Attractive Task Research Articles

Addiction to Rewards

The paper explores the hidden costs of in a dynamic principal-agent framework, in which an informed principal selects in each period a reward for an agent. It shows that rewards are often addictive in that once offered, a contingent reward makes the agent expect it whenever a similar task is faced. This expectation develops because rewards bring bad news: a higher reward is more likely to be offered when the task is difficult or the agent is weak. This, in turn, compels the principal to use rewards over and over again. Furthermore, in a long-term principal-agent relationship there is a two-sided ratchet effect: the principal is concerned about creating addiction for the agent, whereas the agent does not want to appear too enthusiastic. On the principal's side, the ratchet effect implies that there are fewer rewards in a long-term principal-agent relationship than in a situation where the agent faces transient principals while implementing a series of similar tasks. On the agent's side, ratcheting conflicts with a desire to work in order to acquire valuable information about the task attractiveness. If doing the task once allows the agent to fully learn its characteristics, addiction may not develop. In contrast, the principal may first promise a bonus when the task is easy, rather than difficult (or the agent is strong) so as to induce the agent to acquire the good news by doing. Then, bonuses become redundant thereafter.

The influence of ethnocentrism on social perceptions of nonnative accents

This study examines the relationship between ethnocentrism and perceptions of nonnative accents. Participants were assigned to either an experimental or a control group. After completing a measure of ethnocentrism, participants in both groups were exposed to one of two videos of the same speaker delivering a speech on the benefits of exercise. The videos were identical except that the speaker in the video viewed by the experimental group spoke with a nonnative accent while the speaker viewed by the control group spoke with a standard American accent. For the experimental group, ethnocentrism was negatively and significantly correlated with perceptions of the speaker’s physical, social, and task attractiveness, his credibility, and perceived homophily. For the control group, none of the correlations were significant.

The Role of Empowerment in Crowdsourced Customer Service

For decades, researchers have seen employee empowerment as the means to achieving a more committed workforce that would deliver better outcomes. The prior conceptual and descriptive research focused on structural empowerment, or workplace mechanisms for generating empowerment, and psychological empowerment, the felt empowerment. Responding to calls for intervention studies, this research experimentally tests the effects of structural empowerment changes, through different degrees of decision-making authority and access to customer-relationship information, on psychological empowerment and subsequent work-related outcomes. Using a virtual contact center simulation, crowdsourced workers responded to customer requests. Greater decision authority and access to customer-relationship information resulted in higher levels of psychological empowerment which in turn resulted in task satisfaction and task attractiveness outcomes among the crowdsourced customer service workers.

Pre-service Teacher Trainees’ Perceptions of Interpersonal Communication

This study aims at assessing teacher trainees’ perceptions as to interpersonal communication, focusing on several aspects, i.e. the instructional environment, teacher's verbal and nonverbal communication behaviours - what the teacher says and how he/she says it, the teachers’ source credibility and task attractiveness, instructional outcomes, discipline management. We admistered a questionnaires aimed at identifying teacher trainees’ perceptions concerning interpersonal communication. The results revealed that beginning teachers consider as essential the dedicated and involving message delivery, emphasising ideas through stress and intonation, and focusing on students’ attention and interest.

How to attract applicants in the Atlantic versus the Asia-Pacific region? A cross-national analysis on China, India, Germany, and Hungary

While previous studies have shown that firms need to build a favourable employer image to prevail in the war for talent we still lack of an international perspective on employer branding. Based on a survey among engineering students from China, India, Germany, and Hungary, we show that the impact of some facets of employer image (e.g. task attractiveness) varies across different countries, while other employer image facets, such as perceived career opportunities and working atmosphere, unfold a stable influence on students’ intention to apply. Thus, we propose that there is an opportunity for a global employer positioning approach.

