Australian influences on Elton Mayo: the construct of Revery in industrial society

Elton Mayo was born in Australia and spent most of his first 42 years living in that country. This article explores the Australian context in which he developed his views views of Australia compared with that of the United States during the time that Mayo developed his approach to psychology and the role of workers in industry. In addition, the social context in which Mayo established his career was shaped by significant political events in Australia. The construct of revery, which describes a specific state of consciousness, is central to Mayo's early theorizing and was developed by Mayo partly in reaction to political and industrial conflict occurring in Australia.     

Causal Responsibility and Rationing in Medicine

The article addresses the issue of rationing health care services, a topic currently being hotly debated in many countries. The author argues that the aspect of causal responsibility ought to play a decisive role in the allocation of limited medical resources. Starting out from Ronald Dworkin's distinction between option luck and brute luck, the appropriate and meaningful uses of the term causal responsibility are clarified first. A discussion of the conditions which might justify giving lower priority to patients whose illnesses are the result of unhealthy behavior, like e.g. alcohol abuse, follows. Causal responsibility is then viewed in the context of private health insurance and the club model of organ donation. It is argued that individuals themselves are basically responsible for their decisions regarding insurance coverage and membership in organ donors' clubs. Causal responsibility is shown to be a more suitable criterion for rationing scarce medical resources than other criteria which might alternatively be considered, such as patients' age.     

An interval size illusion: the influence of timbre on the perceived size of melodic intervals

In four experiments, we investigated the influence of timbre on perceived interval size. In Experiment 1, musically untrained participants heard two successive tones and rated the pitch distance between them. Tones were separated by six or seven semitones and varied in timbre. Pitch changes were accompanied by a congruent timbre change (e.g., ascending interval involving a shift from a dull to a bright timbre), an incongruent timbre change (e.g., ascending interval involving a shift from a bright to a dull timbre), or no timbre change. Ratings of interval size were strongly influenced by timbre. The six-semitone interval with a congruent timbre change was perceived to be larger than the seven-semitone interval with an incongruent timbre change (interval illusion). Experiment 2 revealed similar effects for musically trained participants. In Experiment 3, participants compared the size of two intervals presented one after the other. Effects of timbre were again observed, including evidence of an interval illusion. Experiment 4 confirmed that timbre manipulations did not distort the perceived pitch of tones. Changes in timbre can expand or contract the perceived size of intervals without distorting individual pitches. We discuss processes underlying interval size perception and their relation to pitch perception mechanisms.     

Predicting without modeling: a critique of Trabasso and Bartolone (2003)

T. Trabasso and J. Bartolone (2003) used a computational model of narrative text comprehension to account for empirical findings. The authors show that the same predictions are obtained without running the model. This is caused by the model's computational setup, which leaves most of the model's input unchanged.     

An fMRI study on conceptual, grammatical, and morpho-phonological processing

The aim of the present study was to determine whether processing of syntactic word information (lemma) is subserved by the same neural substrate as processing of conceptual or word form information (lexeme). We measured BOLD responses in 14 native speakers of German in three different decision tasks, each focussing specifically on one level of lexical processing (conceptual, syntactic, and morpho-phonological). The test parameters were natural gender, grammatical gender, and word form derivation, respectively. Discrimination between words played backwards and complex sounds served as control task. Complex contrasts revealed a functional fractionation of the left inferior frontal gyrus for each level of lexical processing.     

Bistability and biasing effects in the perception of ambiguous point-light walkers

The perceptually bistable character of point-light walkers has been examined in three experiments. A point-light figure without explicit depth cues constitutes a perfectly ambiguous stimulus: from all viewpoints, multiple interpretations are possible concerning the depth orientation of the figure. In the first experiment, it is shown that non-lateral views of the walker are indeed interpreted in two orientations, either as facing towards the viewer or as facing away from the viewer, but that the interpretation in which the walker is oriented towards the viewer is reported more frequently. In the second experiment the point-light figure was walking backwards, making the global orientation of the point-light figure opposite to the direction of global motion. The interpretation in which the walker was facing the viewer was again reported more frequently. The robustness of these findings was examined in the final experiment, in which the effects of disambiguating the stimulus by introducing a local depth cue (occlusion) or a more global depth cue (applying perspective projection) were explored.     

A relational model of workplace victimization: social roles and patterns of victimization in dyadic relationships

This article proposes a model of the ways in which dyadic interactions between employees who occupy 1 of 4 archetypal social roles in organizations can lead to either episodic or institutionalized patterns of victimization. The model shows how the occurrence of victimization involving these 4 role types is influenced by organizational variables such as power differences, culture, and access to social capital. The model integrates behavioral and social structural antecedents of victimization to develop a relational perspective on the dynamics of harmful behavior in the workplace.     

A counterintuitive hypothesis about employment interview validity and some supporting evidence

This study found mixed support for the hypothesis that the difference in criterion-related validity between unstructured and structured employment interviews is due solely to the greater reliability of structured interviews. Using data from prior meta-analyses, this hypothesis was tested in 4 data sets by using standard psychometric procedures to remove the effects of measurement error in interview scores from correlations with rated job performance and training performance. In the 1st data set. support was found for this hypothesis. However, in a 2nd data set structured interviews had higher true score correlations with performance ratings, and in 2 other data sets unstructured interviews had higher true score correlations. We also found that averaging across 3 to 4 independent unstructured interviews provides the same level of validity for predicting job performance as a structured interview administered by a single interviewer. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.