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Following up on a recent debate, we examined advice taking in dyads compared to individuals in a set of three studies (total N = 303 dyads and 194 individuals). Our first aim was to test the replicability of an important previous finding, namely that dyads heed advice less than individuals because they feel more confident in the accuracy of their initial judgments. Second, we aimed to explain dyads’ behavior based on three premises: first, that dyads understand that the added value of an outside opinion diminishes when the initial pre-advice judgment is made by two judges rather than one judge (given that the dyad members’ opinions are independent of each other); second, that they fail to recognize when the assumption of independence of opinions does not hold; and third, that the resistance to advice commonly observed in individuals persists in groups but is neither aggravated nor ameliorated by the group context. The results of our studies show consistently that previous findings on advice taking in dyads are replicable. They also support our hypothesis that groups exhibit a general tendency to heed advice less than individuals, irrespective of whether the accuracy of their initial judgments warrants this behavior. Finally, based on the three assumptions mentioned above, we were able to make accurate predictions about advice taking in dyads, prompting us to postulate a general model of advice taking in groups of arbitrary size.

A rational strategy to update and revise one’s uncertain beliefs is to take advice by other agents who are better informed. Adults routinely engage in such advice taking in systematic and selective ways depending on relevant characteristics such as reliability of advisors. The current study merged research in social and developmental psychology to examine whether children also adjust their initial judgment to varying degrees depending on the characteristics of their advisors. Participants aged 3 to 6 years played a game in which they made initial judgments, received advice, and subsequently made final judgments. They systematically revised their judgments in light of the advice, and they did so selectively as a function of advisor expertise. They made greater adjustments to their initial judgment when advised by an apparently knowledgeable informant. This suggests that the pattern of advice taking studied in social psychology has its roots in early development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

We investigate decision-making in the Judge--Advisor-System where one person, the ``judge'', wants to estimate the number of a certain entity and is given advice by another person. The question is how to combine the judge's initial estimate and that of the advisor in order to get the optimal expected outcome. A previous approach compared two frequently applied strategies, taking the average or choosing the better estimate. In most situations, averaging produced the better estimates. However, this approach neglected a third strategy that judges frequently use, namely a weighted mean of the judges' initial estimate and the advice. We compare the performance of averaging and choosing to weighting in a theoretical analysis. If the judge can, without error, detect ability differences between judge and advisor, a straight-forward calculation shows that weighting outperforms both of these strategies. More interestingly, after introducing errors in the perception of the ability differences, we show that such imperfect weighting may or may not be the optimal strategy. The relative performance of imperfect weighting compared to averaging or choosing depends on the size of the actual ability differences as well as the magnitude of the error. However, for a sizeable range of ability differences and errors, weighting is preferable to averaging and more so to choosing. Our analysis expands previous research by showing that weighting, even when imperfect, is an appropriate advice taking strategy and under which circumstances judges benefit most from applying it.

In contrast to the truncated view that replications have only a little to offer beyond what is already known, we suggest a broader understanding of replications: We argue that replications are better conceptualized as a process of conducting consecutive studies that increasingly consider alternative explanations, critical contingencies, and real-world relevance. To reflect this understanding, we collected and summarized the existing literature on replications and combined it into a comprehensive overall typology that simplifies and restructures existing approaches. The resulting typology depicts how multiple, hierarchically structured replication studies guide the integration of laboratory and field research and advance theory. It can be applied to (a) evaluate a theory's current status, (b) guide researchers' decisions, (c) analyze and argue for the necessity of certain types of replication studies, and (d) assess the added value of a replication study at a given state of knowledge. We conclude with practical recommendations for different protagonists in the field (e.g., authors, reviewers, editors, and funding agencies). Together, our comprehensive typology and the related recommendations will contribute to an enhanced replication culture in social psychology and to a stronger real-world impact of the discipline. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Although empirical research has investigated what we ideally seek in a romantic partner for decades, the crucial question of whether ideal partner preferences actually guide our mating decisions in real life has remained largely unanswered. One reason for this is the lack of designs that assess individuals’ ideal partner preferences before entering a relationship and then follow up on them over an extended period. In the Göttingen Mate Choice Study (GMCS), a preregistered, large-scale online study, we used such a naturalistic prospective design. We investigated partner preferences across 4 preference domains in a large sample of predominantly heterosexual singles (N = 763, aged 18–40 years) and tracked these individuals across a period of 5 months upon a possible transition into romantic relationships. Attesting to their predictive validity, partner preferences prospectively predicted the characteristics of later partners. This was equally true for both sexes, except for vitality-attractiveness where men’s preferences were more predictive of their later partners’ standing on this dimension than women’s. Self-perceived mate value did not moderate the preference-partner characteristics relations. Preferences proved to be relatively stable across the 5 months interval, yet were less stable for those who entered a relationship. Subgroup analyses using a newly developed indicator of preference adjustment toward (vs. away from) partner characteristics revealed that participants adjusted their preferences downward when partners fell short of initial preferences, but showed no consistent adjustment when partners exceeded them. Results and implications are discussed against the background of ongoing controversies in mate choice and romantic relationship research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

