Conscientiousness assessments for people with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: Measurement properties and potential issues.

Organizations increasingly recognize the importance of including neurodivergent people (e.g., those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], autism, dyslexia) in the workforce. However, research suggests that some selection tools (e.g., measures of conscientiousness) show lower means for those with ADHD, which may carry implications for personnel selection. The three studies reported here address three questions: (1) What is the magnitude of ADHD-based differences in conscientiousness, and are these differences driven by facets with high or low job relevance? (2) Could reframing conscientiousness items within work contexts attenuate group mean differences in conscientiousness? And (3) do work-specific and general conscientiousness measures have different measurement properties for respondents with ADHD? Study 1 surveyed 291 undergraduates, finding those with ADHD scored significantly lower on global conscientiousness and its facets. Study 2 (a mixed-design experiment) had 317 employees complete a work-specific and a decontextualized set of conscientiousness items. Using work-specific conscientiousness items reduced differences in conscientiousness by ADHD status. Study 3 (a between-subjects design, N = 515) experimentally increased the stakes of survey administration to approximate a selection context. Mean differences by ADHD status were present on both work-specific and general items for global conscientiousness and most facets, even under high stakes. However, these results are qualified by findings of measurement noninvariance on general and work-specific conscientiousness facet measures, suggesting scale mean differences by ADHD status may be driven by item content rather than construct-level differences. Together, the findings reinforce a need for ongoing investigation into the implications of using conscientiousness assessments with neurodivergent people. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Discrimination on the basis of race and color.

The heightened focus on racism and colorism in recent years has deepened scholarly attention to the pervasive emergence and impact of racism and colorism within organizations. In this review, we begin by exploring the diverse ways in which racism manifests within organizations. We then address the complexities and variations that exist within racial categories - exploring colorism and the ways targets of racism and colorism manage their identities. Finally, we present strategies to address and mitigate these evolving issues of racism and colorism, and we offer insights for both practice and future research.

Social inattentional blindness to idea stealing in meetings.

Using a virtual reality social experiment, participants (N = 154) experienced being at the table during a decision-making meeting and identified the best solutions generated. During the meeting, one meeting participant repeated another participant's idea, presenting it as his own. Although this idea stealing was clearly visible and audible, only 30% of participants correctly identified who shared the idea first. Subsequent analyses suggest that the social environment affected this novel form of inattentional blindness. Although there was no experimental effect of team diversity on noticing, there was correlational evidence of an indirect effect of perceived team status on noticing via attentional engagement. In sum, this paper extends the inattentional blindness phenomenon to a realistic professional interaction and demonstrates how features of the social environment can reduce social inattention.

The Dobbs Decision and the Future of Occupational Health in the US.

Access to abortion care has a profound impact on women's ability to participate in the workforce. In the US, restrictions on abortion care have waxed and waned over the years, including periods when abortion was broadly permitted across the nation for most pregnant people for a substantial proportion of pregnancy and times when restrictions varied across states, including states where abortion is banned for nearly all reasons. Additionally, access to abortion care has always been a reproductive justice issue, with some people more able to access this care than others even when it is structurally available. In June 2022, the US Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, returning to states the ability to determine restrictions on abortion, including near-total bans on abortion. In this anthology, ten experts share their perspectives on what the Dobbs decision means for the future, how it will exacerbate existing, well-researched issues, and likely also create new challenges needing investigation. Some contributions are focused on research directions, some focus on implications for organizations, and most include both. All contributions share relevant occupational health literature and describe the effects of the Dobbs decision in context.

Fighting the 400-Year Pandemic: Racism Against Black People in Organizations.

Anti-Black racism is a pernicious problem that has plagued the USA throughout history. In 2020, we saw intense moments that highlighted the stark anti-Black racism and racial inequity in America. Namely, the murder of George Floyd coupled with the disproportionate levels of negative outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic affecting Black people in the USA. These instances called attention to the considerable racial inequality in US society and reminded many people that racism seeps throughout all facets of life. Our first goal with this special issue was to call attention to research within in the organizational sciences that focuses on anti-Black racism. The articles in this issue call attention to some of the manifestations and consequences of anti-Black racism as well as ways to reduce its insidious effects. Our second goal was to intentionally highlight the work of Black scholars in the field of I-O psychology. As such, we engaged in targeted recruiting that allowed us to successfully curate articles from a racially diverse group of scholars, and we are able to highlight the work of Black scholars and practitioners in the field.

Worrying About Finances During COVID-19: Resiliency Enhances the Effect of Worrying on Both Proactive Behavior and Stress.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic instability, many people are contending with financial insecurity. Guided by Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, American Psychologist 44:513-524, 1989; Hobfoll et al., Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 5:103-128, 2018), the current research explores the consequences of experiencing financial insecurity during a pandemic, with a focus on individuals who report relatively higher rates of financial insecurity, performance challenges, and stress during such experiences: working parents (American Psychological Association, 2022). This research also examines the role that personal resources, in the form of trait resiliency, play in the relationships between financial insecurity and behavioral and psychological outcomes including worrying, proactive behaviors, and stress. In a study of 636 working parents and their children, we find that financial insecurity heightens worrying, underscoring the threatening nature of the loss or anticipated loss of material resources. Worrying, in turn, promotes proactive behaviors at work-an effect that is more pronounced among high-resiliency individuals. However, worrying is also associated with elevated stress among high-resiliency individuals, providing support for a trait activation perspective (rather than buffering hypotheses) on ongoing, uncontrollable adversities. Taken together, our results help to (1) illuminate the impact of financial insecurity on work and well-being, (2) reveal a mechanism (i.e., worrying) that helps explain the links between financial insecurity and work and personal outcomes, and (3) expand our knowledge of the implications trait resiliency has for both psychological and behavioral reactions to ongoing crises.

