Autochthonous determinants of perception are accurately measured by psychophysics. There is need for equally precise measurement of motivational determinants. The experiments on estimating size were planned to test hypotheses that such determinants are more influential when objects have greater social or individual value. Ten-year-old children adjusted a lighted circle to the perceived size of 5 coins and 5 cardboard discs. With the objects present, discs...

Patients' memories of painful medical procedures may influence their decisions about future treatments, yet memories are imperfect and susceptible to bias. We recorded in real-time the intensity of pain experienced by patients undergoing colonoscopy (n = 154) and lithotripsy (n = 133). We subsequently examined patients' retrospective evaluations of the total pain of the procedure, and related these evaluations to the real-time recording obtained during...

Two experiments examined the effects of answering a question about a specific component of life satisfaction on respondents' assessment of their overall satisfaction with life. The results suggest that the use of primed information in forming subsequent judgments is determined by Grice's conversational norms. In general, answering the specific question increases the accessibility of information relevant to that question. However, the effect that this has...

Self-reports of behaviors and attitudes are strongly influenced by features of the research instrument, including question wording, format, and context. Recent research has addressed the underlying cognitive and communicative processes, which are systematic and increasingly well-understood. The author reviews what has been learned, focusing on issues of question comprehension, behavioral frequency reports, and the emergence of context effect in attitude measurement. The accumulating knowledge about...

Whereas it has long been noted that crises may be sources of opportunity for organizations and their constituents, relatively little is known about the conditions under which executives come to perceive crises as opportunity. The authors delineate some factors that affect the tendency of executives to adopt a “crisis as opportunity” mindset as well as the behavioral concomitants of their having done so. The analysis...

The problem and the solution. Since the events of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina during the summer of 2005, the words crisis and disaster evoke images of families stranded on causeways turned islands, surrounded by what little property they could carry; houses smashed by killing winds; and skyscrapers crumbling out of the sky. Disastrous events, such as fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, terrorist incidents, and chemical...

This paper presents a model of team learning and tests it in a multimethod field study. It introduces the construct of team psychological safety—a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking—and models the effects of team psychological safety and team efficacy together on learning and performance in organizational work teams. Results of a study of...

The problem and the solution. Most executives are aware of the negative consequences associated with an organizational crisis and focus on communications and public relations as a reactive strategy. However, many neglect the other leadership responsibilities associated with organizational crises.This may result from lack of formal training and on-the-job experiences that prepare executives to lead crises. Executives who enable their organizations to recover from a...

Although most research on cynicism toward change (CTC) has been conceptualized at the individual level, we propose that CTC is better conceptualized as a multilevel phenomenon, acting as both an employee attitude and an organizational climate. We conducted a multilevel investigation of CTC in a field sample of 687 correctional officers in the 14 prisons in a state penal system. Consistent with our hypotheses, both...

The discovery of benefits from living with adversity has been implicated in psychological well‐being in numerous investigations, is pivotal to several prominent theories of cognitive adaptation to threat, and can be predicted by personality differences. This article summarizes the prevalence and adaptive significance of finding benefits from major medical problems, locates the place of benefit‐finding in stress and coping theories, and examines how it may...