Homogeneity of Personality in Occupations and Organizations: A Comparison of Alternative Statistical Tests

Purpose

The attraction?Cselection?Cattrition (ASA) model has served as the foundation for numerous investigations. However, the generally supportive evidence for ASA??s homogeneity hypothesis has often been based on statistical tests (e.g., MANOVA) that rely on between-group differences to evaluate within-group agreement. The primary purpose of this article was to discuss advantages of direct statistical tests of homogeneity??average deviation (AD) and r _wg??when testing ASA??s homogeneity hypothesis, and advantages of other statistical tests for testing other aspects of ASA theory. A secondary goal was to evaluate the extent to which occupational homogeneity is distinct from organizational homogeneity.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) and included scores on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^? (MBTI) personality measure for 1,103 managers from 25 organizations and 17 occupations.

Findings

Results were generally supportive of the homogeneity hypothesis. AD values showed that most groups were homogeneous on most assessed personality dimensions. A comparison analysis using traditional statistical tests (i.e., MANOVA) indirectly suggested within-group homogeneity by revealing a significant between-groups effect. In addition, results suggested possible boundary conditions to ASA; notably, meaningful heterogeneity was observed for the S?CN (sensing-intuition) MBTI^? dimension.

Implications

The current study provides direct support for ASA??s homogeneity hypothesis for both organizations and occupations and offers guidance for future research on ASA theory and its possible boundary conditions.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to test the predictions of ASA in both organizations and occupations using a direct index of agreement.     

Religion replenishes self-control

Researchers have proposed that the emergence of religion was a cultural adaptation necessary for promoting self-control. Self-control, in turn, may serve as a psychological pillar supporting a myriad of adaptive psychological and behavioral tendencies. If this proposal is true, then subtle reminders of religious concepts should result in higher levels of self-control. In a series of four experiments, we consistently found that when religious themes were made implicitly salient, people exercised greater self-control, which, in turn, augmented their ability to make decisions in a number of behavioral domains that are theoretically relevant to both major religions and humans' evolutionary success. Furthermore, when self-control resources were minimized, making it difficult for people to exercise restraint on future unrelated self-control tasks, we found that implicit reminders of religious concepts refueled people's ability to exercise self-control. Moreover, compared with morality- or death-related concepts, religion had a unique influence on self-control.     

A Unified,Transdiagnostic Treatment for Adolescents With Chronic Pain and Comorbid Anxiety and Depression

Chronic pain disorders represent a significant public health concern, particularly for children and adolescents. High rates of comorbid anxiety and unipolar mood disorders often complicate psychological interventions for chronic pain. Unified treatment approaches, based on emotion regulation skills, are applicable to a broad range of emotional disorders and suggest the possibility of extending these interventions to chronic pain and pain-related dysfunction. This case report describes the use of a unified protocol for treatment of an adolescent boy with chronic daily headache and social anxiety and an adolescent girl with whole body pain and depression. Following weekly, 50-minute individual treatment sessions, the boy demonstrated notable improvement in emotional symptoms, emotion regulation skills, somatization, and functional disability. The girl showed some improvement on measures of anxiety and depression, although there appeared to be a worsening of pain symptoms and somatization. However, both patients demonstrated improvement over follow-up. This case study illustrates the potential utility of a unified treatment approach targeting pain and emotional symptoms from an emotion regulation perspective in an adolescent population.     

Counselling in the workplace: How time‐limited counselling can effect change in well‐being

Background: Many employers provide counselling support on work and personal issues for their employees, but in times of economic pressure such services can be at risk if their effectiveness is not demonstrated. Aim: To evaluate whether time‐limited counselling in a workplace can effect sustained change in well‐being. Method: The study was carried out by a staff counselling team in a university setting. The Warwick‐Edinburgh Mental Well‐being Scale (WEMWBS) was completed by clients at the beginning and end of counselling, and at three and six months following. A non‐treatment comparison group completed the survey at the same intervals. Results: The results of our investigation show clearly that the effect of time‐limited counselling (average seven sessions) on distressed clients is positive. The evidence of our treatment group suggests that they acquire an increased sense of well‐being as a result of the experience of counselling with a significant statistical difference between pre‐and post‐counselling treatment group scores on the WEMWBS and consistently higher scores found post counselling. The improvement was maintained at the same level for at least six months following the end of counselling. Conclusions: The provision of time‐limited counselling by employers is an effective support for personal difficulties affecting work.     

Stability of older adults' preferences for life-sustaining medical treatment.

The use of instructional advance directives assumes that preferences for life-sustaining medical treatment remain stable over time and across changes in life condition. A sample of 332 older adults recorded their preferences for 4 life-sustaining treatments in 9 illness scenarios. These preferences were elicited again 1 and 2 years after the original interview. Overall, preferences for life-sustaining treatment were moderately stable over time, but stability varied significantly across judgments. Preferences were most stable for illness scenarios that were most and least serious and for decisions to refuse treatment. Age, gender, education, and prior completion of an advance directive were all related to preference stability, and evidence indicated that declines in physical or psychological functioning resulted in decreased interest in life-sustaining treatment.     

Protecting Play: It’s a Matter of Life and Death

ABSTRACT

Play is a critical activity, as important to healthy life as sleep, water, and nutrition. Research shows that play promotes cognitive and socioemotional development, and that learning, problem-solving, self-regulation and pro-social skills all stem from playing. Yet play is valued less and less in our culture, with children as young as preschool age being placed in organized activities based on an understanding of enrichment that’s limited to academic achievement and performance. As families and as a society we are failing to provide a “good-enough facilitating environment” for our children to grow, to live, as we take time and space to play away from children and adolescents. Why are we doing this? I speculate that we are a culture who is preoccupied with guaranteeing safety and success because of our anxiety and denial of four fundamental and interrelated experiences: failure, loss, aggression, and death. With the use of clinical material, I illustrate how, in our attempt to guarantee safety and success, we have become unable to safely risk engaging (i.e., play) with, and fully experience, these vulnerabilities, and are in fact creating an unsafe psychic environment for our children, and how play can help us redress this emotional impoverishment.     

Social relationships and ambulatory blood pressure: structural and qualitative predictors of cardiovascular function during everyday social interactions.

Healthy normotensive men and women (N = 102) underwent a 3-day ambulatory blood pressure (BP) assessment in which a BP reading was taken 5 min into each social interaction. After each interaction, participants completed a diary that included structural categorization of the relationship and ratings of the quality of the relationship with the interaction partner. Random regression analyses revealed that interactions with family members and spouses were associated with lower ambulatory BP. Interactions with ambivalent network members (characterized by both positive and negative feelings) were associated with the highest ambulatory systolic BP, an effect that was independent of the familial effects on BP. Although there were psychological correlates associated with both structural and functional aspects of relationships, no evidence was found that these mediated the primary findings involving ambulatory BP. These data highlight the influence of both structural and qualitative aspects of relationships on ambulatory BP and possibly health.