International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2012, Volume 27 (eBook)

Gerard P. Hodgkinson, J. Kevin Ford (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2012
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
9781118311066 (ISBN)

Infos

Continuing the series' tradition of providing scholarly reviews and updates of theory and research, this twenty-seventh volume surveys developments in established areas, such as stress and well-being, consumer behavior, and employee trust, as well as newer topics such as methodological issues in the development and evaluation of multiple regression models, and an examination of the psychological impact of the physical office environment. For advanced students, academics and researchers, as well as professionals, this is the most authoritative and current guide to new developments and established knowledge in the field. 

Gerard P. Hodgkinson, Director of the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change and Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Strategic Management, Leeds University Business School, The University of Leeds, UK

J. Kevin Ford, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, USA

Inhalt

About the Editors vii

List of Contributors ix

Editorial Foreword xi

1. The Self-Concept in Organizational Psychology: Clarifying and Differentiating the Constructs 1
John Schaubroeck, You Jin Kim, and Ann Chunyan Peng

2. The Effect of Subconscious Goals on Organizational Behavior 39
Gary P. Latham and Edwin A. Locke

3. Combating Stress in Organizations 65
Nathan A. Bowling, Terry A. Beehr, and Simone Grebner

4. e-Learning at Work: Contributions of Past Research and Suggestions for the Future 89
Kenneth G. Brown, Steven D. Charlier, and Abigail Pierotti

5. Human Dynamics and Enablers of Effective Lean Team Cultures and Climates 115
Desiree H. Van Dun and Celeste P.M. Wilderom

6. Personnel Selection and the Competitive Advantage of Firms 153
Robert E. Ployhart

7. The Processes of Team Staffing: A Review of Relevant Studies 197
Stephen J. Zaccaro and Gia A. DiRosa

8. Strategic HRM Moving Forward: What Can We Learn from Micro Perspectives? 231
David P. Lepak, Kaifeng Jiang, Kyongji Han, William G. Castellano, and Jia Hu

Index 261

Contents of Previous Volumes 267

Textauszug

Chapter 2

THE EFFECT OF SUBCONSCIOUS GOALS ON ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Gary P. Latham

Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Canada

Edwin A. Locke

Robert H. Smith School of Business, Van Munching Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-1815

The purpose of this chapter is four-fold. First, conscious and subconscious processes are juxtaposed. Second, theoretical explanations of how goals and intentions can be primed are given. Third, the theoretical and practical significance of subconscious goals in the workplace is explained. Finally, empirical research on the effect of subconscious goals on organizational behavior is described. These studies include goals that were primed for achievement, trust, and justice.

JUXTAPOSING CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS PROCESSES

Consciousness is the faculty of awareness, that is, awareness of reality, based on the senses and reason. Though consciousness requires a physical brain, consciousness as an experience is an irreducible primary. One cannot grasp or experience awareness simply by looking at neural connections.

Primitive organisms may possess a sensory level of awareness; they are aware of something, such as light, but not actual objects. Lower animals possess a perceptual level of awareness; they can perceive objects and the motions of objects. Sense perception is the base of all knowledge. Humans share the perceptual level of awareness with lower animals, but we go one step higher: we can integrate perceptual material into concepts. A concept is a mental integration of perceptual concretes, or is reducible to perceptual concretes (Peikoff, 1991; Rand, 1990).

The conceptual level of awareness differs from the perceptual level in two critical respects. Conceptual knowledge can be wrong (e.g., a person may conclude that 2 + 2 = 5). Second, the conceptual level of awareness is volitional; one has to choose to be in conceptual focus or else the mind simply drifts to the perceptual level (Peikoff, 1991).

Not everything in consciousness is in awareness at any given moment. The conscious mind can only hold about seven disparate objects in awareness at the same time (Miller, 1956). The rest is stored. The “place” in which it is stored we call the subconscious. The subconscious is a fully objective concept; it is validated by introspection. We can observe information come into awareness without the need for new learning (e.g., Where did you grow up? What is the square root of 16?). Information is called up by association and by our purpose (e.g., what do I need to do to get accepted into college?) We can also observe information go back into the subconscious when we do not need it; after we have been to the dentist we forget about it. Hence, there is large scale and continuous permeability, continuous movement, between what is in awareness right now and what is subconsciously stored. Human survival would be impossible without storage and continuous access to the subconscious.

The subconscious is not volitional; it is basically passive, though not inert. Information gets stored and consolidated all the time. Through constant learning and repetition, subconscious information becomes automatized. An example is language. We learn to converse with others without having to look up words and rules of grammar as we talk, because the relevant information has been automatized through practice. Automatization leaves the mind free to acquire knowledge that requires conscious focus. The same applies to motor skills. Although we must be conscious when we are driving, the basic skills of steering, accelerating, and braking are gradually automatized, leaving our mind free to look at traffic (Welford, 1968).

