Workplace mobbing: How the victim’s coping behavior influences bystander responses

Victims of workplace mobbing show diverse coping behavior. We investigated the impact of this behavior on bystander cognitions, emotions, and helping toward the victim, integrating coping literature with attribution theory. Adult part-time university students (N = 161) working at various organizations participated in a study with a 3(Coping: approach/avoidance/neutral) × 2(Gender Victim: male/female) × 2(Gender Bystander: male/female) design. Victims showing approach (vs. avoidance) coping were considered to be more self-reliant and less responsible for the continuation of the mobbing, and they elicited less anger. Continuation responsibility and self-reliance mediated the relationship between the victim’s coping behavior and bystanders’ helping intentions. Female (vs. male) participants reported more sympathy for the victim and greater willingness to help, and female (vs. male) victims elicited less anger. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

People with intellectual disability who are ageing: Perceived needs assessment

Background/Objective: Ageing and progressive increase in life expectancy in people with intellectual disability present significant challenges. The present study is to examine the needs that arise in the aging process of this population. To detect these needs is fundamental to ensure personal wellbeing; almost no psychometrically sound instruments have been developed. Method: A structured interview was developed and evaluated by a panel of 20 experts to obtain evidence of content validity. The interview was then applied to 1,173 people with intellectual disability. The ages ranged from 35 to 80 (M = 52.27; SD = 7.5). Results: The interview consisted of 93 items evaluating four areas: perceived needs, personal problems, future perspectives, and solutions required. The results demonstrated the proximity and relationship of the various needs evaluated. In addition it was observed that those with intellectual disability who were older, male and users of residential services tended to indicate more needs, problems, and required more solutions. Conclusions: The instrument has adequate evidence of validity, allowing the evaluation of specific needs of people with intellectual disability. The results advocate the design of transversal intervention policies in order to effectively meet the needs and requirements of this population.     

A Multi-Cultural Study of Salespeople's Behavior In Individual Pay-For-Performance Compensation Systems: When Managers Are More Equal And Less Fair Than Others

In this research, we examine salespeople's behavior in individual pay-for-performance compensation systems and show how perceived management fairness seems to energize sales employees in some environments but not in others. We use a large multicountry database of individual-level remuneration for more than 2,500 salespeople across four B2B industry sectors to demonstrate cultural adaptations of the effect of perceived management fairness. The results indicate that top management should be concerned with employees' perceptions of fairness in addition to the more typical concerns of control and motivation widely acknowledged in the microeconomics-based sales-force compensation literature. In particular, we show that perceptions of management fairness are key to salespeople's proportion of total pay generated by pay-for-performance formulas.     

Social Value Orientation Moderates the Effects of Intuition versus Reflection on Responses to Unfair Ultimatum Offers

We investigated whether social value orientation (SVO) moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective information processing on responses to unfair offers. We measured SVO one week prior to an ultimatum game experiment in which participants had to accept or reject a series of 10 ultimatum offers including very low (unfair) ones. Before making these decisions, participants mentally contrasted their individual goals with the obstacle of pondering at length or acting in a hasty way; then they made the plan to adopt an intuitive or a reflective mode of processing (intuitive and reflective condition, respectively), or made no such plans (control condition). Participants with rather high (prosocial) SVO scores were more likely to accept unfair offers in the reflective than the intuitive condition. This effect also evinced for a subset of selfish individuals; however, the majority with rather low (selfish) scores made similar decisions in both conditions. This pattern of results suggests that SVO moderates the effects of intuitive versus reflective modes of processing on responses to low ultimatum offers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moral foundations tell us why guilt induces unfair allocation in multi‐party interactions

Previous studies have demonstrated that a sense of guilt promotes and maintains social fairness in two‐party interactions (Psychological Bulletin, 115, 1994 and 243). However, the situation is much more complex in three‐party or multi‐party interactions. De Hooge et al. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 2011 and 462) found that guilt could not only induce pro‐social behaviour towards the victim, but also have a disadvantageous impact on a third party. In the present study, we attempt to explain how guilt promotes unfair allocations from a moral foundations perspective. We conducted two experiments using a ‘three‐party dictator game’ paradigm. Firstly, it was repeatedly verified that guilt could induce unfair allocations in three‐party interactions. Secondly, five moral foundations (harm, fairness, ingroup, hierarchy and purity) were measured. Then the moderating and main effects of these five indices on how guilt affects the fair allocation of resources were explored using regression analysis. The results show that competition between harm and fairness in individual traits can explain the disadvantageous effect of guilt on fair allocations: the fairness foundation promoted equality in allocation, while the harm foundation promoted victim compensation.     

Psychometric costs of retaking driving-related cognitive ability tests

The present study tested predictions deduced from competing models advanced in the literature to explain practice effects in driving-related cognitive ability tests due to retesting. The models differ in terms of the processes assumed to be responsible for practice effects and make competing predictions with regard to the level measurement invariance across test administration sessions. A total of N = 239 test-takers solved four driving-related cognitive ability tests at three time-points of measurement. Item response theory analyses indicated that practice effects can be explained in terms of an increase in test-specific abilities. The size of the practice effect varied across driving-related cognitive ability tests and across test-takers’ level of general mental ability. Latent mean and covariance structure analyses indicated that the observed improvements in test performance are purely test-specific and do not generalize to broad cognitive speededness.     

Personality as a moderator between emotional exhaustion and workplace deviance among teachers

This study investigated the moderating role of personal factors of agreeableness and conscientiousness in the relationship between emotional exhaustion and workplace deviance. The sample comprised 200 teachers from nine schools in the south-eastern part of Nigeria (females = 85%; married = 85%; age range 20–59 years; organisational tenure = 8.04 years, SD = 7.44 years; senior staff = 55%). The teachers completed measures of self-reported agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional exhaustion, workplace deviance, and demographics. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis was utilised to predict workplace deviance from agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional exhaustion. The results showed that agreeableness and conscientiousness negatively predicted workplace deviance, whereas emotional exhaustion positively predicted it. In addition, individuals who are low in agreeableness were more likely to indulge in workplace deviance, whereas those high in this trait were more likely to refrain from it. Managing personal workplace deviance may sap resources for work productivity.     

Perceived Control Mediates the Relation Between Parental Rejection and Youth Depression

Previous research suggests that both perceived parental control and rejection may be linked to youth depression. However, research has not definitively determined which dimension matters more, nor examined mediation within a clinical sample. We used a sample of clinically referred youth (aged 7-17) to determine (a) which parenting dimension is more closely associated with youth depression, and (b) whether youngsters' perceptions of control mediated the association. Perceived parental rejection was strongly linked to depressive symptoms (perceived parental control was not); youth perceived control did in fact mediate the association, and robustly so across gender and age groups. The findings suggest a developmental process in depression, plus potential foci for prevention and treatment programs.