Interpersonal memory failure in the workplace: The effect of memory and hierarchy on employee's affective commitment.

The current work examined whether being forgotten or remembered by a boss or a coworker affects employee's interpersonal closeness to that person and, in turn, affective organizational commitment (AOC). A first correlational study examined these possibilities in an employed student (1a) and general employed (1b) samples. Perceived memory by both bosses and coworkers was a significant predictor of closeness to the boss or coworker and, in turn, of AOC. The indirect effect of perceived memory on AOC was stronger for boss memory than coworker memory, but only when memory ratings were supported by specific examples of memory. Study 2 provided additional support for the direction of effects posited in Study 1 using vignettes depicting memory and forgetting in the workplace. Overall, these findings suggest that perceptions of boss and coworker memory have an effect on employee's AOC through interpersonal closeness, and that this indirect effect is stronger for boss memory.

Positive and negative emotions predict weight loss intentions and behaviors beyond theory of planned behavior constructs.

PURPOSE: The current study examined the predictive utility of emotional valence (i.e., positive and negative emotions) on weight loss intentions and behaviors, beyond theory of planned behavior constructs (i.e., attitude, subjective norm, and perceived control), among a community sample of people who were overweight (BMI > 25 kg/m2). METHODS: Participants were recruited for a longitudinal study via an online panel. They completed a baseline survey (N = 732) and a follow-up survey 6 months later (N = 526), both administered online. The surveys included measures of attitude, subjective norms, perceived control, positive and negative emotions regarding one's current weight, intentions to engage in weight loss behaviors (time 1), and having engaged in weight loss behaviors in the past 6 months (time 2). RESULTS: Emotion explained additional variance in weight loss intentions (range ΔR2 = 0.03-0.10, all ps < 0.01) and behaviors (range ΔR2 = 0.01-0.02, all ps < 0.05) beyond theory of planned behavior constructs. Negative emotions mainly predicted the intake of unhealthy food and seeking social support, whereas positive emotions predicted physical activity (intention and behavior). These results suggested that the differential relations might be based on whether the strategy is approach or avoidance oriented. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these findings, comprehensive models of weight loss behaviors should consider emotion, and the valence of such emotion, regarding current weight. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level IV, multiple time series without intervention.

On being forgotten: Memory and forgetting serve as signals of interpersonal importance.

Our memories contain a wealth of social information-including details of past interactions, facts about others, and others' identities. Yet, human memory is imperfect, and we often find ourselves unable to recall such information in social interactions. Conversely, people routinely find themselves on the receiving end of others' memory failures; that is, people sometimes find themselves forgotten. Despite the apparent pervasiveness of such experiences, modern science possesses no explanatory framework for understanding the psychological impact of being forgotten in part or in whole. Here, we propose that evidence of memory in social interactions is a powerful signal of the subjective importance attached to an object of memory and that interpretation of such signals has important consequences for interpersonal relationships. We further proposed that attributional explanations for forgetting and that the closeness of the relationship between the people involved in forgetting might moderate the impact of being forgotten. We tested this framework in four studies examining the experience of being forgotten in daily life (Study 1), in experimentally controlled firsthand encounters (Study 2), and in third party perceptions of forgetting (Studies 3 and 4). Results converged to support our proposed framework as well as the moderating role of attribution. Surprisingly, we found no evidence supporting the moderating role of initial relationships closeness. These results advance a systematic model of an understudied but important phenomenon and suggest rich and varied avenues of additional exploration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A motivational determinant of facial emotion recognition: regulatory focus affects recognition of emotions in faces.

Two studies examined an unexplored motivational determinant of facial emotion recognition: observer regulatory focus. It was predicted that a promotion focus would enhance facial emotion recognition relative to a prevention focus because the attentional strategies associated with promotion focus enhance performance on well-learned or innate tasks - such as facial emotion recognition. In Study 1, a promotion or a prevention focus was experimentally induced and better facial emotion recognition was observed in a promotion focus compared to a prevention focus. In Study 2, individual differences in chronic regulatory focus were assessed and attention allocation was measured using eye tracking during the facial emotion recognition task. Results indicated that the positive relation between a promotion focus and facial emotion recognition is mediated by shorter fixation duration on the face which reflects a pattern of attention allocation matched to the eager strategy in a promotion focus (i.e., striving to make hits). A prevention focus did not have an impact neither on perceptual processing nor on facial emotion recognition. Taken together, these findings demonstrate important mechanisms and consequences of observer motivational orientation for facial emotion recognition.

Perspective image comprehension depends on both visual and proprioceptive information.

Proprioceptive information can supplement visual information in the comprehension of ambiguous perspective images. The importance of proprioceptive information in unambiguous perspective image comprehension is untested, however. We explored the role of proprioception in perspective image comprehension using three experiments in which participants took or imagined taking an upward- or downward-oriented posture and then made judgments about images viewed from below or viewed from above. Participants were faster and more accurate in their judgments when their actual or simulated posture was consistent with the posture implied by the perspective of the image they were judging. These results support a role for proprioception in the comprehension of unambiguous perspective images as well as ambiguous perspective images.

Motivated shortcomings in explanation: the role of comparative self-evaluation and awareness of explanation recipient's knowledge.

Being aware of someone else's existing knowledge is a prerequisite to effectively adapting an explanation to that person's learning needs. However, such knowledge awareness introduces the potential for motivated self-evaluation based on relative knowledge, that is, for social comparison. Because favorable social comparisons are actively defended, we propose that knowledge awareness might undermine information sharing in explanation when social comparison motives are active. We tested this hypothesis in a series of experiments in which participants provided explanations to an ostensible learning partner with or without knowledge awareness. Both dispositionally and situationally motivated social comparison interacted with knowledge awareness to reduce information sharing in explanation. Intriguingly, knowledge awareness uniformly facilitated adaptation of the information that was shared to address partner knowledge deficit. These results illustrate a tension in the components of effective explanation. At the same time that knowledge awareness effectively coordinates explanation content, it can lead to knowledge hoarding by knowledgeable explainers who are motivated to rely on knowledge differences between the self and the explanation recipient for self-evaluation.