Bridging the Breach: Using Positive Affectivity to Overcome Knowledge Hiding after Contract Breaches

Abstract

With a basis in conservation of resources theory, this study investigates the relationship between employees’ exposure to perceived contract breaches and their job performance, while also considering the mediating role of knowledge hiding and the moderating role of positive affectivity. Multisource, three-wave data from employees and their peers in Pakistani organizations reveal that breaches in the psychological contract hinder job performance, because employees respond with an unwillingness to contribute valuable knowledge to execute their job tasks. This mediating role of knowledge hiding is mitigated if employees can draw from their own positive affectivity trait. This study accordingly identifies a key factor, intentional attempts to conceal knowledge requested by other members, that can backfire and make employees suffer doubly: from unfulfilled organizational promises and from lower performance. It also reveals how this risk might be contained, that is, by encouraging employees’ positive affect.     

Charting directions for a new research era: addressing gaps and advancing scholarship in the study of psychological contracts

ABSTRACT

The nature of work and the contexts in which firms operate have changed significantly in the many decades since the study of psychological contracts (PCs) at work began in earnest. These changes have altered the contours of the traditional employer-employee relationship and are key motivators of this Special Issue. We seek to chart new directions for PC research over the next decade by widening the theoretical and methodological lenses used to explore PC processes. In the introductory editorial we briefly outline the PC construct, overview the collected papers, and discuss the next exciting wave of PC research (exploring PC dynamics, PC counterparties, and the PC context) inspired by this collection.     

Extracting Low-Dimensional Psychological Representations from Convolutional Neural Networks

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are increasingly widely used in psychology and neuroscience to predict how human minds and brains respond to visual images. Typically, CNNs represent these images using thousands of features that are learned through extensive training on image datasets. This raises a question: How many of these features are really needed to model human behavior? Here, we attempt to estimate the number of dimensions in CNN representations that are required to capture human psychological representations in two ways: (1) directly, using human similarity judgments and (2) indirectly, in the context of categorization. In both cases, we find that low-dimensional projections of CNN representations are sufficient to predict human behavior. We show that these low-dimensional representations can be easily interpreted, providing further insight into how people represent visual information. A series of control studies indicate that these findings are not due to the size of the dataset we used and may be due to a high level of redundancy in the features appearing in CNN representations.     

When AI meets PC: exploring the implications of workplace social robots and a human-robot psychological contract

ABSTRACT

The psychological contract refers to the implicit and subjective beliefs regarding a reciprocal exchange agreement, predominantly examined between employees and employers. While contemporary contract research is investigating a wider range of exchanges employees may hold, such as with team members and clients, it remains silent on a rapidly emerging form of workplace relationship: employees’ increasing engagement with technically, socially, and emotionally sophisticated forms of artificially intelligent (AI) technologies. In this paper we examine social robots (also termed humanoid robots) as likely future psychological contract partners for human employees, given these entities transform notions of workplace technology from being a tool to being an active partner. We first overview the increasing role of robots in the workplace, particularly through the advent of sociable AI, and synthesize the literature on human–robot interaction. We then develop an account of a human-social robot psychological contract and zoom in on the implications of this exchange for the enactment of reciprocity. Given the future-focused nature of our work we utilize a thought experiment, a commonly used form of conceptual and mental model reasoning, to expand on our theorizing. We then outline potential implications of human-social robot psychological contracts and offer a range of pathways for future research.     

Socioeconomic and psychological correlates of postpartum depression at 6 months in Dhaka,Bangladesh

To current study aimed to estimate the point prevalence and identify correlates of postpartum depression (PPD) in a sample of mothers in Dhaka. A total of 235 participants from low- and middle-SES neighbourhoods in Dhaka completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and other assessments of socioeconomic and psychological factors at 24 weeks postpartum. Regression models were fit to explore potential correlates of PPD. The estimated prevalence of high PPD risk in the current sample is 24.3%. In multivariable linear regression models, recent life events, perceived stress and household resources (e.g., access to cooking gas, telephone, furniture, electricity, television, etc.) were significantly associated with PPD. The association of social support with PPD when controlling for other variables was sensitive to the choice of social support measure, highlighting an important methodological issue. The point prevalence of PPD among poor, urban mothers in Bangladesh ranges from 12.3 to 28.5%, with psychological risk factors and household resources as strong correlates.     

