The move to business schools: how Is I/O psychology holding up in Europe?

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Are all challenges created equal? goal orientations and their relationship with private and public challenging job experiences

To advance theory on the motivational underpinnings of striving for challenge, we propose and empirically demonstrate that challenging job experiences can be meaningfully subdivided into two categories –private and public challenging job experiences – based on characteristics of the challenging job experience. Drawing on achievement goal theory, in a two-wave field study among 216 employees (Study 1) and a multi-source field study among 326 employees (Study 2) we found initial evidence regarding differential effects of employees’ mastery-approach and performance-approach goals in relation to private and public challenging job experiences. Furthermore, Study 2 showed a negative relationship between performance-approach goals and supervisor-rated in-role job performance when public challenging job experiences were low. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed

Systematic reflection: Implications for learning from failures and successes

Drawing on a growing stream of empirical findings that runs across different psychological domains, we demonstrate that systematic reflection stands out as a prominent tool for learning from experience. For decades, failed experiences have been considered the most powerful learning sources. Despite the theoretical and practical relevance, scant research has investigated whether people can also learn from their successes. We show that through systematic reflection people can learn from both their successes and failures. Studies have further shown that the effectiveness of systematic reflection depends on situational (e.g., reflection focus) and person-based factors (e.g., conscientiousness). Given today’s unrelenting pace and the abundance of activities in which people are involved, future research may want to investigate how to effectively integrate systematic reflection within the busy daily environment of the learner

Emotional intelligence predicts success in medical school

Accumulating evidence suggests that effective communication and interpersonal sensitivity during interactions between doctors and patients impact therapeutic outcomes. There is an important need to identify predictors of these behaviors, because traditional tests used in medical admissions offer limited predictions of “bedside manners” in medical practice. This study examined whether emotional intelligence would predict the performance of 367 medical students in medical school courses on communication and interpersonal sensitivity. One of the dimensions of emotional intelligence, the ability to regulate emotions, predicted performance in courses on communication and interpersonal sensitivity over the next three years of medical school, over and above cognitive ability and conscientiousness. Emotional intelligence did not predict performance on courses on medical subject domains. The results suggest that medical schools may better predict who will communicate effectively and show interpersonal sensitivity if they include measures of emotional intelligence in their admission systems

Born to learn or born to win? Birth order effects on achievement goals

Given the widespread use and well-known consequences of achievement goals in different competence-relevant situations, it is important to gain a thorough understanding of how these differences in goal pursuit are formed. Using different analytic approaches, we show that birth order lies at the heart of people's goal preferences as we consistently found that firstborns have developed a preference for mastery goals (which are based on self-referenced standards of competence), whereas secondborns have developed a preference for performance goals (which are based on other-referenced standards of competence). These findings may help explain why people differently define, experience, and respond to competence-relevant situations, including the workplace, the classroom, and the ball field. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved