The Dangers of Resource Myopia in Work and Organisational Psychology: A Plea for Broadening and Integration

On souligne dans cet essai les limites de l'approche quantitative traditionnelle en psychologie du travail et des organisations. Il est nécessaire de s'orienter vers un élargissement de la palette des méthodes une ouverture sur de nouveaux problèmes et une meilleure intégration d'une part avec les disciplines connexes, d'autre part avec les applications des résultats des recherches pour garantir l'utilité et la mise en œuvre de la future psychologie du T&O. Ce qui ne signifie pas que les microproblèmes doivent être laissés de côté, mais on part du principe que la psychologie du T&O ne doit pas être privée de la possibilité de s'attaquer aux questions de niveau moyen et global, souvent les plus pertinentes, sous prétexte que l'on ne dispose pas des outils appropriés pour les traiter.
In this essay the limitations of the traditional quantitative approach in work and organisational psychology are put forward. It is argued that an extension of the methods, a broadening of the type of problems to be addressed, and a stronger integration with associated disciplines as well as with the application and implementation of the research findings are needed to ensure the usefulness and application of future W&O psychology. It is not suggested that micro-level problems should not be investigated, but it is postulated that W&O psychology should not be deprived of the opportunity to tackle other, and often more relevant, meso- and macro-level issues because we lack appropriate tools for attacking them.     

Gender Self‐Confidence and Social Influence: Impact on Working Alliance

The authors investigated the relationships between the counselor's gender self‐confidence, the counselor's use of social influence within the counseling session, and the counselor's sex in relation to the counseling relationship. These attributes were studied with regard to how deeply a therapeutic working alliance developed between the counselor and the client. Results support the importance of counselor characteristics on the counselor–client alliance. Implications for teaching, research, and practice are presented.     

Visual search for dimensionally redundant pop-out targets: Evidence for parallel-coactive processing of dimensions

In two visual search experiments, the detection of singleton feature targets redundantly defined on multiple dimensions was investigated. Targets differed from the distractors in orientation, color, or both (redundant targets). In Experiment 1, the various target types were presented either in separate blocks or in random order within blocks. Reaction times to redundant targets significantly violated therace model inequality (Miller, 1982), but only when there was constancy of the target-defining dimension(s) within trial blocks. In Experiment 2, there was dimensional variability within blocks. Consistent with Experiment 1, constancy of the target-defining dimension(s), but this time across successive trials (rather than within blocks), was critical for observing violations of the race model inequality. These results provide evidence for parallel-coactive processing of multiple dimensions, consistent with thedimension-weighting account of Müller, Heller, and Ziegler (1995).     

Trait motivation moderates neural activation associated with goal pursuit

Research has indicated that regions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) are involved in integrating the motivational and executive function processes related to, respectively, approach and avoidance goals. Given that sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant stimuli is an important feature of conceptualizations of approach and avoidance motivation, it is possible that these regions of DLPFC are preferentially activated by valenced stimuli. The present study tested this hypothesis by using a task in which goal pursuit was threatened by distraction from valenced stimuli while functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected. The analyses examined whether the impact of trait approach and avoidance motivation on the neural processes associated with executive function differed depending on the valence or arousal level of the distractor stimuli. The present findings support the hypothesis that the regions of DLPFC under investigation are involved in integrating motivational and executive function processes, and they also indicate the involvement of a number of other brain areas in maintaining goal pursuit. However, DLPFC did not display differential sensitivity to valence.