Applicant Perceptions of Selection Procedures: The Role of Selection Information,Belief in Tests,and Comparative Anxiety

This study addresses the effects of the provision of information on the reliability and validity of selection procedures and the effects of test–taker attitudes (i.e., belief in tests and comparative anxiety) on fairness perceptions. Prior to an actual selection process, applicants (N= 118) were given either information about the reliability and validity of various selection procedures or no information. Next, they evaluated the fairness of eight selection procedures. No significant effect of selection information was found. Belief in tests had significant effects, with applicants high on test belief giving higher fairness ratings than applicants low on test belief. In addition, an interaction effect between test belief and selection procedure was found. For example, test belief had larger effects on fairness for structured interviews, personality inventories, and cognitive ability tests. No significant effect of comparative anxiety on fairness was found.     

THE EFFECTS OF APPLICANTs' REACTIONS TO COGNITIVE ABILITY TESTS AND AN ASSESSMENT CENTER

Manufacturing applicants' perceptions of two selection devices were examined. In Study 1, applicants ( n = 3,984) completed cognitive ability tests and a survey of reactions. In Study 2, a subset of applicants from Study 1 ( n = 194) participated in an assessment center and completed the survey. Applicants reacted favorably to the procedures but viewed the assessment center as more face valid than the cognitive tests. Applicants who perceived the selection techniques more favorably were also more satisfied with the selection process, the job, and the organization. Although applicants' perceptions of the procedures were related to job acceptance intentions, applicants' liking of the job and organization explained the largest unique variance. In future studies, applicants' job acceptance intentions and attitudes toward the job and organization should be assessed before and after administration of selection devices; not controlling for prior impressions resulted in overestimation of the contribution of applicants' perceptions of selection procedures.     

Applicant Reactions to Selection Procedures: An Updated Model and Meta-Analysis

An updated theoretical model of applicant reactions to selection procedures is proposed and tested using meta-analysis. Results from 86 independent samples  ( N = 48,750)  indicated that applicants who hold positive perceptions about selection are more likely to view the organization favorably and report stronger intentions to accept job offers and recommend the employer to others. Applicant perceptions were positively correlated with actual and perceived performance on selection tools and with self-perceptions. The average correlation between applicant perceptions and gender, age, and ethnic background was near zero. Face validity and perceived predictive validity were strong predictors of many applicant perceptions including procedural justice, distributive justice, attitudes towards tests, and attitudes towards selection. Interviews and work samples were perceived more favorably than cognitive ability tests, which were perceived more favorably than personality inventories, honesty tests, biodata, and graphology. The discussion identifies remaining theoretical and methodological issues as well as directions for future research.     

To Picture or Not to Picture: Levels of Erotophobia and Breast Self-Examination Brochure Techniques1

People's level of erotophobia influences their acceptance of sexually related situations, including the likelihood of engaging in sexually related health care such as breast self-examinations (BSE). Female college students (n= 61) completed a measure of erotophobia and read a BSE brochure that either did or did not contain instructional photographs showing a woman's breasts. As hypothesized when the brochure contained photographs, women high in erotophobia felt less competent in giving themselves BSE and were less likely to claim that they did things to improve their health. When the brochure contained no photographs, women low in erotophobia thought that the information was easier to understand and that BSE was more important.     

The influence of ethnic identity on perceptions of organizational recruitment

This study adapts an information processing perspective and incorporates the construct of ethnic identity (Phinney, 1990) into research on perceptions of one method of organizational recruitment, the use of recruitment brochures. Based on theory in developmental and cross-cultural psychology, we posited ethnic identity moderates the impact of recruitment brochures on recruitment outcomes (i.e., inferences about the organization and job pursuit intentions). Quantitative and qualitative data provided moderate support for this proposition. Regardless of race, individuals with higher levels of ethnic identity made more positive socio-emotional inferences about the nature of work life in an organization (i.e., the organization’s treatment of employees and the relationships among employees) and had greater job pursuit intentions when recruited with a brochure that contained a diversity initiative than when recruited with a brochure without a diversity initiative.     