The Future of Women in Psychological Science.

There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field's investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women's career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.

Physical activity in working mothers: Running low impacts quality of life.

OBJECTIVES: The transition to motherhood is associated with declines in physical activity in women. Working mothers may be particularly at-risk for low levels of physical activity, since they have to balance the competing interests of work and family life, and exercise often takes a backseat to more seemingly pressing concerns. The potential benefits working mothers can experience from physical activity are numerous. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the percentage of working mothers from the United States who met the World Health Organization's and the American College of Sports Medicine's recommended guidelines for weekly physical activity and investigate the associations between physical activity, quality of life, and self-rated work productivity in this sample of working mothers. METHODS: Participants were 334 working mothers from the United States (mean age = 35.00 years; standard deviation (SD) = 5.85; 77.8% White) recruited from a Qualtrics research panel. To be eligible to participate in the study, a woman had to be 18 years or older with at least one child aged 5 years or younger, work at least 30 h per week at a job, live with her child(ren) at least 50% of the time, and have a minimum of a bachelor's degree. Participants completed the Godin leisure time exercise questionnaire, the World Health Organization-five well-being index, a single-item indicator of self-rated work productivity, and a demographic questionnaire. RESULTS: Of the working mothers in the sample, 45.5% met the recommended guidelines of at least 150 min of moderate exercise in the past week. Approximately 39% of working mothers reported engaging in no 30-min bouts of strenuous exercise in the past week. Non-white working mothers, working mothers with a higher singular annual income, and working mothers who obtained a higher educational level were more likely to meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity in the past week. Meeting the recommended physical activity guidelines in the past week was associated with better quality of life (r = 0.39; p < 0.001) and self-rated work productivity (r = 0.13; p < 0.05). Only the association between physical activity and quality of life remained significant in a multivariate analysis (standardized beta coefficient = 0.33; p < 0.001) after controlling for race/ethnicity, maternal singular annual income, and maternal highest level of education. CONCLUSION: Our findings highlight that working mothers in the United States are a group at risk for low levels of physical activity. Given the great benefits that these women do experience as a function of getting exercise, it is critically important we pay more attention to how individual, organizational, and societal-level interventions might assist them in attaining target levels of physical activity.

The face of STEM: Racial phenotypic stereotypicality predicts STEM persistence by-and ability attributions about-students of color.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 116(3) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2019-08943-003). In the article "The Face of STEM: Racial Phenotypic Stereotypicality Predicts STEM Persistence by-and Ability Attributions About-Students of Color" by Melissa J. Williams, Julia George- Jones, and Mikki Hebl (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. October 15, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000153), the Editor' Note acknowledging Toni Schmader as the action editor for this article was omitted. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Despite strong initial interest, college students-especially those from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds-leave STEM majors at high rates. Here, we explore the role of racial phenotypic stereotypicality, or how typical one's physical appearance is of one's racial group, in STEM persistence. In a longitudinal study, URM students were especially likely to leave STEM to the extent that they looked more stereotypical of their group; Asian American students were especially likely to leave STEM to the extent that they looked less stereotypical. Three experiments documented a possible mechanism; participants (Studies 2-4), including college advisors (Study 3), attributed greater STEM ability to more-stereotypical Asian Americans and to less-stereotypical Black women (not men), than to same-race peers. Study 4 showed that prejudice concerns, activated in interactions with Black men (not women), account for this gender difference; more-stereotypical Black men (like women) were negatively evaluated when prejudice concerns were not salient. This work has important implications for ongoing efforts to achieve diversity in STEM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

One hundred years of discrimination research in the Journal of Applied Psychology: A sobering synopsis.

Employment discrimination-a legal, social, moral, and practical problem-has been a persistent focus of narrow scholarship in the Journal of Applied Psychology since its inception. Indeed, this article identifies the environmental characteristics, conceptual underpinnings, dominant methodologies, research questions and findings across 508 articles published on discrimination in the journal over the last 100 years. Emergent themes document signs of stability and change in 3 eras: an era wherein discrimination research was itself discriminatory (1917-1969), the heyday of discrimination research (1970-1989), and an era of unsteady progress (1990-2014). This synthesis suggests that, although increasingly sophisticated methodological approaches have been applied to this topic, the targets of focus and theories driving research have largely been static. Additionally, research published on discrimination in the Journal of Applied Psychology has often trailed too far behind the times. Specific recommendations for advancing the psychological study of employment discrimination in applied contexts are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record

The role of proximal social contexts: Assessing stigma-by-association effects on leader appraisals.

Prior research suggests that segregation in the U.S. workplace is on the rise (Hellerstein, Neumark, & McInerney, 2008); as such, leaders are more likely to lead groups of followers composed primarily of their own race (Elliot & Smith, 2001; Smith & Elliott, 2002). Drawing from theory on stigma-by-association, the authors posit that such segregated proximal social contexts (i.e., the leader's group of followers) can have detrimental effects on leader appraisals. Specifically, they argue that leaders of mostly Black follower groups experience stigmatization based on race stereotypic beliefs, which affects how they are viewed in the eyes of observers. The results of a large field study show performance evaluations generally tend to be lower when the proportion of Black followers is higher. Moreover, 3 experiments demonstrate that the impact of proximal social contexts extends to other outcomes (i.e., perceptions of market value and competency) but appears limited to those who are less internally and externally motivated to control their prejudice. Taken together, these findings explain how workplace segregation systematically can create a particular disadvantage for Black leaders.