Q&A Hero

Q: The essence of the Pygmalion effect is that people's past experiences determine their behavior and performance.

Q: (p. 150) In general, relaxation techniques to reduce strain attempt to help people appraise and cope with stressors in a more rational manner.

Q: "Quality" interpersonal contact among mixed groups often leads to reinforced gender, racial, and age stereotypes.

Q: (p. 149) Supportive practices are one way of helping employees cope with stressful demands.

Q: The key managerial challenge while addressing the issue of stereotyping in organizations is to reduce the extent to which stereotypes influence decision making and interpersonal processes throughout the organization.

Q: (p. 149) One way that organizations provide resources to employees is through training interventions aimed at increasing job-related competencies and skills.

Q: People with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed than others.

Q: (p. 149) Hindrance stressors such as role ambiguity, conflict, and overload not only cause strain but also decrease commitment and job performance.

Q: Racial and ethnic stereotypes are automatically triggered and lead to micro aggressions.

Q: (p. 149) Although reducing stressors may reduce the overall level of stress that a person experiences, this approach is likely to be most beneficial when the focus of the effort is on challenge stressors rather than hindrance stressors.

Q: Older workers are more accident prone than younger workers.

Q: (p. 147) Job sharing means splitting one job into two to reduce role overload.

Q: Age stereotypes are mostly based on fact.

Q: (p. 147) The first step in managing stress is to assess colleagues in the workplace.

Q: Men typically receive higher performance ratings than women for the same level of task performance, confirming the pro-male bias in performance ratings.

Q: Sex-role stereotypes are related to gender-based expectations that people use without any conscious awareness.

Q: (p. 144) Hindrance stressors have a strong positive relationship with job performance.

Q: A sex-role stereotype is the belief that traits and abilities make men and women particularly well suited for different roles.

Q: (p. 143) Instrumental support refers to the help people receive that can be used to address the stressful demand directly.

Q: (p. 143) Social support refers to the help that people receive when they are confronted with stressful demands.

Q: Contrast effect refers to the tendency to remember recent information. If the recent information is negative, the person or object is evaluated negatively.

Q: The recency effect is the tendency to remember old contacts, and then evaluate them by comparing them with characteristics of recently observed people or objects.

Q: (p. 141) Compulsive eating is an example of behavioral strain.

Q: The halo effect leads a rater to consistently evaluate other people or objects in an extremely positive fashion.

Q: (p. 141) Physiological strains that result from stressors include depression, anxiety, anger, hostility, and reduced self-confidence.

Q: (p. 141) Stressors can cause gastrointestinal system problems.

Q: A stereotype is a set of beliefs about the characteristics or attributes of a group.

Q: Stereotypes are useful because they help us process the large amount of information that we receive daily.

Q: (p. 141) Headaches, tight shoulders, and back pain have all been linked to a variety of stressors.

Q: Good leaders are perceived to give preferential treatment to better performing members of a work unit.

Q: (p. 139) People are likely to feel more control over a stressor when they appraise it as a hindrance rather than a challenge.

Q: Unstructured interviews have been shown to reduce bias on the interviewer's part.

Q: (p. 139) A critical factor that determines coping strategy choice is the degree to which people believe that a particular strategy gives them some degree of control over the stressor or how they feel about it.

Q: Implicit cognitions can lead people to make biased decisions.

Q: (p. 137) Seeking assistance is an emotion-focused cognitive coping strategy.

Q: One source of inaccurate performance appraisals is faulty schemata about what constitutes good versus poor performance.

Q: (p. 138) Problem-focused coping refers to behaviors and cognitions intended to manage the stressful situation itself.

Q: Information is retrieved from memory when people make judgments and decisions.

Q: (p. 137) In contrast to cognitive coping, behavioral coping refers to the thoughts that are involved in trying to deal with a stressful situation.

Q: Culture does not affect the type of information stored in semantic memory.

Q: (p. 137) Family time demands include participation in formal education programs, music lessons, sports-related training, hobby-related self-education, participation in local government, or volunteer work.

Q: Person memory contains information about a single individual or groups of people.

Q: Employees who are deeply embedded in their organizations and communities feel less stress than less embedded individuals.

Q: Semantic memory describes the appropriate sequence of events in well-known situations.

Q: (p. 136) Work-family conflict is an example of work hindrance stressor.

