Visual Dominance and Visual Egalitarianism: Individual and Group-Level Influences of Sex and Status in Group Interactions

This study investigated visual dominance and visual egalitarianism of men and women (N = 94; 17 teams) in team meetings at diverse workplaces. Two novel gaze-related measures were developed: (a) a group visual dominance ratio (group-VDR) assessing each member’s visual dominance vis-à-vis all other members, and (b) a gaze distribution index (GDI) assessing each member’s visual egalitarianism to all group members. Multilevel analyses were conducted to account for influences of the team members’ sex and status on the individual level and for influences of sex and status composition of the teams, and the team leaders’ sex on the group level. Results suggested that high-status individuals displayed more visual dominance than low-status individuals. The significant interaction of individuals’ sex and status indicated that the positive relationship of status and visual dominance applied particularly to women. The more women in a team, the more visual dominance was displayed. The team leader’s sex significantly influenced visual egalitarianism: Gaze distribution was less egalitarian when the team leader was male.     

Investing prudently: How financialization puts a legal standard to use

This article reviews the recent history of the prudent investor standard, which provides clear evidence of the changes taking place in American capitalism. By studying legislative, regulatory and judiciary processes together, we can observe how transformations have affected the production and institutionalization of the standard over time. Its meaning has been negotiated both where the federal government's power to regulate meets the political sway of employers and financiers and at the junction between magistrates’ procedural independence and the intellectual authority deriving from economic theories. This method shows that there is no one, single, legal definition of “prudence” but, instead, several connotations that overlap, suggesting that the force of law is (also) based on a semantic diversity, nevertheless instrumental in the structural evolution of financial capitalism.     

Eigenverantwortung als Element eines neuen psychologischen Vertrages

As a result of work flexibilisation, employers increasingly demand from their employees to assume selfresponsibility. New psychological contracts, which emerge in the process of work flexbilisation, mirror this development. The present study analyses the relevance of self-responsibility in the employer perspective on psychological contracts in 14 companies in Switzerland. Each of the contracts corresponds to one of three contract types which drastically, moderately or conservatively diverge from the traditional contract offering employment security. With respect to the contents of self-responsibility, entrepreneurship and employee flexibility, the differences between the contracts are small. Within the companies these contract contents appear to be unbalanced, as high demands but few offers are made. In order to compensate this imbalance, psychological contracts should be actively managed and clearly communicated. Human resource measures should provide general conditions that employees can assume self-responsibility.     

Islam and Muslim Immigrants in Austria: Socio-Political Networks and Muslim Leadership of Turkish Immigrants

This essay outlines the unique historical and legal aspects of the institutionalization of Islam in Austria and its various organizations. Major attention, however, is given to the concept of socio-political networks in understanding the motives for, and processes of, self-organization of Turkish Muslim migrant communities. Finally, Turkish Muslim leadership (the imams), in Austria is discussed. Based on a pioneer study for Austria, the essay argues that in the context of migrant studies, the religious elites of Muslim immigrants have been largely neglected so far and, hence, deals with their function in the Muslim community and their situation in Austria.     

Burnout research: Adding an off-work and day-level perspective

This commentary argues that future burnout research will benefit from adding two perspectives. First, as depersonalization may result from insufficient recovery during off-job time, it will be fruitful to include the investigation of off-work experiences into burnout research. Second, adding a day-level perspective will shed more light on the burnout phenomenon.     

Dealing with unknown variables in policy/program evaluation

A leading objection to the feasibility of applying benefit-cost analysis in evaluation is that one often cannot know the benefits, the costs, or the probabilities of their occurring for a given proposal. Threshold analysis involves handling unknown variables by converting relevant evaluation problems into questions as to whether a given benefit, cost, probability, or combination of these elements is more or less than a threshold. Above the threshold, the proposed program would be relatively profitable; and below the threshold, it would be relatively unprofitable. Applying that analysis may require the drawing of simple graphs to stimulate the minds of knowledgeable persons as to the range of the actual benefits, costs or probabilities. The approach can be applied when the benefits or the costs are either monetary or nonmonetary, and when the problems involve either go/no-go decisions or conflicting-choice decisions.     

Cooperation and preference by peers in early childhood: A longitudinal study

Children who are more proficient in cooperation with peers tend to be more preferred. To date, the development of peer cooperation has been studied mainly in two research traditions, one focusing on action coordination and the other focusing on interaction quality. Both aspects of cooperation are relevant for children's peer relations, but it is unclear whether both aspects of children's earliest cooperation skills predict their later preference by peers after the transition into organized social groups in school. In this study, we assessed coordination proficiency and interaction quality of 181 Dutch children longitudinally from 2 to 4 years of age. No relation between early action coordination and later preference by peers at school was found. However, especially in girls more affiliative and fewer antagonistic behaviors at the age of two predicted likeability among classmates at school at the age of four. The findings shine new light on the earliest foundations of children's peer evaluations.     

Looking Too Old? How an Older Age Appearance Reduces Chances of Being Hired

Building on theories of impression formation based on faces, this research investigates the impact of job candidates’ facial age appearance on hiring as well as the underlying mechanism. In an experiment, participants decided whether to hire a fictitious candidate aged 50 years, 30 years or without age information. The candidate's age was signalled either via chronological information (varied by date of birth) or via facial age appearance (varied by a photograph on the résumé). Findings showed that candidates with older‐appearing faces – but not chronologically older candidates – triggered impressions of low health and fitness, compared to younger‐appearing candidates. These impressions reduced perceptions of person–job fit, which lowered hiring probabilities for older‐appearing candidates. These findings provide the first evidence that trait impressions from faces are a determinant of age discrimination in personnel selection. They call for an extension of current models of age discrimination by integrating the effects of face‐based trait impressions, particularly with respect to health and fitness.