Association of parental depression with psychiatric course from adolescence to young adulthood among formerly depressed individuals

The authors examined whether parental major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with course of depression and other psychopathology among formerly depressed adolescents as they enter adulthood. The sample consisted of 244 individuals (age 24) in a longitudinal study who had experienced MDD by 19. Maternal MDD was associated with MDD recurrence, chronicity and severity, anxiety disorders, and (among sons only) lower psychosocial functioning in offspring between the ages of 19 and 24. Paternal MDD was associated with lower functioning. Sons of depressed fathers had elevated suicidal ideation and attempt rates in young adulthood. Recurrent paternal MDD was associated with depression recurrence in daughters but not sons. The impact of parental MDD on offspring could not be attributed to characteristics of the offspring's depression prior to age 19.     

Choosing the path to bargaining power: an empirical comparison of BATNAs and contributions in negotiation

Although the negotiations literature identifies a variety of approaches for improving one's power position, the relative benefits of these approaches remain largely unexplored. The empirical study presented in this article begins to address this issue by examining how the size of the bargaining zone affects the relative benefit of an advantage in one's BATNA (i.e., having a better alternative than one's counterpart) versus contribution (i.e., contributing more to the relationship than one's counterpart) for negotiator performance. Results indicate that whereas BATNAs exerted a stronger effect on resource allocations than contributions when the bargaining zone was small, an advantage in contributions exerted a stronger effect on resource allocations than BATNAs when the bargaining zone was large. These findings provide needed insight and supporting evidence for how to alter one's power relationship in negotiation.     

In search of the elusive U-shaped performance-turnover relationship: are high performing Swiss bankers more liable to quit?

This project revisits the perennial debate over the relationship between job performance and turnover. Disputing traditional findings, C. Trevor, B. Gerhart, and J. Boudreau (1997) observed that high and low performers quit more than do average performers. They further challenged received wisdom by showing that promotions can induce turnover, especially among poor performers, by signaling ability. The authors sought to replicate and extend these unconventional findings by exploring curvilinear and moderating effects on the performance-exit relationship among 11,098 Swiss nationals employed in a bank. Survival regression revealed that performance is curvilinearly related to quits and that bonus pay deterred superior performers from leaving more than did pay increases. Further, the average number of job levels advanced per promotion rather than promotion rate increased quit risks. Cultural and organizational moderators of performance-termination associations and effective strategies for retaining top performers are discussed.     

The effect of implicit person theory on performance appraisals

Four studies examined whether implicit person theory (IPT) regarding the malleability of personal attributes (e.g., personality and ability) affects managers' acknowledgment of change in employee behavior. The extent to which managers held an incremental IPT was positively related to their recognition of both good (Study 1) and poor (Study 2) performance, relative to the employee behavior they initially observed. Incremental theorists' judgments were not anchored by their prior impressions (Study 3). In the 4th study, entity theorists who were randomly assigned to a self-persuasion training condition developed a significantly more incremental IPT. This change in IPT was maintained over a 6-week period and led to greater acknowledgment of an improvement in employee performance than was exhibited by entity theorists in the placebo control group.     

The structure of goal contents across 15 cultures

The authors investigated the structure of goal contents in a group of 1,854 undergraduates from 15 cultures around the world. Results suggested that the 11 types of goals the authors assessed were consistently organized in a circumplex fashion across the 15 cultures. The circumplex was well described by positioning 2 primary dimensions underlying the goals: intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation) versus extrinsic (e.g., financial success, image) and self-transcendent (e.g., spirituality) versus physical (e.g., hedonism). The circumplex model of goal contents was also quite similar in both wealthier and poorer nations, although there were some slight cross-cultural variations. The relevance of these results for several theories of motivation and personality are discussed.     

Role of orientation in perception of emotions

Our study examined whether perception of novel emotions, as with perception of novel objects, elicits a cardiac orientation reaction. Using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm, data from 11 adult subjects showed that orientation to both novel emotions and novel objects elicited a heart-rate deceleration. Results suggest that the orientation reaction may be an integral part of perception of emotion. Perception of emotions, therefore, is a complex, multistep process that includes an early orientation reaction.     

When do irrelevant visual stimuli impair processing of identical targets?

Three experiments investigated whether the repeated-letter inferiority effect (RLIE) and repetition blindness (RB) are identical phenomena or not and how the RLIE can be reconciled with the flanker compatibility effect (FCE). Participants reported a masked target and ignored an unmasked distractor. We manipulated the type of distractor (identical, alternative target, or neutral), the order of presenting distractor and target, and the predictability of target location. When distractors preceded the targets, distractors identical to the target always caused deficits in target processing (i.e., RB). With simultaneous presentation, identical distractors caused deficits (i.e., an RLIE) for unpredictable target locations only. Yet the RLIE was significantly smaller than RB. This result suggests that simultaneously presented stimuli are identified serially, in random order, if target position is unpredictable. As a result, RB arises only in the 50% of all trials with identical distractors in which the distractor is identified before the target. With simultaneous presentation and predictable target location, however, parallel processing of targets and distractors was possible that gave rise to an FCE in recognition accuracy. Analyses of false alarm rates revealed no evidence of significant response biases.     

Perceptual grouping in Gabor lattices: proximity and alignment

We propose the Gabor lattice as a new stimulus designed to deal with multiple organizations in perceptual grouping, allowing both comparison between psychophysical data and neural findings and a systematic investigation of grouping based on several low-level characteristics and their interactions. A Gabor lattice is a geometric lattice with Gabor patches, evoking a multistable global orientation percept. Visual grouping in Gabor lattices with elements aligned in a global orientation was compared with grouping of nonaligned Gabor patches and of Gaussian blobs. The effect sizes of proximity and alignment were estimated in logistic regression analyses. The results confirmed the importance of proximity and local element alignment as factors in dynamic grouping. We also found a small but consistent enhancement of grouping along the global vector orthogonal to the local patch orientations. In light of these results, we further motivate the relevance of these stimuli and the associated experimental paradigm.