Reflexivity in Teams: A Review and New Perspectives

Team reflexivity posits that the extent to which teams reflect upon and adapt their functioning is positively related to team performance. While remarkable progress has been made to provide evidence of this relationship, the underlying framework is missing elements of current theoretical streams for analyzing and describing teamwork, leaving the diversity of effects of team reflexivity often untouched. In this article, we present an update for this framework, by reviewing previous research on reflexivity, addressing gaps in the literature, and revising the original model by integrating feedback and dynamic team effectiveness frameworks for describing temporal developments of reflexivity. We furthermore propose a new dimensional structure for reflexivity, relying on prior work conceptualizing teams as information-processing systems that learn and advance through social-cognitive elements. Our model is therefore not only suitable for explaining the diverse set of relationships between team reflexivity on outcomes, but also provides valuable directions for viewing reflexivity as process that takes place during both transition and action phases of teamwork. We conclude with implications for managers, identify limitations, and propose an agenda for further research into this area. This article contributes an extended perspective relevant for further theory development and for effectively managing reflexivity in teams.     

Reluctance to Use Host Social Services by Ethnic Minorities: The Role of Consensual Separation,Threat to Heritage Culture and Misunderstanding of the Host Society Language

The main goal of this study was to examine the relationships between two types of separation orientations, namely forced and consensual separation, and the use of French social service community centers. Participants were two groups of young women, both members of ethnic minorities: Turkish (n?=?42) and North African (n?=?41). The results showed that young Turkish women were more oriented towards consensual separation than young North African women. Preference for a separation strategy was positively associated with both the perception of a threat to heritage culture and difficulties in understanding the language of the social workers. The more participants perceived social workers as a source of threat to their heritage culture and as speaking a language they had difficulty understanding, the less frequently they made use of the services offered at the community centers. Socio-demographic variables such as education level and marital status were found to play a significant role in these findings.     

Conflict detection during moral decision-making: evidence for deontic reasoners’ utilitarian sensitivity

Moral dilemmas often force us to decide between deontological (harming others is wrong) and utilitarian (harming others can be acceptable depending on the consequences) considerations. Cognitive scientists have shown that utilitarian responders typically engage demanding deliberate thinking to override a conflicting intuitive deontological response. A key question is whether deontic responders also take utilitarian considerations into account and detect that there are conflicting responses at play. The present study addressed this issue by contrasting people's processing of moral dilemmas in which utilitarian and deontological considerations cued conflicting or non-conflicting decisions. Results showed that deontic responders were slower and less confident about their decision when solving the conflict (vs. no-conflict) dilemmas. This suggests that they are considering both deontic and utilitarian aspects of their decision and indicates that a deontic decision is more informed and less oblivious than it might appear.     

Collective regret versus collective guilt: Different emotional reactions to historical atrocities

A distinction between guilt and regret in reactions to in‐group atrocities is proposed. Four studies (total N = 1249) support the notion that guilt and regret are distinct emotional reactions. Whereas guilt is a self‐focused, aversive emotional reaction following from appraisals of responsibility and associated with the intention to make amends, regret follows from an empathic victim perspective, is less aversive, and is more strongly associated with positive attitudes towards the victim groups and the intention to engage in intergroup contact. These findings suggest that less aversive emotions like regret are more likely to improve intergroup attitudes after a common history of conflict, but the aversive experience of guilt might be more potent in motivating reparations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The direction of masked auditory category priming correlates with participants' prime discrimination ability

Semantic priming refers to the phenomenon that participants typically respond faster to targets following semantically related primes as compared to semantically unrelated primes. In contrast, Wentura and Frings (2005) found a negatively signed priming effect (i.e., faster responses to semantically unrelated as compared to semantically related targets) when they used (a) a special masking technique for the primes and (b) categorically related prime-target-pairs (e.g., fruit-apple). The negatively signed priming effect was most pronounced for participants with random prime discrimination performance, whereas participants with high prime discrimination performance showed a positive effect. In the present study we analyzed the after-effects of masked category primes in audition. A comparable pattern of results as in the visual modality emerged: The poorer the individual prime discrimination, the more negative is the semantic priming effect. This result is interpreted as evidence for a common mechanism causing the semantic priming effect in vision as well as in audition instead of a perceptual mechanism only working in the visual domain.     

Belastungen von Bachelor- und Diplom-Studierenden

Background

The restructuring of the European educational system in line with the Bologna process forms a source of complaints in German universities because of the rigid structure of the curricula and higher pressure to perform. By comparison of students in the former diploma system with students in the bachelor master system during the period of restructuring it was analyzed if the changes in the educational system affect psychological distress in a negative way.

