words. Acoustic analyses revealed that mothers systematically alternated between emphatic and nonemphatic stress when talking to their infants. Using the headturn preference procedure, we then tested 7.5-month-old infants on their ability to detect familiarized bisyllabic words in fluent speech. Stress of target words (emphatic and nonemphatic) was systematically varied across familiarization and recognition phases of four experiments. Results indicated that, although infants generally prefer listening to words produced with emphatic stress, recognition was enhanced when the degree of emphatic stress at familiarization matched the degree of emphatic stress at recognition.     

The Role of Social Cognition in the Religious Fundamentalism‐Prejudice Relationship

The study examines the indirect effects of religious fundamentalism on prejudice through cognitive style and fear of invalidity. Undergraduates (n= 199) completed measures of religious fundamentalism, homophobia, modern racism, hostile and benevolent sexism, need for cognition, need for structure, preference for consistency, and fear of invalidity. Need for cognition partially mediated the relationship between religious fundamentalism and both homophobia and benevolent sexism. Preference for consistency partially mediated the relationship between religious fundamentalism and hostile sexism. The indirect effect of religious fundamentalism on modern racism through preference for consistency approached statistical significance. The interaction between need for structure and fear of invalidity partially mediated the relationship between religious fundamentalism and both homophobia and hostile sexism, with individuals high in need for structure and low in fear of invalidity having higher religious fundamentalism and prejudice.     

Mere exposure has differential effects on attention allocation to threatening and neutral stimuli

The mere exposure (ME) effect is the phenomenon whereby familiar stimuli are rated more positively than their novel counterparts (e.g., Zajonc, 1968). Though the effect of mere familiarity on a variety of affective judgments is robust and well documented, relatively little research has examined the effects of ME on other non-affective outcomes. The current research addressed this issue by examining the effects of ME on selective attention to threatening and neutral stimuli. We predicted and found that threatening stimuli, which typically arouse negative affect and capture attention, were attended to less following ME; conversely, neutral stimuli, which typically do not arouse affect nor capture attention, were attended to more following ME. The implications of these findings for the literatures on mere exposure and attention are discussed as are speculations about mediators of these effects.     

Detecting racial identification: The role of phenotypic prototypicality

Little is known about what cues are used to infer the racial identification of others and whether or not identification inferences are accurate. Three studies provide evidence that phenotypic prototypicality (PP), the degree to which an individual looks like a prototypical member of his or her racial group, shapes inferences about racial identification. Participants assumed that high PP Blacks were more racially identified than low PP Blacks. In addition to serving as an identification cue for observers, PP was related to self-perceptions, as Blacks and Latinos who were higher in PP were in fact more identified with their racial group than minorities who were lower in PP. Furthermore, unacquainted judges accurately detected Black and Latino targets' racial identification based on PP. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for intergroup relationships.     

Bandwidth knowledge of results and motor learning: More than just a relative frequency effect

Motor learning is facilitated when knowledge of results (KR) is presented in accordance with a goal-centred bandwidth (i.e. when the error exceeds a tolerance limit about a movement goal). However, under different conditions of the bandwidth procedure the frequency with which KR is provided is also affected—the wider the goal-centred tolerance limits, the lower the frequency of KR. Since low-KR frequency conditions also have been shown to facilitate motor learning, it is not known whether the bandwidth KR effect is a unique phenomenon in motor learning or is simply due to differences in the frequency of KR. In the present study we partitioned the effects due to bandwidth KR from the effects due to KR frequency using a yoking procedure. Results from the acquisition performance trials indicated that bandwidth procedures exerted both error reduction and performance stabilization influences on motor behaviour that exceeded the effects of the relative frequency control procedures. Bandwidth procedures further resulted in better performance consistency during retention than the relative frequency conditions. These findings were discussed in terms of how KR about movement error and KR about the correctness of movement affect the learning of motor skill.     

Ethnocentrism in dating preferences for an American sample: The ingroup bias in social context

Heterosexual dating partner preferences were examined in a multi-ethnic context. Four groups at UCLA were studied: Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, and Euro Americans. Participants completed surveys asking them to rate a ‘typical/hypothetical’ opposite-sex member for each of the four ethnic groups on physical attractiveness, similarity, social network approval, status, and desirability as a dating/marriage partner; social identification with the ethnic ingroup was also assessed. Members of all four ethnic groups demonstrated some degree of ethnocentrism on most measures (especially partner preferences) by rating opposite-sex members of their own group higher than outgroup members rated them; however, Asians and Latinos rated opposite-sex Whites as more physically attractive than typical members of their own group, and Latinos and Blacks rated Whites and Asians as higher status. Overall, Whites received more favourable ratings than any of the three minority groups. Regression analyses indicated that social network approval (by far), similarity, and physical attractiveness were (in that order) the most powerful predictors of ethnocentrism in partner preferences. Avenues of integration and interpretation between theories of inter-personal attraction and intergroup relations were considered, including the dimensionality of ingroup favouritism, and the need for stronger consideration of social influence in theories of intergroup relations.