The impact of relational demographics on perceived managerial trustworthiness: similarity or norms?

Perceived trustworthiness is a critical antecedent of interpersonal trust, yet researchers have a limited understanding of how such perceptions are generated. The authors used 2 competing perspectives within the relational demography literature--similarity-attraction and relational norms--to empirically examine the effect of demographic differences. Whereas the similarity-attraction account suggests that subordinates will perceive their managers as more trustworthy when managers and staff are similar in demographic attributes, the relational norms account proposes that subordinates will perceive their managers as more trustworthy when their demographic differences follow normative expectations. Data collected from a field study of 178 manager-subordinate dyads in Hong Kong and Macau support the relational norms account in terms of education and organizational rank. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the study.     

Dirty work, clean hands: The moral psychology of indirect agency

When powerful people cause harm, they often do so indirectly through other people. Are harmful actions carried out through others evaluated less negatively than harmful actions carried out directly? Four experiments examine the moral psychology of indirect agency. Experiments 1A, 1B, and 1C reveal effects of indirect agency under conditions favoring intuitive judgment, but not reflective judgment, using a joint/separate evaluation paradigm. Experiment 2A demonstrates that effects of indirect agency cannot be fully explained by perceived lack of foreknowledge or control on the part of the primary agent. Experiment 2B indicates that reflective moral judgment is sensitive to indirect agency, but only to the extent that indirectness signals reduced foreknowledge and/or control. Experiment 3 indicates that effects of indirect agency result from a failure to automatically consider the potentially dubious motives of agents who cause harm indirectly. Experiment 4 demonstrates an effect of indirect agency on purchase intentions.     

The genesis of reading ability: What helps children learn letter-sound correspondences?

Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences underpins successful reading acquisition, and yet little is known about how young children acquire this knowledge and what prior information they bring to the learning process. In this study, we used an experimental training design to examine whether either prior letter awareness or prior phonemic awareness directly assists preliterate children in subsequently learning letter-sound correspondences. Here 76 preschoolers received 6 weeks of training in either letter awareness, phonemic awareness, or control tasks and then received a further 6 weeks of training in either letter-sound correspondences or control tasks. There was limited evidence that prior training in either phoneme or letter awareness directly assisted learning of letter-sound correspondences, although phonemically trained children appeared to show some advantage on recognition tasks. Overall, the data suggest that there is little value in training preschoolers in either letter forms or sounds in isolation in advance of providing instruction on the links between the two.     

Self-esteem depends on the beholder: Effects of a subtle social value cue

The idea that self-esteem functions as a gauge or “sociometer” of social value [Leary, M. R., Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 1-62). San Diego: Academic Press] is supported by research on direct social feedback. To examine if the sociometer model is relevant to more subtle social value cues, the implicit self-esteem of women was assessed a week after an interaction with an experimenter. Consistent with the sociometer model, Week 2 self-esteem depended on a subtle social value cue encountered during Week 1. When the Week 1 experimenter wore a t-shirt celebrating larger bodies (i.e., “everyBODY is beautiful”), heavier women had higher self-esteem than lighter women in Week 2. As hypothesized, this effect was relationship-specific, occurring only when the same experimenter administered Week 1 and 2 sessions.     

Die methodologifchen Grundlagen der Biologie

Ohne Zusammenfassung Nach einem Vortrag in der Gefellfchaft für wiffenfchaftliche Philofophie, Berlin.