Social Psychological Bulletin
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Temporal Dependency of Emotional States at Work and Its Relationship With Dynamic Performance
No full textEmotion dynamics, how people’s emotions fluctuate across time, represent a key source of information about people’s psychological functioning and well-being. Investigating emotion dynamics in the workplace is particularly relevant, as affective experiences are intimately connected to organizational behavior and effectiveness. In this study, we examined the moderating role of emotional inertia in the dynamic association between both positive and negative emotions and self-rated job performance among a sample of 120 Italian workers (average age 41.4, SD = 14), which were prompted six times per day, for five working days. Emotional inertia refers to the extent that emotional states are self-predictive or carry on over time and is measured in terms of the autocorrelation of emotional states across time. Although inertia has been linked to several indicators of maladjustment, little is known about its correlates in terms of organizational behavior. Findings revealed that workers reporting high levels of positive emotions and high inertia rated their performance lower than workers high in positive emotions, but low in inertia. In contrast, the relation between negative emotions and performance was not significant for either high levels of inertia or low levels of inertia. Taken together, these results suggest the relevance of investigating the temporal dependency of emotional states at work
Round Table Talks Did Not Happen in a Vacuum: The Political Solidarity Model of Social Change and Polish Transition to Democracy
No full textTheories of social change developed within social psychology are rarely employed to interpret historical events. This is a serious neglect, as a social-psychological perspective has the capacity to inform our understanding of long-term processes that prepare the ground for major political breakthroughs. In this commentary, I utilize the political solidarity model of social change (Subašić, Reynolds, & Turner, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868308323223) to examine Poland’s path to democracy. Using a tripolar division for the authority (i.e., communist leaders), the minority (i.e., democratic opposition), and the majority (i.e., unengaged citizens), I argue that the Round Table Talks of 1989 originated from two interdependent social processes that precipitated in the late ’70s. Whereas one of these processes encompassed the loss of popular support for the Communist Party, the other one involved an increase in the majority’s identification with the democratic opposition. I propose that without the co-occurrence of these two processes, the Round Table agreements would not have been possible
Motivational and Affective Drivers of Right-Wing Populism Support: Insights From an Austrian Presidential Election
No full textResearch has identified political disenchantment as an important driver for the recent spread of right-wing populism. The cultural backlash approach explains this relationship as a counter response to progressive socio-political developments in Western societies. Drawing on previous work, the present research examines motivational and affective factors underlying the support of right-wing populist parties. We hypothesize that a perceived alienation from the symbolic architecture of a society may decrease levels of psychological need satisfaction, which may catalyze into anxiety and anger. As the “political system” represents an important reflective surface for the socio-political status quo, we expected lower levels of need satisfaction and its resulting affective consequences to help explain the relationship between political disenchantment and right-wing populist support. We tested these tenets based on data from the 2016 Austrian presidential election (n = 626). The results of a structural equation model corroborated our predictions with some exceptions. Data indicated a negative relationship between political disenchantment and need satisfaction. Moreover, decreased need satisfaction was associated with increased self-reported anxiety and anger. Political disenchantment indirectly predicted support for a right-wing populist presidential candidate through decreased need satisfaction and anger, thus corroborating the role of anger as an important driver underlying right-wing populism support. Counterintuitively, the data indicated a negative relationship between anxiety and right-wing support. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, as well as limitations stemming from sample characteristics and the employed cross-sectional design
A Categorization of Behaviors Reported in Experience Sampling Studies
No full textExperience sampling is considered one of the best methods for measuring behavior (Furr, 2009, https://doi.org/10.1002/per.724). When used for this purpose, it requires a coding system to transform diversified reports on what people are doing, provided as responses to an open-ended question, into interpretable data. We present a categorization of everyday behaviors that can be used to code responses from experience sampling and diary studies conducted with different groups of participants—from adolescents to elderly people. This categorization was developed and validated on a set of 19,840 responses to an open-ended question about participants’ recent activity, provided by 667 persons ranging in age from 12 to 66. As a result of the multistage work, we present a categorization system which forms a hierarchy from three broad categories to 97 narrow ones through middle levels of five, 23, and 63 categories of behaviors. The possible usage of the developed categorization is discussed
The Implicit Misattribution Model of Evaluative Conditioning
No full textEvaluative conditioning (EC) refers to a change in one’s attitude toward an object based on its contiguous pairing with other positive or negative objects. EC can, in principle, occur through multiple mechanisms, some more and some less thoughtful. We argue that one relatively low-thought route through which ECproduces evaluative change is implicit misattribution. Our Implicit Misattribution Model (IMM) is premised on research indicating: a) attributional thinking is pervasive and relatively automatic, b) affective experiences are pervasive and relatively automatic, and c) errors in automatic attributional processing can lead to misattribution of affect from one object to another, resulting in the latter object taking on the affect produced by the former. Research employing the “surveillance paradigm” we developed provides support for the model, particularly its key moderating variable, source confusability. We further discuss assumptions of the model in terms of encoding, storage, and retrieval/application of the conditioned attitude, as well as the role of contingency awareness and other central issues in the EC literature
Do Altruists Like Equity?
