Diversity mindsets and the performance of diverse teams

Diversity can enhance as well as disrupt team performance. Diversity beliefs and climates may play an important moderating role in these effects, but it is unclear what form these should take to promote the positive effects of diversity. Addressing this question in an integration of research in team cognition and diversity, we advance the concept of diversity mindsets, defined as team members’ mental representations of team diversity. These mindsets capture diversity-related goals and associated procedural implications for goal achievement. We develop theory about the accuracy, sharedness, and awareness of sharedness of mindsets as moderators of the diversity-performance relationship. We also identify the determinants of these aspects of diversity mindsets. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model for the management of diversity.     

Changing the body image concern and eating behaviour of chronic dieters: The effects of a psychoeducational intervention

Abstract

A program designed to diminish body image concern and to normalise the eating of chronic dieters was evaluated experimentally and by monitoring outcomes for 12 months. The subjects were 82 females (mean age 44.4 years, mean BMI 31.4). Data from repeated measures of eating style, self-esteem and body shape concern revealed a strong, positive and enduring intervention effect. At 12 months the majority (86%) of the subjects were not dieting and 73% reported “sometimes” or “often” engaging in natural eating, i.e., unrestrained and physiologically cued eating. A positive relationship was found between extent of natural eating and the likelihood of weight loss or weight maintenance. It is concluded that female dieters can derive considerable benefits from programs promoting natural eating.     

Why women of lower educational attainment struggle to make healthier food choices: The importance of psychological and social factors

Women of lower educational attainment are more likely to eat unhealthy diets than women of higher educational attainment. To identify influences on the food choices of women with lower educational attainment, 11 focus groups (eight with women of lower, and three with women of higher educational attainment) were held. Using a semi-structured discussion guide, environmental, social, historical and psychological factors known to be associated with food choice were explored. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Compared to women of higher educational attainment, women of lower educational attainment had less control over their families’ food choices, less support for attempts to eat healthily, fewer opportunities to observe and learn good food-related practices, more negative affect, more perceived environmental constraints and more ambiguous beliefs about the consequences of eating a nutritious diet. These findings provide a starting point for taking forward the design of an intervention to improve the diets of young women.     

Do increases in physical activity encourage positive beliefs about further change in the ProActive cohort?

Effects of behaviour change on cognitions are rarely examined within the Theory of Planned Behaviour. We tested whether increases in physical activity resulted in more positive beliefs about further change among a cohort of sedentary adults participating in a behavioural intervention trial (ProActive). At baseline, 6 and 12 months, 365 adults completed questionnaires assessing physical activity and cognitions about becoming more active over the coming year. Objective activity was assessed at baseline and 12 months. Participants reporting larger increases in activity were no more positive about making further increases than those reporting less behaviour change (p-values > 0.05). Participants with larger increases in objective activity reported weaker perceived control (β?=??0.342; p?=?0.001) and more negative instrumental attitudes (β?=??0.230; p?=?0.017) at 12 months. Participants may have felt that they had changed enough or measures of perceived success may be more sensitive to behaviour change. Alternatively, long measurement intervals may have missed immediate cognitive and affective consequences of behaviour change, or such effects may require participants to consistently self-monitor or receive feedback on performance. Future studies could test the effect of such techniques on physical activity and a wider range of cognitive, affective and physiological consequences, using more frequent measurement intervals.     

Illness representations in patients with multimorbid long-term conditions: Qualitative study

Most research on illness representations explores how patients view single conditions, but many patients report more than one long-term condition (known as multimorbidity). It is not known how multimorbidity impacts on patient illness representations. This exploratory qualitative study examined patients’ representations of multimorbid long-term conditions and sought to assess how models of illness representation might need modification in the presence of multimorbidity. We explored two major issues: (1) the impact of multimorbidity on patient representations of their individual conditions and (2) the representation of multimorbidity itself. Twenty eight adults with at least two long-term conditions (mean of 4) were interviewed. The presence of multimorbidity impacted on patient illness representations in relation to the dimensions of identity, perceived cause, coherence and consequences. Representations of multimorbidity itself concerned representations of the burden of medication and perceived priorities among conditions and synergies and antagonisms between conditions and their management. The results have implications for the measurement of multimorbidity (through scales such as the Illness Perception Questionnaire) and the use of illness representations in the design and delivery of interventions to improve health behaviour and outcomes of patients with multiple long-term conditions.     

