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We propose that an organizational culture where playing politics is important for advancement, compared with an organizational culture where showing competencies is important, elicits stronger lack of fit experiences for women than for men. In a pre-study, playing politics was perceived as dominant, typically male work behaviors, whereas showing competencies was perceived as competent, typically female work behaviors. We then tested in two experiments (689 individuals, integrated in a small-scale meta-analysis) the joint effect of organizational culture and gender on four lack of fit indicators (self-concept conflict, fear of backlash, intention to seek power positions, concerns about one’s skills). As expected, women indicated more lack of fit experiences than men in politics cultures, but not in competencies cultures. Our findings suggest that perceived organizational culture may play an important role in understanding the dynamics of career advancement of women and men.

ABSTRACTThis research aimed at testing whether the association of formality of clothing with mental abstraction found in prior research depends on whether individuals are (made) aware of the formality of their clothing prior to measuring mental abstraction. In two preregistered studies participants estimated the formality of their clothing and performed an action identification task (Study 1) or categorization task (Study 2) as measures of mental abstraction. In addition, we varied the order of assessing formality of clothing and mental abstraction to manipulate the accessibility of formality of clothing before completing the mental abstraction tasks. When assessing formality of clothing prior to mental abstraction we did not obtain a reliable correlation so that the assumed decrease of this relation in the reversed order condition could not be tested. When pooling the data of both experimental conditions, the results of Study 1 support the hypothesis that formality of clothing is positively correlated with mental abstraction and are compatible with the hypothesis of a causal mechanism where formality of clothing influences mental abstraction through changes in subjective social status and power. Study 2 did not yield evidence for a positive correlation between formality of clothing and mental abstraction.

Abstract.The present research investigates the relation between different domain satisfactions (e.g., health, income, etc.) and overall life satisfaction. Based on theorizing on the differences between positive and negative information, we assumed that specific domain satisfactions particularly are correlated with overall life satisfaction when the specific domain satisfactions (a) are low rather than high and (b) have declined rather than increased. Relying on a nationally representative sample of the German population (Socio-Economic Panel), we tested these considerations with both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal design. The findings strongly support that the more negative the domain satisfaction the more pronounced was the relation between domain and overall life satisfaction – both when negativity was assessed relative to other domains as well as when negativity was assessed relative to prior satisfaction with the same domain.

•Accessible information can elicit assimilation or contrast effects in judgments.•Inclusion of information into representation of target results in assimilation.•Excluded information may enter into the representation of the standard.•Information entering into the standard elicits contrast.•Relevance, representativeness, and conversational norms determine information use.

Procedural justice concerns play a critical role in economic settings, politics, and other domains of human life. Despite the vast evidence corroborating their relevance, considerably less is known about howprocedural justice judgments are formed. Whereas earlier theorizing focused on the systematic integration of content information, the present contribution provides a new perspective on the formation of justice judgments by examining the influence of accessibility experiences. Specifically, we hypothesize that procedural justice judgments may be formed based on the ease or difficulty with which justice-relevant information comes to mind. Three experiments corroborate this prediction in that procedures were evaluated less positively when the retrieval of associated unfair aspects was easy compared to difficult. Presumably this is because when it feels easy (difficult) to retrieve unfair aspects, these are perceived as frequent (infrequent), and hence the procedure as unjust (just). In addition to demonstrating that ease-of-retrieval may influence justice judgments, the studies further revealed that reliance on accessibility experiences is high in conditions of personal certainty. We suggest that this is because personal uncertainty fosters systematic processing of content information, whereas personal certainty may invite less taxing judgmental strategies such as reliance on ease-of-retrieval.

We review how affective states moderate the impact of stereotypes in social judgment. The reported evidence suggests that stereotypes have more impact on judgments formed by individuals in a happy mood rather than sad mood, whereas the reverse holds for individuating information. We trace these effects to mood-dependent differences in processing style. Extending previous theorizing, we suggest that individuals are more likely to process new information in a bottom-up fashion when the situation is perceived as problematic, which is partially a function of being in a sad mood. In contrast, individuals are more likely to rely on pre-existing general knowledge structures when the situation is perceived as safe, which is partially a function of being in a happy mood. The available evidence indicates that the differential impact of general knowledge structures is not mediated by mood effects on processing capacity or motivation, in contrast to what previous theorizing suggested.

Selected judgmental processes that bear on how individuals determine if things have changed in their life, and whether these changes are for the better or worse, are reviewed. In the absence of systematic research into this issue, we draw on related research into the construal and evaluation of the past, present, and future to offer educated guesses, to identify theoretical gaps, and to highlight issues for future research.

The impact of happy and sad moods on the processing of persuasive communications is explored. In Experiment 1, sad subjects were influenced by a counter attitudinal message only if the arguments presented were strong, not if they were weak Happy subjects, however, were equally persuaded by strong and weak arguments, unless explicitly instructed to pay attention to the content of the message. Subjects' cognitive responses revealed a parallel pattern, suggesting that the findings reflect the impact of mood on cognitive elaboration of the message. In Experiment 2, working on a distractor task during message exposure eliminated the advantage of strong over weak arguments under bad-mood conditions. Good-mood subjects were not affected by a distracting task, suggesting that they did not engage in message elaboration to begin with. It is concluded that subjects in a good mood are less likely to engage in message elaboration than subjects in a bad mood.

Processus mentaux de construction et l'émergence des effets de contexte dans la mesure d'attitudes.Les auteurs présentent un modèle théorique des processus cognitifs responsables des effets de contexte dans la mesure des attitudes. Le modèle prévoit: (a) les conditions sous lesquelles les effets de contexte sont susceptibles d'apparaitre; (b] leurs sens (assimilation ou contraste); (c) leur Importance; (d) leur généralisation sur les Items; et (f) leur dépendance sur le mode employé de collecte de données. La recherche empirique concernant ces prévisions est analysée et les implications pour la construction de questionnaire sont discutées.