No abstract

This study examines how need for cognition, source credibility, and communication strength influence perceptions of a print‐media communication. Participants read a strong or weak communication about an evolutionary theory, presented as an article from the Washington Post (high credibility) or the National Enquirer (low credibility). Results revealed a significant Need for Cognition × Source × Communication Strength interaction. Low‐need‐for‐cognition participants who read the weak communication rated the article more positively when it was attributed to the high‐credibility source than to the low‐credibility source. Source credibility did not affect impressions of the article and theory among participants high in need for cognition or reading the strong communication. However, articles from the Washington Post were rated as more believable, factual, accurate, and true than those from the National Enquirer.

The present study examined perceptions of female gossipers in the workplace. Male and female participants (N=129) were asked to think of a woman who either frequently or rarely contributed negative information about other people during conversation. Participants then completed ratings on the target using the six dimensions of the FIRO-B. As predicted, high gossipers were perceived as having a greater need to exert control of others, but less need for others to control them, than low gossipers. Higher gossipers were also perceived as less emotionally warm than low gossipers. The implications of these findings for gossip research are presented.

Social loafing is the tendency of individuals to work less hard collectively than individually. The present study examined the joint influence of achievement motivation and expected coworker effort on collective task performance. Participants (N= 107) who qualified and were available after pretesting on an achievement motivation scale were randomly assigned to a work condition and coworker effort condition. Dyads were asked to generate as many uses for a knife as possible within a 12‐min time period. Participants low in achievement motivation engaged in social loafing, but only when expected coworker effort was high, whereas participants high in achievement motivation did not engage in social loafing, regardless of expected coworker effort. The implication of achievement motivation for collective task performance settings is discussed.

Research on social compensation has documented that individuals may actually work harder collectively than individually under some conditions in order to compensate for the expected poor performance of other group members. The present study examined the joint effects of both coworker ability and coworker effort expectations on collective task performance. Participants (N = 112) worked either coactively or collectively on an idea-generation task with a coworker who was believed to be either high or low on both effort and ability at the task. When group members were paired with a partner who they believed would exert low effort, they (a) compensated when the partner had low ability and (b) loafed when the partner had high ability. Implications of these findings for group research and practice are discussed.Group psychologists face the important challenge of understanding the dynamics of individual motivation in collective performance settings. This has proven to be a daunting task, as working in a group can serve either to undermine or to enhance the motivation of its members. Much of the research on individual motivation loss in groups has focused on social loafing-the tendency to work less hard collectively than when working coactively on the same task (for a review, see Karau & Williams, 1993). However, the research pendulum has recently swung in the opposite direction, focusing on the properties of groups that enhance individual motivation (Hertel, Kerr, & Messe, 2000;Williams & Karau, 1991). In the present article, we tested several implications of the collective effort model (CEM;Karau & Williams, 1993) regarding the joint effects of coworker ability and coworker effort on an individual's willingness to work hard on a group task.