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.     

Ingroup Versus Outgroup Perceptions of the Characteristics of High-Risk Youth: Negative Stereotyping1

Adolescents tend to categorize themselves and their peers into discrete ingroups and outgroups. A comparison of ingroup versus outgroup perceptions of the characteristics of high-risk youth was investigated. Based on current stereotype research, we examined the perspective that outgroup members would hold a more extreme stereotype of high-risk youth compared to the perceptions of ingroup members. A total of 955 7th- and 10th-grade southern California adolescents completed a questionnaire regarding the characteristics of their own peer group and a high-risk group. Support was obtained for an extremity of judgement effect. Outgroup youth perceived that their high-risk peers engaged in fewer school and nonschool low-risk activities, more high-risk activities, and greater drug use than did ingroup members. Outgroup members also held perceptions of high-risk youth as less likely to hold a white-collar job than did the ingroup members. The perceptions that adolescents have of these groups may play major roles in their own social behavior. The implications of these results for future tobacco use prevention programs are considered.     

Delay reduction: current status.

Delay-reduction theory states that the effectiveness of a stimulus as a conditioned reinforcer may be predicted most accurately by the reduction in time to primary reinforcement correlated with its onset. We review support for the theory and then discuss two new types of experiments that assess it. One compares models of choice in situations wherein the less preferred outcome is made more accessible; the other investigates whether frequency of conditioned reinforcement affects choice beyond the effect exerted by frequency of primary reinforcement.     

Unification of models for choice between delayed reinforcers.

Two models for choice between delayed reinforcers, Fantino's delay-reduction theory and Killeen's incentive theory, are reviewed. Incentive theory is amended to incorporate the effects of arousal on alternate types of behavior that might block the reinforcement of the target behavior. This amended version is shown to differ from the delay-reduction theory in a term that is an exponential in incentive theory and a difference in delay-reduction theory. A power series approximation to the exponential generates a model that is formally identical with delay-reduction theory. Correlations between delay-reduction theory and the amended incentive theory show excellent congruence over a range of experimental conditions. Although the assumptions that gave rise to delay-reduction theory and incentive theory remain different and testable, the models deriving from the theories are unlikely to be discriminable by parametric experimental tests. This congruence of the models is recognized by naming the common model the delayed reinforcement model, which is then compared with other models of choice such as Killeen and Fetterman's (1988) behavioral theory of timing, Mazur's (1984) equivalence rule, and Vaughan's (1985) melioration theory.     

Construct validity and test-retest reliability of a date rape decision-latency measure

In two studies, the construct (convergent and discriminant) validity and test-retest reliability of a date rape decision-latency measure was examined. In Study 1, 174 college men completed measures related to sexual aggression and listened to an audiotaped simulation of a date rape, during which cues of nonconsent and force gradually escalated over time. Participants were instructed to respond, by pressing a button which recorded the latency of their decisions in seconds, if and when they believed the man depicted in the scenario should stop his sexual advances. Results demonstrated positive associations between prolonged decision latencies and sexually aggressive behavior, calloused sexual beliefs, acceptance of interpersonal violence, and sexual promiscuity. In Study 2, initial results were cross-validated in a sample of 102 college men, and discriminant validity was established as decision latencies were unassociated with measures of social desirability, alcohol consumption and drug use. Test-retest reliability assessed over a 2-week interval was .87.The authors wish to thank Alan Gross and Brian Marx for providing the audiotaped stimulus materials, Richard Marsh for writing the decision-latency computer program, Jason Hicks for assisting with programming, and the undergraduate research assistants for serving as experimenters.     

Social Values and Relationships with Parents among American College Women of Chinese and European Descent

This study compared social values and relationships with parents among American college women of Chinese and European descent. Chinese-American women scored higher on a measure of practicality and pragmatism (mastery), hierarchy, and traditionality. The Euro-American women showed a greater interest in voluntary prosocial behaviour and philanthropy. Both groups of women reported having a sense of self, autonomous of their parents. Within the Chinese-American group, ethnic identification and religion, but not generation, moderated scores on a measure of traditionality of outlook regarding issues of law and order and social equality. We discuss the implications of our findings for recent debates in cross-cultural psychology, including the growing challenge to the individualism-collectivism dimension.     

The double bind of caregiving: Representation of gendered emotion in American advice literature

Parent advice books written for the traditional, intact biological family represent maternal and paternal emotion quite differently from one another [S. A. Shields and B. A. Koster (1989) Emotional Stereotyping of Parents in Child-Rearing Manuals, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 52, pp. 44–55]. This study examined gender-specific references to emotion in advice books directed to adoptive parents, step-parents, single parents, and married couples in order to determine the relationship between beliefs about women's and men's emotional natures and beliefs about caregiving. The gendered representation of caregivers' emotion is remarkably consistent across time, parenting genre, and author characteristics. Books directed to parents portray women as at risk for excessive emotions (both positive and negative) that have negative developmental impact on the child. In contrast, men are largely encouraged to be emotionally expressive, and when they are cautioned about their emotional display, the caution is restricted to negative emotions that are elicited by external emotional hazards: the children, the spouse (or ex-spouse), or the situation. In contrast, marriage manuals portray spouses as mutually responsible for their own and their spouse's emotional well-being. Husbands and wives are encouraged to express unlimited positive emotion and to engage in moderated ventilation of negative emotion. In our discussion of these results we consider the role of emotion representation in promoting a culture of mother blaming.We are indebted to Diane Early, Diane Hayashino, Nancy Kohn, and Sonja Jensen for their assistance in collecting and interpreting the data. This research was supported by University of California, Davis, Faculty Research Grants to S. Shields.     

AN EXPERIENTIALLY DERIVED BASE-RATE ERROR IN HUMANS

Abstract— Two experiments tested college students in a delayed matching-to-sample procedure designed to explore how multiple competitive sources of control interact in determining choice behavior. The primary sources of potential control were the frequency with which each of two colors was correct (base rates) and the accuracy of a sample in predicting the correct choice (accuracy rate). In one experiment, subjects ignored the base rates, and therefore made nonoptimal choices. These results mimicked the well-known base-rate error found in verbal responses to questions. In a second experiment, manipulations to increase subjects' motivation did not alleviate the error significantly. Together, these results suggest that the base-rate error may represent a broad behavioral pattern not restricted to verbal arenas. The results are compared with previous attempts to reconcile behavioral and cognitive lines of experimentation.     

Human choice in concurrent ratio-interval schedules of reinforcement.

Seven undergraduates participated in a concurrent-choice experiment with monetary reinforcers. Response-independent analogues of variable-interval and variable-ratio schedules were used to assess whether subjects would maximize reinforcement rate. The optimal pattern of behavior, in terms of maximizing reinforcement rate, involved a large bias toward the ratio alternative, with only occasional sampling of the interval schedule. Most experiments with pigeons, however, demonstrate matching of response rates to reinforcement rates, with only slight biases for the ratio schedule. Although subjects in the present experiment allocated more time to the ratio alternative than required by matching, the magnitude of the bias did not approximate that predicted by a maximizing account. After exposure to clock stimuli correlated with the operation of each schedule, 1 subject's behavior did show a substantial level of bias, increasing the total number of reinforcers obtained, and lay at a point between the predictions of matching and maximizing. The other subjects, however, continued to respond less optimally. The present results can be accounted for by a view of matching that incorporates the effects of delayed reinforcement.