Minding the Psychological Contract: Intersection of Cognitive Research and Practice

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Minding the Psychological Contract Intersection
of Cognitive Research and Practice

• Denise M. Rousseau
• Carnegie Mellon University
• MOC Welcome
• Academy of Management

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Cognition 101

• MindfulnessDirected attention is needed to
  modify frames, schemas, or scripts
• Bounded RationalityCan process only limited
  information at a time (serial processing, limited
  attention and computational capacity)
• Fast/Frugal is NormPacking info into
  hierarchically organized concepts makes for
  computational ease

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Cognition 101cont

• Thinking gtFrame Application
• (Schema, Script)
• Meaning matters (not the Stimulus)

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Cognition 101 contd

• Presentism We typically have difficulty
  imagining a tomorrow different from today and
  assume that we will think, want or feel much the
  same as we do now.
• Anticipation Machine Most important thing a
  human brain does is making the future.

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Psych Con Minding 1

• Individual can only process limited information
  at one time
• Standard Models of Everything cannot be
  individually accurate
• Psychological Contract must be filled in over
  time to be an informed guide for interpretation
  and action

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Standard Model
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Individual With Bounded Rationality
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Psych Con Minding 2

• Requires directed mental force to create or
  revise
• MindfulnessDirected attention is needed to
  modify frames, schemas, or scripts
• When people are paying attention, the employer
  may a) be silent, b) convey what it doesnt
  intent, c) be represented by an agent with
  another point of view
• -- Exposure to variations creates deeper
  processing of meanings (more elaborate expert
  schemas)

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Psych Con Minding 3

• Filling in is episodic cues must capture
  attention.
• Episodes post-hire occur in social
  contextnetwork ties and informal social
  structure impact what is paid attention to and
  what interpretations are made
• Pre-contract and post-contract perceptions and
  motives differ (greatest differences evident in
  first year)

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Psych Con Minding 4

• Increasing Imagination Improves Capacity to
  Anticipate (helps in contracting EBMgt)
• MY FAVOR Mind exploits ambiguity for its own
  gratification
• MY WAY Reciprocity favors personal preferences
  (competencies, habits, resources)-- cf. OCB.
• EASY When its easy to imagine an event, its
  likelihood is overestimated (availability)
• INSIGHT DEPENDS ON OTHERS TO FILL PERCEPTUAL
  GAPS We can anticipate future more accurately
  when others share their own experiences
  (surrogators veterans share w/newcomers).

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Practice

• Biased toward top-down control
• Cognition and organization-related processes are
  bottom-up as well as top-down.
• Undervalues social influence as a major source of
  fill-ins (discrepancy resolution, learning)
• Under-uses discrepancies and variety of
  experiences as learning opportunities
  (performance vs. learning goals)

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Teaching is Practice and (Effective) Practice is
Teaching

• Learning occurs any time a discrepancy (error or
  gap in understanding) is resolved.
• Fewer errors
• More complete or mutual understanding
• Learning is highest among those whose training
  involved more discrepancies
• (minimal instruction or explicit incorporation of
  mistakes) compared with trainees who received
  detailed instructions and prescriptions for
  action (Frese)
• Mindfulness promotes learning (cf. Langer)
• Continuous creation of new categories
• Openness to new information,
• Implicit awareness of more than one perspective.

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Mindful psychological contracting?

• Can psychological contract be created mindfully?
  (cf. as opposed to mindless application of
  existing categories Kawakami, White, Langer,
  2000).
• Careful attention to novel distinctions and
  insights (e.g., development, support,
  value-added)
• Awareness of conditional nature of knowledge
  and beliefs
• Expand zone of negotiation/acceptance by
  perspective taking, new distinctions

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Conclusion

• Taking bounded rationality seriously
• limited number of factors influence schema
  (e.g., psychological contract) at a given time.
• accumulation of influences occurs over time via
  schema formation and bottom-up experiences
• exposure to varied sources and environments
  creates more complex (complete?) schemas, and
  more mindful use of them.
• Variation may be more important than consistency
  in creating meaningful and adaptive psychological
  contracts and agreements (with mindful
  reflection)