N. T. Feather

Organizational citizenship behaviours in relation to job status, job insecurity, organizational commitment and identification, job satisfaction and work values

This study investigated organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) in a sample of 154 school teachers from Victoria, Australia, of whom 101 were in permanent employment and 53 on fixed-term contracts. Participants completed measures of OCBs, job insecurity, organizational commitment, organizational identification, job satisfaction and work values relating to influence, variety and skill utilization. Results showed that the contract teachers reported more job insecurity and more OCBs compared to the permanent teachers. OCBs were positively related to perceived job insecurity and negatively related to opportunities to satisfy influence and skillutilization work values for the contract teachers, and positively related to organizational commitment, organizational identification and to opportunities to satisfy variety and skill-utilization work values for the permanent teachers. Results were discussed in relation to the different functions that OCBs were assumed to serve for both groups of teachers and the possibility of conceptualizing OCBs using a motivational analysis that takes account of expectations and goal structures.

Envy, Resentment, Schadenfreude, and Sympathy: Reactions to Deserved and Undeserved Achievement and Subsequent Failure

This study tested the hypothesis that schadenfreude (or pleasure in anothers misfortune) would be more closely related to resentment and a wish to correct a perceived injustice than to envy, and that sympathy would involve different processes. Participants were 184 undergraduates who responded to scenarios in which a student with a record of either high or average achievement that followed high or low effort subsequently suffered failure under conditions where there was either high or low personal control. Results showed that resentment about the students prior achievement could be distinguished from envy. Schadenfreude about the students subsequent failure was predicted by resentment and not by envy. Sympathy was not predicted by either resentment or envy. Deservingness was a key variable in the models that were tested.

An Attribution-Value Model of Prejudice: Anti-Fat Attitudes in Six Nations

The authors propose an Attribution-Value model of prejudice, which hypothesizes that people are prejudiced against groups that they feel have some negative attribute for which they are held responsible. The structure of prejudice against fat people was compared in six nations: Australia, India, Poland, Turkey, the United States of America, and Venezuela. Both a negative cultural value for fatness and a tendency to hold people responsible predicts anti-fat prejudice. Most important, a multiplicative hypothesis was supported—people with both a negative value for fatness and a tendency to hold people responsible were more anti-fat than could be predicted from cultural value and attributions alone. These effects were more pronounced in individualist cultures. The authors develop the Attribution-Value model of prejudice that can apply to prejudice of many sorts across many cultures.

Reactions to penalties for an offense in relation to authoritarianism, values, perceived responsibility, perceived seriousness, and deservingness

Two studies involving participants from metropolitan Adelaide, South Australia (Study 1: N = 220, Study 2: N = 181) examined variables that were assumed to influence cognitive and affective reactions to penalties imposed for offenses relating to domestic violence, plagiarism, and shoplifting (in Study 1), and resisting a police order in a protest against logging (in Study 2). Results of path analyses supported a model that assumed paths linking perceived responsibility to the perceived seriousness of an offense; responsibility and seriousness to deservingness of the penalty; deservingness to the perceived harshness of the penalty, to reported positive affect about the penalty, and to reported sympathy for the offender; and perceived harshness of the penalty to reported positive affect and sympathy. Right-wing authoritarianism and relevant values had direct effects on perceived seriousness consistent with the assumption that values affect the way an offense is construed in relation to its negative valence or aversiveness. Deservingness had a central role as a mediator of reactions.

Understanding unemployed people's job search behaviour, unemployment experience and well-being: A comparison of expectancy-value theory and self-determination theory

Previous unemployment research has directly tested hypotheses derived from expectancy-value theory (EVT; Feather, 1982, 1990), but no comparative analysis has been executed with another motivational framework. In one large study with 446 unemployed people, separate analyses provided good evidence for predictions derived from both EVT and self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000). Comparative analyses indicated that the type of peoples job search motivation, as conceptualized through the notions of autonomous versus controlled motivation within SDT, is an important predictor of peoples unemployment experience and wellbeing, beyond peoples strength of motivation assessed within EVT through expectancies of finding a job and employment value. The importance of simultaneously testing two theoretical frameworks is discussed.

