Journal of personality and social psychology
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Comparative Study
The cultural effects of job mobility and the belief in a fixed world: evidence from performance forecast.
Results from 5 studies illustrate how perception of and experiences with low job mobility can shape culture-characteristic pattern of judgments and behaviors. Although both Americans and some Asian groups (e.g., Chinese, Asian Americans) consider having successful practitioners' personality traits (role personalities) to be important to job performance, the Asian groups place heavier emphasis on possessing role personalities when making performance forecast than do Americans (Studies 1-3). Moreover, even among Americans, a brief subjective experience with low job mobility can increase the perceived importance of possessing role personalities in performance forecast (Study 4), and a brief direct experience with low job mobility can increase job applicants' tendency to claim possession of role personality traits in job applications (Study 5). Furthermore, the belief in a fixed world mediates the relationship between perception of low job mobility and perceived importance of possessing role personalities in performance forecast (Study 2).
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Five studies examined a self-presentation explanation for comparative optimism. Experiments 1 and 2 laid the foundation for such an account by first showing that people associate a favorable identity-image with the conveyance of an optimistic outlook and that people recognize that an individual may be perceived in a negative light if his or her optimistic estimates are disconfirmed, hence raising the issue of potential accountability demands. ⋯ Specifically, when self-presentational situations involved greater accountability demands, comparative optimism decreased (less optimistic), whereas, when these situations involved reduced accountability demands, comparative optimism increased (more optimistic). In short, the current experiments present compelling evidence demonstrating that comparative optimism may reflect an individual's goal to self-present a favorable identity-image, with the provision that such efforts are constrained by accountability pressures.
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Work preferences, life values, and personal views of top math/science graduate students (275 men, 255 women) were assessed at ages 25 and 35 years. In Study 1, analyses of work preferences revealed developmental changes and gender differences in priorities: Some gender differences increased over time and increased more among parents than among childless participants, seemingly because the mothers' priorities changed. In Study 2, gender differences in the graduate students' life values and personal views at age 35 were compared with those of profoundly gifted participants (top 1 in 10,000, identified by age 13 and tracked for 20 years: 265 men, 84 women). ⋯ Across both cohorts, men appeared to assume a more agentic, career-focused perspective than women did, placing more importance on creating high-impact products, receiving compensation, taking risks, and gaining recognition as the best in their fields. Women appeared to favor a more communal, holistic perspective, emphasizing community, family, friendships, and less time devoted to career. Gender differences in life priorities, which intensify during parenthood, anticipated differential male-female representation in high-level and time-intensive careers, even among talented men and women with similar profiles of abilities, vocational interests, and educational experiences.
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Comparative Study
Identity fusion: the interplay of personal and social identities in extreme group behavior.
The authors propose that when people become fused with a group, their personal and social identities become functionally equivalent. Two hypotheses follow from this proposition. First, activating either personal or social identities of fused persons should increase their willingness to endorse extreme behaviors on behalf of the group. ⋯ In particular, fused persons were more willing to fight or die for the group than nonfused persons, especially when their personal or social identities had been activated. The authors conclude that among fused persons, both the personal and social self may energize and direct group-related behavior. Implications for related theoretical approaches and for conceptualizing the relationship between personal identities, social identities, and group processes are discussed.
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Comparative Study
Need for cognition, task difficulty, and the formation of performance expectancies.
In the present article, the authors analyze how performance expectancies are generated and how they affect actual performance. The authors predicted that task difficulty would affect performance expectancies only when cognitive motivation (i.e., need for cognition [NFC]) and cognitive capacity are high. This should be the case because analyzing task difficulty is a process requiring cognitive capacity as well as cognitive motivation. ⋯ This hypothesis was supported: Significant relations between performance expectancies and actual performance were found only for difficult tasks and for participants higher in NFC. Studies 5 and 6 showed clear evidence that the NFC x Difficulty interaction could not be explained by differences in the use of task-specific self-concepts. The findings were robust across academic, social, and physical tasks.