A Multilevel Investigation of the Influences of Employees' Resistance to Empowerment

We employed a multilevel research design to examine the effects of employees' resistance to empowerment. Survey responses were obtained from 637 customer service engineers who worked in 121 empowered teams. At the team level of analysis, resistance to empowerment climate related negatively to customer satisfaction as mediated by transition processes. In addition, resistance to empowerment climate evidenced an indirect relation with team performance via team action processes. At the individual level of analysis, employees' resistance to empowerment related negatively to their job satisfaction. Moreover, a cross-level relation was evidenced whereby team-level resistance to empowerment climate related negatively to job satisfaction, beyond that accounted for by the individual-level effects, as partially mediated by team interpersonal processes. Results are discussed in terms of the multilevel manner in which employees' resistance to empowerment can undermine organizational design changes.     

“Obedience to traditional authority:” A heritable factor underlying authoritarianism,conservatism and religiousness

Social attitudes, political attitudes and religiousness are highly inter-correlated. Furthermore, each is substantially influenced by genetic factors. Koenig and Bouchard (2006) hypothesized that these three areas (which they termed the Traditional Moral Values Triad) each derive from an underlying latent trait concerning the tendency to obey traditional authorities. We tested this hypothesis with data from a sample of twins raised in different homes. We assessed social attitudes with Altemeyer’s (1988) Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, political attitudes with Wilson and Patterson’s (1968) Conservatism scale, and religiousness with Wiggins’ (1966) Religious Fundamentalism scale. The best-fitting model identified the three TMVT domains as different manifestations of a single latent and significantly heritable factor. Further, the genetic and environmental bases for this factor overlapped heavily with those for the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Traditionalism scale, supporting the conception of traditionalism as the latent factor represented by the three scales in contemporary Western societies.     

Feminism and Evolutionary Psychology: Moving Forward

The Special Issue on feminism and evolutionary psychology published by Sex Roles (Smith and Konik 2011) has elicited responses that advance understanding of the debate between evolutionary psychology and feminist perspectives concerning the origins of similarities and differences in the behavior of women and men (Smith and Konik 2013). The further challenges to evolutionary psychology mounted in these responses suggest that the Special Issue has intensified the debate more that it has resolved it. Moving forward requires that feminist psychologists not only add to the considerable body of empirical evidence that challenges evolutionary psychology but also produce alternative evolutionary theories that transcend the nature-nurture controversy that underlies the current debate. To this end, we refer readers to our biosocial constructionist theory in which culture and biology are intertwined in both distal evolutionary processes that shaped human psychology and proximal mechanisms that underlie differences and similarities in male and female behavior (Wood and Eagly 2012).     

Conceptual and non-conceptual repetition priming in category exemplar generation: Evidence from bilinguals

One measure of conceptual implicit memory is repetition priming in the generation of exemplars from a semantic category, but does such priming transfer across languages? That is, do the overlapping conceptual representations for translation equivalents provide a sufficient basis for such priming? In Experiment 1 (N=96) participants carried out a deep encoding task, and priming between languages was statistically reliable, but attenuated, relative to within-language priming. Experiment 2 (N=96) replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and assessed the contributions of conceptual and non-conceptual processes using a levels-of-processing manipulation. Words that underwent shallow encoding exhibited within-language, but not between-language, priming. Priming in shallow conditions cannot therefore be explained by incidental activation of the concept. Instead, part of the within-language priming effect, even under deep-encoding conditions, is due to increased availability of language-specific lemmas or phonological word forms.     

PARENT EDUCATION INTERVENTION RESULTS IN DECREASED CHALLENGING BEHAVIOR AND IMPROVED TASK ENGAGEMENT FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES DURING ACADEMIC TASKS

Children with developmental disabilities and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder often engage in challenging behavior when presented with academic demands. Parents of school‐age children with such diagnoses are commonly asked to assist their child with academic tasks but may struggle to do so as a result of challenging behavior. This study evaluated the effects of a parent education intervention on the challenging behaviors and task engagement of three school‐age children with disabilities during academic activities. Parent education consisted of (i) weekly didactic instruction; (ii) modeling; (iii) role‐play; and (iv) in vivo coaching and performance feedback. Using a non‐concurrent multiple baseline across participants with embedded individual multi‐element design, this study demonstrates that a parent education intervention results in decreases in challenging behavior and increases in task engagement. These results suggest that parent education focused on addressing challenging behavior during one‐to‐one instruction may facilitate completion of academic tasks. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.