Effects of Self-Appraisal Information, Appraisal Purpose, and Feedback Target on Performance Appraisal Ratings

This experiment investigated the effects of three factors on performance appraisal ratings: self-appraisal information, appraisal purpose, and feedback target. Two hundred and three subjects rated a subordinate's performance on a clerical task subsequent to receiving either a high or low self-assessment. They were told they would provide performance feedback either to the experimenter (organizational agent) or their subordinate, and their ratings would be used either for an administrative decision or developmental feedback. Performance ratings were significantly higher when subjects received a favorable subordinate self-assessment than when self-assessments were unfavorable. A significant interaction was found between feedback target and the appraisal purpose. Implications for the use of self-appraisals in organizations were discussed.     

Chronic sorrow: A content analysis of parental differences

Sixty-eight mothers and 64 fathers of children with a neural tube defect responded to a questionnaire about chronic sorrow. Mothers reported a mood state change in very intense category from more pessimistic at time of diagnosis to more optimistic at current time. Fathers, although indicating a mood change in the very intense category to more optimistic, also had more pessimistic responses. Parental similarities and differences were also reported in both times and events that triggered the sorrow response. Categories across times and events were primarily related to health care, school/development concerns and social significance. Clinical and research implications of these findings are discussed.     

Laterally induced impedance effects in vision

A linear integral equation for a system of mutually impeding points is developed and solved explicitly. Particular solutions are shown to be subharmonic functions for a large class of stimuli. Specialized forms of the general equation presented in this paper occur within a number of mathematical models of Mach bands. In addition to these known spatial properties, our results also show that the time course of this basic equation may be useful in developing models of transient neural activity as well as of temporal psychophysical phenomena, such as the Broca-Sulzer effect. Further, a spatial transfer function much like the low-frequency cutoff of empirically derived modulation transfer functions follows directly from our basic integral equation if the additional assumption of spatial homogeneity is imposed.