Getting off on the right foot: The role of openness to experience in fostering initial trust between culturally dissimilar partners

Cross-cultural partnerships can provide a competitive edge for organizations, but also hinder trust between individuals, and thus the flow of diverse knowledge that facilitates positive organizational outcomes. We investigate whether openness to experience (openness, in short) protects against lower trust in cross-cultural partnerships by weakening the effect of cultural diversity on trust formation processes (defined by perceived similarity and trustworthiness, serially). We randomly assigned White, American participants to partners from either the same or different (i.e., Chinese) cultural background. After introductions, participants rated their partner’s similarity and trustworthiness, and played a game assessing behavioral trust. Openness was measured 3–7 days prior. People high (versus low) on openness were more trusting towards culturally dissimilar partners because they perceived them as more similar, and thus more trustworthy.     

Examining the Clinical Efficacy of Core Transformation: A Randomized Clinical Trial

This randomized clinical trial with a sample of adults (N = 129) from India explored the effects of a single core‐transformation session on symptom experience and psychological growth. The results over the total 8‐week study period indicated significant, moderate overall effect sizes (ds = 0.63 and 0.52) for symptom experience, emotional stability, affect balance, global well‐being, and purpose in life. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Age Differences Across Adulthood in Interpretations of Situations and Situation–Behaviour Contingencies for Big Five States

In the last two decades, a burgeoning literature has begun to clarify the processes underlying personality traits and momentary trait‐relevant behaviour. However, such work has almost exclusively investigated these questions in young adults. During the same period, much has been learned about adult personality trait development but with scant attention to the momentary processes that contribute to development. The current work connects these two topics, testing developmental questions about adult age differences and thus examining how age matters to personality processes. The study examines how four important situation characteristics are experienced in everyday life and how situations covary with Big Five trait‐relevant behaviour (i.e. situation–behaviour contingencies). Two samples were collected (total N = 316), each assessing three age groups: young, middle‐aged, and older adults. Using experience sampling method, participants completed reports four or five times per day across a representative period of daily life. Results suggested age differences in how situations are experienced on average, in the variability around these average situation experiences, and in situation–behaviour contingencies. The results therefore highlight that, across adulthood, age groups experience chronically different situations, differ in how much the situations they experience vary moment to moment, and differ in how much situation experience predicts their enactment of traits. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Good fortune but bad luck? Predictable versus unpredictable gains and losses in risky choice

This study examines the effects of two different types of good and bad experiences on risk‐taking preferences: fortune and luck. We define fortune as a relatively stable positive or negative context within which choices are made and luck as a more unpredictable series of better or worse outcomes. With the use of a lottery‐based paradigm, fortune was operationalized as a preponderance of all‐gain or all‐loss two‐outcome option pairs within a larger set of mixed‐outcome control lotteries. Luck was operationalized as the experienced frequency of better versus worse outcomes when playing the lotteries. We predicted that fortune and luck would lead to opposite risk‐taking tendencies within control lotteries. An assimilation effect of fortune was predicted, with risk‐averse preferences for control lotteries when surrounded by good fortune and risk‐seeking preferences when surrounded by bad fortune. In contrast, we expected that high rates of success with good luck would lead to risk‐seeking preferences, whereas low rates of success with bad luck would yield risk‐averse preferences. Our predictions for fortune were confirmed; however, there was no evidence of any effect on risk taking based on experiencing good versus bad luck. Moreover, we observed a striking disconnect between impressions of the experience and risk‐taking behavior. Both identification and attributions of luck and fortune were highly correlated with the number of gain outcomes that participants experienced but were uncorrelated with risk taking. We review these surprising findings considering several prominent theories of risk‐taking behavior, particularly drawing attention to the differential roles of predecisional and postdecisional information in choice.     

Experiencing gay affirmative therapy: An exploration of clients' views of what is helpful

Gay affirmative therapy is a counselling approach that emphasises an affirming, non‐pathologising approach to therapeutic work with lesbian, gay and bisexual clients. In this study, lesbian and gay clients who had experienced counselling that they defined as affirming identified what they perceived to have been helpful. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the views of a sample of lesbian, gay and bisexual informants. The material gathered was analysed using a grounded theory approach, which generated six main categories: communicating a non‐pathologising perspective on homosexuality; the counselling relationship; the counselling space; what the counsellor brought to the relationship; humanity; and the counsellor adopting a holistic approach. Some of these identified affirming elements are unique to gay affirmative therapy and cannot be attributed to other factors. The possible significance of the findings for practitioners is discussed.     