Increasing attendance at colorectal cancer screening: testing the efficacy of a mailed, psychoeducational intervention in a community sample of older adults.

This article describes a trial of a psychoeducational intervention designed to modify negative attitudes toward flexible sigmoidoscopy screening and thereby increase screening attendance. The intervention materials addressed the multiple barriers shown to be associated with participation in earlier studies. Adults ages 55-64 (N = 2,966), in a "harder-to-reach" group were randomized either to receive an intervention brochure or to a standard invitation group. Attitudes and expectations were assessed by questionnaire, and attendance at the clinic was recorded. Compared with controls, the intervention group had less negative attitudes, anticipated a more positive experience, and had a 3.6% higher level of attendance. These results indicate that psychoeducational interventions can provide an effective means of modifying attitudes and increasing rates of screening attendance.     

Client-Therapist Intimacy: Responses of Psychotherapy Clients to a Consumer-Oriented Brochure

Psychotherapy clients read two consumer-oriented brochures: a general brochure on psychology and a brochure on the topic of client-therapist intimacy. Half of the participants read the general brochure first and the brochure on client-therapist intimacy second, and half the participants did the reverse. Participants reported favorable reactions to the brochures, indicating they thought both should be made available to psychotherapy clients; that neither were too long, too sensitive, or too difficult to read; and that the brochures should be made available early during the therapeutic process. After reading the client-therapist intimacy brochure, participants also showed some changes in Likert-type scores measuring attitudes regarding intimate contact between clients and therapists. Although participants were more negative about issues of sexual misconduct after reading the client-therapist intimacy brochure, they did not indicate a decrease in trust of therapists, nor did they indicate a greater likelihood of filing a false complaint. We concluded that therapists' reservations about presenting clients with factual information regarding therapist sexual exploitation of clients are not empirically founded.     

Client-therapist intimacy: responses of psychotherapy clients to a consumer-oriented brochure

Psychotherapy clients read two consumer-oriented brochures: a general brochure on psychology and a brochure on the topic of client-therapist intimacy. Half of the participants read the general brochure first and the brochure on client-therapist intimacy second, and half the participants did the reverse. Participants reported favorable reactions to the brochures, indicating they thought both should be made available to psychotherapy clients; that neither were too long, too sensitive, or too difficult to read; and that the brochures should be made available early during the therapeutic process. After reading the client-therapist intimacy brochure, participants also showed some changes in Likert-type scores measuring attitudes regarding intimate contact between clients and therapists. Although participants were more negative about issues of sexual misconduct after reading the client-therapist intimacy brochure, they did not indicate a decrease in trust of therapists, nor did they indicate a greater likelihood of filing a false complaint. We concluded that therapists' reservations about presenting clients with factual information regarding therapist sexual exploitation of clients are not empirically founded.     

Organizational Justice,Change Anxiety,and Acceptance of Downsizing: Preliminary Tests of an AET-Based Model

This study tested an AET-based model that integrates cognitions (justice perceptions) and emotions (change anxiety) to explain the effects of change program characteristics on employees' acceptance of downsizing and other work attitudes. Seventy-one employees from an organization that was undergoing downsizing participated in the study. Path analyses and a Q index of .992 offered preliminary support for the proposed model by showing that procedural justice and change anxiety explained the effects of change management procedures on acceptance of downsizing, while interactional justice and change anxiety explained the effects of the quality of change communications on trust in the change managers. Although distributive justice did not have the predicted direct effect on employee morale, it helped explain the effects of procedures on acceptance of change and morale by helping reduce anxiety about the change. Together, these findings support the utility of an AET-based framework in helping understand employee responses to downsizing.     

