Subjective power and emotions in everyday interpersonal interactions: Counterparts' constrictive posture as moderator

Power is one of the vital components embedded within interpersonal interactions, but few studies have studied it in everyday life context. This experience sampling study examined the associations of subjective power with emotional well-being and investigated the moderating effects of counterpart' postures in the associations. Our results demonstrated that individuals reported higher positive emotions and lower negative emotions when they perceived higher subjective power. Their positive emotions were positively correlated with counterparts' expansive postures while negative emotions were positively correlated with counterparts' constrictive postures. The subjective power-negative emotion associations were stronger when counterparts displayed higher level of constrictive posture. Our findings provide an evidence base for a comprehensive understanding on the role of subjective power and perception of counterparts' power-related posture in dyadic communications in emotional well-being.     

Individualism-Collectivism as a Boundary Condition for Effectiveness of Minority Influence in Decision Making

Results of this experiment demonstrate that individualists and collectivists react differently to minority influence. Based on the distinction between objectivity and preference norms in the minority influence literature, we hypothesize that individualism and collectivism influence (A) responses to minority influence (focusing on the target of influence) and (B) effectiveness of minority influence (focusing on the influence agent). Our results replicate past research and demonstrate improved decision quality for individuals exposed to a minority perspective. Moreover, minority influence targets with high horizontal individualism and low horizontal collectivism made higher quality decisions. Influence targets with high vertical collectivism demonstrated higher quality decisions when the influence agent held a high status position in the group. Results also demonstrate that influence agents with high vertical individualism experienced less role stress than those with low vertical individualism. Finally, influence agents with low role stress were more effective in influencing the decision making of others. We discuss our findings in terms of boundary conditions to the minority influence process.     

Expectation and cooperation in prisoner’s dilemmas: The moderating role of game riskiness

This paper investigated the effect of risk orientation, game riskiness, and expectation of cooperation on cooperation in one-shot prisoner’s dilemmas (PD). Participants in pairs played PD games that varied on game riskiness such that for half of the games cooperation was more risky than defection (more risky games) while for another half cooperation was less risky (less risky games). They estimated how likely it was that the other player was going to cooperate (expectation of cooperation) before they made their cooperation/defection decision on each game. Supporting the Goal/Expectation Hypothesis, we replicated the effect that expectation of cooperation enhanced cooperation. We also found that risk-seeking individuals cooperated more in more risky games whereas risk-averse individuals cooperated more in less risky games. More importantly, we found that game riskiness moderated the effect of expectation of cooperation on cooperation. The positive effect of expectation of cooperation on cooperation was stronger for more risky games than for less risky games. Our results illustrated how the relation between expectation and cooperation as stipulated by the Goal/Expectation Hypothesis was moderated by riskiness of the situations.     

The Moderating Role of Intergroup Contact in Race Composition,Perceived Similarity,and Applicant Attraction Relationships

Purpose

This study investigated the moderating effect of intergroup contact on the relationship between the race composition of organizational representatives, perceived similarity, and minority applicant attraction.

Design/Methodology/Approach

344 minority Malaysian-Chinese university students read a job advertisement that varied the racial composition of organizational representatives (100 % Malay or 50 % Malay–50 % Chinese or 100 % Chinese). Of these participants, 161 were Malaysian-Chinese in Malaysia (high intergroup contact location) and 183 were Malaysian-Chinese in Australia (low intergroup contact location). After reading the advertisement, participants responded to a series of scale items (e.g., perceived surface-level similarity, perceived deep-level similarity, and applicant attraction).

Findings

Results showed that the effect of race composition on attraction was stronger for minority participants in Australia than for minority participants in Malaysia. Perceived deep-level similarity mediated this moderated relationship.

Implications

The study findings suggest that organizations should include minority representatives in their recruitment advertising to attract minority applicants, particularly to attract minorities in locations with few opportunities for intergroup contact.

Originality/Value

By testing the mediating effects of perceived surface-level and deep-level similarity, this study contributes to our understanding of the mechanism linking the interaction between race composition and location with applicant attraction.