Lay rationalism and inconsistency between predicted experience and decision

Decision‐makers are sometimes depicted as impulsive and overly influenced by ‘hot’, affective factors. The present research suggests that decision‐makers may be too ‘cold’ and overly focus on rationalistic attributes, such as economic values, quantitative specifications, and functions. In support of this proposition, we find a systematic inconsistency between predicted experience and decision. That is, people are more likely to favor a rationalistically‐superior option when they make a decision than when they predict experience. We discuss how this work contributes to research on predicted and decision utilities; we also discuss when decision‐makers overweight hot factors and when they overweight cold factors. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visual expectations change subjective experience without changing performance

It is widely believed that visual expectations can change the subjective experiences of humans. We investigated how visual expectations in a recognition task affected objective performance and subjective perception. Using a 2-alternative-forced-choice task based on digit recognition of briefly presented and visually masked digits, we found over two experiments that expectations changed the quality of the experiences without changing the performance capabilities associated with the quality of experience. Expectations were manipulated by providing a cue indicating the set of possible digits that might appear on each trial.The results also inform the debate about whether subjective experiences can be categorized in a dichotomous manner or in a graded manner. We found that subjective experiences were graded near the objective threshold and more dichotomous away from the threshold. Furthermore, distinct expectations resulted in a more dichotomous distribution of subjective experience.We also provide evidence of an interesting relationship between stimulus duration, objective performance and subjective ratings. Only experiences that were rated as evoking some degree of perception showed systematic improvements in objective performance as a function of stimulus duration.These findings suggest that subjective experience cannot be understood without considering the broader cognitive context, namely that the quality of subjective experiences is dependent on a multitude of factors such as attention, task requirements and cognitive expectations.     

Perseverative cognition,distracted communication,and well‐being in everyday social interaction

This study examined how rumination and worry experienced within varying contexts of everyday life are associated with current‐moment and cross‐moment indicators of subjective well‐being. We also investigated if, in the context of social interaction, distracted communication uniquely predicts subjective well‐being and mediates the link between perseverative cognition and well‐being. Using experience sampling, we found that the effects of rumination and worry on subjective well‐being were social‐context dependent. Rumination experienced alone, relative to during interaction, was a stronger positive predictor of current and later‐in‐the‐day loneliness. In contrast, worry experienced alone, but not during interaction, negatively predicted later loneliness. Distracted communication accounted for unique variance in current affective well‐being and current and later loneliness, but its role as a mediator was uncertain.     

Bayes,time perception,and relativity: The central role of hopelessness

Time judgement and time experience are distinct elements of time perception. It is known that time experience tends to be slow, or dilated, when depressed, but there is less certainty or clarity concerning how depression affects time judgement. Here, we use a Bayesian Prediction Error Minimisation (PEM) framework called ‘distrusting the present’ as an explanatory and predictive model of both aspects of time perception. An interval production task was designed to probe and modulate the relationship between time perception and depression. Results showed that hopelessness, a symptom of severe depression, was associated with the ordering of interval lengths, reduced overall error, and dilated time experience. We propose that ‘distrusting the future’ is accompanied by ‘trusting the present’, leading to the experiences of time dilation when depressed or hopeless. Evidence was also found to support a relative difference model of how hopelessness dilates, and arousal accelerates, the rate of experienced time.     

How do motivational factors influence entrepreneurs’ perception of business opportunities in different stages of entrepreneurship?

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it analyses the relationship between optimism about the emergence of future entrepreneurial opportunities and the length of the entrepreneurial experience; second, it aims to identify the external factors that can moderate this relationship. Our empirical analysis is conducted on a cross-national sample of 450,000 individuals drawn from the Adult Population Survey (APS), which is collected by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) consortium and covers the period from 2009 to 2011. Our results find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the length of the entrepreneurial experience and our indicator of optimism. Additionally, the relationship between optimism and length of entrepreneurial experience is conditioned by a set of external-factor moderators, such as social capital and the individuals’ perception of how valued entrepreneurship is as a career choice in their country.