A growing body of research shows that individual differences in working memory capacity play a pivotal role for a large number of higher order cognitive tasks. Surprisingly, however, the impact of individual differences in working memory capacity on group performance has received little attention. In this conceptual article, we focus on three typical group tasks (group idea generation, group decision making, group judgment) and, for each task, provide an analysis of how individual differences in working memory capacity might affect group performance. Our key idea is that group interaction is a cognitively demanding task as group members have to continuously monitor the ongoing conversation, hold their ideas in memory, integrate the information put forth by others, and update their mental representations accordingly. Therefore, individual differences in working memory capacity are presumed to have a profound impact on how people process information during group interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

Advice utilization during judgment and decision-making is an integral part of everyday life. The most stable finding in the literature on advice taking is that judges tend to place too much weight on their own judgments and do not utilize advice as much as they objectively should. This phenomenon is termed underutilization of advice. However, the opposite extreme, namely overutilization of advice, has largely been ignored so far. This dissertation provides first evidence for judges' inability to fully discount useless advice. Whereas advice from supposedly competent advisors was integrated to a high degree, judges failed to completely discount advice from supposedly computer generated random numbers that were said to have no validity whatsoever. The presented data further show that the overutilization of non-valid advice can be explained by a misperception of validity on the one hand and a combination of positive hypothesis testing and selective activation of target-relevant knowledge on the other.

When making judgments and decisions, people suffering from depression are often faced with opinions and advice from others (e.g., from their therapists) but it is unclear how their psychopathology alters the utilization of such information. This study is the first to examine whether depressed people are more or less susceptible to informational social influence. To this end, we employed the Judge–Advisor-System, which allows for a pure test of how people utilize information from others. We found that depressed participants had significantly higher advice taking values than non-depressed participants, which was mediated by self-esteem. A fine-grained analysis of these group differences revealed that depressed participants were more likely to revise their initial estimates after receiving advice than non-depressed people. Yet, once having decided to revise their estimates, depressed people did not weight advice more heavily. Theoretical implications concerning two qualitatively independent effects of depression on advice taking are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

Ausgewählte Kongressbeiträge (18. Workshop Psychologie der Arbeitssicherheit und Gesundheit 2014 in Dresden) zum Thema ``Physische und psychische Gesundheit bei der Arbeit'' werden dokumentiert. - Inhalt: (1) Birgit Smettan-Rehnolt: Gefährdungsbeurteilung an Arbeitsplätzen in der öffentlichen Verwaltung: Was belastet die Beschäftigten in für die Menschen so wichtigen Institutionen wie Sozialämtern und Leitstellen für Feuerwehr und Rettungsdienst. (2) Corinna Wiegratz und Frank Stracke-Rehms: Der Einsatz des Screening-Instruments zur Bewertung und Gestaltung menschengerechter Arbeit (SIGMA) als Gruppenverfahren - erste Anwendungserfahrungen. (3) Nicki Marcquardt, Kristian Gerstmeyer, Christion Treffenstädt und Ricarda Gades-Büttrich: Mentale Beanspruchung bei Ärzten und kritische OP-Ereignissee. (4) Hiltraud Grzech-Sukalo und Kerstin Hänecke: Guten Morgen! Einfluss von Wegzeiten und Arbeitszeiten auf Gesundheit, Schlaf und Freizeit bei Auszubildenden im Bäckereifachgewerbe. (5) Jana Greubel, Anna Arlinghaus und Friedhelm Nachreiner: Variable Arbeitszeiten und Arbeitsunfälle. (6) Peter Görg, Mike Hammes und Rainer Wieland: Zwioschenergebnisse des Projekts ``Regionale Unterschiede bei Arbeitsunfällen in Betrieben''.

