A Visual Illustration of Induction in Multilevel Methods: The Problem of Leaders Awarding Countervailing Merit Components

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the use of a multilevel technique, Within and Between Analysis (WABA), for inductively investigating the impact of how supervisory groups influence the process of awarding merit raises (permanent) and performance bonuses (temporary). From a levels of analysis perspective, is this relationship best modeled at the individual subordinate, the whole supervisory-group, or the within-group level?

Design

Archival merit pay data for 2 years were obtained for 71 managers and professionals nested within 21 supervisory groups who encompassed the entire management hierarchy of a 500+ person-manufacturing plant.

Findings

What appeared to be a countervailing relationship at the individual level (r _total = ?.64***), in which raises and bonuses were negatively correlated, was found to be a countervailing relationship at the whole supervisory-group level (r _between = ?.79*** vs. r _within = ?.36*). Given the statistically significant differences between supervisory groups, an induction toward a whole-group effect was made. These countervailing findings were replicated at the group level in the subsequent year’s data.

Implications

The whole-group effect indicates that managers were attempting to create some type of within-group equity by (1) minimizing variability within their groups, and (2), at the same time, trading off raises for bonuses at the whole-group level.

Originality

The application of WABA focuses on testing entities as well as variables, and it can provide a generalizable method for investigating levels of analysis issues in merit pay programs without necessarily advocating that only one level of analysis is universally potent. WABA also allows for the inductive investigation of additional levels of analysis as well as a variety of boundary conditions.     

City under the Ice: The Closed World of Camp Century in Cold War Culture

Located on the beeline between the two nuclear superpowers, Greenland took on vital strategic importance during the early phases of the Cold War. As part of its polar strategy, the USA constructed several bases in Greenland. Camp Century, known as ‘City under the Ice’, was an experimental-military American city built entirely inside the ice sheet in 1959–1960. A 225-person, nuclear-powered army base, Century was the precursor for a much larger installation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (which never materialized), but was also used to project popular images of techno-scientific control, nuclear containment, and American values into Cold War American culture. Applying Paul Edward's closed-world metaphor to photos, film, books, and articles about Camp Century enables us to see both the strengths and the fragility of public discourses about the camp. Century was depicted as an outstanding example of man's never-ceasing quest for knowledge, as the epic conquest of the harsh Arctic environment by US Army engineers, as an Arctic sword and shield against the Soviet aggressor, and as a friendly collaboration between the USA and Denmark (in 1953, the former colony of Greenland became part of the Danish Realm). In the end, Camp Century had to be abandoned due to the glaciological forces of the moving ice sheet which crushed the tunnels, but also due to changes in Cold War politics and the political difficulties underscoring nuclear installations on Danish territory.     

The paddle move commonly used in magic tricks as a means for analysing the perceptual limits of combined motion trajectories

Following Gustav Kuhn's inspiring technique of using magicians' acts as a source of insight into cognitive sciences, we used the 'paddle move' for testing the psychophysics of combined movement trajectories. The paddle move is a standard technique in magic consisting of a combined rotating and tilting movement. Careful control of the mutual speed parameters of the two movements makes it possible to inhibit the perception of the rotation, letting the 'magic' effect emerge--a sudden change of the tilted object. By using 3-D animated computer graphics we analysed the interaction of different angular speeds and the object shape/size parameters in evoking this motion disappearance effect. An angular speed of 540 degrees s(-1) (1.5 rev. s(-1)) sufficed to inhibit the perception of the rotary movement with the smallest object showing the strongest effect. 90.7% of the 172 participants were not able to perceive the rotary movement at an angular speed of 1125 degrees s(-1) (3.125 rev. s(-1)). Further analysis by multiple linear regression revealed major influences on the effectiveness of the magic trick of object height and object area, demonstrating the applicability of analysing key factors of magic tricks to reveal limits of the perceptual system.     

