Relationship between trust in appraisal and appraisal effectiveness: A field study

The current study examined the influence of trust in the appraisal system on ratees' reactions to performance evaluations. One-hundred and sixty eight bank tellers completed an instrument that assessed their trust in the appraisal system, appraisal satisfaction, perceived utility of evaluations, behavioral intention to improve performance, and intention to leave the job. Trust and performance evaluations were significant predictors of ratee reactions to appraisals and intention to improve on performance weaknesses. In addition, performance ratings were a better predictor of intention to improve on performance weaknesses for ratees who had high trust in the appraisal system. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Miami, Florida, April, 1990.     

Surviving a failure: Efficacy and a laboratory based test of the hopelessness model of depression

Abramson, Metalsky and Alloy's (1989) revision of the reformulated model of helplessness and depression to hopelessness theory introduced the possibility of additional diatheses for depression. The present paper describes a laboratory-based test of the hopelessness model which provides an opportunity to explore the role of efficacy in relation to the new model and to extend its application to anxiety. Undergraduate students were asked to complete a general ability test and received false feedback which led them to believe that they had performed less well than they had anticipated. Attributional style was found to be predictive of increase in anxiety following failure feedback. The interaction between attributional style and eficacy was found to predict depression. Among subjects who were low in efficacy attributional style was significantly related to depression. While the study provided partial support for hopelessness theory it indicates a role for the assessment of efficacy as a moderator variable within the model.     

Role of intertrial interval following an escape or avoidance response in bar-press avoidance

In three experiments, rats learned bar-press avoidance as a function of the intertrial interval following an escape or an avoidance. The general hypothesis is that the length of these intervals affects bar-press avoidance differentially, depending on whether an avoidance follows an escape (avoidance/escape) or an avoidance (avoidance/avoidance) on the previous trial. Specifically, it is proposed that short escape ITIs will facilitate avoidance/escape and avoidance/avoidance, while avoidance ITIs will have no effect on avoidance responding. The results tend to support this hypothesis. The shorter the intertrial interval following an escape, the higher the probability of both measures: avoidance/escape and avoidance/avoidance. No effect of avoidance interval was found on avoidance/avoidance. Unpredictedly, however, it was found that in comparison to a very short intertrial interval following an avoidance (0.5 sec), relatively long intervals (5 and 45 sec) facilitate avoidance/escape. These results were interpreted as mainly reflecting nonassociative factors such as shock-produced activity.     

Efficacy of self-instructional training for reducing children''s anxiety in an evaluative situation

Fifty-six fourth-grade children were categorized as either high or low in trait anxiety and then assigned to a self-instruction treatment, minimal-treatment, or no-treatment control condition. At both pretest and posttest, the subjects recited a memorized poem while being videotaped with the expectation that they would be judged on their performance. State anxiety measures, a behavior rating of anxiety, a measure of performance accuracy and the time involved in reciting a poem were obtained at both pretest and posttest. Contrary to expectation, the self-instructional training resulted in subjects' exhibiting greater signs of behavioral anxiety, subjects' hurrying through the task (taking less time to recite the poem) and high trait-anxiety subjects' reporting more state anxiety while anticipating reciting the poem. Correlational analyses indicated that trait anxiety was significantly related to the measures of state anxiety and the behavior rating of anxiety but not to performance accuracy.     

How to maximize reward rate on two variable-interval paradigms

Without assuming any constraints on behavior, we derive the policy that maximizes overall reward rate on two variable-interval paradigms. The first paradigm is concurrent variable time-variable time with changeover delay. It is shown that for nearly all parameter values, a switch to the schedule with the longer interval should be followed immediately by a switch back to the schedule with the shorter interval. The matching law does not hold at the optimum and does not uniquely specify the obtained reward rate. The second paradigm is discrete trial concurrent variable interval-variable interval. For given schedule parameters, the optimal policy involves a cycle of a fixed number of choices of the schedule with the shorter interval followed by one choice of the schedule with the longer interval. Molecular maximization sometimes results in optimal behavior.     

Violations of stochastic transitivity on concurrent chains: Implications for theories of choice

The concurrent-chains procedure has been used to measure how choice depends on various aspects of reinforcement, such as its delay and its magnitude. Navarick and Fantino (1972, 1974, 1975) have found that choice in this procedure can violate the condition of stochastic transitivity that is required if a unidimensional scale for reinforcements is to be possible. It is shown in this paper that two simple unidimensional models of choice on concurrent chains can produce violations of stochastic transitivity. It is argued that such violations may result from the complex contingencies of the concurrent-chains procedure.     

If the boy loves the girl and the girl loves the dog,does the boy love the dog?: The overgeneralization of verbal transitive inference skills

Two studies investigated 4- to 10-year-old children's capacity to make verbal transitive inferences. The results of the two studies suggest that the development of transitive inference skills follows a specific to general developmental path, and that children overgeneralize their verbal transitive inference skills to inappropriate relational terms prior to determining the general principle that underlies the use of relational terms in transitive sentences.     

The Priority of the Now

This article motivates and develops a new theory of time: priority presentism. Priority presentism is the view according to which (i) only present entities exist fundamentally and (ii) past and future entities exist, but they are grounded in the present. The articulation of priority presentism is an exercise in applied grounding: it draws on concepts from the recent literature on ontological dependence and applies those concepts in a new way, to the philosophy of time. The result, as I will argue, is an attractive position that can do much of the same work in satisfying our intuitions about time as presentism, but without the ontological cost.