152 part-time graduate students enrolled in an evening Master of Business Administration program in a major Midwestern university participated in an experimental study testing cognitive complexity as an interpretation of Fiedler's Esteem for Least Preferred Co-worker measure. The results contradict that interpretation: low scorers, but not high scorers, cognitively differentiated between the manipulated conditions of task stress, suggesting that cognitive complexity is related to the domain (e.g., task vs relationship) of value. The findings are consistent with the value-attitude interpretation of the least preferred co-worker.
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