The claim that appropriate after-event review might decrease the relative advantage of drawing lessons from failures over drawing lessons from successes was examined in a quasi-field experiment. The results show that performance of soldiers doing successive navigation exercises improved significantly when they were debriefed on their failures and successes after each training day, compared with others who reviewed their failed events only. The findings also show that, before the manipulation, in both groups, learners' mental models of failed events were richer in constructs and links than were their mental models of successful events. This gap closed gradually in subsequent measurements.

We are indebted to Carol Dweck, Mario Mikulincer and Tory Higgins for comments on an earlier draft. AbstractThis chapter features the concept of ascribed epistemic authority (Kruglanski, 1989) offered as a unique perspective on source effects in social judgment. In contrast to prior approaches that viewed the source of communication as external to the self, we assume that both the self and external sources may be assigned different degrees of epistemic authority in different domains, and that this determines how individuals process information, make decisions and undertake actions. The present framework traces the socio-developmental aspects of epistemic authority assignments, and considers individual differences in the distribution of authority assignments across sources. From this perspective, we claim a central role in human judgment to the information's source, and the assessment of its epistemic authority is seen to constitute an essential preliminary phase in individuals' approach to information.

The claim that appropriate "after-event review (AER)" may increase the relative value of drawing lessons from successes, as compared with failures, was examined in the present study. The study was a laboratory experiment in which the effect of type of AER (failure-focused, success-focused, failure- and success-focused, and no AER review) on performance improvement and causal attributions was tested under conditions of earlier success and earlier failure. In general, 2 results were demonstrated: (a) Drawing lessons from successful experience is feasible, and its effectiveness is contingent upon the type of AER. More specifically, after successful events, the most effective review is that of wrong actions, whereas after failed events, any kind of event review (correct or wrong actions) is effective. (b) AERs elicit more internal (as opposed to external) and specific (as opposed to general) attributions. These 2 classifications moderate the effect of AERs on task performance.

The present study explored the relationship between level of employees’ help‐seeking behavior and their overall job evaluations. It was hypothesized that employees would seek more help from others whom they perceive as more knowledgeable than they are and that they would seek more help from superiors than from coworkers. Regarding the link between amount of help seeking and performance evaluations, it was predicted that the relationship between amount of help seeking and evaluations of overall job performance are curvilinear and affected by the perceived expertise of the helper. Study participants were employees of a chemical plant, and they reported on the amount of help seeking that they engaged in with superiors and coworkers. Data on the perceived expertise of the help seeker and the help giver in any helping interaction were collected. Most recent job performance evaluations as reported by participants’ superiors served as a measure of job performance. The analyses indicate that in line with prediction, the relationships between help seeking and performance evaluations were curvilinear. These relationships were moderated by the help seeker's relative task‐relevant expertise. The theoretical implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

No abstract