An examination of blue- versus white-collar workers’ conceptualizations of job satisfaction facets

This study examined the degree to which blue- versus white-collar workers differentially conceptualize various job facets, namely the work itself, co-workers, supervisors, and pay. To examine these potential differences, we conducted a series of analyses on job satisfaction ratings from two samples of university workers. Consistent with the study hypothesis, results revealed that blue- and white-collar workers held different conceptualizations regarding the nature of co-workers, pay, and the work itself, but not of supervisors. In general, more dimensions for each facet emerged for the white-collar workers, suggesting that these individuals possess more differentiated and multidimensional evaluations of these job facets than do blue-collar workers. Discussion focuses on the meaning and implications of the findings.     

Who's Right About the Right? Comparing Competing Explanations of the Link Between White Evangelicals and Conservative Politics in the United States

Five competing explanations for why white evangelicals hold right‐of‐center political attitudes are examined using data from the 2000–2004 National Election Studies. Dependent variables include attitudes about abortion, homosexuality, immigration, national defense, and social spending. The five competing explanations accounting for conservative positions are: religiosity, moral standards traditionalism, gender and family ideology, class culture, and cultural geography. Moral standards traditionalism attenuated the evangelical effect on attitudes about abortion, homosexuality, and social spending. Religiosity and male‐dominant gender ideology attenuated the effect on abortion and homosexuality only. In a second set of models, which include members of all major religious groups, these three variables, together with low levels of education, were significantly associated with conservative attitudes. Moral standards traditionalism demonstrated the most consistent, and generally the strongest, effects across dependent variables.     

Acculturative Stress Among Cuban American College Students: Exploring the Mediating Pathways Between Acculturation and Psychosocial Functioning

We examined different dimensions of acculturative stress in mediating the association between acculturation and psychosocial functioning among 199 Cuban American college students (M age = 20.1 years) in Miami. Results showed that heritage‐cultural orientation was directly associated with self‐esteem. No other direct relations emerged. Spanish competency pressures and pressures against acculturation mediated the relationships between heritage‐cultural orientation and internalizing symptoms, whereas pressures to acculturate mediated the association between American cultural orientation and self‐esteem. These findings highlight the unique roles of different components of acculturative stress in the relationship of heritage and American cultural orientation to Cuban American adolescents' psychosocial well‐being. Implications regarding the multidimensionality of acculturation and of acculturative stress are discussed.     

Background shifts affect explanatory style: how a pragmatic theory of explanation accounts for background effects in the generation of explanations

Cognitive scientists are interested in explanation because it provides a window into the cognition that underlies one’s understanding of the world. We argue that the study of explanation has tended to focus on what makes an explanation “bona fide” as opposed to the processes involved in how the explanation is generated. In the current study, we asked participants to respond to the request for an explanation within a novel domain after we manipulated their initial exposure to the domain, and thus the background of the request. In two experiments, we found evidence that the background shaped participants’ interpretations of the prompt for the explanation and that this, in turn, influenced whether they used a causal or functional style of explanation when responding to the prompt. We also asked participants to evaluate a number of explanations and found that the manipulation of the background did not have the same effect on the evaluative tasks. Our data support a pragmatic approach (e.g. The scientific image. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980) to the study of explanation generation, a philosophical approach which argues that the background influences the interpretation of the question, the development of a relevance relation which connects the question and explanation, and the identification of some set of candidate answers. We also suggest there is an important difference between the process of generating an explanation and evaluating an explanation, a difference that has escaped the attention of cognitive scientists thus far.     

Using Attributions to Understand the Effects of Explanations on Applicant Reactions: Are Reactions Consistent With the Covariation Principle?1

Research has shown that explanations for selection decisions may influence a variety of applicant perceptions and behavior, but an understanding of how and why this occurs remains largely unknown. This study attempts to understand the effects of explanations by adopting Kelley's (1967, 1972) covariation model of the attribution process. Specifically, explanations that vary on consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency covariation information should produce predictable effects on applicant perceptions and attributions. Results from 2 studies, the first a laboratory study and the second a field study with actual applicants, support the utility of the covariation model for understanding the influence of explanations for selection decisions on locus attributions, fairness, self‐perceptions, and organizational attractiveness. These results suggest that the covariation model may be a useful means to construe the explanation‐attribution‐perception relationship, and thus provide a number of theoretical and practical implications.     

Family Functioning, Self-Concept, and Severity of Adolescent Externalizing Problems

We investigated direct and shared effects of family functioning and self-concept on the severity of adolescent externalizing problems in a sample of 224 clinically referred adolescents. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed strong, direct relationships between problem behaviors and both family functioning and self-concept. Using R. M. Baron and D. A. Kenny's (1986) and G. N. Holmbeck's (1997) criteria for testing mediation in SEM, family functioning partially mediated the relationship between self-concept and problem behaviors. A moderation model, testing the relationship between externalizing problems and the interaction between family functioning and self-concept, did not yield a significant effect. Our findings indicate that self-concept and family functioning exert direct and shared effects on externalizing problems and suggest that interventions for clinically referred adolescents should target both the individual adolescent and his/her family.     

Reliability and Validity of the Complex Postformal Thought Questionnaire: Assessing Adults’ Cognitive Development

Three studies investigated the psychometric properties of the complex postformal thought (PFT) questionnaire (Sinnott, unpublished scale, 1998; Sinnott and Johnson 1997), which is a measure of adult cognitive development. The scale was found to be moderately reliable (α = .63). To assess construct validity, a comparison of participants’ performance on the PFT scale to their performance on the Need for Cognition scale was conducted, which indicated the PFT scale is valid measure of complex thought. Factor analysis reduced the scale to three factors, which correspond to important components of PFT: Multiple Elements, Subjective Choice, and Underlying Complexities. Implications for understanding the nature of adult cognitive development and the usefulness of this new measure for research in this area are discussed.     

Acquisition of hierarchical reactive skills in a unified cognitive architecture

In this paper, we review Icarus, a cognitive architecture that utilizes hierarchical skills and concepts for reactive execution in physical environments. In addition, we present two extensions to the framework. The first involves the incorporation of means-ends analysis, which lets the system compose known skills to solve novel problems. The second involves the storage of new skills that are based on successful means-ends traces. We report experimental studies of these mechanisms on three distinct domains. Our results suggest that the two methods interact to acquire useful skill hierarchies that generalize well and that reduce the effort required to handle new tasks. We conclude with a discussion of related work on learning and prospects for additional research, including extending the framework to cover developmental phenomena.     

Remembrance of Eyewitness Testimony: Effects of Emotional Content,Self‐Relevance,and Emotional Tone1

This experiment concerned the effects of emotional content, self‐relevance, and emotional tone of testimony on memory. Eyewitness accounts of 4 events were constructed that systematically differed in emotionality and self‐relevance. The testimony, captured on videotape, was expressed with or without negative emotion. After viewing one of the videotaped accounts, participants were administered cued‐recall and recognition memory tests. Significant main effects indicated that participants best remembered testimony that was emotional in content, self‐relevant, and negatively expressed. Although emotional content and self‐relevance interacted to affect state anxiety, the latter did not mediate memory effects. Overall, significant gender differences in state anxiety but not memory emerged. Implications for understanding the influence of emotion on juror memory are discussed.