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This study engages an understudied presupposition that values are relatively impervious to situational pressures. We do this within a key sociological context, incorporating social status as a meso-level structure, by measuring values before and after a competition situation with an experimentally controlled outcome to determine the situational robustness of values.

We incorporate measures of values into a standard competition experiment, looking at how winning or losing and the status of the perceived competition influence peoples’ values.

Drawing on the well-established expectation states literature, we demonstrate that perceptions of gaining or losing a competition influence core values. Overall, positive, related situational feedback seemed to heighten all of the values-measures, while receiving (manipulated) negative, specific feedback dampened the rating of all values.

This is an initial exploration of the received wisdom; future work should involve different manipulations, wider arrays of values-measurement, and more diverse samples.

We hope that our interpretations of these results suggest how perceived status influences core internal experiences. The processes described have implications for the experiences of groups that win or lose political competitions, and other social interactions whereby people feel more or less affirmed in terms of their core beliefs.

This suggests that individuals and groups who perceive themselves as winning competitions, elections, or challenges will feel affirmed in their core beliefs, and be more motivated to pursue those valued ends. People who perceive themselves as being situationally unsuccessful will feel a general dampening of these core beliefs.

This chapter is the first to link the internal study of values with the general expectation states tradition. It is exploratory, and results suggest this is a fertile area for future inquiry.

Fundamental theories of power and status have developed sufficiently to apply in educational and organizational contexts. The path from basic theory to program development is neither simple nor direct. We trace the application of theoretical principles taken from network exchange theories of power as well as status characteristics and expectation states theories through the interdisciplinary field of leadership studies to applications that interrelate basic research, applied research, undergraduate educational programs, and organizational development. Two proposals result (1) a leadership training program that will produce university graduates with effective leadership skills, while also bringing diverse high school students to participate in a university program and (2) basic status characteristics research to explain the glass ceiling phenomenon.

Social psychological perspectives on educational stratification offer explanations that bridge the macro and micro social worlds. However, while ethnoracial disparities in academic achievement are evident during the earliest grade levels, most social psychological research in this area has examined high school or college student samples and has used a black–white binary to operationalize race.

We use longitudinal structural equation models to examine links between academic self-efficacy beliefs and school performance among a national sample of diverse third- through eighth-grade students in the United States.

Contrary to hypotheses derived from the student identity literature, we find no evidence that elementary and middle school students from different ethnoracial backgrounds vary in the degree to which they selectively discount evaluative feedback in their academic self-efficacy construction, nor in the extent to which they demonstrate disrupted links between academic self-efficacy and subsequent academic performance.

The study examines the extent to which race-linked social psychological processes may be driving academic achievement inequalities during the primary schooling years.

There are many cognitive training tests purporting to both measure older people’s cognitive performance, several of which come with associated training that are deemed to improve cognition. This chapter describes cognitive tests that have been claimed to be linked to driver behaviour, and that training on them could improve driver behaviour. Of special interest are tests that could be completed at home on a computer, as it is suggested this could capture many individuals who are worried about attending a driver assessment centre and are not likely to be referred. Findings suggest that UFOV (Useful Field of View) Time Making Trail (A and B) and Dual N have research suggesting that training on them could improve driver performance for older drivers. However, the robustness of the research is debateable. There are also two physiological tests – a neck and shoulder and a general fitness test that also show promising results for improving driver performance. In addition, education and training is purported to improve driver behaviour, but although there is positive feedback from older people who attend and some short-term improvements, research on long-term improvements on driver behaviour are not yet evident. Overall, there are promising results from individual cognitive, physiological tests and from education and training suggesting that reflection on action and feedback from the task is important to improving driver performance but more research is needed.

A long-standing question is how group perception, which is the perception of a whole group, becomes an exaggerated perception of the individuals who comprise the group. The question receives scant attention within computer-mediated communication (CMC), which is increasingly a communication mode for groups and a research tool to study groups. I address this gap by examining bias in group perception when rating copresence, which is the sense of being together, with the group.

I model bias as occurring when perceivers differentially weigh ratings of individual group members on a variable while rating the whole group on the same variable. I analyzed how the degree of bias in participants’ ratings of copresence with a status-differentiated group varied by the availability of visual cues during CMC in an experiment. I also examined how the group’s status hierarchy impacted bias.

Bias increase as the availability of visual cues decreased and ratings of middle status members were weighed more in group perception than ratings of other members.

Middle status was based on possessing inconsistent statuses. Inconsistency, and not status position, may have rendered these members more salient than others.

Interventions that target group perception may benefit from targeting the group’s middle status members. Researchers and practitioners can minimize bias in group perception through increasing the availability of visual cues in CMC.

The findings illustrate the underpinnings of copresence with an entire group. This is important because copresence shapes several group processes during CMC.

Organisations are facing enormous changes in the demographic composition of the workforce. Racial groups that have traditionally been professionally isolated from one another are working together as more minorities are assimilated into the workforce (Lewan, 1990). The Hudson Institute's Workforce 2000 statistics project that women, minorities, and immigrants will soon make up the majority of new entrants into the American workforce (Johnston & Packer, 1987). This diversity brings numerous racial and cultural differences into corporations. As a result, managing diversity increasingly appears on the agendas of organisational leaders (Cox & Blake, 1991).

This chapter aims to reflect upon the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and human rights. We argue that although CSR is a good attempt to propose better practices for managerial decisions, a human rights perspective enriches this vision. Therefore, the authors will define the meaning of a human rights perspective for business activities and, specifically, for CSR. The authors apply the idea of res extra commercium to human rights and CSR. As a first step, both factors need to be identified as moral absolutes. Essentially, businesses should start by identifying areas of human activity that are off limits.

Composite solders were prepared by mechanically dispersing 15v% of Cu or Ag particles into the eutectic Sn‐3.5Ag solder. The average sizes for the nominally spherical Cu and Ag particles were 6 and 4 microns, respectively. Two different processing methods were used to prepare the composite solders: blending the powdered particles with solder paste, and adding particles to the molten solder at 2808C. The composite solders were characterised by studying the morphology, size and distribution of the reinforcing phase. Particular interest and emphasis are given towards the modifications of the reinforcements during the reflow process. Microstructural features and chemical analysis of the composite solders were studied using optical and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy dispersive x‐ray (EDX) analysis. The effect of reflow and isothermal ageing on the microstructure as well as the morphological changes in the interfacial IM layer of the composite solders were extensively analysed. A mechanism for IM layer growth is proposed for solid state isothermal ageing.