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Abundant research concerning the role of the self in social judgment suggests that people have a strong tendency to evaluate others' actions, preferences, and values with regard to their own. Reliance on self‐standards contrasts with the legal standard of the reasonably prudent person (RPP) standard, which presumably represents the behavior of the average person in the community. In three studies that investigated judgments of harmful actions, we compared the influence of self‐standards ("How likely would I behave in this manner?") and RPP estimates ("How likely would the average, reasonable person in the community behave in this manner?"). In each study, self‐standards influenced participants' judgments of guilt and the acceptability of the defendant's actions more than did judgments about what a RPP would do. Studies 2a and 2b also investigated attitudinal differences in susceptibility to RPP consensus manipulations. Participants judged a target who committed murder in self‐defense, and also projected their own hypothetical behavior in the scenario. When the manipulated RPP disapproved of the murder, the target was deemed more culpable, but only among participants who themselves were unwilling to commit the hypothetical act. Participants who expressed willingness to murder in self‐defense were unaffected by RPP information, regardless of whether or not it was consistent with their own stance. Hence, RPP information at best exerted minimal influence on juridical judgments, and only among certain participants. Implications of these findings for legal applications of the RPP, and for the role of the self in social judgment, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the encouragement of marketing scholars, many companies are tying employee incentives to customer ratings of satisfaction, service quality, or employee performance. One potential drawback to these practices is that customers' evaluations of employees-and, therefore, any associated rewards-may be biased by employee race. This possibility was examined in a restaurant setting. We found that customers rated the promptness and attentiveness of same race servers more favorably than different race servers, but there were no differences for assessments of server friendliness or appearance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political skill is the capacity to understand others in working life effectively, and to apply such knowledge to induce others to act in ways that add to one's personal or organizational goals. The present investigation reported the results of 2 studies designed to examine the job performance prediction effectiveness of political skill when investigated in conjunction with general mental ability (GMA) and personality characteristics. The results demonstrated that political skill accounted for a significant proportion of job performance variance beyond GMA and personality variables cross-sectionally in Study 1, and predictively (i.e., using a 1-year timeframe) in Study 2 examining effects on multiple dimensions of job performance. The implications of these results, strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much disagreement and confusion has surrounded the nature of the relationship between halo and performance rating accuracy. Traditionally, the relationship has been assumed to be linear ( Cooper, 1981 ), but Fisicaro (1988 ) proposed that the relationship between halo and performance rating accuracy is, instead, curvilinear. Using the halo index suggested by Balzer & Sulsky (1992 ), the results of the present study provided empirical evidence to support Fisicaro's proposal. Future research examining the relationship between halo and accuracy should consider the use of quadratic models, instead of linear ones. For the practitioner, this result implies that low rating dimension intercorrelations (negative halo) may lead to inaccuracy in ratings in much the same way as do high rating dimension intercorrelations (positive halo). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experimental studies investigated whether information implying social-sexual behavior (any non-work-related behavior containing a sexual component) by employees would influence judgments of their effectiveness. In managerial and entry-level positions, both male and female employees depicted as engaging in social-sexual behaviors at work were perceived as less effective and less desirable as bosses, compared to identically described managers for whom no social-sexual behavior information was provided. However, these negative evaluations were mitigated when information was provided indicating that these managers were always on-task and effectively using their time at work (Study 3), suggesting that the effectiveness of employees who engage in social-sexual behavior at work is devalued because others believe that these behaviors detract from productive time in the office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship among key issues discussed in positive organizational behavior (POB) and the implications for organizational success. One of the key outcomes of this paper is to have a better understanding of the relationship between work and a person's broader purpose of existence, and how work helps to accomplish one's purpose of life. In addition, quantitative measures are used to determine the relationship between work and happiness; a positive organizational culture and firm performance; and positive employee characteristics and employee performance. Through various statistical analyses, positive relationships were found among typical measures of positive psychology, positive organizational behavior, and employee performance. Implications for organizations and utilizations of research findings to create sustainable competitive advantages are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the attitudes of teachers of different ethnic origins in Malaysia toward an outcome-oriented performance appraisal, the New Performance Appraisal System (NPAS). It also investigated the relationship between teachers' attitudes toward the system and their job satisfaction and professional commitment. Teachers of the major ethnic origins in Malaysia—Malays, Chinese, and Indians—were selected randomly from 6 public high schools in the state of Kedah. The study found that teachers of all ethnic origins reported less favorable attitudes toward the NPAS, and that their cultural dimension had no bearing on attitudes toward the NPAS. Teachers who received appropriate explanation and supervision of their performance, despite low performance-appraisal results, reported high levels of job satisfaction and professional commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies examined supervisors' satisfaction with subordinates, and its predictors and importance to supervisors. Study 1 found entity relationships in the form of similarity between supervisors' and subordinates' values were uniquely related to satisfaction with subordinates. Liking of subordinates (from LMX theory) appears to link leadership and job-satisfaction domains. In Study 2, entity relationships, functional relationships, and job performance of subordinates were related to supervisors' satisfaction with subordinates. Functional relationships were the strongest and job performance the next strongest predictors. Performance was related moderately to similarity of supervisors' and subordinates' values and functional relationships. Satisfaction with subordinates was not related to supervisors' global satisfaction and turnover intention in either study, suggesting that subordinates may not be very important to supervisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two empirical studies investigated the context sensitivity of various rules for fostering organizational justice using hypothetical vignettes. Study 1 compared the importance of distributive justice rules (equity, equality, need) and procedural justice rules (process control, decision control, consistency, correctability, accuracy, bias suppression, ethicality) across individual and team contexts. The results showed that team contexts enhanced the importance of equality, consistency, and decision control. Study 2 compared the importance of procedural justice rules across different types of teams. The results showed that the accuracy rule was more important in small teams, while the consistency and bias suppression rules were more important in diverse teams. The importance of other rules, including interpersonal and informational justice, did not vary across the experimental conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-assessment research has continued to search for those factors that increase self-other rating agreement. The current field study investigated the feedback- seeking strategies (i.e., monitoring and inquiry) used by 125 employees to obtain performance information, as well as the relationship between feedback-seeking strategy use and self- supervisor performance-rating agreement. Results indicate that the frequency of monitoring reported by employees significantly moderated the relationship between self and supervisor ratings of performance. Individuals who reported higher levels of feedback seeking through monitoring were more likely to have self-assessments that were congruent with their supervisors' ratings of performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study concerned the joint effects of the richness of the feedback environment and task complexity on the development of goals, information search strategies, and performance improvement. A decision-making experiment found interactive effects of feedback and complexity on the number of personal goals, information search, and performance improvement. Further, goals and information search mediated the effect of feedback and complexity on performance over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widely accepted cognitive models of job attitudes suggest that a person's job attitude results from the linear combination of attitudes toward individual job features (feature-based processing). This is a relatively difficult cognitive process. We suggest that people act to economize scarce cognitive resources by using knowledge about job categories to generate job impressions when presented with category-consistent job features. People use feature-based processing when presented with job features that are inconsistent with a job category. Our results suggest that impressions do depend on the descriptive consistency of job features with a job category. The implications of the model for job perceptions in the workplace are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]