Attitudes towards the high achiever: The fall of the tall poppy

Abstract Three studies are reported that concerna attitudes towards a person in a high position (the tall poppy) and towards, the tall poppys fall. The studies were developed in relation to theoretical analyses concerned with value systems, envy, social comparison, and other psychological processes. In Study 1,531 students in South Australian high schools responded to scenarios in which either a high achiever or an average achiever experienced failure. Results showed that subjects reported feeling more pleased about a high achievers fall than about an average achievers fall, more pleased when a high achiever fell to the average position on the performance scale rather than to the bottom, and more pleased and friendly towards a high achiever who fell to the average position than towards an average achiever who fell to the bottom. In Study 2, 361 university students responded to scenarios in which a high achiever or an average achiever cheated at an examination. Results showed that the students were more...

Deservingness and emotions: Applying the structural model of deservingness to the analysis of affective reactions to outcomes

This chapter describes how a structural model of deservingness governed by a principle of balance may be applied to the analysis of emotions relating to deserved or undeserved outcomes of other or of self. In each case perceived deservingness/undeservingness is assumed to mediate both general emotional reactions such as pleasure and dissatisfaction and discrete emotions such as sympathy, resentment, disappointment, and guilt, depending on outcome (positive, negative), the evaluative structure of action/outcome relations, and whether outcomes relate to other or to self. Evidence from studies of reactions to success or failure, and reactions to penalties for offences, supports the analysis, as does earlier research on tall poppies or high achievers. The theoretical analysis is then related to the wider psychological literature on justice and emotions, especially to appraisal theory as exemplified in Weiners approach. Also discussed are issues concerned with reciprocal relations between affect and deservingness, thoughtful versus automatic processing, new extensions of balance theory, and variables such as like/dislike relations, ingroup/outgroup relations, and perceived responsibility that would moderate perceived deservingness/undeservingness, thereby influencing the emotions that are assumed to be activated in each case.

Value Correlates of Ambivalent Attitudes toward Gender Relations

This study related measures of hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, hostility toward men, and benevolence toward men to value priorities. It was predicted that these variables would be positively related to the importance of power values for self and negatively related to universalism and benevolence values and that measures of benevolent sexism and benevolence toward men would be positively related to tradition values and negatively related to self-direction values. These predictions were supported in a study in which student participants in Adelaide, South Australia, completed the Glick and Fiske Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, the Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory, and the Schwartz Value Survey. The results demonstrate how values influence attitudes toward gender relations and provide an additional perspective on current discussions of prejudice.

Resentment, envy, schadenfreude, and sympathy: effects of own and other's deserved or undeserved status

This study used deservingness theory (Feather, 1999) to investigate how perceptions by a low status observer that his or her low status is deserved or undeserved affects the observers envy and resentment towards a deserving or undeserving high achiever, and schadenfreude and sympathy when the high achiever suffers a subsequent failure. Deservingness was manipulated by varying the amount of effort, high or low, that led to a low achievement or a high achievement. Participants were 197 undergraduates who role-played a deserving or undeserving low performing student. In this role they first responded to a scenario involving either a deserving or undeserving high achiever and then to a subsequent epilogue in which the high achiever suffered failure. Results showed that resentment about the role-players low performance affected both envy and resentment towards the high achiever, and that both resentment about the high achievers success and a wish to denigrate the high achiever fuelled schadenfreude about th...

The measurement of values: Effects of different assessment procedures

In a study involving 382 Ss in introductory psychology, rating and pair-comparison procedures for assessing the importance of terminal and instrumental values were compared with the standard ranking procedure developed by Rokeach. Effects of order of presentation of the value sets (terminal/instrumental versus instrumental/terminal) were also investigated. Results indicated that assessment procedure per se had little effect on the average value systems that were obtained. Nor were there replicable order effects across procedures. Some sex differences in the importance assigned to particular values were, however, replicated. Advantages and disadvantages of ranking, rating, and pair-comparison procedures for assessing the importance of values were discussed.