<p>High levels of unemployment have resulted from the recent economic downturn. Job search related research has been limited with respect to the impact of psychological capacities in relation to job search intensity. The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative study was to test the theory of Psychological Capital (PsyCap) that relates PsyCap to preparatory and active job search behaviors. This study focused on active job searchers receiving outplacement services at an international organization for outplacement services. Two research hypotheses were tested: the four subscales of the psychological capital assessment do predict preparatory job search behaviors and the four subscales of the psychological capital assessment do predict active job search behaviors. The findings from an analysis of the results from this study did not provide results that were statistically significant in support of the first hypothesis. The results from the second hypothesis, however, reflected statistical significance in support of the second hypothesis. This study expands the research on positivity as it relates to job search intensity and contributes to the field of Organization and Management by analyzing the impact of PsyCap on job search intensity. The identification of job searchers&rsquo; PsyCap provides an opportunity to expand on the theoretical framework of positive psychology as it relates to the reemployment process. PsyCap is also &ldquo;developable&rdquo; (Luthans &amp; Youssef, 2007), which provides a basis for unemployment consultants in strengthening job searchers&rsquo; overall PsyCap and increasing their intensity levels. This strengthening of job searcher PsyCap should facilitate faster return to employment. </p>

These three experiments examined noticing rates of an unexpected object (UO) that appeared during a dynamic aircraft threat evaluation task that required participants to shift their visual attention between multiple task-relevant locations. Experiment 1 manipulated the location at which the UO appeared; no effects on noticing rates were found. However, eye-tracking data revealed trends for UOs to be noticed more when participants were looking at locations closer to where the UO appeared, or when they were making more eye-movements while the UO was present. Eye-tracking data also showed a strong link between making an eye movement to the UO and noticing it. Experiment 2 manipulated the color, direction and speed of the UO to make it more or less similar to task-relevant objects. Also, to-be-ignored (TBI) aircraft were either present or absent for each participant. An interaction between the color of the UO and the presence of TBI aircraft was found with noticing rates being greater for uniquely-colored UO's only when no TBI aircraft were present. No overall effect of UO and target aircraft similarity was found. Experiment 3 manipulated the visual complexity and cognitive difficulty of the task. Noticing rates were higher only in the visually-simple, cognitively-easy, task pairing. These findings reveal the importance of participants' task strategies, attentional set and the interaction with task complexity unexplored by current theories of visual attention and prior findings from research on inattentional blindness. Also discussed are the implications for designers of human-machine systems.

The main objective of this research was to determine whether differences between group and individual accuracy on behavioral rating tasks are due to differences in memory sensitivity or to systematic differences in the type of decision criterion adopted. Group vs. individual differences in evaluative judgment and in confidence levels, and the effects of a five-day delay were also investigated. Lastly the relationship between response bias and prior evaluative judgment was explored. The results revealed a group memory superiority but also demonstrated that groups adopt a too-liberal decision criterion when rating the occurrence of effective behaviors. In addition, in the delayed rating condition, groups were found to be more confident in their correct responses than individual subjects. And finally, for individual subjects, prior evaluative decisions were positively related to response bias in the rating of effective behaviors and negatively related to response bias in the rating of ineffective behaviors.

It has been theorized that leadership recognition is the product of an automatic categorization process in which individuals compare a set of observed behaviors to a leadership prototype and then, given a sufficient match, automatically recognize the target individual as a leader (Lord, Foti, & DeVader, 1984). The first goal of this research was to test this theory. A second goal was to investigate three potential moderators of the cognitive processes mediating leadership recognition: information load, need for leadership, and time delay. Three experiments were conducted in which subjects assumed the role of a work team coordinator for a small computer company. Their task was to identify an individual to fill an opening in a work team. During a study phase, subjects read a series of behavioral descriptions that were taken from recommendations written about former employees and one job candidate. A test phase followed in which the primary task was Jacoby's (1991) process-dissociation procedure (PDP), a recognition memory that generates estimates of automatic and controlled processes. Results from the experiments revealed that leadership recognition was mediated by a combination of automatic and controlled processes, with the balance clearly favoring automatic processes. That is, individuals operated in a primarily unintentional, unavoidable, and effortless manner when processing and integrating behavioral information about a potential leader. This balance of automatic and controlled cognitive processes was moderated by subjects' perceptions of the extent to which the work team needed a leader (Experiment 2 - Need for Leadership). Specifically, high-need-for-leadership subjects employed a more focused strategy of information processing than did their low-need counterparts. They appeared to expect and to give less scrutiny to behaviors that were consistent with leadership (increase in automatic processes), and to work more diligently to make sense of and integrate behaviors that were irrelevant to leadership (increase in controlled processes). The general primacy of automatic processes found in these experiments suggests that individuals are adept at forming impressions of potential leaders. This ability to identify leaders in a primarily effortless fashion is largely adaptive in light of the attentional scarcity that characterizes much of everyday life.

Studies examining processing of information which is consistent and inconsistent with an expectancy have not been able to conclusively determine which of these types of items has a memory advantage. Recent research indicates that one important determinant of this may be attention allocation to the different types of items. For example, a recent model of impression formation suggests that people process information along a continuum from using only a category label to using only individual attributes. It is proposed that motivational factors can influence attention allocation and thus memory for and use of consistent and inconsistent information. Two different communication sets were compared to assess their effects on information processing. It was hypothesized that whereas accountability would correspond with an advantage for inconsistent information, transmission tuning would correspond with an advantage for consistent information. Two experiments failed to confirm these hypotheses. There are several possible explanations for results.

