A job demands-resources perspective on salespersons’ market intelligence activities in new product development

Research shows that R&D's use of sales’ market intelligence positively influences innovation performance. However, little is known about whether this effect hinges on salespersons’ engagement towards and perceptions of market intelligence activities (MIA). Moreover, research remains incomplete regarding the drivers of salespersons’ MIA engagement. Using dyadic data from 359 salespersons and 239 R&D managers in a multi-level model based on the job demands-resources theory, we demonstrate that the positive effect of R&D's use of sales’ market intelligence on innovation performance is especially pronounced when salespersons’ market intelligence generation is high and role ambiguity is low. We also show that although salespersons’ self-set MIA goals are a strong driver of their MIA engagement, not assigning salespersons MIA goals may be a double-edged sword: in the short run, salespersons might engage in MIA voluntarily. However, in the long run, they could incur psychological costs in terms of role ambiguity and conflict, preventing them from engaging in MIA.     

Relation of infant motor development with nonverbal intelligence,language comprehension and neuropsychological functioning in childhood: a population‐based study

Within a population‐based study of 3356 children, we investigated whether infant neuromotor development was associated with cognition in early childhood. Neuromotor development was examined with an adapted version of Touwen's Neurodevelopmental Examination between 9 and 20 weeks. Parents rated their children's executive functioning at 4 years. At age 6 years, children performed intelligence and language comprehension tests, using Dutch test batteries. At age 6–9 years, neuropsychological functioning was assessed in 486 children using the validated NEPSY‐II–NL test battery. We showed that less optimal neurodevelopment in infancy may predict poor mental rotation, immediate memory, shifting, and planning; but not nonverbal intelligence or language comprehension.     

Does ethnicity matter? The impact of stereotypical expectations on in-service teachers’ judgments of students

Ethnic minority students face many disadvantages in school, which might be due in part to teachers’ stereotypical expectations and attitudes. Dual process theories of impression and judgment formation specify person information that confirms or disconfirms stereotypical expectations as determinants of how judgments are formed. While expectation-confirming information should result in stereotype-based judgments, expectation-disconfirming information should lead to more information-integrating processes. Moreover, attitudes should also be affected in a positive way when a person encounters expectation-disconfirming information. The current study experimentally investigated these hypotheses with regard to stereotypical expectations about ethnic minority students. Eighty-three experienced teachers were randomly divided into four different groups. One group judged a below-average ethnic minority student (confirming) and another group a below-average ethnic majority student. Two other groups judged either an above-average ethnic minority (disconfirming) or ethnic majority student. When assessing a below-average student, teachers judged the confirming ethnic minority student as less proficient in language than the ethnic majority student. These differences could not be found for mathematical achievement or between the above-average ethnic minority and majority students. Attitudes toward ethnic minority students were not affected in the expected way. Findings are discussed with respect to their implications for future research.     

Social role effects on gender stereotyping in Germany and Japan

Social role theory postulates that gender stereotypes are restrained for men and women observed in the same social role. Cultural differences in the valuation of communal attributes might moderate this effect. To examine this possibility, 288 participants (144 German, 144 Japanese) estimated the communal and agentic attributes of an average man or woman described in a male‐dominated role, a female‐dominated role, or without role information. We hypothesized and found that in Germany and Japan, participants perceived men as more agentic than women without role information and as similarly agentic in the same role. However, for communion, German and Japanese participants reacted differently. German participants perceived women as more communal than men without role information and in male‐dominated roles and perceived men as more communal than women in female‐dominated roles. Japanese participants perceived all targets as similarly communal, regardless of role or gender, suggesting that communion is generally expected in Japan.     

Norms on the gender perception of role nouns in Czech,English, French,German, Italian,Norwegian, and Slovak

We collected norms on the gender stereotypicality of an extensive list of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak, to be used as a basis for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies. We present a Web-based tool (available at https://www.unifr.ch/lcg/) that we developed to collect these norms and that we expect to be useful for other researchers, as well. In essence, we provide (a) gender stereotypicality norms across a number of languages and (b) a tool to facilitate cross-language as well as cross-cultural comparisons when researchers are interested in the investigation of the impact of stereotypicality on the processing of role nouns.     

Better Days – A randomized controlled trial of an internet-based positive psychology intervention

The internet seems promising for delivering interventions to enhance well-being in a normal population. The aim of this study was to test the effects of an internet-based positive psychology intervention targeting gratitude, pleasant activities, strengths, mastery, acts of kindness, optimism, flow, attributions, and mindfulness. One-hundred and twelve participants were randomized to the intervention and 94 to the control group, and data were collected at baseline, one, two, and six months after intervention onset. The balance of positive to negative affect increased over time among participants in the intervention group (unstandardized beta coefficient [B]?=?0.07, p?<?0.01), as compared to the controls (B?=?0.02, p?=?010). The intervention worked equally well regardless of participants’ gender, age, or education. However, optimism did not mediate the effect of the intervention on affect balance. In conclusion, the intervention had a small, but significant effect on affect balance among healthy adults.     

Sexist Behavior Undermines Women’s Performance in a Job Application Situation

Can sexist behavior in a job application context threaten women and cause them to underperform on a subsequent cognitive ability test? In a simulated job interview, 46 women and 46 men -- undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Heidelberg, Germany -- were confronted with either sexist (dominant and physically close) behavior by a male interviewer or non-sexist (friendly and neutral) behavior by the same confederate. Participants then solved math items and language-related items from a German standard intelligence test. In accordance with our hypothesis, the results indicated that female participants in the sexist condition performed significantly worse on the mathematical test than female participants in the control condition. The performance of female participants on the language-related test and male participants on both the math and language-related tests did not differ by experimental condition. After the sexist job interview, women’s impaired performance, occurring on the math items only (i.e., specific to the domain in which women are negatively stereotyped), suggests an influence of psychological and interpersonal processes on seemingly objective test outcomes.