Moore J W, Jensen B, Hauck W E
Department of Education, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania 17837.
Adolescence. 1990 Fall;25(99):583-92.
Research supports the theory that after administrators make a decision, feedback, both positive and negative, and also the administrators' perceived security vis-à-vis their position affect their level of commitment to a course of action. However, this research fails to recognize that subjects of college age playing administrators in the simulated, experimental treatments which have been presented in the research had nothing personally to lose if they made a bad decision--an orientation contradictory to the reality of most actual administrative positions. Additionally, the research ignores the interactional effects of the personality of decision makers in terms of their anxiety levels and the judgments they make. This study took both of these considerations into account by creating a decision-making situation within which prospective administrators made monetary commitments to long-term goals while their anxiety level, both as a basic personality attribute and an index of the reality of the decision-making process, was monitored under conditions of varying levels of job insecurity and resistance to their policies in relation to their decisions. Analyses revealed that contrary to the results of past research which used college students as subjects: (1) there is a significant negative correlation between levels of anxiety and commitments to previously chosen courses of action; (2) there are no significant effects of job security on commitment; and, most importantly, (3) high resistance to a policy decision leads to significantly less monetary commitments to long-term goals. The findings suggest that the basis for the contradictory results lies with the anxiety level of decision makers and the realism of experiencing a loss by making poor decisions.
研究支持这样一种理论，即管理者做出决策后，正面和负面的反馈，以及管理者对自身职位的安全感，都会影响他们对某一行动方针的投入程度。然而，这项研究没有认识到，在该研究中所呈现的模拟实验处理中扮演管理者角色的大学生，如果做出错误决策，个人不会有任何损失——这种倾向与大多数实际管理职位的现实情况相矛盾。此外，该研究忽视了决策者个性在焦虑水平和他们所做判断方面的交互作用。本研究通过创设一种决策情境将这两个因素都考虑在内，在这种情境中，未来的管理者对长期目标做出金钱承诺，同时在工作安全感和对其决策政策的抵制程度各不相同的条件下，监测他们作为基本个性特征以及决策过程现实指标之一的焦虑水平。分析表明，与过去以大学生为研究对象的研究结果相反：（1）焦虑水平与对先前选择的行动方针的投入之间存在显著的负相关；（2）工作安全感对投入没有显著影响；而且，最重要的是，（3）对政策决策的强烈抵制会导致对长期目标的金钱承诺显著减少。研究结果表明，产生矛盾结果的原因在于决策者的焦虑水平以及因做出错误决策而遭受损失的现实情况。