Exploring temporal changes in obligated and delivered inducements: a dynamic systems perspective

ABSTRACT

The psychological contract (PC) is a dynamic process, where employees actively and passively adjust their perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements. In this study, we focus on the temporal changes in employee’s perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements and show that these micro-level dynamics take place at every stage through the PC process. We introduce a dynamic systems perspective to understand these temporal fluctuations. We show that employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements interact with each other and form a dynamic system. We compared daily and weekly time-frames and found that the daily time-frame maximizes the temporal fluctuations of employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements, whereas the weekly frame captures more complex trajectories. Furthermore, inducements that are explicitly communicated demonstrate more temporal fluctuations than inducements that are not explicitly communicated. We advance PC theory by providing more understanding of the temporal dynamics of employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements. We provide practical guidelines for the choice of an ideal time-frame to study employees’ perceptions of obligated and delivered inducements, depending on the specific inducements and the aim of the research. We propose that researchers further integrate dynamic systems theory into PC models.     

Perceptual interference and hemispheric specialization

Two experiments evaluated the effect of stimuli presented at fixation on the recognition of faces or random shapes presented to the left or right visual half-field (VF). Increasing the processing demands of the center stimulus produced a large, linear decrease in recognition from both VFs for both faces and shapes. Recognition of random shapes was decreased more in the right visual field by center digits and in the left VF by center faces and shapes. In addition, interference was found between the VF faces and the center digits to the left of fixation. It was concluded that differences in the processing capacity of the two hemispheres are a function of the verbal-nonverbal nature of the stimuli at a later stage in processing but that the two hemispheres may also differ along other perceptual dimensions at an earlier stage of visual recognition.     

Quantifying definitional relations in psychological measurement

Quantitative inferences about psychological attributes, such as extraversion, depression and empathy, involve measurement instruments as well as mathematical models that specify how indicators should be aggregated. The type of model that is appropriate for doing so is conditional on the type of relation that exists between an attribute, its facets and its indicators. The common assumption is that such relations are causal relations. Here, instead, we address definitional attribute-facet relations. Our aim is to find an appropriate mathematical model for when an attribute is defined in terms of facets, instead of causing or being caused by facets. In doing so, we describe the semantics of definitions in logical form. From this form we then derive continuous functions for attribute-facet relations using fuzzy logic. A model with main effects and interactions between facets seems to be more powerful for representing definitional relations than traditional formative and reflective models. This has important implications for measurement in basic and applied research.     

Refugees in the media: Exploring a vicious cycle of frustrated psychological needs,selective exposure,and hostile intergroup attitudes

Two research objectives underlay the present research. First, we tested how frustrated psychological needs caused by the refugee-influx influence the endorsement and selection of refugee-relevant information. Second, we tested how information selection processes contribute to the development of exclusionary attitudes that counteract the integration of refugees into host countries. In a laboratory study (n = 181), frustrated psychological needs decreased participants’ endorsement of a refugee-friendly essay (vs. a control essay). Additionally, frustrated needs led to a biased selection of refugee-hostile over refugee-friendly information and such selection biases, in turn, predicted higher levels of ingroup defense and prejudice toward refugees. The findings imply that host societies’ receptiveness to refugees is influenced by the maintenance of basic psychological needs.     

Contextualizing psychological contracts research: a multi-sample study of shared individual psychological contract fulfilment

ABSTRACT

Research on psychological contracts has made significant contributions to theoretically advancing our understanding of the employee-employer exchange relationship and its implications for organizational practice. However, the predominant emphasis of this empirical research has been on the individual level of analysis and in the process does not give sufficient attention to contextual influences. Teams have become a common feature in organizations today and provide a proximal context through which to understand how teams affect individuals’ evaluation of their psychological contract. Based on the macrosociological perspective of social exchange theory as well as theories on the role of social influence in psychological contract evaluations, we examine how shared individual psychological contract fulfilment (PCF) shapes the relationship between individual PCF and outcomes (employee’s own contributions and contextual performance) at the individual level as well as the predictors (group POS) and consequences (average employee contributions and average contextual performance) of shared individual PCF at the team level. Our findings from three studies, representing a total sample of 995 employees and 170 teams, provide support for the study hypotheses. This paper contributes to the psychological contract literature by conceptually and empirically addressing the role of a team context (shared individual PCF) and its impact on individual- and team-level relationships.