The Influence of Social Regard on the Customer–Service Firm Relationship: The Moderating Role of Length of Relationship

Purpose  

The authors examine the influence of employees’ social regard toward the customers on customer satisfaction, trust, and word of mouth. In addition, we analyzed the moderating role of length of relationship between the service provider and the customer on the effects of social regard on the customer relationship outcomes.     

Criteria‐based content analysis of true and suggested accounts of events

Worldwide, the criteria‐based content analysis (CBCA) is probably the most widely used veracity assessment technique for discriminating between accounts of true and fabricated events. In this study, two experiments examined the effectiveness of the CBCA for discriminating between accounts of true events and suggested events believed to be true. In Experiment 1, CBCA‐trained judges evaluated participants' accounts of true and suggestively planted childhood events. In Experiment 2, judges analysed accounts of recent events that were experimentally manipulated to be a (a) true experience, (b) false experience believed to be true and (c) deliberately fabricated experience. In both experiments CBCA scores were significantly higher for accounts of true events than suggested events. However, this difference was not significant for participants classified as experiencing ‘full’ memories for the suggested event. Self‐report memory measures supported the findings of the CBCA analyses. Taken together these results suggest that the CBCA discriminative power is greatly constrained. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What I Was Doing Versus What I Did: Verb Aspect Influences Memory and Future Actions

ABSTRACT— This research examined whether describing past actions as ongoing using the imperfective aspect (rather than describing them as completed using the perfective aspect) promotes memory for action-relevant knowledge and reenactment of these actions in a future context. In Experiment 1 , participants who used the imperfective aspect to describe their strategy on a prior interpersonal task were more likely to use this strategy on a later task than were participants who used the perfective aspect to describe their prior strategy. Experiment 2 demonstrated that describing behaviors on a task using the imperfective rather than the perfective aspect increased willingness to resume that task by improving memory for task contents. The last two experiments showed that the effects of the imperfective aspect on memory decayed over time and that the imperfective aspect facilitated performance of a future behavior only when the described past behavior was relevant to the future behavior. Thus, the effects of aspect are moderated by memory decay and are behavior-specific.     

Beliefs About Psychological Services (BAPS): development and psychometric properties

A scale to measure attitudes towards seeking psychological help was developed (Beliefs About Psychological Services [BAPS]) and evaluated. This scale was based on items gathered from students, colleagues, and the authors when asked about common positive and negative attitudes toward psychologists and their services. Items were also based on the Fischer and Turner (1970 Fischer, EH and Turner, JLeB. 1970. Orientations to seeking professional help: Development and research utility of an attitude scale. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35: 79–90. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]) Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Services (ATSPPH) measure. Three studies are reported describing the construction and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the BAPS. The BAPS is an 18-item measure consisting of three subscales: Intent, Stigma Tolerance, and Expertness. Support was found for the reliability and validity of the measure.     

Direct and indirect effects of parents' education on reading achievement among third graders in Sweden

Background Cultural capital in families and especially, the educational level of parents, has during the last decades been found to be the most important dimension of socio‐economic influence on school performance. How the transmission of cultural capital over generations is concretized is however not yet fully investigated. Aims The aim is to unfold the influence of home background and more specifically, to reveal some important mediating factors between the educational levels of parents and the reading achievement levels of children. Sample Data comes from the Swedish participation in Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2001 conducted by the The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and comprises some 10,000 students in grade 3. Methods The effects of parents' education on reading achievement are estimated with structural equation modelling. Results The results reveal that the total effect of parents' education is substantial and that almost half of this effect is mediated through other variables, i.e. the number of books at home, early literacy activities, and emergent literacy abilities at the time for school start. The article thus identifies some of the mechanisms through which parents' education exert an influence on children's literacy development. Conclusions Cultural reproduction starts in the very early childhood, in informal settings where reading aloud is an important activity. The knowledge of written language that children have at the time for school‐start influences further reading acquisition.     

Multi-Modal CTL: Completeness,Complexity, and an Application

We define a multi-modal version of Computation Tree Logic (ctl) by extending the language with path quantifiers E ^δ and A ^δ where δ denotes one of finitely many dimensions, interpreted over Kripke structures with one total relation for each dimension. As expected, the logic is axiomatised by taking a copy of a ctl axiomatisation for each dimension. Completeness is proved by employing the completeness result for ctl to obtain a model along each dimension in turn. We also show that the logic is decidable and that its satisfiability problem is no harder than the corresponding problem for ctl. We then demonstrate how Normative Systems can be conceived as a natural interpretation of such a multi-dimensional ctl logic. Presented by Jacek Malinowski     

Social Policies in Uruguay: A View from the Political Dimension of Community Psychology

This paper approaches social policy (SP) from the political perspective considered by Montero (Critical psychology: An introduction, Sage, London, pp 231–244, 1997; Community, Work and Family 1(1):65–78, 1998; Introducción a la Psicología Comunitaria. Desarrollo, conceptos y procesos, Paidos, Buenos Aires, pp 89–114, pp 255–284, 2004; Hacer para transformar. El método en la Psicología Comunitaria, Paidos, Buenos Aires, pp 229–256, 2004) as a paradigmatic dimension of community psychology. The field of SP, the characteristics of certain SPs and the role of SP in the production and reproduction of the subjectivities of those subject to them in Uruguay are described and an analysis given of the challenge posed by going from a compensatory or palliative to a transformative mode of SP. It is proposed that identification of, and understanding and intervention in, psychosocial processes in the field are the keys to maximising the likelihood of SPs assuming a transformative character. Psychosocial aspects and participatory processes implicit in the relationship between the State and civil society are discussed. Finally, some orientations for community psychological intervention in this field of action are proposed.     

Is the attribution of cultural differences to minorities an expression of racial prejudice?

The social psychological literature considers two main perspectives on the study of perceived cultural differences between majorities and minorities: one proposes that perception of cultural differences is an antecedent of prejudice and another states that the attribution of cultural differences to minorities is already a hidden expression of racial prejudice. This paper offers further support to this latter perspective. One hundred and ninety-four participants answered a questionnaire measuring (1) general racist belief; (2) cultural differences attributed to Black people (hetero-ethnicization); (3) the asymmetric attribution of secondary and primary emotions to the in-group and to Black people (infra-humanization); (4) the asymmetric attribution of natural and cultural traits to in-group members and to Black people (ontologization); and (5) negative evaluation of this social category. The general racist belief scale was not anchored in a specific group and measured the belief in the inferiority of certain social groups or peoples based on biological or cultural factors. Relationships between the scales were analysed through a set of Structural Equation Models. According to the predictions, results showed that the attribution of cultural differences is a dimension of prejudice. Results also showed that attribution of cultural differences, negative evaluation of Black people, ontologization, and infra-humanization were different dimensions of a common latent factor that can be identified as racial prejudice; and that prejudice was predicted by general racist belief. Results are discussed in the light of the study of the impact of perceived cultural differences on intergroup relations and in the light of the "new racism" approaches.     

Loyalty and Creativity in a Disciplinary Organization

The relationship between loyalty to rules and the creativity that attempts to improve those same rules was examined among Norwegian army officers deployed in international operations. Today's army officers are faced with rapidly changing work conditions and unpredictable enemies, both of which challenge and outdate rules and routines. They thus may experience that they are either guided by too few or inadequate rules, or by many rules that need to be constantly updated. Assuming that following rules is advantageous to officers, then, contrary to classical theory, it was hypothesized that officers scoring both low and high on loyalty to rules would score high on creativity. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed a significant U‐shaped relationship between loyalty to rules and creativity.