Organizational newcomers: Temporary and regular employees,same‐sex and mixed‐sex superior‐subordinate dyads,supervisor influence techniques,subordinates communication satisfaction,and leader‐member exchange

This study examined the relationship between newly hired employees’ characteristics (i.e., temporary vs. regular employee, superior‐subordinate gender‐dyad combinations), supervisors initial tactics of influence, subordinate communication satisfaction, and quality of leader‐member exchange. Results from 148 (71 temporary) new hires indicated (a) employee characteristics were not significantly related to the leader‐member exchange, (b) supervisors initial use of prosocial influence tactics were significantly and positively related to the quality of leader‐member exchange, and (c) subordinates’ satisfaction with communication was significantly and positively related to the quality of leader‐member exchange.     

Speaking Up Competently: A Comparison of Perceived Competence in Upward Dissent Strategies

Recent dissent research indicates that employees report using several different strategies for expressing their dissent to management and supervisors (i.e., upward dissent). The purpose of this study was to compare previously recognized upward dissent strategies in terms of perceived competence. Employees completed a survey instrument that asked them to assess the competence of different upward dissent strategies. Results indicate that employees perceived solution presentation to be the most competent upward dissent strategy, followed by direct-factual appeal, repetition, and circumvention. Threatening resignation was perceived as the least competent upward dissent strategy.     

Testing a communication network model of employee turnover based on centrality

This study tested Feeley and Barnett's (1997) Erosion Model (EM) of employee turnover which predicts that individuals who are more central in their communication network will be more likely to remain at their position (or less likely to turnover). Seventy employees from three different organizations were surveyed about their attitudes toward their jobs and were also asked to indicate (by checklist) which employees they spoke to regularly at work. Turnover data were obtained at 3 and 6 months time after the surveys were completed. Results generally supported the Erosion Model of employee turnover. Those employees with high Degree or number of links in the network were less likely to turnover. Employees who required fewer links to communicate to all others in the network (i.e., Closeness) were also less likely to turnover but this relationship only approached statistical significance (p = .06). Betweenness, defined as the frequency with which a person falls between pairs of other positions in a network, was also significantly related to employee turnover. It was also predicted, based on Feeley and Bamett's EM, that the relationship between network position and turnover would be mediated by an employee's level of commitment to the organization and his or her intentions to leave work. Closeness significantly predicted commitment while Betweenness and Degree were unrelated to commitment levels. Organizational commitment was negatively related to intentions to leave work and, unexpectedly, commitment levels were positively related to employee turnover. The results were discussed and the applications of this research for management practitioners were considered.     

The relationship between student communication motives and information seeking

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between college students’ communication motives (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse making, sycophantic) and their use of information‐seeking strategies (i.e., overt, indirect, third party, testing, observing). Participants were 149 students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a Mid‐Atlantic university. Results indicated that (a) students who communicate for the sycophantic, relational, and participatory motives use the indirect and observing information‐seeking strategies and (b) students who communicate for the functional communication motive use the overt information‐seeking strategy, but do not use the testing information‐seeking strategy. Future research should examine whether college students use information‐seeking strategies with their classmates and the impact of the use of these strategies on their learning experience.     

Corporal punishment and communication in father‐son dyads

This study was based on a communication‐oriented perspective of corporal punishment of children. The perspective posits that physically aggressive influence tactics would be associated with aggressive communication and a set of communication outcomes. The perceptions of 74 father‐son dyads were solicited to test these relationships. Results indicated that when there was lower argumentativeness and higher verbal aggressiveness in father‐son communication there was more corporal punishment as an influence tactic and that fathers and sons perceived the relationship as less favorable in terms of influence success, communication competence, affirming style, and credibility.     

Instructional Dissent as a Function of Student Conflict Styles

The purpose of this study was to examine how students’ conflict styles (i.e., integrating, avoiding, dominating, obliging, and compromising) were related to the expression of instructional dissent (i.e., expressive, rhetorical, and vengeful). Participants were 160 undergraduate students, who completed a questionnaire measuring their conflict-handling communication with an instructor and how frequently they engaged in instructional dissent throughout the semester. Results of a canonical correlation revealed that (a) when students used the integrating, dominating, and compromising conflict styles, but did not use the avoiding style, they communicated more rhetorical dissent, and (b) when students used the dominating style, but not the integrating or obliging styles, they communicated more expressive, rhetorical, and vengeful dissent.     

Social Media and Speed-Driven Journalism: Expectations and Practices

To examine how journalists use, and are affected by, social media in their pursuit for speed, this study conducted in-depth interviews with 11 journalists from various U.S. national, metropolitan, and local newspapers. Findings revealed an industry-wide expectation that journalists engage with audiences on social media. But in terms of practice, most interviewees reported that they mainly use Twitter to facilitate news work (i.e., contact hard-to-reach sources) and communicate with other journalists; audiences are rarely their focus on social media. The interviewees were also asked about their perception of how Twitter affects audiences. Most interviewees were unsure of its impact on credibility, but believed that it may promote news use, although not contribute to news organizations’ bottom line. This study offers five reasons why social media are not saving the newspaper industry, and discusses managerial implications regarding the gap between social media expectations and practices.     