In the present cross-cultural study, the mental representations of civil courage and helping behavior are compared. It is investigated whether prosocial behavior is designated as civil courage if the actor has to expect negative social consequences, whereas the judgment of helping behavior is not related to the anticipated negative social consequences. Subjects from Germany and the Ukraine received four scenarios in which an actor showed pro-social behavior. This person had to expect either high or low negative social consequences. For each scenario, the participants assessed the behavior described regarding its extent of civil courage and helping behavior. As expected, the manipulation of anticipated negative social consequences only affected the ratings of civil courage but not the ratings of helping behavior.

Es werden die psychologischen Rahmenbedingungen für ein erfolgreiches Ideenmanagement (IM) in Unternehmen dargestellt. Dabei werden folgende Punkte behandelt: (1) Firmenphilosophie und das Selbstverständnis der Beteiligten als Grundlage eines erfolgreichen IM (kontinuierliche Reflexion, neue Anforderungsprofile der Führungskräfte und der Mitarbeiter, Konsequenzen für die Einstellung neuer Mitarbeiter), (2) Mitarbeiterführung als Schlüssel für erfolgreiches IM (wichtige Führungsprinzipien, Schulungsmaßnahmen), (3) ``Center-of Excellence-Kulturen'' zur Förderung des IM (etwa Kommunikationskulturen, Wertschöpfungskultur, Kreativkultur, Problemlösekultur). Abschließend wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob ein erfolgreiches IM planbar ist.

In einem Interview, das U. Nuber mit dem Kieler Psychologen S. Schulz-Hardt führte, werden einige Aspekte des Themas ``Sinn des Lebens'' bzw. ``Sinnlosigkeit'' besprochen. Eingegangen wird in diesem Zusammenhang unter anderem auf (1) die Definition von Sinn (formale und inhaltliche Aspekte), (2) die Veränderung von Sinninhalten im Lauf des Lebens durch sich wandelnde persönliche Werte sowie (3) mögliche Beiträge einer naturwissenschaftlichen Psychologie zu diesem Thema. Veranschaulicht wird die Sinnfrage anhand von konkreten Beispielen (Sinn im Arbeitsleben, Steuermoral, Bewältigung der Vergangenheit in Ostdeutschland). Es wird die Auffassung vertreten, dass sich die Sinnfrage individuell gerade im Bereich des Alltags lösen lässt.

Entscheidungsprozesse in Gruppen werden unter der Fragestellung analysiert, ob und auf welche Art ein effektives Wissensmanagement zur Qualität der Entscheidung beitragen kann. Unter Einbezug des probabilistischen ``collective information sampling''-Modells von G. Stasser und W. Titus und des ``mutual enhancement''-Modells von G. M. Wittenbaum, A. P. Hubbell und C. Zuckermann wird zunächst erläutert, warum Gruppenmitglieder dazu neigen, bevorzugt geteilte und bevorzugt präferenzkonsistente Informationen in die Diskussion einzubringen. Daran anknüpfend werden Konsequenzen diskutiert, die sich aus der asymmetrischen Diskussion für die Entscheidungsfindung ergeben. Abschließend werden Maßnahmen erläutert, die Gruppen dazu befähigen sollen, ein effektives Wissensmanagement zu betreiben und ihren Wissensvorsprung in bessere Entscheidungsqualität umzusetzen.

