reserach paper

The Abstracts of the 38th Conference of the Australian Psychological Society 189

on transaction-specific customer satisfaction is the focus of this study. A community sample of one hundred and fifty participants viewed video clips depicting a service provider displaying three different levels of emotional intelligence in high or low service difficulty transactions. Participants' ratings of anticipated customer satisfaction revealed that higher emotional intelligence of the service provider leads to greater reported satisfaction with the service transaction. Further, there was an interaction between emotional intelli- gence of the service provider and transaction difficulty. In conjunction with previous findings relating emotional intelli- gence to other workplace factors such as leadership and job satisfaction, the present study adds to the accumulating evidence that the emotional intelligence of employees is an element in organisational success.

The screening of autism in 18-month-old infants: Implications for theories of autism

KERR, S., DURKIN, K., & MAYBERY, M. (University of Western Australia). [email protected]

Despite evidence of onset in early infancy, autism israrely diagnosed before age 3. Designed to identify 18- month-old children at risk of autism, the CHAT has shown high specificity but low sensitivity. The present research aims to enhance screening through improving on the CHAT in discriminating children with autism from typically devel- oping children and children with general developmental delay. Children from these three groups completed tasks linked to different theoretical accounts of autism. Tasks measuring joint attention, a precursor to theory of mind, accurately discriminated children with autism from both children with typical development and developmental delay. Tasks measuring executive function produced mixed results with working memory tasks differentiating children with autism from children with typical development, but not children with developmental delay, and planning tasks failing to discriminate any of the groups. Tasks measuring central coherence also failed to differentiate any of the groups. In further research, parent interviews and first-birth- day video footage further indicated that deficits in early social and communicative skills discriminated children with autism from children in the other groups. Based on these findings, a screening instrument will be devised and tested in a large population screening study.

Body image dissatisfaction and drive for ^ muscularity in gay men: An at-risk group?

KING, RM., & FLETCHER, C. (Deakin University). [email protected]

Gay men are a subgroup at risk of developing bodydissatisfaction. Compared with their heterosexual peers, they show greater body dissatisfaction, prefer a thinner ideal body size, more preoccupation with weight and appearance, and are more motivated to exercise to improve attractive- ness. As ideal male body has become more muscular, gay men may be especially vulnerable. This study examines the body image and drive for muscularity in gay men and the role of awareness and internalisation of societal ideals, investment in appearance, and appearance-based compar- isons in determining body dissatisfaction. Seventy gay and 71 heterosexual men (18-55 years) completed anonymous questionnaires. Contrary to predictions, gay men do not report higher levels of body dissatisfaction, though this may

be due to them having a significantly lower BMI. They do, however, display greater awareness and internalisation of the desirability of a muscular, non-fat ideal, investment in appearance, and drive for a muscular body shape. They also report a greater tendency to engage in appearance-based social comparisons. Body dissatisfaction in gay men is predicted by investment in appearance, internalisafion of societal ideals and appearance-based social comparisons. Gay men may engage in behaviours designed to increase their muscularity such as over-exercising and steroid abuse.

Social anxiety disorder: Events tKat cast shadows

KINGSEP, PK. (Centre f o r Clinical Interventions). [email protected]

The general concept of biased processing of social infor-mation forms the basis of cognitive theories for social anxiety disorder (e.g., Clark & Wells, 1995). Individuals with social anxiety disorder demonstrate a heightened preoccupation with their internal responses and thoughts, thus neglecting other, external, information (Spurr & Stopa, 2002). As a result, their processing of the event after it has occurred (post-event processing) involves biases in their judgement about and recollections of the event. This results in difficulties in accurately disputing their maladaptive cognitions and increases their likelihood of avoiding subse- quent social situations. This paper will discuss the research which addresses post-event processing within social anxiety disorder and describe some preliminary research that CCI is undertaking in this area. This will have relevance to tailor- ing effective treatments for specific anxiety disorders by matching the mechanisms maintaining the disorder within an individual to the best possible set of interventions.

Measuring early adolescents' self- and collective efficacy: Predictiveness varies with specificity

KLASSEN, RM. (Simon Fraser University). [email protected]

How does choice of efficacy measurement influenceresearch results? Considerable previous research has shown self-efficacy to be a strong predictor of performance in a wide range of domains. Collective efficacy, too, has been shown to be predictive of (group) performance, but little is known about the implications of measuring efficacy at different levels of specificity. This paper examines how variations in conceptualisation and level of specificity affect the predictiveness of self- and collective efficacy relative to previous achievement and selected motivation and cultural constructs. The sample for the current study consists of 270 Canadian early adolescents from 8 public and 2 private schools. Using multiple regression, the study analyses the predictive utility of 2 levels of self-efficacy beliefs for a mathematics task and 3 levels of collective efficacy beliefs for a group problem-solving task. Results show that although item level self-efficacy was a powerful predictor of achievement, task level efficacy did not predict individual performance. Item level and global collective efficacy were moderately strong predictors of performance, whereas task level collective efficacy did not predict group functioning.

Australian Journal of Psychology — SUPPLEMENT 2003