Methods

The analysis of 535 datasets from the psychotherapeutic outpatient department for students of the university Göttingen in the years between 2006 and 2010 was carried out to clarify if students in the bachelor master system suffered more from severe psychological distress than students of the former German diploma system. Dependent variables are a questionnaire comprising current problems and the global severity index (GSI) from the symptom checklist (SCL)-90-R. The confounding factors resulting from course of study and stud -time in the period of the restructuring have been controlled.

Results

The bachelor master students who sought help were not generally suffering from more psychological distress than diploma students. However, in comparison to students from the former diploma system they suffered more from psychological distress and problems resulting from the study situation and organization in the first semesters.

Conclusions

Psychotherapeutic university outpatient departments have to be aware of the changing demand. The study organization has to be changed to be more student friendly, especially in the beginning. An adequate infrastructure for psychotherapeutic university outpatients has to be provided.     

Using Visitor Observation to Evaluate Exhibits at the Rotterdam Zoo Aquarium

ABSTRACT

This article reports a visitor observation study that was conducted at the aquarium of Rotterdam Zoo, called the Oceanium. Observations were performed in six different aquarium exhibits within the Oceanium and visitors' stopping and watching behaviors were recorded. Results showed that in five out of six exhibits, visitors were more likely to stop and watch during the morning than in the afternoon. This study provided evidence regarding visitors' use of different exhibits, which will be valuable in improving both the recreational and educational value of the experiences offered at the Oceanium.     

Appraisal of Suicidal Risk Among Adolescents and Young Adults Through the Rorschach Test

The aims of this study are to investigate suicidal behaviors among adolescents and young adults and to test an index composed using Rorschach test responses related to an increased risk of suicide. Using a cross-sectional design, 4 groups were studied (according to criteria of the Columbia Classification Algorithm of Suicide Assessment [Posner, Oquendo, Gould, Stanley, &; Davies, 2007 Rierdan, J. 1978. Suicide and transparency responses on the Rorschach: A replication. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 46: 1162–1163.  [Google Scholar]]): A group with suicidal ideation (n = 30), a group with parasuicidal behavior (n = 30), a group with near-lethal suicide attempts (n = 26), and a control group (n = 30). Responses to the Rorschach test yielded 6 potential indicators of suicidal behavior (scored according to Exner's Comprehensive System and the Suicidal Index for Adolescents; Silberg &; Armstrong, 1992 Stengel, E. 1975. Suicide and attempted suicide , 2nd ed., New York, NY: Aronson.  [Google Scholar]). Rorschach scores including at least 4 of these 6 indicators selected 69% of the people who had committed serious suicide attempts. The Rorschach Suicidal Index reached an acceptable reliability and was related to other criteria of suicide risk, such as the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck, Ward, Mendelsohn, Mock, &; Erbaugh, 1961 Beck, A. T., Ward, C. H., Mendelsohn, M., Mock, J. and Erbaugh, J. 1961. An inventory for measuring depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 4: 561–571. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Linehan Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL–I; Linehan, Goodstein, Nielsen, &; Chiles, 1983 Menninger, K. 1938. Man against himself, New York, NY: Harcourt. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Moreover, the Rorschach Suicidal Index showed incremental validity over the BDI and the RFL–I to predict suicidal behavior. A path analysis additionally showed that low social support was an important mediator between the Rorschach Suicidal Index and the number of suicide attempts committed by participants.     

The education of attention as explanation of variability of practice effects: learning the final approach phase in a flight simulator

The present study reports two experiments in which a total of 20 participants without prior flight experience practiced the final approach phase in a fixed-base simulator. All participants received self-controlled concurrent feedback during 180 practice trials. Experiment 1 shows that participants learn more quickly under variable practice conditions than under constant practice conditions. This finding is attributed to the education of attention to the more useful informational variables: Variability of practice reduces the usefulness of initially used informational variables, which leads to a quicker change in variable use, and hence to a larger improvement in performance. In the practice phase of Experiment 2 variability was selectively applied to some experimental factors but not to others. Participants tended to converge toward the variables that were useful in the specific conditions that they encountered during practice. This indicates that an explanation for variability of practice effects in terms of the education of attention is a useful alternative to traditional explanations based on the notion of the generalized motor program and to explanations based on the notions of noise and local minima.     

How shared preferences in music create bonds between people: values as the missing link

How can shared music preferences create social bonds between people? A process model is developed in which music preferences as value-expressive attitudes create social bonds via conveyed value similarity. The musical bonding model links two research streams: (a) music preferences as indicators of similarity in value orientations and (b) similarity in value orientations leading to social attraction. Two laboratory experiments and one dyadic field study demonstrated that music can create interpersonal bonds between young people because music preferences can be cues for similar or dissimilar value orientations, with similarity in values then contributing to social attraction. One study tested and ruled out an alternative explanation (via personality similarity), illuminating the differential impact of perceived value similarity versus personality similarity on social attraction. Value similarity is the missing link in explaining the musical bonding phenomenon, which seems to hold for Western and non-Western samples and in experimental and natural settings.