Am I the Right Candidate? Self-Ascribed Fit of Women and Men to a Leadership Position

Women are assumed to show a self-ascribed lack-of-fit to leadership positions compared to men (Heilman Research in Organizational Behavior 5:269–298, 1983). The present study examined whether this gender difference would diminish when agency is accounted for and whether a stimulus person’s gender would alter women’s self-ascribed fit. German management students (91 women, 95 men) received a fictitious recruitment advertisement for a leadership position that portrayed a man, a woman, or both a man and a woman. Participants indicated their perceptions of agency and suitability to the advertised position. As predicted, women judged themselves as less suitable for the leadership position than men and participants’ self-reported agency mediated this effect. Furthermore, all participants felt most suitable if a male and a female stimulus person were portrayed.     

"Did you have a nice evening?" A day-level study on recovery experiences, sleep, and affect

In this study, the authors used a within-person design to examine the relation between recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery experiences) during leisure time, sleep, and affect in the next morning. Daily survey data gathered over the course of 1 work week from 166 public administration employees analyzed with a hierarchical linear modeling approach showed that low psychological detachment from work during the evening predicted negative activation and fatigue, whereas mastery experiences during the evening predicted positive activation and relaxation predicted serenity. Sleep quality showed relations with all affective states variables. This study adds to research on job-stress recovery and affect regulation by showing which specific experiences from the nonwork domain may improve affect before the start of the next working day.     

High school students’ career decision-making process: A longitudinal study of one choice

This study investigated high school students’ process of choosing a study in higher education, using a longitudinal design. A sample of 535 adolescents participated at the beginning, middle, and end of Grade 12. Latent curve modeling revealed evidence for a mean developmental increase in the career decisional tasks of orientation, exploration, decisional status, and commitment. In general, the growth trajectories were in line with theoretical models in which orientation and broad exploration are important at the beginning of the career decision-making process whereas in-depth exploration and decisional status are considered important later on. Furthermore, the results showed substantial variability between adolescents in their initial levels of career decisional tasks and in the rate of change. Finally, growth in orientation related to growth in environmental and self-exploration, and growth in environmental exploration related to progress in commitment and decisional status.     

When Small Means Comfortable: Relations Between Product Attributes in Two‐Sided Advertising

The processes that mediate the effectiveness of 2‐sided advertising were studied. We predicted that (a) 2‐sided (vs. 1‐sided) advertisements increase perceived source credibility and that (b) the logical relation between the negative and positive product attributes mentioned in the 2‐sided ad (e.g., little space, implying a cozy atmosphere) facilitates favorable inferences about the positive attributes, especially when recipients have sufficient time to process the message content. Results supported these predictions. However, the effects of message type and processing time on attitudes were mediated by inferences about positive attributes but not by perceived source credibility. Implications of these findings for consumer judgment and decision making are discussed.     

Constructing Gender: A Lens-Model Inspired Gender Communication Approach

In this experiment (n=115), I followed a lens-model approach (Brunswik, 1956) to investigate the communicative construction of gender. For this purpose, a situation was created in which gender was not clearly visible and thus existed mainly as a gender-assumption in the eye of the beholder. The study featured the perception of a team leader during a team-meeting presented in a masked video-clip and either labeled as Mr. K or Mrs. K (Goldberg-paradigm study). Results suggested that the assumption of the leader's gender (gender-assumption) had a systematic impact on trait-ratings of the leader in the unexpected direction that “women” were rated higher on agentic traits than “men.” This was interpreted as an expectancy-based double-standard effect in leadership perception on the basis of nonverbal cue utilization. Furthermore, differences in the predictive values of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic cues were suggested in the analysis of verbal cue utilization. Overall, the lens-model perspective provides a useful framework by making perceptual and behavioral processes of gender construction more transparent.     

The relationship between high performance and knowledge about how to master cooperation situations

This paper applies the expertise approach to cooperation settings and examines high performers' knowledge about cooperation situations. We argue that high performers know more about how to address cooperation situations than do moderate performers. Specifically, we assume that they know more about problem analysis, about how to address the task, the cooperation partner and the cooperation partners' task approach. We report findings of two empirical studies in which study participants responded to scenario situations. The first study based on a sample of 39 software professionals showed that high performers were superior with respect to overall knowledge and specific knowledge aspects. The second study based on a sample of 62 engineers partially replicated these findings. High performers' better knowledge of cooperation situations could not be explained by years of experience or perspective taking. However, situation‐specific experiences partially accounted for the relationship between performance level and knowledge. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Further examination of the convergent and discriminant validity of the student–teacher relationship scale

Two studies extended psychometric research on the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) with kindergarten and preschool children (N₁ = 60–71; N₂ = 35) and their teachers. These studies used a multi‐method approach to replicate and extend previous findings concerning the convergent validity of the STRS Closeness, Conflict, and Dependency scale and to further examine the discriminant validity of the STRS. Study 1 investigated convergence between the STRS scales and child‐ and peer‐reports of the same constructs based on a multi‐trait multi‐method approach. Study 2 examined the pattern of associations between the STRS and indicators of teacher–child relationship quality rated by external observers. Support was found for the convergent validity and to a lesser extent the discriminant validity of the STRS Closeness and Conflict scale. For the STRS Dependency scale, additional research remains necessary. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interlimb coordination: Learning and transfer under different feedback conditions

The role of intrinsic and extrinsic information feedback in learning a new bimanual coordination pattern was investigated. The pattern required continuous flexion-extension movements of the upper limbs with a 90 ° phase offset. Separate groups practiced the task under one of the following visual feedback conditions: (a) blindfolded (reduced FB group), (b) with normal vision (normal FB group), or (c) with concurrent relative motion information (enhanced FB group). All groups were subjected to three different transfer test conditions at regular intervals during practice. These tests included reduced, normal vision, and enhanced vision conditions. Experiment 1 showed that the group receiving augmented information feedback about its relative motions in real-time produced the required coordination pattern more successfully than the remaining two groups, irrespective of the transfer conditions under which performance was evaluated. Experiment 2 replicated and extended the superiority of the enhanced feedback group during acquisition and retention. Experiment 3 demonstrated that successful transfer to various transfer test conditions was not a result of test-trial effects. Overall, the data suggest that the conditions that optimized performance of the coordination pattern during acquisition also optimized transfer performance.