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This nine-year study examined the extent to which selected admissions criteria of 34 family therapy doctoral students predicted their future performance on clinical, academic, research, and other job-related criteria. Age and clinical background were positively related to clinical ratings after three years. Letters of recommendation and student autobiographies were positively related to qualify and quantity of publications. Graduate Record Examination scores and interview ratings were not predictive of any of the criterion variables at three or six years. Additional findings are presented and discussed.

This paper presents the theoretical basis and the associated perceptions of race relations that characterized a race relations competence workshop which served as the educational component of an overall program to improve race relations among managers within the fictitiously named XYZ Corporation. Workshop activities combined didactic and experiential methods and focused on group and individual levels of learning based on embedded intergroup relations theory. An assessment of the race relations competence workshop was carried out as part of an overall effort to evaluate the race relations improvement program in the company. Employing measures of both global evaluation and perceptions of race relations among managers, the study showed that Blacks evaluated the workshop more favorably than Whites, that reports of having information about the workshop were positively associated with favorable evaluations of the workshop, that workshop participants more than nonparticipants were likely to perceive Whites as hurting Blacks and less likely to perceive Blacks as hurting Whites. Additional analyses showed that, while the workshop generally had favorable effects for participants, the groups most likely to show unfavorable consequences were White male first level managers younger than 41 years and White female first level managers older than 40 years.

Bonding is an essential factor in the establishment and maintenance of an intimate committed relationship. Dissecting elements of bonding leads to an understanding of the internal structure of the marriage. Attraction and bonding are different and equally vital in turning initial romance into enduring intimacy. The process of attraction based on projections developing into an enduring bond between peers merges relationship purpose and a rationale for emotional involvement. This occurs when attention is accorded to each of the factors of bonding; ego-equality, respect, interdependence and reality grounding. In therapy, a couple’s bonding can be assessed through the isomorphic qualities actualized in the therapeutic joining process. Discussions includes over bonded and under bonded couples, their presenting problems, and a treatment focus for each condition. © 1991 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Since the typical account longevity is short, agencies should anticipate their likelihood of loss, seek to forestall and invest in their client relationships. A model is proposed for examining account lifetimes, which can offer guidance on the likely retention of future accounts. The impact of agency structural characteristics on longevity is also examined, and compared for both U.S. and U.K. markets. Results for both markets indicate that cumulative account dissolution increases at a decreasing rate over time. Greater account longevity is associated with larger agency size (both in terms of agency billings and employees), and agency age but not with stability of billings growth. Evidence suggests that several structural characteristics of agencies reflect the motivation and/or ability to maintain accounts. © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

To gain insight into how people select life insurance policies, we conducted a controlled experiment to see how consumers with varying levels of expertise make choices among life insurance policies when provided relevant information presented in an easy-to-use format. We found that those with greater product class knowledge engage in qualitatively and quantitatively different decision processes than those with less knowledge, and therefore are likely to reach different decisions. Specifically, experts are statistically more likely to engage in pairwise/multiple comparisons and to evoke a greater number of choice criteria. There is directional support that they search for more information as well. For all participants, the number of information searches far exceeded the number of elimination and choice criteria evoked. © 1998 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

A growing body of literature suggests that experts are little if at all better than novices in terms of the quality of decision outputs, To explain this counter-intuitive finding, the authors propose a conceptual framework that focuses on initial problem structure as a key moderator of the effect of expertise on performance, Specifically, they argue that the expert-novice performance differential should be greatest at moderate levels of problem structure and weakest at both extremes. To examine this central hypothesis, the authors conduct a controlled experiment that compares experts with novices when solving a complex problem that had characteristics of a moderately ill-structured problem, Relative to novices, the authors find that experts select fewer, but more diagnostic, information inputs and are more consistent when evaluating nonquantified inputs, As a result, they make more accurate and tightly clustered judgments than do novices, and. also are more confident in their decisions. To examine the moderating influence of problem characteristics, certain task variables are manipulated to increase or decrease initial problem structure. As hypothesized, the benefits of expertise are less pronounced when solving a problem with increased initial structure.

The purpose df this paper is to examine factors that affect the calibration of judgments by systematically comparing experts' judgments to novices' when solving a complex, real-world problem that varies in its initial characteristics. Calibration in this context refers to the proportion of times decision makers provide a range about their best estimates that includes the actual outcome. We found that experts specify a narrower range and provide more accurate best estimates than novices. But their tighter ranges are not justified by their greater accuracy: they are less likely to encompass the actual outcome than are novices. However, this effect is attenuated when solving more complex problems. Novices apparently underestimate the complexity of difficult problems, hence the accuracy of their best estimates decreases as does the width of their ranges, resulting in worse calibration. The performance of experts was not significantly different across problem solving conditions. Both groups provided asymmetrical ranges about their best estimates, which suggests they account for the effect of subproblem dependencies. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.

Most studies of corporate social responsiveness (CSR) focus on the relationship between CSR and profit. Here, we use three perspectives (institutional theory, economic theory and agency theory) to explain CSR. Industry norms, market share and indicators of management reputation predict variance in CSR. The combined perspectives improve understanding of both CSR and the CSR-profit relationship in two ways. First, they suggest that CSR levels and their relationship with profit will vary by industry. Second, they suggest that stock market measures and accounting measures will respond differently to CSR measures. Stock market measures lead, while accounting measures lag, CSR.

Management researchers are always in search for new controlled environments from which they can gather data. This article proposes the use of total enterprise simulations as a research setting for studying management decision making. Using INTOP, the authors present examples of analyses that were conducted from a data base generated from the responses of executive MBA participants. Using a multiple regression, policy-capture approach, differences in the decision making strategies between groups are examined. Also discussed is an approach to developing a performance criterion that may be used when testing hypotheses regarding managerial decision-making effectiveness. The authorsconclude that total enterprise simulations represent a research setting that warrants further exploration. © 1990, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.

To investigate emotion expression and personality relations, the authors coded infants' full-face and component positive and negative expressions during Episodes 4 through 8 of the strange situation procedure at age 18 months and obtained maternal ratings of the 5-factor model of personality when children were 3.5 years old. Full-face negative expression was directly related to Neuroticism and inversely related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. By contrast, component positive expression showed the exact opposite pattern of relations. Full-face positive expression was positively correlated with Extraversion and Openness to Experience. These findings indicate that full-face and component expressions may index different intensities of emotions. Emotion expression and personality relations were not mediated by the security of attachment continuum or the emotional reactivity dichotomy derived from the attachment subclassifications.

A substantial body of theoretical literature testifies to the evolutionary functions of emotions. Relatively little has been written about their developmental functions. This article discusses the developmental functions of emotions from the perspective of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard, 1977, 1991). According to DET, although all the emotions retain their adaptive and motivational functions across the lifespan, different sets of emotions may become relatively more prominent in the different stages of life as they serve stage-related developmental processes. In the first section, we present a brief overview of relevant aspects of the theory. In the second section, we discuss how emotions play a central role in helping the individual achieve developmental milestones and tasks during four major periods of life: Infancy, toddler through preschool years, middle to late childhood, and adolescence. The underlying thesis of this article is that emotions play a central role in stimulating social cognitive attainments at each stage of development. © 1999 Psychology Press Ltd.