Contraction bias in memorial quantifying judgment: does it come from a stable compressed memory representation or a dynamic adaptation process?

A common response bias in psychophysical judgments is regression toward the mean (overestimation of small and underestimation of large values, or the response contraction bias). The same bias is observed in magnitude estimation from memorized quantities. Participants estimated alphabetic interval distances between 2 letters for different levels of interletter distances. The underestimated and overestimated values and the point of least error changed, depending on the level of alphabetic distances judged; furthermore, their estimation showed a progressively increasing tendency toward the mean, rendering the estimation progressively less accurate as the estimation task was repeated. We conclude that the regression toward the mean in memorial quantifying judgment derives from a cognitive adaptation process rather than from a permanent, compressed memory representation of the stimuli. Two opposing views on the adaptive meaning of this judgment bias are discussed.     

Emotion and the new epistemic challenge from cognitive penetrability

Experiences—visual, emotional, or otherwise—play a role in providing us with justification to believe claims about the world. Some accounts of how experiences provide justification emphasize the role of the experiences’ distinctive phenomenology, i.e. ‘what it is like’ to have the experience. Other accounts emphasize the justificatory role to the experiences’ etiology. A number of authors have used cases of cognitively penetrated visual experience to raise an epistemic challenge for theories of perceptual justification that emphasize the justificatory role of phenomenology rather than etiology. Proponents of the challenge argue that cognitively penetrated visual experiences can fail to provide the usual justification because they have improper etiologies. However, extant arguments for the challenge’s key claims are subject to formidable objections. In this paper, I present the challenge’s key claims, raise objections to previous attempts to establish them, and then offer a novel argument in support of the challenge. My argument relies on an analogy between cognitively penetrated visual and emotional experiences. I argue that some emotional experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their improper etiologies and conclude that analogous cognitively penetrated visual experiences fail to provide the relevant justification because of their etiologies, as well.     

Job demands,job resources and innovative work behaviour: a European Union study

This study aims to investigate the relationship between several job design variables and innovative work behaviour (IWB). Guided by the Job Demands Resources model, the aim was to evaluate the relationship between work demands (time constraints), resources (autonomy and social support), and other work factors (task monotony, complexity, and dealing with unforeseen circumstances) with idea generation and idea implementation behaviours in a sample of 12,924 participants from the 27 European Union member states in 2010. We also wished to investigate if individual IWB, at the country level, is associated with country innovative performance (an aggregate of process/product and marketing/organizational innovation). We employed a multilevel generalized structural equation model to test our hypotheses. In our final model autonomy, manager encouragement and dealing with unforeseen problems showed the highest positive relationship with idea generation and idea implementation. Conversely, monotonous tasks and working at high speed were negatively related to IWB. Furthermore, we have found strong indications that country-level IWB positively relates to the odds of a country scoring higher on the aforementioned innovation indicators. Between-country unexplained variance in IWB was reduced from 17.1% in our initial model, to 1.9% in our final iteration. Limitations, implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Do Politicians Take Risks Like the Rest of Us? An Experimental Test of Prospect Theory Under MPs

Political psychologists have been quick to use prospect theory in their work, realizing its potential for explaining decisions under risk. Applying prospect theory to political decision‐making is not without problems, though, and here we address two of these: (1) Does prospect theory actually apply to political decision‐makers, or are politicians unlike the rest of us? (2) Which dimension do politicians use as their reference point when there are multiple dimensions (e.g., votes and policy)? We address both problems in an experiment with a unique sample of Dutch members of parliament as participants. We use well‐known (incentivized) decision situations and newly developed hypothetical political decision‐making scenarios. Our results indicate that politicians’ deviate from expected utility theory in the direction predicted by prospect theory but that these deviations are somewhat smaller than those of other people. Votes appear to be a more important determinant of politicians’ reference point than is policy.     

Temporal coding in rhythm tasks revealed by modality effects

Temporal coding has been studied by examining the perception and reproduction of rhythms and by examining memory for the order of events in a list. We attempt to link these research programs both empirically and theoretically. Glenberg and Swanson (1986) proposed that the superior recall of auditory material, compared with visual material, reflects more accurate temporal coding for the auditory material. In this paper, we demonstrate that a similar modality effect can be produced in a rhythm task. Auditory rhythms composed of stimuli of two durations are reproduced more accurately than are visual rhythms. Furthermore, it appears that the auditory superiority reflects enhanced chunking of the auditory material rather than better identification of durations.     

Memory for Sexual and Nonsexual Television Commercials as a Function of Viewing Context and Viewer Gender

The present study investigated memory for sexual and nonsexual commercials as a function of programme‐commercial congruity and programme‐induced level of involvement. Participants were allocated to one of four conditions: sexual programme with sexual or nonsexual commercials and nonsexual programme with sexual or nonsexual commercials. Recall and involvement levels were tested with a series of memory tests and programme ratings. It was predicted that sexual advertisements would be recalled and recognised better overall, that the sexual programme context would impair memory for commercials, and that level of involvement with the programme would inversely correlate with recall and recognition of the commercials and their content. Recall of sexual advertisements was found to be better than for nonsexual advertisements, and subjective ratings of programme involvement were higher for the sexual programme. Neither the perceived involvement level nor programme type affected memory for the commercials overall, but men were shown to remember sexual advertisements better than nonsexual advertisements—particularly when the sexual advertisements were embedded in a sexual programme. Women were equally good at remembering sexual and nonsexual advertisements. Implications of the current results and suggestions for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Finer Grained Approach to Psychological Capital and Work Performance

Purpose

Psychological capital is a set of personal resources comprised by hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience, which previous research has supported as being valuable for general work performance. However, in today’s organizations, a multidimensional approach is required to understanding work performance, thus, we aimed to determine whether psychological capital improves proficiency, adaptivity, and proactivity, and also whether hope, efficiency, resilience, and optimism have a differential contribution to the same outcomes. Analyzing the temporal meaning of each psychological capital dimension, this paper theorizes the relative weights of psychological capital dimensions on proficiency, adaptivity, and proactivity, proposing also that higher relative weight dimensions are helpful to cope with job demands and perform well.

Methodology

Two survey studies, the first based on cross-sectional data and the second on two waves of data, were conducted with employees from diverse organizations, who provided measures of their psychological capital, work performance, and job demands. Data was modeled with regression analysis together with relative weights analysis.

Findings

Relative weights for dimensions of psychological capital were supported as having remarkable unique contributions for proficient, adaptive, and proactive behavior, particularly when job demands were high.

Originality/Value

We concluded that organizations facing high job demands should implement actions to enhance psychological capital dimensions; however, those actions should focus on the specific criterion of performance of interest.