The “Drinking-Buddy” Scale as a Measure of Para-Social Behavior

Para-social behavior is a form of quasi-interpersonal behavior that results when audience members develop bonds with media personalities that can resemble interpersonal social interaction, but is not usually applied to political communication. This study tested whether the "Drinking-Buddy" Scale, a simple question frequently used in political communication, could be interpreted as a single-item measure of para-social behavior with respect to political candidates in terms of image judgments related to interpersonal attraction and perceived similarity to self. The participants were college students who had voted in the 2008 election. They rated the candidates, Obama or McCain, as drinking buddies and then rated the candidates' perceived similarity to themselves in attitude and background, and also the social and task attraction to the candidate. If the drinking-buddy rating serves as a proxy measure for para-social behavior, then it was expected that participants' ratings for all four kinds of similarity to and attraction toward a candidate would be higher for the candidate they chose as a drinking buddy. The directional hypotheses were supported for interpersonal attraction, but not for perceived similarity. These results indicate that the drinking-buddy scale predicts ratings of interpersonal attraction, while voters may view perceived similarity as an important but not essential factor in their candidate preference.

Students' orientation towards interpersonal communication in online social networking sites

PurposeAs computer‐mediated communication has diffused, successive technological variations raise new questions about interpersonal impressions and several standardized instruments have been advanced in literature to asses various aspect of interpersonal attraction phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to examine the claims for reliability and validity of the attraction scales by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in the light of research since 1974 which has employed the scales, and then improve the measures if needed.Design/methodology/approachRandom sampling procedure was carried out in two kulliyahs (Faculty) at International Islamic university Malaysia (IIUM), in which 340 students were selected from a population of 2,000 undergraduate students. A total of 26 items were tested from an instrument that has been used in previous studies; each item is expected to measure one of the three orientations' dimensions.FindingsThe analysis result confirms that the orientation of students towards interpersonal communication in online social network sites (SNS) is a multi‐dimensional construct consisting of social attraction, physical attraction and task attraction. In addition, since substantial numbers of research studies have been reported to have employed one or more of these measures, this research was examined to evaluate their reliability and validity.Research limitations/implicationsSince the reliabilities found in literatures have been highly varied, it was determined that improved measures should be used in the future. Thus, a revised and improved version of these measures, using CFA, are reported and recommended in this paper for future research.Originality/valueThe paper has produced a second‐generation measure with substantially improved internal reliability and validity. The paper's most important and obvious conclusion is that interpersonal attraction does appear to be a multidimensional construct.

Bringing Japan and Taiwan closer electronically: A look at an intercultural online synchronic chat task and its effect on motivation

This study examines the motivation of 20 Japanese students of English as a foreign language (EFL) who chatted electronically with 19 Taiwanese EFL students using online synchronous chat software. In particular, we were interested in four factors that affect task-based motivation: the willingness to communicate, task attractiveness, task innovativeness, and the need to communicate in the target language. Qualitative analysis of a posttest questionnaire and the texts that students produced during their online task reveal that students were generally motivated throughout the task with respect to all four of the factors. It is suggested that well-designed online chat tasks, whereby students need to arrive at a consensus via interaction, can be very motivating to students. For teachers, electronic synchronous chat represents one more valuable tool for language teachers to facilitate interaction in the target language.

The Moderating Effects of Task Complexity and Task Attractiveness on the Impact of Monetary Incentives in Repeated Tasks

ABSTRACTThis study examines the interactive effects of task complexity and attractiveness on the effectiveness of explicit monetary incentives in promoting task performance. We provide theory for and find an interaction such that monetary incentives are more effective when tasks are less complex, but only when the task is viewed as relatively unattractive. In addition, by varying task complexity, this study extends Bailey et al. (1998), finding that when incentive pay leads to higher performance, it is through faster initial performance, not faster improvement.

Interpersonal attraction and religious identification: a comparative analysis of Muslims and Hindus in India

This study compared whether an individual is more likely to perceive interpersonal attraction toward a member of his/her own or a different religious group. Self-identified Hindus (N=526) and self-identified Muslims (N=301) in India participated in the study. Results indicate members of a religious group (Hindus and Muslims) are significantly more likely to perceive physical, social, and task attraction for members of their own religious group than for individuals from another religious group. These results support an ethnic group vitality and in-group/out-group dichotomy.

Will Privatization Reduce Costs?