Es werden verschiedene Gefahrenquellen diskutiert, die die Qualität von Gruppenentscheidungen beeinträchtigen können und unter Umständen zu gefährlichen Fehlentscheidungen führen. Besprochen werden in diesem Zusammenhang: (1) die suboptimale Informationsnutzung in Entscheidungsgremien, (2) exzessives Harmoniestreben (Groupthink), (3) Fortsetzung verlustreicher Handlungen (Entrapment) und (4) ein integrativer Erklärungsansatz für Selbstbestätigungsprozesse bei (Gruppen-)Entscheidungen (Entscheidungsautismus). Anhand des aktuellen Forschungsstandes wird jeweils erläutert, warum diese Gefahrenquellen auftreten und unter welchen Bedingungen besonders stark mit ihnen zu rechnen ist. Abschließend werden Möglichkeiten und Techniken zur Vorbeugung gegen solche Gefahrenquellen und somit zur Verbesserung von Gruppenentscheidungen vorgeschlagen.

Abstract: One prominent finding in research on group judgment is that groups often outperform the average of their members’ individual judgments. Previous research attributed this finding to groups weighting their more competent members more strongly (differential weighting explanation). We postulate an alternative explanation, namely that groups outperform individuals due to group-to-individual (G–I) transfer, which denotes group members becoming more accurate individually during group interaction. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that individual accuracy in an estimation task strongly increases due to interaction, leading to high accuracy at the group level. Experiment 2 replicates this finding and shows that G–I transfer can be enhanced by expertise feedback. In both experiments, when controlling for G–I transfer during group interaction, group judgments were not better than the average model. The findings imply that previously observed superior performance by groups compared to individuals may have been due to G–I transfer and not necessarily due to differential weighting. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Entrapment occurs if people persist with losing courses of action. In two experiments, we show how elaborating social feedback (i.e., premature praise or forewarning regarding the chosen course of action) can have paradoxical effects on entrapment. The participants acted as head of a translation department and had to choose one out of four possible translation strategies for their employees. After choosing, they read four arguments (presumably written by former participants) which were either all in favor of the strategy chosen, all against it, or mixed. Half of the participants only read these arguments, whereas the other half elaborated on them by providing written comments (Experiment 1). The results showed that elaborating on other persons' arguments led to stronger entrapment, independently of whether the arguments were positive or negative. This pattern was due to biased argument processing: Whereas confirming thoughts were generated for positive arguments, negative arguments were refuted. Experiment 2 confirmed that this biased argument processing caused subsequent entrapment. These results indicate that elaborating any type of argument can lead to heightened entrapment and, hence, forewarning can backfire. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Das von D. Kahneman und K. Tversky entwickelte Konzept des kontrafaktischen Denkens wird erläutert und im Bereich kontrafaktischer Gedanken von Vorgesetzten zu den Leistungen ihrer Mitarbeiter empirisch untersucht. Von kontrafaktischem Denken wird gesprochen, wenn Vorgesetzte sich Gedanken darüber machen, welche Bedingungen hätten vorhanden sein müssen, damit Mitarbeiter sich anders (besser oder auch schlechter) entwickelt hätten. Es kann positive affektive Konsequenzen haben, Veränderungsbedarf deutlich machen und zu Leistungsverbesserungen führen. In einer Fragebogenstudie wurde kontrafaktisches Denken von 60 Führungskräften analysiert. Sie nannten Bedingungen, die zu besseren oder schlechteren Leistungen ihrer Mitarbeiter geführt hätten. Die Antworten wurden von vier Beurteilern hinsichtlich Anzahl, Struktur und Referenz der kontrafaktischen Gedanken bewertet. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Führungskräfte besonders bei durchschnittlichen Mitarbeitern ihre eigenen Einflussmöglichkeiten thematisierten, während die Verhinderung günstigerer Entwicklungen der schwachen Mitarbeiter den Mitarbeitern selbst zugeschrieben wurde. Sollten die Vorgesetzten mental bessere Mitarbeiter simulieren, führten sie neue Bedingungen ein, während bei simulierten negativen Entwicklungen tatsächliche Hindernisse mental subtrahiert wurden. Die Ergebnisse werden auf ihre praktischen Implikationen untersucht.