Contenu du sommaire

Uncertainty and escalation of commitment. When cooperation becomes risky
Staw (1976) showed that decision-makers tend to continue to invest in failing course of action. This study analyses the escalating commitment effect in a project negotiation. A sample of students and community officials was presented a project said to be negotiated among several municipalities. The participants had to decide whether to continue this negotiation or not, in spite of negative feedback. The results confirm the general tendency of all the participants to escalate their commitment. Uncertainty about the position of the other parties increases the escalating commitment effect. The community officials tend to explain their commitment in terms of decision-making process and to reduce their degree of confidence in their capacity to succeed in said negotiation.

How middle-managers adapt to behavior prescriptions
Because of their position as both managers of their teams and subordinated to their own managers, middle-managers are under the pressure of both the upper and the lower hierarchy. This pressure is nowadays higher because of the increasing expectations concerning not only the means and results of the middle-managers, but also their behaviour. This article focuses on how middle-managers react to this pressure. We examine the effects of behaviour prescriptions on middle-managers using the role theory. Four types of role adjustment are identified and discussed considering their organizational backgrounds.

The effect of individual social power on the use of the expressive dimension on the self-description
This study examines the effect of individual social power on the use of self-description related to the expressive dimension of the self (Bem, 1974). One hundred female participants split in two group according to their socio-economic status completed a battery of tests supposed to assess individual social power and received a diagnosis of high vs low individual social power. Subsequently, participants were asked to provide self-descriptions using traits that measure interpersonal sensitivity from BSRI (Bem, 1974) and instrumental traits. As hypothesis 1 suggested, participants with experimentally induced low level of individual social power were defined by a higher level of interpersonal sensitivity, whereas their level of instrumentality was not influenced by experimental manipulation of social power. Contrary to our hypothesis 2, participants of low socio-economic status did not have a higher level of interpersonal sensitivity. Additional analysis of the sub-dimensions of interpersonal sensitivity yielded an interaction between the factors of one dimension, suggesting that participants of low socio-economic status were sensitive to experimental induction of social power, whereas participants of high socio-economic status were not.

The First name: An attribute of self-identity that affects one's evaluation of oneself and that of others. The effects of first names have been of interest to research psychologists for more than half a century. It is now known that first names are an attribute of one's identity and that they influence both the individuals' psychology and, to some extent, their social interactions. Many studies, mainly Anglo-Saxon, show the effects of individuals' first names on their self-esteem and on other internal factors, such as their abilities in school and organizations, their self-evaluation, mental health, social skills, etc. Such studies also show that individuals' first names are related to their judgment, evaluation and behaviours towards others. We hereunder present a synthesis of the social psychology studies on first names, which is probably the first review of scientific literature on this topic addressed to the French scientists.

Social determinants of intergroup perceptions in a hospital environment : a contribution to societal psychologyThe issue of crossed categorization may effectively be considered from the perspective of societal psychology, which allows it to be explained at the positional and ideological levels (Doise, 1982). The aim of this research is to detect signs of discrimination among doctors and nurses of both genders using two dimensions of the social value. The first of these two dimensions, “desirability”, is related to the affective value, while the second, “social utility”, reflects the adequacy of behaviours to the demands of social functioning (see Beauvois, 1995). The results show two symmetrical patterns according to the social value of groups. These findings allow the understanding of discrimination beyond the classical in-group bias. This research also attempts to assess the groups' representations of the boundaries between the two categories of gender and professional status.

Representations of minors, of their rights and of psychosocial risk
This study examines the representations of the minors' rights and those of the psychosocial risk which may threaten the minors. The sample comprised both teenagers and adults. The survey was carried out using both a quantitative and a qualitative methodology. Results show that the social representations of minors' rights become understandable if, among others, we consider the diversification of the typical profiles of the minor. The representations built by teenagers display a mythical view of childhood and the anticipation of teenage discomfort and developmental risk. Teenage discomfort and developmental risk are also particularly salient for the adults involved with education. The articulations among representations seem to depend not only on organizing principles such as responsibility and sense of justice, but also on the participants' personal involvement in day-to-day relationships with minors, on how adults understand their own [educating] role and on the minors' developmental stage.