Person-organization fit: Testing socialization and attraction-selection-attrition hypotheses

Using the socialization and attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) frameworks, this study examined the relation between employees’ work values and their organization’s values (person-organization fit). With a two year time interval, 140 respondents participated in a longitudinal study. After entry, socialization served to enhance homogeneity. The work values underwent small changes and the perception of fit with the organization grew. Despite high retention rates results confirmed the attrition effect. Results indicated that the lower the perceived match between own and organizational values at entry, the more likely it was that someone left the organization over time. We concluded that socialization as well as attrition mechanisms were present at the same time.     

When and how communicated guilt affects contributions in public good dilemmas

Two laboratory studies investigated how groups may deal with the strong emotions that social dilemmas often elicit. A first study showed that a new group member evaluated guilt communicated by a fellow group member as more instrumental than neutral emotion feedback when the amount of required resources to obtain the public good (i.e., provision point) was perceived as difficult to obtain. A second study revealed that participants use communicated guilt to draw inferences about both past and future contributions from all fellow group members. Participants also contributed more themselves and adhered to equality more often when guilt versus no emotion was communicated, but only when the provision point was high. Expected contributions from fellow group members mediated this effect.     

Quantitative autism traits in first degree relatives: evidence for the broader autism phenotype in fathers, but not in mothers and siblings

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms are present in unaffected relatives and individuals from the general population. Results are inconclusive, however, on whether unaffected relatives have higher levels of quantitative autism traits (QAT) or not. This might be due to differences in research populations, because behavioral data and molecular genetic research suggest that the genetic etiology of ASD is different in multiplex and simplex families. We compared 117 unaffected siblings and 276 parents of at least one child with ASD with 280 children and 595 adults from the general population on the presence of QAT using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Mean SRS scores for siblings, control children, parents and control adults were 25.4, 26.6, 33.7 and 32.9. Fathers of children with ASD showed significantly higher levels of QAT than controls, but siblings and mothers did not. We could not detect a statistically significant difference in SRS scores between relatives from simplex and multiplex families. These results do not support the theory of differential (genetic) etiology in multiplex and simplex families and suggest that a carried genetic risk is generally not expressed phenotypically in most relatives, except in fathers.     

One night of sleep deprivation affects reaction time, but not interference or facilitation in a Stroop task

The Stroop color-naming task is one of the most widely studied tasks involving the inhibition of a prepotent response, regarded as an executive function. Several studies have examined performance on versions of the Stroop task under conditions of acute sleep deprivation. Though these studies revealed effects on Stroop performance, the results often do not differentiate between general effects of sleep deprivation on performance and effects specifically on interference in the Stroop task. To examine the effect of prolonged wakefulness on performance on the Stroop task, we studied participants in a 40-h "constant routine" protocol during which they remained awake in constant conditions and performed a Stroop color-naming task every two hours. We found that reaction time was slowest when the color and word did not match (incongruent), fastest when the color and word did match (congruent), and intermediate when participants named the color of the non-word stimulus (neutral). Performance on all three trial types degraded significantly as a function of time awake. Extended wakefulness did not significantly change the additional time needed to respond when the color and word did not match (Stroop interference), nor did it change the amount of facilitation when color and word matched. These results indicate that one night of sleep deprivation influences performance on the Stroop task by an overall increase in response time, but does not appear to impact the underlying processes of interference or facilitation. The results suggest that the degree to which an "executive function" is affected by sleep deprivation may depend on the particular executive function studied and the degree to which it is subserved by the prefrontal cortex.     

On the role of goal relevance in emotional attention: disgust evokes early attention to cleanliness

Prior evidence has shown that aversive emotional states are characterised by an attentional bias towards aversive events. The present study investigated whether aversive emotions also bias attention towards stimuli that represent means by which the emotion can be alleviated. We induced disgust by having participants touch fake disgusting objects. Participants in the control condition touched non-disgusting objects. The results of a subsequent dot-probe task revealed that attention was oriented to disgusting pictures irrespective of condition. However, participants in the disgust condition also oriented towards pictures representing cleanliness. These findings suggest that the deployment of attention in aversive emotional states is not purely stimulus driven but is also guided by the goal to alleviate this emotional state.     

