TRAINING TEAM PERFORMANCE-RELATED ASSERTIVENESS

The present paper extends the existing literature on assertiveness in a way that supports industrial training as well as the selection of individuals for team positions. Data are reported from three studies that examined determinants of team performance-related assertiveness. First, data from 149 college students demonstrated that assertiveness consists of multiple dimensions which were not all related to performance in a team decision-making task. Second, data obtained from 225 business students indicated that correlations among self-report measures and peer ratings of the same assertive responses assigned by intact team members varied according to the interpersonal context (i.e., personal, stranger, work related) in which scale items were framed. Third, data from 60 college students suggested that team performance-related assertiveness has a significant skill component. Whereas both attitudinally focused and skill-based training improved attitudes toward team member assertiveness, practice and feedback were essential to producing behavioral effects. Implications for selection and team training are discussed.     

Toward a Metacommunicational Framework of Couple Interactions

A multi-level, metacommunicational framework to understand couple interactions is presented. Five interactional levels are defined following a mode of abstraction that parallels the theory of logical types; case examples are offered of couples interacting at each of the levels. The clinical implications of the framework, as a metaphor for understanding transactional processes, are discussed with an emphasis on the pragmatics of working with punctuational diffferences, developing therapeutic strategies, measuring progress, and setting goals for therapy with couples.     

Effects of self‐disclosure and responsiveness between couples on passionate love within couples

Previous work shows that high‐self‐disclosure interactions between couples can increase feelings of closeness within couples. We investigated whether couple friendships created in the lab through high‐self‐disclosure and closeness‐building activities would boost feelings of passionate love. In Study 1, couples randomly assigned to a high (vs. low) closeness induction task, either alone or with another couple, showed significantly greater increases in passionate love when they were highly self‐disclosing with other couples. Study 2 showed that the responsiveness of the other couple mediated the effects of self‐disclosure on increases in passionate love following high‐self‐disclosure interactions with other couples. The creation of couple friendships may be an additional way to reignite feelings of passionate love in romantic relationships.     

WHY EMPLOYEES DO BAD THINGS: MORAL DISENGAGEMENT AND UNETHICAL ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

We examine the influence of individuals’ propensity to morally disengage on a broad range of unethical organizational behaviors. First, we develop a parsimonious, adult‐oriented, valid, and reliable measure of an individual's propensity to morally disengage, and demonstrate the relationship between it and a number of theoretically relevant constructs in its nomological network. Then, in 4 additional studies spanning laboratory and field settings, we demonstrate the power of the propensity to moral disengage to predict multiple types of unethical organizational behavior. In these studies we demonstrate that the propensity to morally disengage predicts several outcomes (self‐reported unethical behavior, a decision to commit fraud, a self‐serving decision in the workplace, and supervisor‐ and coworker‐reported unethical work behaviors) beyond other established individual difference antecedents of unethical organizational behavior, as well as the most closely related extant measure of the construct. We conclude that scholars and practitioners seeking to understand a broad range of undesirable workplace behaviors can benefit from taking an individual's propensity to morally disengage into account. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.