Another sphere in which the subconscious operates automatically pertains to emotion (Locke, 2009). All emotions (discounting brain disorders) are based on automatic, subconscious appraisals of objects, people, events, and ideas. One can volitionally try to understand the causes of one's emotions, reprogram them, and choose what actions to take in response to them. Yet the emotions themselves are not volitional. Our subconscious is continually making appraisals of the objects, people, events, and ideas that we encounter.

Now consider action. We know that what is in conscious awareness, (e.g., values, goals, desires) affects action. All living action is goal directed (even at the level of plants), but only human beings choose their goals (above the level of internal, goal-directed physiological actions, which have been programmed by evolution to function automatically, such as the beating of the heart). Virtually everything we do is based on a goal (Locke & Latham, 1990). Nevertheless, the subconscious must also be a storehouse for goals, because, as noted, we can only hold a small number of things in awareness at the same time.

Where it gets complicated is how the conscious and subconscious operate in concert or in conflict to direct action. For example, need for achievement, measured projectively, as well as need for achievement, measured by self-report, affect entrepreneurship (Collins, Hanges, & Locke, 2004), yet the two types of measures are not correlated. In the past two decades there has been an increasingly voluminous literature, particularly in social psychology, on the subconscious priming of action. The evidence suggests that priming goals can affect actions independently of conscious intent.

THEORETICAL MODELS OF PRIMED GOALS

Lashley (1951) introduced the word prime to the psychological literature. He defined it as a process that occurs between the act of will or intention and a given response. The intent, he said, primes the response. Among the social psychologists currently at the forefront of research on priming goals are Bargh, Chartrand, Epstein, Gollwitzer, Kruglanski, and Shah.

Bargh and Chartrand (2000) defined priming as the temporary unconscious (what the present authors call subconscious) activation of an individual's mental representation (e.g., goals) by environmental cues and the effect of this activation on cognition, affect, and behavior in the absence of awareness. Bargh and Chartrand (1999) argued that subconscious goals become automatized through repeated conscious choice (goal selection) in specific situations. To the extent that the same goal is selected repeatedly in a given situation, conscious choice no longer occurs as it is replaced by “automaticity”. That is, environmental features (e.g., people, settings) trigger goal activation which then directly affects goal-directed behavior without an individual being aware of this process.

Epstein's (1994) cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) is based in part on Bargh's empirical research. This theory states that there are two interactive cognitive modes of information processing. The reflective, rational, conscious mode enables the acquisition of information intentionally, to form ideas, and to engage in conscious analyses. The second is the automatic mode that involves effortless acquisition of information from experience without the conscious intention to do so. CEST states that the subconscious continuously influences processing at the conscious level and that it is associated with experiencing affect of which people may be unaware.1 If one's feelings are positive, the theory states that a person is likely to pursue the goal; if an individual's feelings are negative, that person is likely to take action to avoid the goal. In short, people pursue a primed goal only to the extent that it pre-exists in their mind as a desired state.

Gollwitzer's (1999) theory of implementation intentions states that when an individual expresses a conscious intent to take a future action, a mental link is created subconsciously between the intent and the relevant action. An individual becomes committed to goal directed behavior once an appropriate setting or the means for doing so is encountered. This occurs automatically, without conscious effortful control. The sight of an appropriate person, group, or setting is sufficient to trigger this intention without an individual realizing it. The theory further states that an implementation intention only affects subsequent behavior to the extent that it pre-exists in a person's mind as a desired state with positive effect, and the task is complex for an individual rather than routine (Gollwitzer & Moskowitz, 1996).

Similarly, Shah's (2005) means-goal theory states that means-goal associations occur as a result of the perceived functional relationship or pairing between means and ends based on experience. The stronger the association, the higher the probability that when an appropriate setting or the means to attain the primed goal is encountered, an individual pursues the end (goal) in the absence of the awareness of doing so.

Kruglanski and colleagues’ (Kruglanski, Shah, Fishbach, Friedman, Chun, & Sleeth-Keppler, 2002) goal systems theory states that automatic associations can develop between goals and other representations that frequently occur at the same time. These interconnections may be facilitative or inhibitory depending on the relations between the goals involved. When the attainment of a conscious goal is related to the attainment of a subconscious goal, pursuing one goal leads to pursuing the other. The theory further states that opposing conscious and subconscious goals may compete for cognitive resources and thus have a detrimental effect on performance.

These five theories are similar. All of them state that conscious goals become, with repeated experiences, connected to the subconscious, and that subsequently, subconscious goals...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.4.2012
• Reihe/Serie: International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Reihe/Serie: International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Reihe/Serie: International Review of Industrial and Organizational Psychology
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Psychiatrie / Psychotherapie
• Schlagworte: Annual • Arbeitspsychologie • authoritative • Behavior • Chapters • chosen • Concerns • established • Experts • Field • Industrial • Integrative • Key • Literature • Major • organizational • Organizational & Industrial Psychology • prestigious • providing scholarly • Psychologie • Psychologie i. d. Arbeitswelt • Psychology • series • Topics • Tradition • twentyseventh
• ISBN-13: 9781118311066 / 9781118311066