Heritability analysis of the WAIS subtests. A study of twins

Forty pairs of monozugotic and 40 pairs of dizygotic like-sexed twins were tested on WAIS. Estimates of genetic variance, environmental variance within families, and environmental variance between families were obtained for all subtests, for verbal, performance, and total IQ, and for the “Cohen factors”. Estimated genetic variance was somewhat higher, and environmental variance between families was less than usually reported, especially for verbal tests.     

I. Genotype-environment interaction in the schizophrenia spectrum: genetic liability and global family ratings in the Finnish Adoption Study

In the Finnish Adoption Study, a national sample of adoptees with high versus low genetic liability for schizophrenia spectrum disorders was indexed by DSM-III-R diagnoses of their biological, adopting-away mothers. The rearing-family environments of the adoptees were independently evaluated from global ratings of directly observed adoptive family relationships. The interaction of high genetic liability and dysfunction of the rearing families predicted highly significantly to schizophrenia spectrum disorder of the adoptees at 21-year follow-up. Either low genetic liability or healthy rearing protected against a spectrum outcomes for the adoptees. Initial adoptive parent diagnosis, as a proxy for rearing family dysfunction, predicted to adoptee outcome only as a trend.     

DSM-5 personality traits and DSM-IV personality disorders

Two issues pertinent to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) proposal for personality pathology, the recovery of DSM-IV personality disorders (PDs) by proposed DSM-5 traits and the validity of the proposed DSM-5 hybrid model, which incorporates both personality pathology symptoms and maladaptive traits, were evaluated in a large undergraduate sample (N = 808). Proposed DSM-5 traits as assessed with the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 explained a substantial proportion of variance in DSM-IV PDs as assessed with the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4+, and trait indicators of the 6 proposed DSM-5 PDs were mostly specific to those disorders with some exceptions. Regression analyses support the DSM-5 hybrid model in that pathological traits, and an indicator of general personality pathology severity provided incremental information about PDs. Findings are discussed in the context of broader issues around the proposed DSM-5 model of personality disorders.     

Coming to terms: quantifying the benefits of linguistic coordination

Sharing a public language facilitates particularly efficient forms of joint perception and action by giving interlocutors refined tools for directing attention and aligning conceptual models and action. We hypothesized that interlocutors who flexibly align their linguistic practices and converge on a shared language will improve their cooperative performance on joint tasks. To test this prediction, we employed a novel experimental design, in which pairs of participants cooperated linguistically to solve a perceptual task. We found that dyad members generally showed a high propensity to adapt to each other's linguistic practices. However, although general linguistic alignment did not have a positive effect on performance, the alignment of particular task-relevant vocabularies strongly correlated with collective performance. In other words, the more dyad members selectively aligned linguistic tools fit for the task, the better they performed. Our work thus uncovers the interplay between social dynamics and sensitivity to task affordances in successful cooperation.     

The Hierarchical Structure and Construct Validity of the PID‐5 Trait Measure in Adolescence

The DSM‐5 may be the first edition that enables a developmental perspective on personality disorders because of its proposal to include a trait assessment in the Axis II section. The current study explores the reliability, structure, and construct validity of the Personality Inventory for DSM‐5 (PID‐5; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012) in adolescents, a measure that assesses the proposed DSM‐5 traits. A community sample of Flemish adolescents (N = 434; 44.7% male) provided self‐reports on the PID‐5 and the Dimensional Personality Symptom Itempool (DIPSI; De Clercq, De Fruyt, Van Leeuwen, & Mervielde, 2006). Results indicate an acceptable reliability for the majority of the PID‐5 facets and a tendency toward structural convergence of the adolescent PID‐5 structure with the adult proposal. Convergent validity with age‐specific facets of personality pathology was generally supported, but discriminant validity appeared to be low. Beyond the findings that support the applicability of the PID‐5 in adolescents, developmental issues may be responsible for specific differences in the adolescent PID‐5 structure, the rather poor discriminant validity of the PID‐5, and the lower reliability of a small number of PID‐5 facets. These results indicate that further research on the validity of the PID‐5 in younger age groups is required.