Age differences in verbal and visuo-spatial working memory updating: evidence from analysis of serial position curves

Memory updating is the ability to select and update relevant information and suppress no-longer-relevant data. The few studies in this area, targeting mainly the verbal domain, have investigated and confirmed an age-related decline in working memory updating ability (De Beni & Palladino, 2004; Van der Linden, Bredart, & Beerten, 1994). The present research examines the ability of younger and older adults to update information in verbal and visuo-spatial running memory tasks. Results showed that the participants' performance was higher in the verbal than in the visuo-spatial task. Nonetheless, independently of the task domain, an age-related decline in updating performance was found. Moreover, analysis of serial positions suggested that, in the updating procedure, the participants were not attempting to actively maintain items, preferring to adopt a low-effort, "recency-based" strategy. The use of this type of strategy is more evident in older participants, as shown in both the accuracy performance and the proportion of intrusion errors.     

Children's emotional reactivity to interadult nonverbal conflict expressions

The authors investigated children's responses to nonverbal expressions of conflict. Reactions of 3 groups of children (ranging in age from 6 to 16 years) to multiple forms of nonverbal conflict behaviors expressed in videotaped simulations of interadult disputes were examined. Results indicated that children make few discriminations between different forms of nonverbal conflict behaviors and that their reactions to nonverbal conflict are similar to their reactions to verbal conflict. Adults' expressions of fear elicited the most negative emotional responses from children, suggesting that children react to the meaning of conflict expressions and that expressions of fear may represent the greatest emotional security risks to children. Implications of these results for a theoretical model of the effects of forms of marital conflict on children are discussed (P. T. Davies & E. M. Cummings, 1994).     

Thought-shape fusion in anorexia nervosa: an experimental investigation

Cognitive biases and cognitive distortions have been implicated as important factors in the development and maintenance of many disorders. The concept of thought-shape fusion (TSF) in eating disorders was developed by Shafran, Teachman, Kerry, and Rachman (British Journal of Clinical Psychology 38 (1999) 167) as a variant of thought-action fusion, described by Shafran, Thordarson and Rachman (Journal of Anxiety Disorders 10 (1996) 379). TSF occurs when thinking about eating certain types of food increases a person's estimate of their shape and/or weight, elicits a perception of moral wrongdoing, and/or makes the person feel fat. Shafran et al. (1999) examined both the psychometric and experimental properties of TSF in an undergraduate sample. This paper reports an extension of this work to a clinical group (N=20) of patients with anorexia nervosa. After completing a set of relevant questionnaires, participants were asked to think about a food which they considered extremely fattening. They were then asked to write out the sentence, "I am eating--.", inserting the name of the fattening food in the blank. After being asked to rate their anxiety, guilt, feelings about their weight, morality, etc., participants were given the opportunity to neutralize their statement in any way they chose. The majority of the participants neutralized in ways consistent with the findings of Shafran et al. (1999). The results are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural formulations of eating disorders, and of the influence of cognitive biases and cognitive distortions on the processing of information relevant to food, weight and shape in anorexia nervosa.     

Leader mistreatment,employee hostility,and deviant behaviors: Integrating self-uncertainty and thwarted needs perspectives on deviance

Integrating self-uncertainty management and thwarted needs perspectives on leader mistreatment and workplace deviance, we examine when and why leader mistreatment is associated with workplace deviance. We propose that competence uncertainty strengthens the relationship between leader mistreatment and workplace deviance and that hostility mediates this interactive effect. Four field studies and one experiment support the hypotheses. The first two studies provide evidence for the predicted interaction between leader mistreatment and competence uncertainty, and the next three studies demonstrate that hostility mediates this interactive effect. We discuss an extended social exchange explanation of workplace deviance and highlight the psychological interplay between motives, cognition, and affect in reciprocating leader mistreatment.     

A comparative analysis of global and local processing of hierarchical visual stimuli in young children (Homo sapiens) and monkeys (Cebus apella)

Results obtained with preschool children (Homo sapiens) were compared with results previously obtained from capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) in matching-to-sample tasks featuring hierarchical visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, monkeys, in contrast with children, showed an advantage in matching the stimuli on the basis of their local features. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which control trials enabled the authors to rule out that children used spurious cues to solve the matching task. In a 3rd experiment featuring conditions in which the density of the stimuli was manipulated, monkeys' accuracy in the processing of the global shape of the stimuli was negatively affected by the separation of the local elements, whereas children's performance was robust across testing conditions. Children's response latencies revealed a global precedence in the 2nd and 3rd experiments. These results show differences in the processing of hierarchical stimuli by humans and monkeys that emerge early during childhood.