Louis A. Penner

THE CAUSES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR: A MOTIVATIONAL ANALYSIS

This study addressed the role of motives in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Three motives were identified through factor analyses: prosocial values, organizational concern, and impression management. Scales that measured these motives and other variables known to covary with OCB were administered to 141 municipal employees and were correlated with self-, peer, and supervisor ratings of 5 aspects of OCB. Relative to the other motives, prosocial values motives were most strongly associated with OCB directed at individuals, and organizational concern motives were most strongly associated with OCB directed toward the organization. Each of the motives accounted for unique amounts of variance in OCB. The results suggest that motives may play an important role in OCB.

Dispositional and Organizational Influences on Sustained Volunteerism: An Interactionist Perspective

Community service often involves sustained prosocial actions by individuals. This article focuses on one kind of such actions, volunteerism. Volunteerism involves long–term, planned, prosocial behaviors that benefit strangers, and usually occur in an organizational setting. A selective review of the literature on the correlates of volunteerism is presented. One part of the review concerns the relationship between dispositional variables and volunteerism; it includes new data from an on–line survey that show significant relationships among personality traits, religiosity, and volunteer activities. The other part concerns how organizational variables, alone and in combination with dispositional variables, are related to volunteerism. A theoretical model of the causes of sustained volunteerism is presented and the practical implications of this model are discussed.

Dispositional and Structural Determinants of Volunteerism

The dispositional and structural correlates of volunteerism were examined in a panel study. AIDS service organization volunteers answered questions about affect toward the organization, organizational commitment, motives for volunteering, and a prosocial personality orientation. These measures were used to predict 4 volunteer-related behaviors. Length of service was weakly correlated with the 3 other volunteer behaviors. Altruistic motives and prosocial personality characteristics predicted several of the volunteer behaviors. Initial levels of volunteer activity and organizational commitment also predicted final levels of volunteer activity, but these effects were mediated through intermediate levels of volunteer activities. The findings are discussed within the context of the volunteer process model and role identity models of volunteerism.

Individual differences in intraperson variability in mood

The experience sampling method and palm-top computers were used to obtain 75-100 randomly timed in situ assessments of 11 mood-related items from 54 Ss over 12-14 days. The variability in the distribution of an Ss responses to each item was used as an estimate of intrasubject mood variability. Mood variability was stable across time (average r > .58) and across situations (average r = .51). The intercorrelations among the individual item variabilities were also substantial (average r = .41); when the items were combined into a mood variability scale, the coefficient alpha was .84. The stability and internal consistency of mood variability could not be reasonably attributed to similarity in item valences, differences among the Ss in the situations they encountered, response biases, or response errors. It was concluded that mood variability is a stable personal characteristic, but additional analyses suggested that it may be independent from other kinds of intraperson variability.

Communication and consumer decision making about cancer clinical trials

Communication between patients and physicians likely mediates traditional patient and physician predispositions in determining patient outcomes, including perceptions and decision making. However, the extent to which a mediating effect occurs is unclear. The purpose of this essay is to outline the need for conceptualizing more holistic models of consumer-provider interaction that demonstrate the role of the therapeutic relationship in treatment outcomes. We focus on an important communicative context for exploring this question: the situation where patients, with the help of oncologists, are faced with making treatment choices, particularly whether to enroll in a clinical trial in response to their life-threatening cancer diagnosis. We explore the question from the perspectives of the medical provider, the patient, and the accompanying family member, in order to better frame the complex interactional dynamics occurring during the interaction.

The psychometric properties of several measures of body image

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the construct of body image, there is relatively little information on the psychometric properties of the instruments used to measure it. This study investigated the reliability and validity of several measures of body image and compared bulimics and normals on these measures. One hundred ten normal weight females, half of whom were diagnosed as bulimic, were administered two measures of affect toward ones body, two measures of perceptions of ones entire body, and three measures of perceptions of the size of specific body sites (face, shoulders, waist, and hips). In themain, the measures provided reliable indices of body image. Examination of the correlation matrix for the measures disclosed convergence for the affective measures of body image and for all but one of the perceptual measures of body image. There was also significant covariation between the affective and the perceptual measures. The multitrait-multimethod technique was used to investigate the construct validity of the measures concerned with perceptions of the size of body sites. The multitrait-multimethod matrices disclosed substantial convergence between perceptions of face, shoulder, waist, and hip size across the three measures. However, the measure which used kinesthetic estimates of body-site size produced low reliabilities and all three of the measures showed substantial method variance. Bulimics and normals differed significantly on both the affective and the perceptual components of body image.

The moderator variable approach to behavioral predictability: Some of the variables some of the time☆

Abstract There has been widespread acceptance of the usage of moderator variables to improve the predictability of social behavior from attitudes and traits. However, relatively little is known about the psychometric properties of the specific moderator variables which have been used and the interrelationships between them. The present study investigated these issues. It was found that at least two of the more commonly used moderator variables may be psychometrically weak. A factor analysis disclosed that the five most widely used moderator variables form three orthogonal factors: social communication skills, other-directedness, and inner-directedness. These findings raise some questions about the utility of some of the measures which have been used and the advisability of using single scales to classify a person as predictable or unpredictable.

The Effects of Real vs. Hypothetical Risk on Group Choice-Shifts

The effect of real vs. hypothetical risk on choice-shifts was examined. Two studies were conducted, each using a different decision task and both employing both real and hypothetical risk conditions. The results indicated that the degree of task reality did not significantly influence the direction or magnitude of the group-induced choice shifts.

Differences in audiotaped versus videotaped physician-patient interactions

Most medical interaction studies have been conducted on audiotaped recordings of physician-patient encounters. Empirical studies have not previously demonstrated whether coders scores differ on audio-only versus videotaped data. Data from a convenience sample of forty-seven physician-patient interactions were analyzed using the same coding systems to judge audio-only versus video-based data formats. All coding conditions demonstrated acceptable reliability, using intraclass correlation coefficients. However, MANOVA analyses show that ratings of audiotaped physician-patient interactions are not equivalent to ratings of videotaped encounters. Exploratory factor analyses show differences in the underlying structures of the data derived from the audio-only versus the video information. The differences in the video-based factor solutions account for more total variance and are more consistent with theoretical expectations.

Observer's Reporting of Shoplifting as a Function of Thief's Race and Sex

Summary This study investigated the reporting of a clearly observed theft as a function of the race and sex of the thief and the sex of the observer. Two hundred and forty white male and female shoppers were given the opportunity either spontaneously to report an act of shoplifting or to confirm the fact that the theft had occurred by responding affirmatively to a direct question. Thefts were perpetrated by a white male, white female, black male, or black female confederate. Blacks were reported/confirmed more often than whites. The results were discussed in terms of (a) behavioral manifestations of race prejudice and (b) prior research on victim characteristics and helping.