Q: Event memory functions as a mental dictionary of concepts.

Q: (p. 134) The level of responsibility in a job is higher when the number, scope, and importance of the obligations in the level of responsibility at job are higher.

Q: In the encoding process, different individuals tend to have the same interpretation and evaluation of the same person or event.

Q: Kathleen thought her college studies had prepared her completely for her new job as a restaurant manager. She is completely surprised by the amount of responsibility that has immediately been given to her and the number of skills she is expected to already have. Combined with the amount of pressure she is under to get all the staffing and ordering forms filled out and filed, she is feeling quite stressed. Kathleen's is experiencing work related challenge stress.

Q: Encoding involves storage of information in long-term memory.

Q: (p. 134) Work complexity refers to the degree to which the requirements of the work, in terms of knowledge, skills, and abilities, tax or exceed the capabilities of the person who is responsible for performing the work.

Q: (p. 134) Most people appraise situations with high time pressure as rather stressful, and they also tend to appraise these situations as more hindering than challenging.

Q: Cognitive-category labels are needed to make schemata meaningful.

Q: A cognitive category contains a number of radically different objects.

Q: (p. 134) Role overload reflects the relatively minor day-to-day demands that get in the way of accomplishing the things that we really want to accomplish.

Q: (p. 133) Role ambiguity is often experienced among new employees who haven't been around long enough to receive instructions from supervisors or observe and model the role behaviors of more senior colleagues.

Q: People, events, and objects are interpreted and categorized by comparing their characteristics with information contained in schemata.

Q: (p. 133) Although hindrance stressors can be exhausting, they often trigger positive emotions such as pride and enthusiasm.

Q: Cognitive categories represent mental depositories for storing information.

Q: (p. 133) Stressful demands that are perceived as obstructing progress toward personal accomplishments or goal attainment are called challenge stressors.

Q: A person who needs cash and suddenly realizes that he does not have any cash in his wallet would probably find a McDonald's sign more salient than a sign for an ATM.

Q: (p. 132) Job demands that tend to be appraised as stressful are called benign job demands.

Q: A 12 foot tall university student would be a salient stimulus.

Q: Attention is the process of becoming consciously aware of something or someone.

Q: Jaylene graduated from school in June, got married in August, and started her new dream job in September. These are all happy events that actually reduced her stress level.

Q: (p. 131-132) When people first encounter stressors, the process of primary appraisal is triggered.

Q: People usually do not pay attention to salient stimuli.

Q: (p. 130-131) The particular demands that cause people to experience stress are called strains.

Q: Recognition of objects is one of the major functions of perception.

Q: Our bodies secrete chemical compounds as a result of stress. Which of the following statements is/are true about these chemical compounds? (Check all that apply.) __ These compounds help us cope with stress by increasing the heart rate and redirecting blood from organs such as the spleen to the brain and skeletal muscles. __ When stress is prolonged or highly repetitive, these chemical compounds cause the body to break down both physiologically and psychologically. __ These compounds mimic the beneficial effects of alcohol. __ These compounds have physiological but not psychological effects. __ High levels of these compounds result in Type A behavior.

Q: Individual differences influence our values, attitudes, job satisfaction, and tendency to exhibit counterproductive workplace behaviors.

Q: Which of the listed events would be considered non-work challenge stressors? (Check all that apply) __ Jack needs to leave early if he is to attend his twin girls' ballet recital. __ Heather wants to take an art class that meets on Saturday mornings; but she has been asked to be on call for work three of the next eight Saturdays. __ Budgie is in the process of getting a divorce. __ Karen's new job is much more complex than she thought it would be. __ Tim's promotion involves a great deal of added responsibility.

Q: Explain the five causes of job satisfaction.

Q: (p. 150-151) Describe the practices that organizations use to reduce employee strains.

Q: Mention the three determinants of intention explained by Ajzen.

Q: (p. 149) The organization must help its employees cope with stress. List the various resources an organization can provide to help employees cope with stressors.

Q: Explain the three components of attitude with the help of an example.Students can give any example of their choice.

Q: (p. 147, 150, 151) What is a stress audit? Explain how to reduce stressors and strains.

Q: What is an attitude? Explain the three components of attitudes. How are attitudes related to cognitive dissonance?

Q: Describe the types of value conflict that are related to an individual's attitudes, job satisfaction, turnover, performance, and counterproductive behavior.