Role of Political Skill in Job Performance Prediction Beyond General Mental Ability and Personality in Cross‐Sectional and Predictive Studies1

Political skill is the capacity to understand others in working life effectively, and to apply such knowledge to induce others to act in ways that add to one's personal or organizational goals. The present investigation reported the results of 2 studies designed to examine the job performance prediction effectiveness of political skill when investigated in conjunction with general mental ability (GMA) and personality characteristics. The results demonstrated that political skill accounted for a significant proportion of job performance variance beyond GMA and personality variables cross‐sectionally in Study 1, and predictively (i.e., using a 1‐year timeframe) in Study 2 examining effects on multiple dimensions of job performance. The implications of these results, strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

A latent trait model for response times on tests employing the proportional hazards model

For computer-administered tests, response times can be recorded conjointly with the corresponding responses. This broadens the scope of potential modelling approaches because response times can be analysed in addition to analysing the responses themselves. For this purpose, we present a new latent trait model for response times on tests. This model is based on the Cox proportional hazards model. According to this model, latent variables alter a baseline hazard function. Two different approaches to item parameter estimation are described: the first approach uses a variant of the Cox model for discrete time, whereas the second approach is based on a profile likelihood function. Properties of each estimator will be compared in a simulation study. Compared to the estimator for discrete time, the profile likelihood estimator is more efficient, that is, has smaller variance. Additionally, we show how the fit of the model can be evaluated and how the latent traits can be estimated. Finally, the applicability of the model to an empirical data set is demonstrated.     

German capitalization of nouns and the detection of letters in continuous text.

The missing-letter effect refers to the phenomenon that letters are more difficult to detect in common function words (such as the) than in content words. Assuming that the missing-letter effect is diagnostic of the extraction of text structure, we exploited a special feature of German--the convention to capitalize the initial letter of nouns. Given the great flexibility of word order in German, it was proposed that this convention might help readers specify the structure of the sentence. Therefore orthographic variations that violate the capitalization rules should disrupt structure extraction and should result in a reduced missing-letter effect. The results indicated that: 1) capitalization of function words eliminated the missing-letter effect, but not at the beginning of a sentence; 2) A missing-letter effect occurred when the capitalization of the first letter was correct, but was followed by typecase alternation, and also when the size of the initial letters was relatively large for function words, but relatively small for content words. The results were discussed with respect to the possible contributions of visual familiarity, structural role, and processing time to the missing-letter effect, taking into account that a capitalized initial letter conveys significant information about the word class for German readers. Thus, the present results indicate that readers take advantage not only of function words but of any other information (here the capitalization of nouns) that helps to extract the structure of a sentence.     

Inclusion-exclusion of positive and negative past selves: mood congruence as information

The current research challenges the widespread truism that recalling a positive self necessarily increases self-esteem, whereas recalling a negative self necessarily decreases self-esteem. Four experiments demonstrate that chronically happy people show a relative increase in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a negative self. Chronically sad people, however, show a relative decrease in self-esteem by recalling either a positive or a negative self. These effects are due to divergent perceptions of mood congruence between the recalled self and the current self. Specifically, happy people perceive high mood congruence between a recalled positive self and the current self but low mood congruence between a recalled negative self and the current self. In contrast, sad people perceive high mood congruence between a recalled negative self and the current self but low mood congruence between a recalled positive self and the current self. Independent of chronic mood, mood congruence leads to perceptions of temporal recency, whereas mood incongruence leads to perceptions of temporal distance. In line with the inclusion-exclusion model of social judgment, perceived temporal recency elicits assimilation effects on self-esteem, whereas perceived temporal distance elicits contrast effects on self-esteem.