What do we measure and how do we elicit it? The case for the use of repertory grid technique in multi-party psychological contract research

ABSTRACT

The psychological contract is a multi-faceted construct and, with the rise of gig work, increasingly the contract extends beyond the conventional employer-employee relationship to encompass multi-party exchanges. Against this backdrop, the question of what should be measured when assessing the contract and how it should be elicited remains a significant issue for scholars. We argue that the potential of psychological contract theory as an explanatory lens in understanding contemporary multi-party working relationships is constrained by two key limitations inherent in conventional measurement approaches. Firstly, such approaches have favoured singular rather than multiparty perspectives, and secondly, they have broadly accorded equal weight and significance to the content dimensions unearthed, despite the fact that they may differ markedly in how they are understood by each party to the employment relationship. In order to remedy these shortcomings, we make the case for adopting repertory grid technique as a methodological framework to address measurement limitations and to more rigorously assess the content of the complex multi-party psychological contract.     

Dispelling the illusion of invulnerability: the motivations and mechanisms of resistance to persuasion

Three studies examined the impact of a treatment designed to instill resistance to deceptive persuasive messages. Study 1 demonstrated that after the resistance treatment, ads using illegitimate authority-based appeals became less persuasive, and ads using legitimate appeals became more persuasive. In Study 2, this resistance generalized to novel exemplars, persevered over time, and appeared outside of the laboratory context. In Study 3, a procedure that dispelled participants' illusions of invulnerability to deceptive persuasion maximized resistance to such persuasion. Overall, the present studies demonstrate that attempts to confer resistance to appeals will likely be successful to the extent that they install 2 conceptual features: perceived undue manipulative intent of the source of the appeal and perceived personal vulnerability to such manipulation.     

Prejudice and stereotype maintenance processes: attention, attribution, and individuation

Three experiments examined the relationship between prejudice and processing of stereotypic information. Higher levels of prejudice were associated with greater attention to and more thorough encoding of stereotype-inconsistent than stereotype-consistent behaviors but only when processing capacity was plentiful (Experiments 1 and 3). High-prejudice participants attributed consistent behaviors to internal factors and inconsistent behaviors to external forces (Experiment 2). Together, these results suggest that high-prejudice people attend carefully to inconsistent behaviors to explain them away but only if they have sufficient resources to do so. Results also showed that low-prejudice but not high-prejudice participants formed individuated impressions by integrating the implications of the target's behaviors (i.e., individuating). High levels of prejudice appear to be associated with biased encoding and judgment processes that may serve to maintain stereotypes.     

Comparing performance by parents and offspring on a rapid tapping task

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between 42 parents' and their offsprings' performance on a rapid tapping task. It was expected that genetic predispositions would gradually limit children's performance on a tapping task as they matured chronologically. Four different age groups of children and their parents performed the tapping task on different sizes of boards. Repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated that, while parents' mean performance was generally higher than that of their children (F = 32.89, p < .001), the difference was affected by the children's age, which hand was used, and the board size. Spearman rank correlation scores between parents' and children's overall performances gradually increased across age groups (p = -.29, -.10, .47, and .40, respectively, from younger to older age groups). This finding suggests that the potential of youngsters' future performance may be predicted with greater certainty by observing their parents' present performance. This may improve the predictive power of planned programs.     

Examining the construct validity of the Eating Disorder Inventory

The construct validity of the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) was examined in 3 samples. An archival clinic sample (n = 318) of women completed the EDI, a structured interview, and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) indicated that neither null nor 1-factor models of the EDI fit item-level or item-parcel data. The proposed 8-factor model did not fit at the item level but did fit item-parcel data. Reliability estimates of the 8 scales ranged from .82 to .93, and low-to-moderate interscale correlations among the eating and weight-related scales provided partial support for convergent validity. EDI personality scales showed moderate interscale correlations and were associated with MCMI-II scales. A final CFA of the EDI scales supported a 2-factor model (Eating and Weight, Personality) of the 8 EDI scales. Strong associations between depression and several EDI scale scores were found in a treatment study sample (n = 50). The archival clinic sample scored significantly higher on the 8 EDI scales than the nonpatient college comparison sample (n = 487).     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the WMS-III in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

Five competing models specifying the factor structure underlying the Wechsler Memory Scale-Third Edition (D. Wechsler, 1997b) primary subtest scores were evaluated in a sample of patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (N = 254). Models specifying separate immediate and delayed constructs resulted in inadmissible parameter estimates and model specification error. There were negligible goodness-of-fit differences between a 3-factor model of working memory, auditory memory, and visual memory and a nested--more parsimonious--2-factor model of working memory and general memory. The results suggest that specifying a separate visual memory factor provides little advantage for this sample--an unexpected finding in a population with lateralized dysfunction, for which one might have predicted separate auditory and visual memory dimensions.     

Differential Attention as a Mechanism of Change in Parent–Child Interaction Therapy: Support from Time-Series Analysis

Although many interventions address children’s externalizing behavior problems, negative treatment outcomes remain common. Reasons for success or failure are frequently unclear, due in part to a lack of research identifying treatment change mechanisms. The current study evaluated differential attention as a mechanism of change in Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), a treatment for children with externalizing problems. Using sequential coding and time-series analysis, we examined parent–child interactions across treatment for three families. Contrary to hypotheses, child prosocial behaviors and parent skill use held steady or decreased across coaching periods, with the exception of one family, where the parent’s skill use increased during coaching. Partial support was found for the hypothesis that parent differential attention would predict child prosocial behavior in the next minute. These results provide support for differential attention as a mechanism of change, but also demonstrate that this factor is not the only such mechanism.