Attributional Complexity: A Link Between Training, Job Complexity, Decision Latitude, Leader–Member Exchange, and Performance

Previous research demonstrated that individuals differ in the relative sophistication of their schemas for organizing and interpreting social stimuli (i.e., attributional complexity, or AC) and that AC has been linked to performance in social situations. In the present study, 420 employed students completed surveys for an investigation of the relationship between individual, work role, and job characteristics; AC; and job performance. Educational level and major predicted AC, but leader–member exchange (LMX), decision latitude (DL), and social/task complexity of the job did not. Contrary to expectations, social and task complexity did not interact with DL and LMX to predict AC. AC, DL, LMX, and educational level predicted job performance. Further, AC interacted with social complexity of the job to predict performance. The results suggest that AC may be both content and process based, and predictive of performance in certain jobs.     

Providing a Rationale in an Autonomy-Supportive Way as a Strategy to Motivate Others During an Uninteresting Activity

When motivating others during uninteresting activities, people typically use extrinsic contingencies that promote controlling forms of extrinsic motivation. In contrast, we investigated a motivational strategy that could support another person's capacity to personally endorse and value the effort he or she put forth during the uninteresting activity. That strategy is the provision of an externally provided rationale when communicated in an autonomy-supportive way. In two studies, we tested and found support for a motivational mediation model, based on self-determination theory, in which the presence of such a rationale (vs. its absence) adds to participants' identification with the task's personal value which, in turn, explains participants' subsequent effort. These studies suggest that extrinsically motivated behaviors can become self-determined through the process of identification and that the promotion of this identification experience depends on the presence of a rationale that is communicated in an autonomy-supportive way.     

EFFECTS OF A VIDEOTAPE FEEDBACK PACKAGE ON THE PEER INTERACTIONS OF CHILDREN WITH SERIOUS BEHAVIORAL AND EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES

Peer interactions are among the greatest challenges experienced by children who have severe emotional and behavioral problems. This study evaluated an intervention package designed to increase the ratio of these children's desirable to undesirable interactions. The package included three principal components: (a) observation of videotapes following regularly scheduled peer activity sessions; (b) self-evaluation of the children's peer interactions observed on the videotapes; and (c) delayed feedback and reinforcement for desirable peer interactions. Five students from two elementary schools participated. Multiple baseline designs and one reversal were used to evaluate the effects of the intervention package. The results showed that the intervention produced lower levels of undesirable peer interactions and higher ratios of desirable to undesirable interactions for all participants. The results are discussed in regard to their conceptual and applied implications and in terms of specific directions for future research.     

Responses to Marriage Counselling

The experiences of clients who received marital counselling from trained volunteer marriage guidance counsellors were investigated. Fifty-one clients from 42 marriages were interviewed and questioned about why they chose the agency, what expectations they held, what happened during counselling, how they felt about the counsellor, and what if anything was achieved through counselling. They were also asked how they had fared since. Rating scales were used after the interview to evaluate satisfaction with counselling, benefit from counselling, aspects of the counselling relationship, etc. The clients were also asked to do a card-sort of statements about counselling to determine what aspects had been valuable and disappointing. Some of the preliminary results of the study are presented and discussed.     

Exploring the Relationships Between Racial/Cultural Identity and Ego Identity Among African Americans and Mexican Americans

Relationships between collective identity and ego identity were examined among 299 African American and Mexican American university students. Participants completed scales measuring racial or cultural identity and ego identity. Regression analyses indicated that ego identity was significantly related to racial identity for African Americans and cultural identity for Mexican Americans.     

Panpsychism,Emergentism and the Metaphysics of Causation

This article uses causation to show that panpsychism and emergentism share far less than most philosophers suppose. It argues that panpsychism has features, among them its rationalism, that force what the article calls a strong account of causation. And that emergentism entails what the article calls a weak account of causation incompatible with any strong account. The article then ventures that panpsychism and emergentism form parts of two wide‐ranging but incompatible metaphysical packages.     

Self-schema for assertiveness: Extending the validity of the self-schema construct

This research attempted to extend the validity of the self-schema concept by examining a previously untested self-attribute and by examining self-schema effects on the interpretation of more realistic stimulus situations than used in past studies. The attribute was a self-schema for assertiveness and the validity of this self-knowledge structure was evaluated in two studies. In Stuty 1 assertion schematics and aschematics were compared for retrieval of schema-relevant information on a laboratory task of incidental recall. In Study 2 schematics and aschematics were compared on five different tasks that required elaboration of information about rights assertion conflict situations. Study 1 results revealed that schematics as compared to aschematics recalled more assertion related adjectives but did not differ in recall of domain-irrelevant words. Results from Study 2 showed that schematics as compared to aschematics recalled more past instances of assertive behaviors when asked to elaborate why an assertion adjective was endorsed as “Like me”. Also, schematics were significantly more certain they would behave assertively both in situations where assertion was appropriate and in those where compromise was more appropriate. On two perceptual factors known to correlate with assertive behavior, schematics were more likely to judge moderately legitimate requests (i.e., ambiguous requests) as more unreasonable and when asked to generate expected consequences for assertive responses focused more on self rather than other person consequences. The consistency of the results with respect to various hypothesized functions of the self-schema construct are discussed.     

Greater family identification—but not greater contact with family members—leads to better health: Evidence from a Spanish longitudinal study

We investigated the effect of family identification (one's subjective sense of belonging to and commonality with the family) on self‐reported ill‐health in 206 Valencian undergraduates, with eight months between Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). While greater family identification T1 predicted lower ill‐health T2, ill‐health T1 did not predict family identification T2. Family contact T1 (one's intensity of interaction with family) was unrelated to ill‐health T2. This shows that family identification impacts positively on health over time (rather than health impacting positively on family identification over time), and this is not reducible to effects exerted by family contact. These findings indicate that encouraging patients to engage in group activities might produce negligible health gains unless the patient identifies with the group in question.