PSYCHOLOGICAL CLIMATE: IMPLICATIONS FROM COGNITIVE SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY AND INTERACTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Underlying assumptions and rationale of psychological climate are addressed from the perspectives of cognitive social learning theory and interactional psychology. Major emphasis is placed on the implications of these theoretical models for psychological climate. It is suggested that psychological climate (a) reflects psychologically meaningful, cognitive representations of situations rather than automatic reflections of specific situational events; (b) is generally more important than the objective situation in the prediction of many salient individual dependent variables; (c) is predicated on developmental experience, and frequently involves conflicting orientations generated by the preservation of valued and familiar schemas, on one hand, and openness to change in the interest of achieving adaptive and functional person-environment fits, on the other; and (d) is related reciprocally to memory, affect, and behavior in a causal model which predicts a reciprocal causation between perception and affect, and between individuals and environments. The suggestions above are employed to provide recommendations for future research.     

MODERATOR RESEARCH AND THE LAW OF SMALL NUMBERS1

The thesis of this paper is that many proposed moderators in personnel psychology are probably illusory, having been created solely by belief in the law of small numbers. Evidence is presented that race as a moderator of test validity is one such illusory moderator. In addition, a model for validity generalization is described which, in addition to eliminating the need for criterion-related validity studies under certain circumstances, strongly calls into question the idea that situations moderate test validity, i.e., the traditional doctrine of situational specificity of test validities. Calculations are presented which show that adequate statistical power in moderator research requires much larger sample sizes than have typically been employed. This requirement is illustrated empirically using validity data for the Army Classification Battery for 35 jobs and 21,000 individuals. These analyses show that (1) even when a moderator is generally assumed to be large, large samples are required to gauge its effect reliably and (2) large sample research may show that moderators that appear plausible and important a priori are nonexistent or trivial in magnitude. The practice of pooling across numerous small sample studies to obtain statistical power equivalent to that of large sample studies is recommended. In light of the evidence that many proposed moderators may not exist, the authors hypothesize that the true structure of underlying relationships in personnel psychology is considerably simpler than personnel psychologists have generally imagined it to be.     

DESIGNING INCENTIVE PLANS FOR UNIONIZED EMPLOYEES: A COMPARISON OF CONTINUOUS AND VARIABLE RATIO REINFORCEMENT SCHEDULES1

The relative effectiveness of incentive plans administered on continuous and VR-4 schedules of reinforcement was investigated with unionized employees using a within subjects design. Mountain beaver trappers working side by side were randomly assigned to one of two groups. In group A the trappers received $1.00 for every rat they trapped. At the end of four weeks, they were switched to a VR-4 schedule in which they received $4.00 contingent upon trapping a rat and correctly guessing the color of one of four marbles prior to drawing it from a bag held by the supervisor. In group B the order of the schedules was reversed. The results were analyzed in terms of cost-related, behavioral, and reaction criteria. The study increased employee productivity and decreased costs for the company. Inexperienced workers had higher productivity on the continuous reinforcement than on the VR-4 schedule; experienced workers had higher productivity on the VR-4 schedule than on the continuous schedule. Both the experienced and the inexperienced employees preferred the VR-4 schedule over the continuous schedule.     

Nasality and precision of articulation

Two reading passages, one with nasal consonants and one without, were tape-recorded for 72 subjects: 34 selected as having precise articulation and 38 selected as having imprecise articulation. These speech samples were evaluated for degree of precision and also for degree of nasality by the psychological scaling method of equal-appearing intervals employing a 7-point scale. Analysis indicated a relationship between degree of precision and degree of unpleasant nasality, that is, a tendency for decreases in precision to be accompanied by increased nasality and a tendency for males to be more imprecise in articulation and more nasal than females.     

INTERRELATIONSHIPS AMONG EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION, INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES, GOAL DIFFICULTY, GOAL ACCEPTANCE, GOAL INSTRUMENTALITY, AND PERFORMANCE

A field study was conducted with 41 female typists in a large corporation to test an explanatory model of goal setting. Weekly productivity goals were either assigned by the supervisors or were set jointly with a typist. Goals were set for ten consecutive weeks. A correlational analysis of the data indicated that difficult goals led to higher performance. Higher performance led to higher absolute goals for the subsequent week, but smaller improvement goals. Persons with a high need for achievement and an internal control orientation set higher goals. Goal setting led to greater overall performance improvement for employees who had high self esteem or who perceived goal attainment to be instrumental for getting extrinsic rewards. Hypothesized relationships involving goal acceptance were not supported, which may have been due to a lack of validity for the goal acceptance measure.     

Note on preference for stimulus complexity across the life-span

Preference for stimulus complexity across the life-span was investigated with 175 females ranging in age from 17 to 72 yr. of age. Preference for complexity appeared to be age-invariant and monotonic function. Relationships to previous findings are discussed.     

Reinforcing effects of prerecorded words and delayed speech feedback on the verbal behavior of a neologistic schizophrenic

The possibility of using prerecorded words and 2-sec. delayed speech feedback as reinforcement in the reconditioning of intelligible verbal responses in a chronic, neologistic schizophrenic patient was investigated. A test situation was devised which involved daily presentation of 100 stimulus word-picture cards to elicit verbal responses. The results indicated that both singly presented prerecorded words and delayed speech feedback apparently strengthened correct and intelligible verbal responding.