Correlates of organizational commitment: Differences in the public and private sector

Private and public sector managers were compared regarding their job characteristics and organizational commitment. We hypothesized that job characteristics would be positively related to commitment and that sector would moderate that relationship. Moderated regression analyses revealed partial support for both hypotheses. The existence of clarity and challenge were positively related to commitment. Job characteristics demonstrated a stronger relationship with commitment among private sector managers. Explanations for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

The use of subtle items in detecting deception

When subjects attempt to fake psychopathology on the MMPI, scores on subtle subscales tend to be lower than those of nonfaking subjects. Our study hypothesized that this paradox comes about because the subtle subscales have no predictive validity, but their face validity for psychopathology is the opposite of the keyed direction for psychopathology. Subjects who attempt to fake psychopathology do so on the basis of item content and thus achieve lower rather than higher scores. Three groups of 80 undergraduates took the MMPI under regular, faking-good, or faking-bad instructions. As expected, faking-bad subjects scored significantly lower than regular subjects on the 100 most subtle items, and this was due to their responses to those. 73 of the items whose face validity was misleading. The results are consistent with other work showing valid uses of subtle items in detecting deception.     

Group Commitment and Resource Conservation: Two Field Experiments on Promoting Recycling1

Two experiments evaluated the effect of commitment on paper recycling. Using an ABA design, Experiment 1 asked 24 individuals in a retirement home to sign a 4-week group commitment pledge to recycle paper. During this intervention, the subjects recycled 47% more paper than they had during baseline. They continued to recycle at this level during a 4-week follow-up period, when the group commitment was removed. Experiment 2 evaluated the relative effectiveness of group commitment, individual commitment, and token reinforcers on paper recycling in a college dormitory. The students in all three experimental conditions recycled from three to five times more paper than those in the control group during the 4-week intervention. However, in the 3-week follow-up period, when the treatments were removed, only the individually committed subjects continued to recycle significantly more paper than the controls.     

Clinical multiplicity of cerebrovascular disorders in childhood

A group of 107 children with vascular diseases of the nervous system aged 3-14 years have been studied. In 100 children of the study group acute disturbances of the brain blood circulation have been found, out of which 37 children were with transitory ischemic attacks; 29 were found to be with brain ischaemia; 22-with haemorrhages (7 cases with subarchnoidal, 9 cases with intracerebral and 6 cases with subarachnoidal-parenchimatose); 5 children had wenous thromboses; 7 children were with spinal strokes. In other 7 children we found the presence of Sturge-Weber syndrome. Congenital vascular malformations have been found in 32 children (30%), out of which 16 children (15%) with loops and stenosis of the extracranial segments of the internal carotid artery, and another 16 children (15%) with AV-malformations. Congenital and acquired heart diseases are found to be primary cause for the strokes in 12 children (11%). Considerable is the rate of the epileptic seizures in the acute stage of the strokes as well as of the residual epileptic syndromes.     

Birth order and fear of success among midadolescents

While among 194 high school students 79 first-borns showed less fear of negative consequences of academic success than 78 last-borns and 37 middle-borns, no differences were observed on fear of increased positive attention or of increased responsibility.     

Smiling of preschool children in performance-oriented situations: assessment of the emotional significance in relation to other facial expressions

The goal of the reported experiment was to study how adults judge the meaning of different kinds of smiling and laughing by preschool children, and the role played by other facial movements in determining this meaning. Videotapes and photographs of spontaneous facial expressions of children in a play situation served as stimuli. The results show that different kinds of smiling were judged by the adult subjects as being significantly different from each other. In order to find subgroups within the stimuli, cluster analyses were performed, and the resulting clusters indicated different mixtures of positive and negative emotions contained within the pictures. Regression analyses showed that the adults' judgements were dependent on the number of indicators for positive and negative emotions which could be seen in the pictures. The most important indicator movement for the judged strength of the positive emotion expressed in the smile was the raising of the cheeks and, for negative emotions, the lowering of the lip corners. The significance of the components of the expressions as well as the strength of the expressed emotion were, however, dependent on the mode of presentation (video/photo).     

Bilingual language processing after a lesion in the left thalamic and temporal regions. A case report with early childhood onset.

This case study concerns an 18-year-old bilingual girl who suffered a radiation lesion in the left (dominant) thalamic and temporal region when she was 4 years old. Language and memory assessment revealed deficits in auditory short-term memory, auditory word comprehension, nonword repetition, syntactic processing, word fluency, and confrontation naming tasks. Both languages (English and Dutch) were found to be affected in a similar manner, despite the fact that one language (English) was acquired before and the other (Dutch) after the period of lesion onset. Most of the deficits appear to be related to verbal (short-term) memory dysfunction. Several hypotheses of subcortical involvement in memory processes are discussed with reference to existing theories in this area.     

Image statistics and the perception of apparent motion

The short- and long-range apparent motion processes are discussed in terms of the statistical properties of images. It is argued that the short-range process, exemplified by the random-dot kinematogram, is primarily sensitive to the dipole statistics, whereas the long-range process, exemplified by illusory occlusion, is treated by the visual system primarily in terms of the tripole and higher statistical correlation functions. The studies incorporate the balanced dot, which is a unique stimulus element that permits high pass filtering while preserving detailed positional information. Low spatial frequencies are shown to be critical for texture segregation in random-dot kinematograms, independent of the grain size or number density of texture elements. Illusory path perception in the long-range process is shown not to require low spatial frequencies, but is sensitive rather to global temporal phase coherency. These results are interpreted in terms of the respective roles of the power and phase spectra in perceptual organization. The construction of balanced dots is discussed in detail.     

A further validation of the bem sex role inventory: A multitrait-multimethod study

The present study used a multitrait-multimethod technique [D.T. Campbell and D. W. Fiske (1959) “Convergent and Discriminant Validation by the Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix,” Psychological Bulletin, 56, 81–105] to examine Bem's [(1974) “The Measurement of Psychological Androgyny,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 152–162] use of an instrumental-expressive dichotomy to conceptualize the Masculinity and Femininity scales of the Bem Sex Role Inventory as statistically orthogonal constructs. Results indicate that while perhaps reliable, masculinity and femininity lack clear convergent and discriminant validity. Therefore, Bem's contention that masculinity and femininity are orthogonal constructs is questioned. Results are discussed in light of trait- vs. method-driven research.