Follower Jealousy at Work: A Test of Vecchio's Model of Antecedents and Consequences of Jealousy

The present study tests the validity of Robert P. Vecchio's seminal work on antecedents and consequences of jealousy. Specifically, we examine whether antecedents such as in-group status, supervisory considerateness, and supervisory differentiation of subordinates are associated with jealousy. In addition, we examine whether jealousy is associated with the outcome variable of social loafing. Leaders (n = 73) and their followers (n = 303) working in business organizations in Norway contributed data. Multilevel analyses showed that a high-quality working relationship with one's supervisor was inversely related to reports of jealousy. In addition, supervisors who displayed high levels of considerateness, for example, by providing followers with positive emotional support, were better able to reduce subordinate jealousy. This is a novel observation since previous research failed to demonstrate such a relationship. Finally, jealousy was positively associated with social loafing, suggesting that jealous followers engaged in an active counterproductive resistance response. The present study contributes to the extant literature by identifying unexamined antecedents of jealousy and a dysfunctional behavioral response to jealousy in the form of social loafing in the workplace.     

Children's Sensitivity to Cost and Reward in Decision Making across Distinct Domains of Probability,Effort, and Delay

Many behavioral paradigms used to study individuals' decision‐making tendencies do not capture the decision components that contribute to behavioral outcomes, such as differentiating decisions driven toward a reward from decisions driven away from a cost. This study tested a novel decision‐making task in a sample of 403 children (age 9 years) enrolled in an ongoing longitudinal study. The task consisted of three blocks representing distinct cost domains (delay, probability, and effort), wherein children were presented with a deck of cards, each of which consisted of a reward and a cost. Children elected whether to accept or skip the card at each trial. Reward–cost pairs were selected by using an adaptive algorithm to strategically sample the decision space in the fewest number of trials. Using person‐specific regression models, decision preferences were quantified for each cost domain with respect to general tolerance (intercept), as well as parameters estimating the effect of incremental increases in reward or cost on the probability of accepting a card. Results support the relative independence of decision‐making tendencies across cost domains, with moderate correlations observed between tolerance for delay and effort. Specific decision parameters showed unique associations with cognitive and behavioral measures including executive function, academic motivation, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Evidence indicates that sensitivity to reward is an important factor in incentivizing decisions to work harder or wait longer. Dissociating the relative contributions of reward and cost sensitivity in multiple domains may facilitate the identification of heterogeneity in suboptimal decision making. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Are Decisions Made by Group Representatives More Risk Averse? The Effect of Sense of Responsibility

We tested the hypothesis that a sense of responsibility drives group representatives' decisions to be more risk averse compared with decisions made by individuals. The hypothesis was supported when the monetary considerations (i.e., payoff inequality and the magnitude effect) were controlled for in the potential gain domain as well as in the potential loss domain. Evidence showed that this is because the group representatives were concerned about how they would view themselves (e.g., guilt and self‐blame) and also how they would be viewed by others (i.e., to avoid being blamed and looked down upon by others). This study provided new insights into understanding group representatives' decision making under risk. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In Defense of Rawlsian Fair Equality of Opportunity

Richard Arneson argues that Fair Equality of Opportunity (FEO) should be rejected, since it is not only too weak and too strong, but also problematically meritocratic. The paper aims to defend FEO, and argues that it is not too weak, since, pace Arneson, it does apply to the problem of stunted ambition. The argument from meritocracy is shown to be based on a conflation of different senses of meritocracy. Finally, it is shown that FEO, correctly interpreted, gives intuitive answers to the examples put forward to bolster the too strong charge. It is concluded that Arneson’s refutation of FEO fails.     

A Brief Argument For Consciousness Without Access

This paper proposes a new argument in favour of the claim that phenomenal consciousness overflows – that is, has a far higher capacity than – cognitive access. It shows that opponents of overflow implicate a necessary role for visual imagery in the change detection paradigm. However, empirical evidence suggests that there is no correlation between visual imagery abilities and performance in this paradigm. Since the use of imagery is not implicated in the performance strategy of subjects, we find a new argument for consciousness without access.     

It is written all over your face: Socially rejected people display microexpressions that are detectable after training in the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT)

Social rejection is a powerful negative emotional experience, yet rejected people often appear stoic and unmoved. That is, their macroexpressions of emotion are not accurate reflections of their emotional states. Yet, there is reason to believe that rejected people exhibit involuntary microexpressions of negative emotion. We contrasted people's macroexpressions of emotion with their microexpressions subsequent to an acceptance or rejection experience. Observers coded microexpressions after being trained with the Micro Expression Training Tool. Rejected participants expressed more sad and angry microexpressions than did accepted participants. This research demonstrates that socially rejected people display negative microexpressions that are detectable by observers trained in the Micro Expression Training Tool.