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A process model linking occupational strength to attitudes and behaviors: The explanatory role of occupational personality heterogeneity.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
This study proposes a mediated process model that seeks to explain how occupational strength influences personality heterogeneity, ultimately affecting attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, it proposes that strong occupations restrict personality heterogeneity (defined as the extent to which there is variability in incumbents' personalities), which mediates the effect of occupational strength on work-related outcomes. Using a sample of 178,087 individuals employed in 315 occupations, the results indicate that strong occupations (operationalized as having high task significance) had advantageous effects on occupational satisfaction, tenure, and turnover intentions, and these effects were partially mediated by personality heterogeneity. Task significance had a negative effect on personality heterogeneity, and personality heterogeneity led to less favorable attitudes and behaviors. The occupational autonomy operationalization of situational strength also had advantageous effects on incumbents' occupational satisfaction, tenure, and turnover intentions, but these effects were not mediated by personality heterogeneity. In addition, personality distance (defined as the extent to which incumbents were personally different from others in the occupation) adversely affected within-occupation attitudes and behaviors. This study reexamines situational strength theory, shifting the emphasis away from an interaction (behavior = person × situation) to an explanatory process (behavior is a function of personality heterogeneity, which is a function of situational strength). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Supporting and enhancing scientific rigor.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
has implemented to further support and enhance scientific rigor. In line with the previous editorial, the practices discussed in the following text broadly seek to enhance scientific rigor and transparency in the empirical research published by providing the reader sufficient information needed to verify the accuracy and validity of study findings and inferences and enable the accumulation of knowledge through replications and extensions of primary research as well as meta-analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record

Changing abilities vs. changing tasks: Examining validity degradation with test scores and college performance criteria both assessed longitudinally.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
We explore potential explanations for validity degradation using a unique predictive validation data set containing up to four consecutive years of high school students' cognitive test scores and four complete years of those students' college grades. This data set permits analyses that disentangle the effects of predictor-score age and timing of criterion measurements on validity degradation. We investigate the extent to which validity degradation is explained by criterion dynamism versus the limited shelf-life of ability scores. We also explore whether validity degradation is attributable to fluctuations in criterion variability over time and/or GPA contamination from individual differences in course-taking patterns. Analyses of multiyear predictor data suggest that changes to the determinants of performance over time have much stronger effects on validity degradation than does the shelf-life of cognitive test scores. The age of predictor scores had only a modest relationship with criterion-related validity when the criterion measurement occasion was held constant. Practical implications and recommendations for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Toward customer-centric organizational science: A common language effect size indicator for multiple linear regressions and regressions with higher-order terms.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
To address a long-standing concern regarding a gap between organizational science and practice, scholars called for more intuitive and meaningful ways of communicating research results to users of academic research. In this article, we develop a common language effect size index (CLβ) that can help translate research results to practice. We demonstrate how CLβ can be computed and used to interpret the effects of continuous and categorical predictors in multiple linear regression models. We also elaborate on how the proposed CLβ index is computed and used to interpret interactions and nonlinear effects in regression models. In addition, we test the robustness of the proposed index to violations of normality and provide means for computing standard errors and constructing confidence intervals around its estimates. (PsycINFO Database Record

Central tendency and matched difference approaches for assessing interrater agreement.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
, AD, and ICC(1) values for actual and pseudo groups, with the establishment of bootstrapped confidence intervals around such differences. In both studies, we employ simulated and real data to demonstrate the accuracy and practical utility of the new procedures for assessing agreement with respect to groups. Notably, to generate simulated data for Studies 1 and 2, we developed a new underlying model for multilevel data and procedure for data generation, and we discuss its potential utility for enhancing research in group-level studies. Moreover, we discuss, relative to current practices, how and why the new inference procedures provide information about mean interrater agreement in the population, which can improve data aggregation decisions and interpretations of findings from group-level studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Composition and compensation: The moderating effect of individual and team performance on the relationship between Black team member representation and salary.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
Despite considerable focus on how the demographic composition of a workplace (e.g., the representation of minorities, women) may adversely affect the salaries of all individuals within that workplace, few researchers have investigated the factors that may impede this deleterious effect. In two distinct samples of multiracial work teams and one experiment, we test the moderating factors that attenuate or exacerbate these demographic influences on the monetary assessments of individuals' worth. Specifically, we demonstrate that the proportion of Black coworkers on a team is more negatively related to individual compensation for poorer, rather than higher, performing individuals or teams. Experimentally, we show that when performance is lower (individual or team), having more Black coworkers on a work team is related to greater stigmatization and, consequently, lower salaries. No such indirect effect is present, however, when performance is higher. These studies demonstrate that, under poor performance, the pernicious effects of stigma may have a wider reach than previously believed. Theoretical and practical implications of this finding are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Lay theories of effortful honesty: Does the honesty–effort association justify making a dishonest decision?

