Effectiveness of antismoking public service announcements on children's intent to smoke.

The authors randomly assigned 5th- and 8th-grade students to 1 of 3 treatment conditions to study the effects of frequency of exposure to an antismoking public service announcement (PSA) on the students' intent to smoke over time. They found that, among younger children only, viewing an antismoking PSA at least once reduced smoking intentions, although these positive effects did not remain over time. However, the antismoking PSA was effective for younger at-risk children. After younger at-risk children viewed the antismoking PSA once, their intent to smoke decreased significantly. Notably, these positive effects remained stable over time and mirrored the smoking intentions of younger children who were not identified as at risk.

Importance of goal setting in virtual project teams.

This research investigated goal setting on engineering teams with geographically dispersed members. A survey was designed to measure the Quality of Goal Setting, Goal Commitment, Perceived Task Outcomes, and Perceived Psychosocial Outcomes, all constructs and scales used in previous research on project teams. 82 respondents from 12 virtual teams participated. Analysis suggested the quality of goal setting affected Perceived Task Outcome (t = 2.40, p < .05) but not Perceived Psychosocial Outcomes. Further regression analysis indicated goal commitment predicted significant variance in both Perceived Task Outcomes (t = 2.35, p < .05) and Perceived Psychosocial Outcomes (t = 4.3, p < .01). These results suggest that setting high quality goals and building commitment to goals significantly affect perceptions of outcomes on virtual project teams.

Some effects of reputation on alliance formation.

Using an experimental approach with 108 MBA students, effects of reputation on the quantity and quality of offers from other players to enter a transaction as well as a player's behavior toward protection against a partner's defection were tested. A purely cooperative strategy generated more and better offers but behavior nearly as consistently reliable was no better rewarded than a pure defection strategy. Also, players with work experience tended to mistrust even strong reputation signals.

Designing personable and informative job recruiting web sites: testing the effect of the design on attractiveness and intent to apply.

To date, most of the limited research conducted about the efficacy of corporate job recruiting web sites has been either anecdotal or based on field surveys. In this study, the effects of using a photograph, a friendly text message, and a list of job tasks in job descriptions were measured on undergraduates' ratings of the Personableness and Informativeness of recruiting web sites. In addition, the relationships between ratings of Personableness and Informativeness on perceptions of organizational Attractiveness and Intent to Apply were tested. Use of a photograph increased ratings of both Personableness and Informativeness. Additional results are provided and directions for research suggested.

Relation of managers' personality to accident and injury rates.

Previous research has explored the link between certain aspects of individuals' personalities and their safety behavior and accident rates. We predicted a relation between 23 managers' scores on Big Five personality dimensions and departmental accident and injury rates in a manufacturing company. Accident and injury data were provided by the organization. We found a relation between managers' personality profiles and both injury and accident rates in their departments. The findings suggest that managers with certain types of personalities may have safer work units. This has implications for the selection of managers in work environments with safety risks.