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Concepts and methods of psychophysics were adapted to a study of the relationship between the size of a pay increase and the subjective impressions it creates. Management personnel (n = 109) were asked to assign cognitive labels to an ordered series of pay increases, and estimates of just meaningful differences UMD) in pay were made for subjects grouped according to level of current salary. Contrary to predictions derived from Weber's Law, the JMD was a decreasing percentage of current pay. Regression analyses revealed that current salary, perceived equity of current salary and, in one instance, expectations regarding future promotions accounted for a significant portion of the individual differences in the size of the JMD. The use of the JMD as an index reflecting psychological sensitivity to changes in income is discussed.

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The effect of time‐compressed persuasive communications on listener attitudes was investigated. Previous research has indicated that faster speech rates enhance the perception of a message with no loss in comprehension. However, many of these studies suffer from methodological problems that make their conclusions tentative. The present study is an attempt to clarify the effects of time compression on commercial messages. Eighty subjects listened to one of two commercial messages at one of four speeds: 150, 175, 200, or 225 words per minute (WPM). Subjects later rated the message on several dependent measures using nine attitude rating scales and one behavioral intention measure. Results show support for the moderate speeds of 175 and 200 WPM being the preferred rate of speed on most of the dependent measures. The results suggest that many of the beneficial effects of faster speech rates previously shown may be artifacts of methodological controls.

A s public and private sector organizations continue to undergo transformational change, it is important to identify organizational factors that impact employee behaviors and attitudes to change. One such organizational factor is subordinate trust in the direct leader. Trust can be defined as an attitude held by subordinates toward their managers based upon their perceptions, beliefs, and attributions about their managers' benevolence, reliability, openness, and loyalty derived from their observations of their supervisors' behavior (Butler, 1991). Several researchers have made claim to the importance of trust. For instance, Rotter (1967) concluded that the adaptability of all social groups is dependent upon trust because it affects efficiency and adjustment. Additionally, Brockner, Siegel, Daly, Martin, and Tyler (1997) concluded that a manager's effectiveness depends on the ability to gain the trust of subordinates. In fact, the significance of trust in leadership has been recognized by researchers for at least five decades (e.g.