Social cliques as mental models

The present research investigates how a mental model derived from patterns of sentiment relations (mental clique model) interacts with social background information (membership in social categories). Testing memory for a set of sentiment relations, the data support the assumption that a strongly polarizing categorization interferes with a mental clique model derived from the learning of these sentiment relations. Such interference was claimed to occur whenever sentiment implications from the social categorization would contradict information contained in the mental clique model. In line with this reasoning, balanced triads were selectively impaired in memory as opposed to relations from unbalanced triads which did not allow construction of any clique model and which were not influenced by category interference.     

Do Parents Know Best? Examining the Relationship Between Parenting Profiles,Prevention Efforts,and Peak Drinking in College Students1

The study examined parent profiles among high school athletes transitioning to college and their association with high‐risk drinking in a multi‐site, randomized trial. Students (n = 587) were randomized to a control or combined parent‐based and brief motivational intervention condition and completed measures at baseline and at 5‐ and 10‐month follow‐ups. Four parent profiles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, indifferent) were observed among participants. Findings indicated control participants with authoritarian parenting were at the greatest risk for heavy drinking. Alternately, students exposed to permissive or authoritarian parenting reported lower peak drinking when administered the combined intervention, compared to controls. Findings suggest the combined intervention was efficacious in reducing peak alcohol consumption among high‐risk students based on athlete status and parenting profiles.     

A Partial Defense of Illocutionary Silencing

Catharine MacKinnon has pioneered a new brand of anti‐pornography argument. In particular, MacKinnon claims that pornography silences women in a way that violates their right to free speech. In what follows, we focus on a certain account of silencing put forward by Jennifer Hornsby and Rae Langton, and we defend that account against two important objections. The first objection contends that this account makes a crucial but false assumption about the necessary role of hearer recognition in successful speech acts. In response, we argue that, as silencing primarily concerns communication, Hornsby and Langton are perfectly correct to treat hearer recognition as they do. The second objection contends that their particular account of silencing has the unacceptable result of undermining the responsibility of rapists. We here argue that no such result follows from their account.     

AN EXPLORATION OF MEMBER ROLES AS A MULTILEVEL LINKING MECHANISM FOR INDIVIDUAL TRAITS AND TEAM OUTCOMES

We use data from 220 individuals in 45 teams to examine team member roles as a cross-level linking mechanism between personality traits and team-level outcomes. At the individual level, peer ratings of task role behavior relate positively with Conscientiousness and negatively with Neuroticism and Extraversion. Peer ratings of social role behavior relate positively with Agreeableness and negatively with Openness to Experience. At the team level, a composition process of aggregation operates such that the mean for social roles corresponds with social cohesion. Compilation processes of aggregation also occur, as the variance of social roles corresponds negatively with task performance, and the variance of task roles corresponds negatively with cohesion. Skew of the distribution for social roles within each team—a measure of critical mass of members individually enacting the role—also correlates with social cohesion.     

On Pornography: MacKinnon,Speech Acts,and “False” Construction

Although others have focused on Catharine MacKinnon's claim that pornography subordinates and silences women, I here focus on her claim that pornography constructs women's nature and that this construction is, in some sense, false. Since it is unclear how pornography, as speech, can construct facts and how constructed facts can nevertheless be false, MacKinnon's claim requires elucidation. Appealing to speech act theory, I introduce an analysis of the erroneous verdictive and use it to make sense of MacKinnon's constructionist claims. I also show that the erroneous verdictive is of more general interest.     

ROLE CONFLICT AND FLEXIBLE WORK ARRANGEMENTS: THE EFFECTS ON APPLICANT ATTRACTION

This paper challenges a popular assumption that organizations with flexible work arrangements are more attractive to job seekers than those with a standard work arrangement. Drawing on boundary theory, we suggest that the attractiveness of these arrangements depends in part on job seekers' interrole conflict. Subjects were 142 MBA students at a midsized midwestern university. Those with high role conflict were more attracted to an organization when flextime was offered than when it was not. Those with low role conflict, however, were just slightly less attracted to an organization when flextime was offered. Conversely, subjects with low role conflict were more attracted to an organization when telecommuting was offered than when it was not; subjects with high role conflict were indifferent. These results suggest that organizations should understand the needs of their targeted applicant pool and carefully consider recruitment implications of work arrangements when analyzing costs associated with these policies.     

Fostering Creativity in the Classroom: Effects of Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs,Motivation, and Goal Orientation

The relationships of teachers' epistemological beliefs, motivation, and goal orientation to their instructional practices that foster student creativity were examined. Teachers' perceived instructional practices that facilitate the development of multiple perspectives in problem solving, transfer, task commitment, creative skill use, and collaboration were measured as indicators of their effort to foster creative thinking in students. Participants were 178 elementary‐school teachers of third‐, fourth‐, and fifth‐graders. Teachers' learning goal orientation was the most significant teacher attribute that demonstrated significant impacts on all five creativity‐fostering instructional practices. Teachers with sophisticated beliefs about knowledge and with high intrinsic motivation for creative work also reported supporting student creativity through some of their instructional practices. However, teachers' motivation for challenging work, beliefs about learning, or performance goals did not significantly predict most of the creativity‐fostering instructional practices. Educational implications of the current findings are offered.