The relationship between sex role stereotypes and requisite management characteristics among college students

The relationship between sex role stereotypes and characteristics perceived as necessary for management success was examined among male and female undergraduate management students and compared with results of managers today as well as with those of managers studied 15 years ago. Male management students, similar to their managerial counterparts in the 1980s and 1970s, still adhere to the male managerial stereotype and perceive that successful middle managers possess characteristics, attitudes, and temperaments more commonly ascribed to men in general than to women in general. Female management students, similar to today's female managers, no longer sex type the managerial job, a change from the female managers of the 1970s. Implications of these outcomes for undergraduate management education are discussed.Portions of this research were funded by a Gettysburg College Institutional Self Renewal Grant.     

Access to attitude-relevant information in memory as a determinant of persuasion: The role of message attributes

Recipients with access to attitude-relevant information in memory were thought to draw on these beliefs and prior experiences to evaluate the validity of message arguments. Consistent with this idea, persuasion for these recipients was largely a function of the perceived validity of message content: Messages containing high-quality arguments were more persuasive than messages containing lowquality arguments, whereas variations in a structural attribute of the message (its length) proved to have little impact on opinion change. In contrast, people who tend to retrieve little attitude-relevant information were believed to be less able to evaluate the validity of message arguments in terms of information accessed from memory. Instead, it was anticipated that they would base their opinion judgments on a more superficial analysis of persuasion cues, focusing on attributes like message length. Consistent with this reasoning, these recipients were more persuaded by long than short messages. Recipients with moderate levels of retrieval functioned much like the high-retrieval subjects.     

Workplace justice outcomes as a function of adversaries' gender composition: A field assessment

There is extensive documentation that the sex of organizational members may bias a wide variety of managerial decisions and workplace outcomes. While such effects have been persuasively demonstrated, the sex context of these effects has received little attention. It is argued here that it is not merely the sex of the actor, but the nature of the dyadic match (male/male; female/female; male/female; female/male) that is a critical influence on outcomes. This hypothesis is strongly supported by gross differences in workplace justice outcomes based on the dyadic composition of the actors involved in dispute proceedings (n=369) in a field setting. These results are tempered, however, inasmuch as analysis also indicates differences in the severity of disputed issues across these dyadic compositions.     

Separating the effects of salience and disparity on the rate of observing

Pigeons producing deliveries of grain on a mixed variable-interval, extinction schedule by pecking a center key could also produce discriminative stimuli on concurrent variable-interval schedules by pecking the left or right observing key. The stimuli produced by each observing key were varied independently. In the first experiment, the negative discriminative stimulus was at the far end of the spectrum from the key illumination accompanying the mixed schedule and from the positive discriminative stimulus. When the magnitude of the difference between the latter two stimuli (salience) was varied, more pecks occurred on the observing key producing the larger of the two differences than on the key producing the smaller difference. In the second experiment, the stimulus accompanying the mixed schedule was at the far end of the spectrum, and the magnitude of the difference between the two discriminative stimuli (disparity) was varied. The proportion of pecks occurring on each observing key shifted systematically in the direction of the key producing the larger difference. The salience of the discriminative stimuli and their disparity each has an independent influence on the frequency of observing when the other is controlled, but the effect of the salience appears to be the more substantial.     

At-entry differences in part-time and full-time employees

Research consistently shows part- and full-time workers to be different on a variety of characteristics such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intentions to leave the organization. This study challenges the commonly accepted argument that these differences are due to the different structural conditions of work that are faced by part- and full-time workers. The possibility that these differences are the consequence of at-entry differences in dispositions and orientations to work is tested on a sample of part- and full-time registered nurses who had just begun employment. With one exception the part-and full-time employees were found to be the same on fourteen at-entry characteristics. These results strongly suggest that it is the structural conditions of work that produce the often observed differences found between part- and full-time workers.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1991 Midwest Sociological Society Meetings, Des Moines, Iowa, April 11–14. Support for the original data collection came from the Division of Nursing of the Health Resources and Services Administration (R01 NU01050-01A1). Joanne McCloskey is to be thanked for allowing us to use this data set.     

Imagery,concreteness, goodness,and familiarity ratings for 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs

Partly in order to facilitate research on the relation between some standard psychological variables, we gathered normative data on 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, 1970). The scales for which we gathered data are imagery, concreteness, goodness , and familiarity. These norms may be of value to researchers who wish to sample linguistic units larger than the word from a set that contains an extensive number of unfamiliar and familiar items. To illustrate the possible uses to which these data may be put, we presented a causal model of the relation between the four variables mentioned above.     

Developing suicide prevention programs for African American youth in African American churches

Suicide prevention programs for African American youth in African American churches may have broad appeal because: (1) the Black Church has a strong history of helping community members, regardless of church membership; (2) African Americans have the highest level of public and private religiousness; and (3) the church can help shape religious and cultural norms about mental health and help-seeking. The proposed gatekeeper model trains lay helpers and clergy to recognize the risk and protective factors for depression and suicide, to make referrals to the appropriate community mental health resources, and to deliver a community education curriculum. Potential barriers and suggestions for how to overcome these barriers are discussed.     

When your boss says no! The effects of leadership style and trust on employee reactions to managerial explanations

The present study proposes and tests a model that examines the relationship between leadership style, trust, employee interpretations of managerial explanations, and justice perceptions. Using a critical incident methodology, 203 working adults were asked to recall a recent situation in which a request or proposal made to their manager was denied. Results provide strong support for the theoretical model. Namely, the effect of leadership style on explanation perceptions was indirect through employees' level of trust in their manager. Specifically, employees who felt their manager was transformational reported a higher degree of trust and more favourable reactions to managerial explanations.