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
= 153) lay theories, and then manipulated the strength of situational force that encourages dishonesty, and found that an individual's lay theory influences subsequent dishonesty only in a weak situation, where individuals have more agency to interpret the situation. This research provides novel insights into how our lay theories linking honesty and effort can help us rationalize our dishonesty, independent of whether a particular moral decision requires effort or not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A formal model of leadership goal striving: Development of core process mechanisms and extensions to action team context.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
This research develops and tests a formal process-oriented theory of leader goal striving. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we developed a computational model that explicates the core process mechanisms involved in a leader-subordinate dyadic goal pursuit system. We then extended this core model to incorporate action team features (i.e., negative external disturbances, deadlines, and task interdependence) to account for leadership behavior in action team context. We simulated our proposed model to generate predictions about trajectories of a critical leadership function (i.e., leader engaging in team task-specific actions) under different conditions of disturbances, deadlines, task interdependence, and leader attributes. The predicted relationships were then tested in a laboratory experiment. As predicted by the model, time-related factors, including disturbances and deadlines, had significant effects on trajectories of leader actions. Over time within a given task, leaders were more likely to take actions when further than closer to the deadline. Leaders were also more likely to take actions when external disturbances set task states back. In addition, leaders' time allocation was less evenly distributed across subordinates when the deadline was short (vs. long). We discussed the implications of the model and how future research can extend our model to account for more complicated goal pursuit and team processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The heterogeneity problem in meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) revisited: A reply to Cheung.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
Yu, Downes, Carter, and O'Boyle (2016) introduce a new technique to incorporate effect size heterogeneity into meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) labeled full information meta-analytical structural equation modeling (FIMASEM). Cheung's (2018) commentary raises concerns about the viability of FIMASEM and provides its initial validation. In this reply, we briefly respond to those concerns noting how they relate to Yu et al.'s original conclusions, general MASEM practices, and operational decisions within the FIMASEM procedure. We synthesize Cheung's criticisms and build on his findings to lay out a research agenda for the future of MASEM and the role that our technique might play in it. In doing so, we clarify the conceptual nature of FIMASEM, identity inferential mistakes that current MASEM studies are likely to make, and offer specific and actionable recommendations in terms of the types of research questions FIMASEM is best suited to address and how FIMASEM results can best be interpreted and reported. (PsycINFO Database Record

Sprinting to the finish: Toward a theory of Human Capital Resource Complementarity.

Journal of Applied Psychology 2018
In traditional work contexts, factors such as individuals' general competencies are used to predict indices of their performance such as yearly performance appraisals. Whereas traditional approaches to predicting individuals' performance focus on differences between individuals, a considerable proportion of variability in performance is attributable to within-person sources. However, we submit that within-person variability in performance may also be attributable to the fact that people work in different contexts. Moreover, individual performance is often the result of unrecognized team contributions. Accordingly, we advance a Human Capital Resource Complementarity (HCRC) theory to explain the alignment of human capital resources with dynamic situational features, and to illustrate the influence of team collective competencies on the performance of individual members. We then empirically test HCRC theory-derived hypotheses using a sample of 169 cyclists from 22 teams across 18 stages of the centennial Tour de France. Our results suggest that individuals' specific competencies interact with situational characteristics to predict their performance variability over time, beyond that accounted for by their general competencies. Moreover, these effects are accentuated to the extent that teammates' competencies aligned with individual competencies in a given situation. Implications for future theory building, research, and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).