Using a computerized information display board, subjects gathered information regarding applicants and subsequently evaluated the applicants. Results showed that subjects with prior impressions operated under a confirmatory bias during the information search and during the subsequent decision making process. This effect was greater for subjects under time pressure and with lesser cognitive complexity. Subjects having no prior impressions preferred to gather diagnostic information. Subjects under time pressure demonstrated a noncompensatory processing strategy by increasing the rate of processing, gathering less information, and showing greater variance in dimensional accesses. Subjects under severe time pressure demonstrated greater variance in applicant accesses, focused on the information dimensions most important to them, and had significantly more Type 4 (nonsystematic) transitions. Subjects with lesser cognitive complexity eliminated applicants from consideration sooner than did subjects with greater cognitive complexity. Subjects with lesser cognitive ability were more likely to immediately reaccess information and gathered less information.

With the introduction of advanced information technologies, organizations are able to work in many new arrangements which impact the way groups and individuals interact. This research examined the effects of working at a distance on the quality and quantity of communication, as well as LMX quality between a supervisor and subordinate. The impacts of using advanced information technologies to manage a distance situation were also investigated, and factors leading to choice of a particular communication mode were defined. The results suggest that neither the quality nor quantity of communication between a supervisor and employee is related to the distance between the two. The LMX quality of the pair is not related to distance either. However, while the communication seems to be the same for distance and non-distance workers, employees in non-traditional distance jobs feel as if they are more isolated and communicate less with their supervisors. These findings suggest that employees in non-traditional distance jobs may require more communication with their supervisors than those in other work scenarios. In addition, the results imply that advanced communication technologies can play a significant role in managing distance work. The overall media richness of the technology used by a pair to communicate moderates the effects of distance on LMX quality for non-traditional distance workers. In examining how individuals make choices concerning technology use, the results support suggestions put forth by the Social Information Processing Model (Fulk, Steinfield, Schmitz, & Power, 1987) and the Critical Mass Theory (Markus, 1987) and support generalization of these models to technologies other than electronic mail. In addition, the results reinforce ideas put forth by Daft and his colleagues (Daft et. al, 1987) concerning the match between the appropriate technology and a specific task. Overall, these two factors are very important in determining technology use. The results of this study also suggest that electronic mail has been integrated into corporate cultures to a great degree and seems to be a preferred method of communication. In contrast, very little use is currently being made of more advanced communication technologies such as computer conferencing and video conferencing.

In trouble-shooting, subjects choose the order in which they test hypotheses. This choice often involves a trade-off between the time it takes to test a hypothesis and the probability that the hypothesis is correct. In visual search, subjects may have to choose which of two displays they are going to search first. The trade-off is similar in that the display most likely to contain the target may take longer to search. A series of experiments investigated whether subjects are efficient in the way they trade-off the size of a visual display and the probability it contains the target. Subjects were presented with information about the size of each of two displays and their respective probabilities of containing the target. The task was to choose which display to search first and then conduct the search as rapidly as possible. The first experiment showed that subjects did follow specific patterns of display choice, and that subjects have a strong tendency to overweigh probability information. Experiment 1 also showed that subjects generally fail to take into consideration the effect of highlighting the target. When a target is highlighted, the size of the display has a negligible effect on search time and therefore should make the size of the display unimportant in choosing which display to search. The display choice of most subjects was uninfluenced by target highlighting. Experiment 2 used a wider range of display sizes to see if that would make display size more salient and possibly induce subjects to pay more attention to it. As in Experiment 1, subjects paid too much attention to the probability that a display contains the target and not enough attention to the time it takes to search the display. Three methods of training subjects to consider the time to test a hypothesis when choosing hypotheses were evaluated in Experiment 4. Even though the surface characteristics of the training materials and the visual search task differed, training did improve subjects' performance on the visual search task. The relative neglect of the time it takes to test hypotheses may be a general phenomenon.

As the use of graphical user interfaces expands into new areas, icons are becoming an increasingly important aspect of GUIs. Oddly, little research has been done into the costs and benefits associated with using icons. A set experiments was conducted in which various attributes of icons were examined, including simple icon borders, icon "quality" and set size (number of "distractor" icons). An eye tracking study of the task was also conducted to examine the icon search strategies of computer users. Based on the results of the studies, two models were then constructed in ACT-R/PM to carry out the same task as in the experiments. The final iteration of the models was predictive of human performance in icon search tasks. Insights into icon design and computational modeling of icon search are discussed.

The effect of receipt of a realistic job preview (RJP) on employees' coping skills was explored. The RJP lowered employees' expectations, but did not result in better met expectations for those in the treatment group, in comparison to those in the control group, who did not receive an RJP. The RJP interacted with employees' tenure in affecting social coping; for the treatment group, as tenure increased, social coping decreased. In contrast, for the control group, social coping remained the same across months of tenure. Finally, the RJP interacted with negative affectivity. For the control group, as negative affectivity increased, controllability decreased. Treatment subjects' controllability ratings were similar across levels of negative affectivity. The study indicates that RJPs may have important outcomes beyond reducing turnover.