Understanding and Managing Others: The Impact of Social Intelligence upon Social Influence

The present study provided support for the relevance of social intelligence—to social influence. Consistent with but extending past research, recognizing situational influences (i.e., discriminative facility) was associated with effective social interactions. In particular, individuals high in discriminative facility demonstrated greater flexibility when considering influence tactics than individuals low in discriminative facility.     

中国家庭三代数字反哺现状及影响因素研究

本文厘清了数字反哺的理论渊源和概念维度,并在家庭传播视域下考察其现状及影响因素。以全国54座城市954个家庭3291位祖孙三代样本的问卷调查数据为基础,我们在数字接入反哺、技能反哺和素养反哺的三大维度上进行了不同世代的分析与对比。就反哺现状而言,年轻世代"给出去的反哺"与年长世代"接受到的反哺"大体能达成共识,但仍有三成左右互相矛盾。在年长世代中,祖代(老年人)虽然在数字媒体的采纳、使用与素养方面都显著低于亲代(中年人),但他们各维度数字反哺的接受程度都显著高于亲代。进一步的影响因素分析也印证了上述发现,个体特征上处于弱势(年龄大、教育程度低、女性、自我效能感低、心理障碍多)但在家庭结构中位居核心(与家人互动频繁深入且关系亲密)的人越有可能接受数字反哺。     

Welcoming Our Robot Overlords: Initial Expectations About Interaction With a Robot

This study examined the relationships between faculty workplace bullying with graduate students’ burnout and organizational citizenship behaviors. Graduate students (N = 272) completed a self-report questionnaire measuring the degree to which faculty bully them at work (i.e., through belittlement, punishment, managerial misconduct, exclusion) along with reports of their student burnout (i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, professional efficacy) and use of organizational citizenship behaviors (i.e., helping, civic virtue, sportsmanship). Results of canonical correlations revealed that faculty bullying was related positively to graduate student burnout and was related inversely to organizational citizenship behaviors.     

An Examination of Aggression and Adaption Traits with Moral Foundation

ABSTRACT

Moral Foundation Theory forwards that morality is a traitlike disposition that guides one's behaviors, attitudes, and communication. This study examined the relationship between participants' moral foundations and their aggressive and adaptation communication traits. Results of this study suggest that the foundations that concern others (i.e., harm/care and fairness/reciprocity) were associated negatively to verbal aggressiveness, argumentativeness, and Machiavellianism and associated positively with responsiveness, assertiveness, and cognitive flexibility. The foundations that concern socially binding constructs (i.e., in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity) were negatively related to Machiavellianism and cognitive flexibility.     

Spreading the word? European Union agencies and social media attention

Public agencies need to distribute information to their manifold audience quickly and directly. The emergence of social media platforms has sparked positive projections about future government-public interactions via the internet and almost every EU agency has created social media presences on the leading social media platforms. However, social media accounts of agencies receive strongly varying amounts of public attention and therefore display varying degrees of usefulness to connect with the public. This research examines which factors influence how much long-standing and temporal attention social media accounts of EU agencies receive. Using an extensive Twitter dataset of EU agencies and a new methodology that employs supervised text classification through the novel BERT language model to classify agency tweets, possible explanations of social media attention are tested. Results show that long-standing social media attention (i.e., size of the followership) is mostly explained by salience in traditional news, account age, and tweeting frequency, whilst a more interactive communication style tends to yield more temporal attention (i.e., number of retweets). The findings underline previous assumptions that employing a more interactive communication style maximizes public organizations' potential to connect with their audiences on social media.     

Work socialization through part-time work: cultivating self-efficacy and engagement through care

This study provides insight into how work socialization occurs through part-time work in a Youth Employment Program. Drawing on in-depth interviews with youth employees and supervisors, we consider how the young people’s meanings of work were shaped through their early employment experiences. Participants report significant transformations in both their views of work – from seeing it primarily in terms of extrinsic rewards like a paycheck to developing more robust interpretations of work – and their level of self-efficacy. We argue that the organizational culture and supervisor relationships were crucial for the positive outcomes the youth experienced. This study demonstrates the formative impact that part-time work has on young people and the promise of studying work socialization in part-time work. Practically, our findings point to the importance of approaching the employment of young people as more than just an economic exchange. We suggest that those who employ young people should provide a work context marked by routine, supportive interactions with supervisors who provide and uphold clear expectations.     