I develop a model of public sector contracting based on the multitask framework by Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991). In this model, an agent can put eort into increasing the quality of a service or reducing costs. Being residual claimants, private owners have stronger incentives to cut costs than public employees. However, if quality cannot be perfectly measured, providing a private …rm with incentives to improve quality forces the owner of the …rm to bear risk. As a result, private …rms will always be cheaper for low levels of quality but might be more expensive for high levels of quality. Extending the model to allow for dierences in task attractiveness, I …nd that public …rms shun unattractive tasks, whereas private …rms undertake them if incentives are strong enough.

When Individuals Form Teams: Experimental Evidence Regarding Links Among Monetary Incentives, Stress, Effort, Attractiveness and Performance

This study extends research on the determinants of performance by examining the effect of compensation scheme and perceptions of task attractiveness on team performance. In a laboratory experiment all participants completed a cognitively difficult task both individually and in teams of three individuals. Both individuals and teams were asked to self-report their perceptions of the task’s attractiveness before and after completing the task for compensation, and were compensated for their task performance using one of two compensation schemes: fixed-wage or incentive-based. All links in the theoretical model were supported. Team results provide support for links between Compensation and Stress; Effort and Performance; Attractiveness and Effort; and finally, between Stress and Change in Attractiveness. Individual results provide support for links between Compensation and Stress; Stress and Effort; Effort and Performance; Attractiveness and Performance; Compensation and Change in Attractiveness; Stress and Change in Attractiveness; and finally, between Change in Attractiveness and Performance. Additionally, we find evidence that Attractiveness is a more important determinant of Effort and Performance in the absence of incentive-based compensation.

Things to Do Today . . . : A Daily Diary Study on Task Completion at Work

Relatively little is known about how goals in complex jobs are translated into action and how they are completed in real life settings. This study addressed the question to what extent planned work may actually be completed on a daily basis. The completion of daily work goals was studied in a sample of 878 tasks identified by 29 R&D engineers with the help of a daily diary. Multilevel analysis was used to analyse the joint effect of task attributes, perceived job characteristics, and personality attributes on the completion of planned work goals. At the level of task attributes, we found that priority, urgency, and lower importance were related to task completion, and at the individual level, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and time management training. Task completion was not related to task attractiveness, workload, job autonomy, planning, or perceived control of time.On connaît relativement peu de choses sur la manière dont les objectifs dans des tâches complexes sont traduites en action et sur la manière dont elles sont accomplies dans le cadre de la vie quotidienne. Cette étude a abordé la question de savoir dans quelle mesure les travaux prévus peuvent être effectivement achevés dans la vie quotidienne. Pour ce faire, un échantillon de 878 tâches a été identifié par 29 ingénieurs R&D à l’aide d’un journal quotidien. Une analyse multi niveau a été réalisée pour étudier l’effet conjoint des caractéristiques de la tâche et des caractéristiques de la personnalité sur l’accomplissement des objectifs d’un travail planifié. Au niveau des caractéristiques de la tâche, nous trouvons que l’accomplissement de la tâche est liéà la priorité, l’urgence et une importance basse et au niveau individuel à la conscience, la stabilitéémotionnelle et à la gestion du temps. L’accomplissement de la tâche n’est pas liéà son attrait, à la charge de travail, à l’autonomie au travail ou au contrôle du temps perçu.

The Relationship Between College Students' Self-Reports of Class Participation and Perceived Instructor Impressions

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the extent to which college students' self-reports of their in-class participation are related to their impressions of instructors (i.e., credibility, attractiveness, and homophily). Participants were 223 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory communication course at a large Mid-Atlantic university. Students' self-reports of their in-class participation were positively correlated with perceived instructor social attractiveness, physical attractiveness, background homophily, and attititude homophily, but not with perceived instructor competence, character, caring, and task attractiveness. Furthermore, class size, perceived instructor social attractiveness, and perceived instructor background homophily emerged as significant predictors of in-class participation.

