Many studies confirmed the positive effect of trust on human relations and performance in organizations. As a social judgment, trust should be related to perceived competence and warmth as two basic dimensions of person perception. Surprisingly, to date no attempts have been made to examine the influence of attributed competence and warmth on social judgments in interpersonal relations at work. To this end, we examine the influence of perceived competence and warmth on trust, liking and respect in upward and downward (...) work relations. A study involving 190 middle-stage managers revealed that the two fundamental dimensions of social cognition influence respect, liking and trust. Competence had a stronger effect on respect than warmth; the opposite was true for liking. Trust was conditioned by both competence and warmth to an equal, high extent. At the same time, warmth expressed by supervisors led to higher results in liking, respect and trust in them than warmth expressed by subordinates. (shrink)

The belief to have fixed or malleable traits and help giving: implicit theories and sequential social influence techniques Two sequential social influence techniques, the foot-in-the-door and the door-in-the-face, seem to be symmetrical, but there are different moderators and quite different mechanisms underlying each of the strategies. What links both techniques is the social interaction between a person presenting a sequence of requests and an interlocutor. The techniques' effectiveness depends on the course and perception of the interaction and the difficulty of (...) requests in the sequence. The aim of the article was to verify various mechanisms of incremental and entity theorists compliance with the FITD and the DITF techniques. In a series of four studies it was shown that incremental theorists comply the FITD technique to a greater extend especially when a sequence of requests meets their mastery style of behavior thus means an interesting challenge to undertake or opportunity to deepen contact with a newly met person. Entity theorists are more prone to the DITF strategy as their helpless style of behavior and sense of guilt are triggered, thus a sequence of decreasing in magnitude demands is perceived as less threatening. (shrink)

Self-concept and self-esteem: How the content of the self-concept reveals sources and functions of self-esteem The relations of content of self-concept to self-esteem may reflect the role of different factors in developing self-esteem. On the basis of theories describing sources of self-esteem, we distinguished four domains of self-beliefs: agency, morality, strength and energy to act, and acceptance by others, which we hypothesized to be related to self-esteem. In two studies, involving 411 university students, the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept was (...) examined. The results confirmed relative independence of these four domains. Self-evaluation of agency was the strongest predictor of self-esteem, followed by self-evaluation of strength and energy to act, and self-evaluation of acceptance by others. Self-evaluation regarding morality turned out to have either no or negative relationship with self-esteem. The results supported the theories assuming that either perception of one's own agency or acceptance by others are sources of self-esteem. (shrink)

Subjective determiners of treating the final secondary school examination as a threat The article discusses the findings of the research carried out basing on the investigation procedure originating from the function-action approach to psychological defense developed by A. Senejko, where every reaction to threat can be considered as a defensive reaction. A nation-wide final secondary school examination was employed as the threat in the study and the reactions to such a threat were diagnosed twice: in January 2005 and two weeks (...) before the exam in April 2005.The participants were 177 students of secondary schools of the Lower Silesian and Upper Silesian regions of Poland.In the she study two questionnaires were employed. Part one of The Psycho-Social and Psychic Defenses Questionnaire and the Questionnaire of Personal Judgements developed by Kinga Lachowicz-Tabaczek and Alicja Senejko for identifying the following psychological dispositions: self-esteem, social anxiety, depressiveness, obligation will, emotional reactivity, sensitivity, activity and endurance.The basic research questions concerned the effect which the diagnosed factors had on the two dimensions of the subjects' attitude to their final exam as a threat as well as how they influenced their reactions to it, that is their psychological defenses. The multiple regression analyzes showed that the two dimensions of the participants' approach to their exam as a threat were the most substantially influenced by endurance, self-esteem, gender and reactivity. However, the way the examinees reacted their exam was the most substantially influenced by their obligation will, depressiveness and endurance. (shrink)