How help during pregnancy can undermine self-efficacy and increase postpartum intentions to quit

Pregnancy reflects a common experience for women in today's workforce, yet recent data suggest that some women scale back or leave the workforce following childbirth. Considering these effects on women's careers, researchers have sought to understand the underlying dynamics of these decisions. Here, we explore a paradoxical reason for weakened postpartum career attitudes: help that women receive during pregnancy. We integrate stereotype threat and benevolent sexism theories to explain how the effects of help on postpartum intentions to quit may be transmitted through reductions in work self-efficacy. In doing so, we consider the role of perceived impact—or the extent to which help interferes with versus enables women's perceived ability to continue performing their work role. Results of a weekly diary study of 105 pregnant employees suggest that work-interfering help led to decreased self-efficacy for work during the following week. Furthermore, there was an indirect effect of average help received at work during pregnancy on postpartum intentions to quit the workforce through reductions in work self-efficacy that was stronger insofar as help was work-interfering versus work-enabling. Taken together, our results highlight unintended negative consequences that occur when others provide ineffective support to women at work during pregnancy.     

Reciprocal Relationships between Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) and Job Satisfaction: A Cross‐Lagged Analysis

While previous research has mainly emphasised the importance of leader–member exchange (LMX) to job satisfaction, there is a lack of research on reciprocal relationships between job satisfaction and LMX. In this study, we not only suggest that good LMX increases job satisfaction, but that job satisfaction can also enhance high‐quality supervisor–employee relationships. A full cross‐lagged panel analysis was used to test reciprocal relationships between LMX and job satisfaction. Employees (N= 279) of a large information technology company filled out questionnaires at two times, with a time lag of 3 months. In line with our predictions, findings revealed a positive relationship between LMX and job satisfaction both at Time 1 and Time 2. Moreover, LMX at Time 1 predicted the increase of job satisfaction at Time 2, and job satisfaction at Time 1 predicted the increase of LMX at Time 2. The results demonstrate the need to consider reciprocal relationships between job satisfaction and LMX when explaining employees' workplace outcomes. Our findings are discussed in terms of positive psychology theory.     

Socializing Attribution: Generalization to “Real” Social Environments1

Social status variables have been shown to influence attributional judgments, but their effects have been demonstrated almost entirely in experimental settings. The influence of such statuses in experimental settings may differ from their influence in natural settings. We examined the influence on attributional judgments of the status characteristics of both subjects and actors in conjunction with variations in the degree of “real world” characteristics of both subjects and social context. These comparisons were drawn through a partial replication of earlier research investigating the effects of a social status variable, victim sex, and a situational variable—type of assault—on attributions about an assault victim. The social status characteristic, victim sex, had less influence on attributions in an adult juror sample than in a student sample and testimony-related characteristics were more influential in the adult juror sample than in the student sample. Thus, the categories of variables that influence attributions appear to depend on the context of judgment and on the breadth of subjects' life experience. These findings are discussed and we conclude with the caution that careful identification of the differences produced by context and subject characteristics is necessary to support generalization of laboratory-based research.     

Focused search of semantic cases in question answering

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that people can execute focused searches of semantic cases when answering questions about complex facts, such as “the teacher watered the peas, the corn, and the lettuce with the hose.” In Experiment 1, answer time varied mainly with the number of concepts in the relevant or focused case, supporting the hypothesis. Experiment 2 indicated that the irrelevant case undergoes some processing. Experiment 3 confirmed that search in Experiments 1 and 2 focused on semantic cases rather than on taxonomic categories. It is proposed that focused memory search has a high probability of retrieving the relevant case and a low probability of retrieving the irrelevant case. In the latter event, the irrelevant concepts receive full processing.