People with low job levels included terms related to being personable and considerate significantly more than those in high levels of the organization. That is, they often described their co-workers as being more personable and considerate. 

Personable and Considerate as They Relate to Job Level

Employees that were more cognitively differentiated, more mobile, and in higher levels  used significantly more terms related to their ability to be influenced in their descriptions of liked co-workers. There was no meaningful difference found among the descriptions of disliked co-workers.  

Differences in the Influence Construct

People that were more highly mobile in their jobs included more negative traits in their descriptions of liked co-workers than less-mobile people did (Chi squared = 5.014, p < .05). 

Number of Negative Traits in Descriptions of Liked Co-workers

Role Category Questionnaire (RCQ) indicates score on a cognitive differentiation; thus, a higher score indicates it being used in more people's descriptions. Mobility refers to job mobility and level refers to being high or low profession in the overall organization.

Alma College

The construct systems of liked individuals were found to be more tightly organized than those of disliked others; that is, more of the terms used to describe liked co-workers were in the same three categories (considerate, personable, and integrity). That is, there was less variety in describing co-workers that were liked. 

Liked and Disliked Constructs

Sypher, B. D., & Zorn, T. E. (1988). Individual differences and construct system content in descriptions of liked and disliked co-workers. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 1(1), 37-51.

Individual Differences and Construct System Content in Descriptions of Liked and Disliked Co-Workers

There were considerable differences in the frequency in which terms were used to liked and disliked co-workers. For one, the terms used for liked co-workers were more positive than those for disliked people. Secondly, the top three words for the liked individuals were used more frequently than the most used word for disliked individuals. In other words, there was a greater variety of terms used to describe each disliked person.

Table 1: Rank Order of Terms Used

Differences According to Mobility and Level

There was a wider distribution for the descriptions for disliked co-workers; that is the correlations ranged from .46-.74 for the disliked people whereas it was .74-.95 for liked individuals. However, these results failed to reach statistical significance.

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