No full textAltruism and inequity aversion are often conceptually interrelated, which implies that altruistic and selfish humans may respond differently to disadvantageous inequity conditions. However, a correlation between altruism and inequity responses has thus far not been directly tested experimentally. We have addressed this question using an experimental paradigm inspired by animal experiments in which adult humans work for real food rewards. We have studied whether subjects' responses to different reward distributions were altered by being exposed to equitable or non-equitable situations. In the control conditions, subjects expressed either a strong altruistic attitude, choosing to work for their partner's welfare in the majority of trials, or mostly rejected this course of action. These purely altruistic and selfish behaviors were also expressed after being exposed to disadvantageous inequity, but priming with equitable conditions significantly reduced their occurrence. This implies an important role of inequity pressure, which is presumably present in modern society, in shaping human-helping attitudes
Work Meaning in Self and World Perspective: A New Outlook on the WAMI Scale
No full textRecent research demonstrates that finding the meaning of work (MW) is a growing need among employees. It thus seems vital to examine the predictors and outcomes of meaningful work with the aim of identifying practical implications for employees and organizations in this area. However, there are several different concepts of MW and only a handful of published measures. Using the framework of the big two we proposed and developed a two-dimensional model of MW: agentic work meaning (the self-perspective) and communal work meaning (the world perspective). The aim of our research was to adapt the Work and Meaning Inventory (WAMI; Steger, Dik, & Duffy, 2012) into Polish and to verify the hypothesis of a two-dimensional model of MW, which is a new perspective on this scale. The three studies conducted amongst employees in Poland (N = 403) supported our ideas. First, confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the two-dimensional model of MW in WAMI-PL, i.e., meaning in the self and in world perspectives. In line with previous studies on MW, these two factors correlated positively with meaning in life, work well-being (work engagement, organizational commitment) and positive work behaviors (in-role and extra-role behaviors, job crafting). Moreover, we demonstrated a relationship between MW and the eudemonic indicators of well-being in the workplace, such as fit and personal development, positive relationships at work, and contribution to the organization. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research
Can Virtual Observers Affect Our Behavior? Social Facilitation in Virtual Environments: A Mini-Review
No full textThe social facilitation effect describes the change in the performance of the task under the influence of the presence of observers. The effect itself consists of two components: social facilitation in simple tasks and social inhibition in complex tasks. In the context of the dynamic development of new technologies, the question of the possible influence on human behavior by virtual characters gains importance. We attempted to critically describe and summarize current research on social facilitation in order to answer the question of whether it occurs in virtual environments. We found 13 relevant studies, 3 of which demonstrated social facilitation, 4 social inhibition and 1 demonstrated the whole effect. The conclusions drawn from the analysis are ambiguous. Firstly, we identified that 12 out of 13 analyzed studies failed to show the whole effect. Secondly, we encountered several shortcomings of the summarized research that further complicated its interpretation. The shortcomings: presence of the researcher, unclear usage of “agent” and “avatar”, evaluation of activation, no pilot tests of observers and no description of how their characteristics are generated, among others, are discussed. Furthermore, we investigated the effect sizes and their variability. The average effect size for social facilitation was g = 0.18, CI [-0.28; 0.64] and for social inhibition g = -0.18, CI [-0.40; 0.04]. In social facilitation, a substantial level of heterogeneity was detected. Finally, we conclude that it is still too early to provide a definite answer to the question of whether social facilitation exists in Virtual Environments. We recommend limiting evaluation activation to the lowest possible level, conducting pilot tests prior to the experiment, avoiding the presence of the researcher in the experimental room and a clear distinction of “agent” and “avatar”, as measures to achieve a better quality in future research
Self-Esteem Relates to Expecting Others to See Us How We See Ourselves
No full textWe examined whether self-esteem relates to coherence between self-evaluations and anticipated evaluations by others. In two studies (total N = 279), participants twice completed a measure of their personal attributes, once from their own standpoints and once from the perspective of someone they anticipated meeting, separated by a 25-minute distractor task. Supporting our preregistered predictions, the within-person association between self- and other-ratings was stronger as a function of between-person increases in self-esteem. These effects remained after statistically controlling for self-concept clarity and for fear of negative evaluation, both of which related meaningfully to self-esteem. Together, these findings indicate that persons high in selfesteem anticipate that others will evaluate them consistently with how they evaluate themselves
Freedom, Freedom... but What Kind of Freedom? Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sense of Freedom as Predictors of Preferences for Political Community and Attitudes Towards Democracy
No full textIn theoretical considerations on democracy freedom is sometimes understood in unconditional and conditional terms. This general distinction underlies I. Berlin's concept of negative and positive freedom, and E. Fromm's concept of 'freedom from' and 'freedom to'. The authors of this paper introduce the concept of extrinsic and intrinsic sense of freedom which is meant to be psychological representation of the philosophical distinction on unconditional and conditional freedom, respectively. An extrinsic freedom results from a lack of external restrictions/barriers, whereas intrinsic freedom is based on the belief that being free means compatibility between one's own actions and preferred values, life goals or worldview. Based on nationwide survey data, the authors show that both forms of freedom are embedded in entirely different basic human values and moral intuitions. Further, it is shown that intrinsic freedom negatively predicts liberal orientation and clearly favors communitarian orientation, whereas extrinsic freedom clearly favors liberal orientation. The authors argue that both forms of experiencing freedom have different effects on support for the principles of liberal democracy. The positive effect of extrinsic freedom is indirect, i.e., entirely mediated by liberal orientation. On the other hand, the effect of intrinsic freedom can be decomposed into three components: a) as a positive direct effect, b) as a positive indirect effect (by strengthening the communitarian orientation), and c) as a negative indirect effect (by weakening the liberal orientation). In conclusion, the consequences of intrinsic and extrinsic freedom are discussed in the light of their relationships with support for democratic principles