Humor ability,unwillingness to communicate,loneliness, and perceived stress: Testing a security theory

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a theory of the laughter‐humor link in interpersonal communication. The basic premise of the theory is that a sense of security underlies the ability to encode humor in everyday conversation. It was hypothesized that communication‐related security (i.e., willingness to communicate) predicts humor ability, which in turn negatively predicts loneliness and perceived stress. Undergraduates completed a survey including the following scales: Unwillingness‐ to‐Communicate, Humor Orientation, Coping Humor, revised UCLA Loneliness, and Perceived Stress. Regression analyses confirm that willingness to communicate predicted humor orientation, while humor orientation mediated the relationship between willingness to communicate and coping humor. Humor orientation negatively predicted loneliness and perceived stress, although in both cases willingness to communicate mediated the relationships. The discussion highlights methodological limitations (e.g., use of self‐report) and reiterates the need for interaction‐ and context‐based studies of the laughter‐humor relationship.     

The relationship between student communication motives and perceived instructor communicator style

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between student communication motives (i.e., relational, functional, participatory, excuse‐making, sycophantic) and perceived instructor communicator style (i.e., friendly, impression leaving, relaxed, contentious, attentive, precise, animated, dramatic, open, dominant). Participants were 228 undergraduate students enrolled in a variety of communication courses at a small Midwestern university. Results indicate that (a) the perceived instructor communicator style attributes of impression leaving, friendly, and contentious predict student use of the relational motive, (b) the attribute of friendly predicts student use of the functional motive, (c) the attributes of animated, contentious, and friendly predict student use of the participatory motive, (d) the attributes of attentive and contentious predict student use of the excuse‐making motive, and (e) the attributes of contentious and friendly predict student use of the sycophantic motive.     

Relational messages in conflict situations among siblings

The purpose of this study was to explore the association of sibling conflict style (i.e., integrative, distributive, avoidant) with perceived relational communication themes (i.e., immediacy, similarity, receptivity, composure, formality, dominance, equality, task orientation). Participants were 186 undergraduate students who reported on a recent conflict episode with a sibling. Results indicate that (a) siblings who used the relational communication themes of immediacy, similarity, receptivity, composure, and equality reported using the integrative conflict strategy, but not the distributive conflict strategy, and (b) siblings who used the relational communication theme of immediacy and to a lesser extent the theme of task orientation, but not the relational communication themes of similarity and equality, reported not using the avoidant conflict strategy.     

Effects of tactile stimulation and gross motor movement on cognitive learning: A test of Montessori's muscular movement theory in the college classroom

Research investigating the management styles of male and female supervisors is mixed. In an effort to clarify this research, the present study examined the interaction effect of gender of supervisor and gender of subordinate on perceived mentoring. Results revealed the least amount of mentoring occurred between female supervisors and female subordinates, but the greatest mentoring took place between female supervisors and male subordinates. Results were explained in terms of managerial experience and the double‐bind of female managers. These findings challenge the traditional advice that female subordinates should seek female supervisors.     

Effects of fictional media depictions of realistic threats on children's emotional responses,expectations, worries,and liking for related activities

An experiment was conducted to assess whether exposure to fictional depictions of realistic life‐threatening events (e.g., fires, drownings) affects children's risk‐related assessments that have the potential to influence longer‐term responses. Kindergarten through fifth‐grade children were exposed to dramatic versions of a housefire or a drowning or to control programs depicting benign scenes involving fire or water. The threatening scenes induced more fear and more negative affect in general than their neutral counterparts. In addition, children exposed to a particular threat subsequently rated similar events (related threats) as more likely to occur in their own lives, considered the potential consequences to be more severe, and reported more worry about such happenings than subjects exposed to neutral depictions. Moreover, liking for activities closely related to the observed threats was reduced. Responses regarding the unrelated threat (i.e., fire danger if exposed to the dramatized drowning or water danger if exposed to the house fire) held an intermediate position, but statistical decisions varied across dependent measures. Some analyses revealed a main effect of witnessing negative outcomes. However, planned contrasts showed that for most measures, subjects who viewed threatening scenes did not differ from subjects in the neutral conditions in their ratings of other threats. Findings were interpreted as predominantly supportive of incidental learning, but the contribution of generalized emotion effects could not be ruled out entirely.     

The Role of Political Identity and Media Selection on Perceptions of Hostile Media Bias During the 2012 Presidential Campaign

Viewing a hostile media bias against one’s group (e.g., political party) is a perceptual effect of media use. When it comes to the portrayal of political parties in the United States, prior research suggests that both Democrats and Republicans see mainstream media coverage as favoring the other side, regardless of the orientation of the political news coverage. Although prior research has not identified all factors that make this perceptual bias more likely, or at explaining how or why this perceptual effect occurs, we do know that it is related to one’s group identity. In this study, we examined salient predictors of hostile media bias during the 2012 presidential campaign. Individual (i.e., political cynicism) and group identity related (i.e., group status, intergroup bias, political ideology) differences of media users predicted such perceptions. But, the medium selected for political information about the campaign also mattered. The use of two media in particular—TV and social networking sites—appear to have blunted hostile media bias perceptions, whereas the use of two other media—radio and video sharing sites—appear to have accentuated perceptions that the media were biased against one’s party