Borrowing from Health Communications to Motivate Students to Learn Information Literacy Skills

Given an unfamiliar audience, an undervalued skill, and a limited time to present, librarian information specialists need a prescriptive means to generate motivation to learn. Tailoring, more commonly used in health communications, could enhance perceived task attractiveness and relevancy. In a controlled trial, two groups were compared on the basis of exposure or non-exposure to a tailored lesson introduction prior to an online Website evaluation tutorial. The tailored introduction group reported significantly higher levels of task attractiveness before and after the tutorial; relevancy was significantly greater before, but not after the tutorial. Further research into tailoring is warranted.

The Moderating Effects of Task Complexity and Task Attractiveness on the Impact of Monetary Incentives in Repeated Tasks

This study examines the interactive effects of task complexity and attractiveness on the effectiveness of explicit monetary incentives in promoting task performance. We provide theory for and find an interaction such that monetary incentives are more effective when tasks are less complex, but only when the task is viewed as relatively unattractive. In addition, by varying task complexity, this study extends Bailey et al. (1998), finding that when incentive pay leads to higher performance, it is through faster initial performance, not faster improvement

Student Communication Motives and Interpersonal Attraction Toward Instructor

Instructional communication research has not specifically focused on the impact of student classroom communication behaviors on the student-teacher relationship. The current study investigated the relationship between student motives to communicate with instructors and interpersonal attraction toward them. Canonical correlation results indicated student levels of physical, social, and task attraction were positively related to their motivation to establish a relationship, and expressing interest in class and task attraction was inversely related to participatory, excuse-making, and sycophantic motives. Regression analyses determined students' relational motivations as the greatest predictor of social and physical attraction, while excuse-making was the greatest predictor of task attraction.

The influence of ethnocentrism in organizational contexts: perceptions of interviewee and managerial attractiveness, credibility, and effectiveness

This paper presents the results of two studies that examine the influence of ethnocentrism on interpersonal perceptions of attractiveness, credibility, and managerial effectiveness. In Study I participants (N=117) watched a video-taped interview of a Korean national student being interviewed for a job in the financial aid office of her United States (US) college. Participants then completed measures of ethnocentrism, interpersonal attraction, credibility, and were asked to give a hiring recommendation. Results reveal that ethnocentrism was negatively and significantly correlated with perceptions of social attraction, competence, character, and hiring recommendations. Study II focused on the influence of ethnocentrism on perceptions of managerial attraction, credibility, and effectiveness in a manager–subordinate conflict situation. Approximately half (N=59) of the participants watched a video of an Asian student manager reprimanding a white student worker. The other half (N=64) watched a nearly identical video of a white student manager reprimanding the same white student worker. Participants completed measures of ethnocentrism, interpersonal attraction, credibility, generalized attitudes about the manager, and managerial effectiveness. In the group of participants who watched the Asian student manager, results reveal that ethnocentrism was negatively and significantly correlated with perceptions of physical, social, and task attraction, competence, and general attitudes about the manager, but not managerial effectiveness. In the group of participants who watched the white student manager there were no significant correlations between ethnocentrism and any of the dependent variables.

Toward a general model of instructional communication

A general model of instructional communication is advanced and the linkages of four components in the model are tested. Data were drawn from college teachers and college students through a split‐class design which permitted collection of unique data from teachers and two sets of their students. Using by‐class analyses of data it was determined that teacher self‐reported temperament is significantly correlated with students' perceptions of the teachers' communication behaviors and the students' evaluation of teachers' source credibility and task attractiveness. All of these measures were also found to predict learning outcomes and teacher evaluations of another group of students. The results support the general model and provide a foundation for future research in instructional communication.

Experimental Evidence on the Links among Monetary Incentives, Task Attractiveness, and Task Performance

This study reports the results of a laboratory experiment where subjects performed a complex task under two types of compensation contracts, fixed-wage and piece-rate. Additionally, all subjects evaluated the attractiveness of the task prior to learning how they would be compensated during the experiment, and after they performed the experimental task under their assigned compensation contract. The results show that when the task was originally perceived as being attractive, piece-rate compensation led to a significant reduction in the perceived attractiveness of the task and worsened task performance relative to fixed-wage compensation. When the task was originally perceived as being unattractive, the form of compensation did not affect perceptions of task attractiveness or task performance. However, these results did not hold for a second group of subjects who performed a less complex task.