Employee–supervisor political skill congruence and work outcomes: The mediating role of leader–member exchange quality

This study aims to investigate the effect of employee–supervisor political skill congruence on the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX), which in turn influences employees' job satisfaction and turnover intention. For this purpose, two survey studies were conducted. The first study examined the relationship between employee–supervisor political skill congruence and LMX using multi-source data collected from 287 employee–supervisor dyads. The second study examined the indirect effect of congruence in political skill on work outcomes through LMX by using time-lagged multi-source data collected from 142 employee–supervisor dyads. The findings indicate that compared with incongruence, congruence in political skill is associated with higher employee-rated LMX. Moreover, among dyads with congruent political skills, congruence at high levels of political skill is associated with higher employee-rated LMX compared with congruence at low levels of political skill. Moreover, in case of incongruency, low employee–high supervisor political skill combination was related to higher supervisor-rated LMX compared with high employee–low supervisor political skill combination. Lastly, employee–supervisor political skill congruency indirectly influences job satisfaction and turnover intention through employee-rated LMX. This research significantly contributes to the political skill literature by examining potential consequences of employee–supervisor congruence in political skill in the workplace.     

Stimulus conditions affecting rate of acquisition in a computer-operated version of the two-way active avoidance procedure

Several experiments were performed with rats in order to investigate the stimulus conditions affecting the rate of acquisition of two-way active avoidance. The number of trials per session, the duration of the Conditioned Stimulus (CS), the intertrial interval (pause time), and the intensity of the shock presentation were each varied in separate experiments. The optimal, yet practicable, conditions required to obtain a fast rate of acquisition included 40 to 60 trials per session, a 40-sec intertrial interval, a 10-sec Conditioned Stimulus presentation and a shock intensity of 1.0 mA. These results are discussed with regard to the problem of standardization in behavioral research manipulating biological independent variables.     

Exploring the Context-Sensitivity of Collective Action Motivations and the Mobilizing Role of Social Media: A Comparative Interview Study With Activists in Germany and Turkey

Western scholarship has underlined the relevance of social identity, perceived efficacy, emotions, and cost–benefit assessments as central catalysts of collective action. Little has been done to understand the context-sensitivity of these catalysts by means of cross-culturally comparative designs. The current study explores their context-sensitivity. It aims to find out whether existing opportunity structures in a democratic, nonrepressive country like Germany produce catalysts of collective action different from those produced in an autocratic, repressive country like Turkey. It also aims to understand the role of social media in mobilizing people in these two contexts. Semistandardized interviews with activists were carried out in both countries (n = 18 in Germany and n = 15 in Turkey) and analyzed by means of a cross-culturally comparative inductive coding procedure including initial and focused coding. Results show that collective action is related to different configurations of collective-action catalysts in the two countries. Solidarity concerns at the face of existential risks are more pronounced in Turkey, whereas political-change concerns are more important in Germany. The role of social media accordingly differs, adhering to the different activist goals. Theoretical implications for the role of context in studying collective action are discussed.     

QUALIA UND PHYSIKALISMUS

Qualia and Physicalism. It is assumed that the following three relations exhaust the possibilities for a physicalist account of qualia: 1. determination, 2. identity, 3. realization. The first relation is immediately rejected because it does not exclude property dualism. The second faces the problem that it is probably impossible to discriminate empirically between the identity thesis and the epiphenomenalist position. The third cannot handle qualia adequately, for qualia are not functional properties and the realization relation is only plausible as a relation between physical realizers and functional properties. Finally, if one attempts to replace multiple realization by multiple identities it is shown that the notion of multiple property identities is unintelligible. The upshot is that if these three relations exhaust the possibilities of a physicalist construal of qualia then physicalism is wrong. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Repetition effects on word fragment completion: The role of competition among responses

Four experiments examined the effect of spaced repetition of study words on completion of word fragments with only one solution and word fragments with multiple solutions. Recognition was used as test of explicit memory in the first two experiments. The study words were presented either once or three times. Repetition was found to increase recognition memory substantially, and to affect fragment completion performance only marginally. This was true for both single- and multiple-solution fragments, showing that competition among responses is not critical for the magnitude of the repetition effect in fragment completion. This finding, that the repetition effect is marginal also when the type of cues provides an occasion for repetition effects to show up, suggests that the real effect of repetition on perceptual priming is borderline. It is proposed that memory from the first presentation eliminates necessary processing of items when they are re-exposed, and that the repetition effect thereby is reduced.     

Instructed versus pharmacological effects of alcohol in alcoholics and social drinkers

Twelve alcoholics and 12 social drinkers were studied in an experiment where instructions about alcohol or placebo were orthogonally crossed with administration of alcohol or placebo in a Balanced Placebo Design. Three subjects were simultaneously observed while watching soccer games on the TV together and having free access to a mixed drink, which in the alcohol conditions contained 150ml of 80% proof vodka. The assessment procedure included several aspects of drinking behavior, behavioral observations during the session, psychiatric ratings and nurse observations before and after each session, ratings for craving, self-reported state anxiety and physiological changes (heart rate and blood pressure). In general, the results showed the alcoholic's behavior to be controlled by instruction-induced expectancies rather than by the actual beverage given, whereas the social drinkers showed tendencies in the opposite direction. The implications of these results for the traditional disease conception of alcoholism and for learning theory approaches are discussed.     

Decomposing the encoding of action events: A dual conception

Two experiments are reported in which we tested the hypothesis that encoding of verbal features of subject-performed tasks or SPTs (e.g., bounce the ball, lift the spoon) is attention-demanding and effortful, whereas physical features of this memory task (e.g., color, weight) are acquired with little effort, and without deliberate encoding strategies. In Experiment 1, subjects were asked to perform a series of SPTs and were examined on recall of verbal instructions and colors of objects involved under conditions of focused or divided attention. In Experiment 2, performance of a series of SPTs was followed by recall of verbal instructions and recall of weights of objects involved. Results of both experiments indicated that recall of the verbal task component was negatively affected by requirements of dual-task performance, whereas recall of both physical task features was equally good in both encoding conditions. The obtained pattern of outcome is interpreted as supportive of the dual conception hypothesis of the nature of the encoding of action events.     

Perception of autonomic reactions and actual heart rate in phobic patients

The relationship between perceived physiological arousal and actual heart-rate reactions was studied in two behavioral test situations. The subjects were 70 phobic patients (34 social phobics and 36 claustrophobics) who were given the general form of the Autonomic Perception Questionnaire about 1 month before the respective behavioral test and the specific form immediately after the test. The results showed significant correlations between APQ and actual heart rate for the social phobics, while the picture was more complicated for the claustrophobics. The implications of these results are discussed.This research was supported by Grant 05452 from the Swedish Medical Research Council.     

Overt repetition as a means of controlling rehearsal

Abstract.— Three different ways of using the concept of rehearsal were discussed. Examples were presented showing confusions in the literature due to a failure to distinguish these three definitions. A free recall experiment was conducted with the purpose of investigating three problems relating to the concept of rehearsal: ( a ) an unclear relationship between overt and covert repetition, ( b ) whether overt repetition excluded other control processes, and (c) whether a shallow repetition produces a permanent memory trace or not. Using a pronounced time pressure it was demonstrated first that overt repetition facilitated recall performance of recency items and that recall of primacy items was facilitated by covert repetition. Secondly, it was shown that overt repetition did not exclude other types of encoding. Finally, a shallow maintaining repetition did not produce a permanent memory trace. The results are interpreted as supporting a level of processing point of view rather than a multistore approach.