Personality trait inferences of Turkish immigrant and neutral targets: An experimental study

Sandal, G. M. Bye, H. H. & Pallesen, S. (2012). Personality trait inferences of Turkish immigrant and neutral targets: An experimental study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 528–533. The study investigated whether personality traits attributed to immigrant targets differ from personality inferences made for a neutral target, and whether trait attributions differ for assimilated and integrated immigrant targets. Participants (n = 340) were randomized to one of three conditions in which they read the same story about a person, but where the person was described as either: (a) an assimilated Turkish immigrant; (b) an integrated Turkish immigrant; or (c) neutral (no nationality or religious practice indicated). Subsequently, they rated the personality of the described person on the NEO‐Five Factor Inventory (observer rating version) and completed the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Impression Management scale) with reference to themselves. Both immigrant targets were rated as significantly higher on extraversion and lower on neuroticism than the neutral target. The integrated target was rated as more open than the neutral target, and as higher than the assimilated target on neuroticism when controlling for impression management.     

Intramodal and crossmodal pairing and anchoring in comparisons of successive stimuli

Two experiments were conducted to study effects of modality, temporal position, and their interaction on comparisons of successive stimuli. In Experiment 1, intramodal (tone–tone and line–line) and crossmodal (tone–line and line–tone) stimulus pairs, with two interstimulus intervals (ISIs), 400 and 2,000 ms, were presented. Participants indicated which stimulus was the “stronger.” Time-order errors (TOEs) were assessed using the D% measure and were found in all types of pairs. Variation in TOEs across conditions was well accounted for by changes in parameters (stimulus weights, reference levels) in an extended version of Hellström’s sensation weighting (SW) model. With an ISI of 2,000 ms, the first stimulus had a lower weight (less impact on the response) than did the second stimulus. More negative TOEs were found with the longer ISI in all pair types except tone–line. In Experiment 2, participants indicated which of two lines was the longer or which of two tones was the louder. An intra- or crossmodal anchor, or no anchor, was interpolated between the stimuli. Anchoring tended to reduce the weight of the first stimulus, suggesting interference with memory, and to yield negative TOEs. Intramodal anchors yielded reduced weights of both stimuli, most dramatically for tones, suggesting an additional effect of stimulus interference. Response times decreased with crossmodal anchors. For line–line pairs, strong negative TOEs were found. In both experiments, the variation in TOE across conditions was well accounted for by the SW model.     

A randomized controlled effectiveness trial of parent management training with varying degrees of therapist support

This study examined the effectiveness of a Swedish parent management training (PMT) intervention for parents of children aged 3 to 10 within the context of regular social service. Self-referred parents of 159 children (aged 3 to 10) with conduct problems were randomly assigned to either 11 practitioner-assisted group sessions (PMT-P), or a single instructional workshop followed by self-administration of the training material (PMT-S), or a waitlist control group. Intent-to-treat analyses showed that both PMT-P and PMT-S improved parent competence and reduced child conduct problems compared to the waitlist at posttest. Both training conditions showed further significant improvements at the 6-month follow-up. In direct comparison, PMT-P was superior to PMT-S on measures of child conduct problems at both posttest and follow-up. Improvement in child conduct was mediated by improvement in parent competencies and homework fidelity. The findings in this study have implications for large-scale dissemination of parent management training through different means of delivery.     

The relative impact of workplace bullying as a social stressor at work

Hauge, L. J., Skogstad, A. & Einarsen, S. (2010). The relative impact of workplace bullying as a social stressor at work. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51, 426–433. Exposure to workplace bullying has been argued to be a severe social stressor and a more crippling and devastating problem for affected individuals than the effects of all other work‐related stressors put together. However, few studies have explicitly investigated this assumption. In a representative sample of the Norwegian working population, the present study investigated the relative contribution of workplace bullying as a predictor of individual and organizational related outcomes after controlling for the well‐documented job stressors of job demands, decision authority, role ambiguity and role conflict. Bullying was found to be a significant predictor of all the outcomes included, showing a substantial relative contribution in relation to anxiety and depression, while for job satisfaction, turnover intention and absenteeism, more modest relative contributions were identified. Workplace bullying is indeed a potent social stressor with consequences similar to, or even more severe than, the effects of other stressors frequently encountered within organizations. Thus, the finding that bullying has a considerable effect on exposed individuals also when controlling for the effects of other job stressors demonstrates bullying as a serious problem at workplaces that needs to be actively prevented and managed in its own right.