The Interactive Effects of Procedural Justice and Equity Sensitivity in Predicting Responses to Psychological Contract Breach: An Interactionist Perspective

Purpose  The purpose of the study was to examine the combined interactive effects of a situational variable (procedural justice) and a dispositional (equity sensitivity) variable on the relationship between breach and employee outcomes. Design/methodology/approach   Data were obtained from 403 full-time employees representing a wide variety of business sectors in the Philippines. Supervisors were requested to provide an assessment of their subordinate’s civic virtue behavior. Findings  Results showed that equity sensitivity and breach interacted in predicting affective commitment. The negative relationship between breach and affective commitment was stronger for employees with an input-focused approach to organizational relationships (referred to as benevolents) than for those with an outcome-focused approach (referred to as entitleds). Results also indicated a stronger negative relationship between contract breach and civic virtue behavior under conditions of high procedural justice. Finally, a three-way interaction was found between contract breach, procedural justice and equity sensitivity in predicting affective commitment. Implications  Our findings provide a new insight suggesting that worse outcomes are to be anticipated especially if employees have an expectation that procedural justice can prevent any form of contract breach. In addition, although previous research has portrayed benevolents as more accepting of situations of u under-reward, this study has demonstrated that they too have their limits or threshold for under-reward situations. Originality/value  This research suggests that the type and intensity of one’s reactions to psychological contract breach is influenced by interactive forces of the individual’s disposition and the organizational procedures. A portion of this paper was presented at the 64th annual meeting of the academy of management meeting, New Orleans, USA, August, 2004.     

Anxiety and sensitivity to gaze direction in emotionally expressive faces

This study investigated the role of neutral, happy, fearful, and angry facial expressions in enhancing orienting to the direction of eye gaze. Photographs of faces with either direct or averted gaze were presented. A target letter (T or L) appeared unpredictably to the left or the right of the face, either 300 ms or 700 ms after gaze direction changed. Response times were faster in congruent conditions (i.e., when the eyes gazed toward the target) relative to incongruent conditions (when the eyes gazed away from the target letter). Facial expression did influence reaction times, but these effects were qualified by individual differences in self-reported anxiety. High trait-anxious participants showed an enhanced orienting to the eye gaze of faces with fearful expressions relative to all other expressions. In contrast, when the eyes stared straight ahead, trait anxiety was associated with slower responding when the facial expressions depicted anger. Thus, in anxiety-prone people attention is more likely to be held by an expression of anger, whereas attention is guided more potently by fearful facial expressions.     

Films for eliciting emotional states in children

Standardized sets of films have been shown to be effective for eliciting emotional states in adults, but no comparable validated stimuli are available for children. We therefore examined the effects of three pre-selected film clips each of 3-min duration in eliciting a pleasant, neutral and unpleasant emotional state in 297 children aged between 6 and 12 years. After the films were presented on a video projector, affective ratings were obtained with the Self-Assessment-Manikin on the emotional dimensions of valence and arousal. Increasing pleasure ratings were observed from the unpleasant to the neutral to the pleasant film. Associated arousal ratings were stronger for the unpleasant and pleasant films compared to the neutral film. Overall, results showed successful elicitation of targeted emotional states only marginally influenced by age, gender or prior experience with the films. The use of these films is therefore suggested for future studies on emotions in children.     

I Recognise You but I Can't Place You: An Investigation of Familiar-only Experiences during Tests of Voice and Face Recognition

In this paper, we examine in detail the situation in which a subject finds that a face or voice is familiar but is unable to retrieve any biographical information about the person concerned. In two experiments, subjects were asked to identify a set of 40 celebrities either from hearing their voice or from seeing their face. Although many more celebrities were identified and named in response to their face than their voice, the results showed that there was a very large number of occasions when a celebrity's voice was felt to be familiar but the subject was unable to retrieve any biographical information about the person. This situation occurred less frequently in response to seeing a celebrity's face; when a face was found familiar, the subject was much more likely to be able to recall the celebrity's occupation. The possibility that these results might have come about because subjects were using different criteria to determine familiarity in the face and voice conditions was investigated and discounted. An additional finding was that when subjects found a face to be familiar-only, they were able to recall significantly more additional information about the person when they were cued by the person's voice than when they simply saw the face again. These results are discussed in relation to the models of person recognition put forward by Bruce and Y oung (1986) and Burton, Bruce, and Johnston (1990).