Compensatory biases after ingroup threat: ‘yeah,but we have a good personality’

It was hypothesized that participants who strongly identify with the ingroup and receive unfavorable feedback about their group in one domain would compensate on alternative dimensions. A group of emergency medical service volunteers received negative, positive or no feedback on their volunteer organization and were asked to rate the ingroup and an outgroup on dimensions alternative to the feedback. As predicted, high identifiers showed an increase in ingroup favoritism after negative feedback (i.e. compensation) and a decrease after positive feedback (i.e. modesty effect). In contrast, low identifiers distanced themselves from the ingroup after negative feedback and accentuated self‐ingroup similarity after positive feedback. Results are discussed in relation to a schema‐maintenance model through compensation (Seta & Seta, 1993 ) and social identity theory. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting contraceptive behavior from attitudes: a comparison of within- versus across-subjects procedures

Within- versus across-subjects procedures for predicting behavior from attitudes were contrasted. Each procedure requires a comparison among attitudes in order to generate a prediction; the comparison is either among the same attitudes held by different people (across subjects) or among different attitudes held by the same person (within subject). It was hypothesized that the within-subject model provides a more adequate explanation of behavior from attitudinal constructs and, hence, more accurate prediction of behavior from attitudes than does the across-subjects model. To test this view, a sample of 349 married couples was administered a questionnaire containing measures of three attitudinal components--affect, cognition, and conation--toward each of four contraceptive methods--oral contraceptives, IUD, diaphragm, and condoms. Contraceptive behavior was assessed 1 year later. In support of the hypothesis, the within-subject predictions bore a significantly stronger relation to the behavioral criteria than did the across-subjects predictions. This effect was consistent for each of the three components of attitude, for the prediction of behavior and behavioral intention, for male and female respondents, and for a variety of contraceptive behaviors. In addition, both the within- and the across-subjects analyses demonstrated a clear rank ordering in the predictive validity of the three attitudinal components: Conation was a better predictor of behavior than was affect, which, in turn, was better than cognition.     

Attributional Ambiguity of Affirmative Action

We propose that affirmative action policies that are perceived to give preference to individuals solely or primarily on the basis of their group membership create attributional ambiguity about the personal deserving of individuals affected by these procedures. This ambiguity about the extent to which outcomes are deserved is hypothesized to be self-protective for people who are denied a position, but to have detrimental consequences among beneficiaries, especially if they are members of groups whose competence is doubted (either by themselves or others). Selection procedures that are perceived to be based both on individual merit and group membership, in contrast, are hypothesized to reduce attributional ambiguity about deserving and thus attenuate the effects of group-based preferential selection procedures on those who are benefited and bypassed by these procedures. An experiment was conducted to test these hypotheses. Men and women were randomly selected or rejected for a leadership role under one of three procedures: outcomes based (a) solely on sex, (b) solely on merit, or (c) on both sex and merit. Results provided partial support for our hypotheses.     

Taking a sickie: Job satisfaction and job involvement as interactive predictors of absenteeism in a public organization

Correlations between absenteeism and work attitudes such as job satisfaction have often been found to be disappointingly weak. As prior work reveals, this might be due to ignoring interactive effects of attitudes with different attitude targets (e.g. job involvement and organizational commitment). Drawing on basic principles in personality research and insights about the situational variability of job satisfaction judgments, we proposed that similar interactions should be present also for attitudes with the same target. More specifically, it was predicted that job involvement affects absenteeism more if job satisfaction is low as this indicates a situation with weak constraints. Both attitudes were assessed in a sample of 436 employees working in a large civil service organization, and two indexes of absence data (frequency and time lost) were drawn from personnel records covering a 12‐month period following the survey. Whereas simple correlations were not significant, a moderated regression documented that the hypothesized interaction was significant for both indicators of absence behaviour. As a range of controls (e.g. age, gender, job level) were accounted for, these findings lend strong support to the importance of this new, specific form of attitude interaction. Thus, we encourage researchers not only to consider interactions of attitudes with a different focus (e.g. job vs. organization) but also interactions between job involvement and job satisfaction as this will yield new insights into the complex function of attitudes in influencing absenteeism.     

Attitudes toward immigrants: The interactive role of the authoritarian predisposition,social norms,and humanitarian values

This investigation tested whether social norms and endorsement of humanitarian values interact to influence authoritarians' attitudes toward immigrants. Oyamot, Borgida, and Fisher (2006) found correlational evidence for a model in which: (1) clear social norms for attitudes toward an outgroup (favorable or unfavorable) influence the authoritarianism–attitude relationship in the direction of the norm, and (2) in the absence of clear social norms, endorsement of humanitarian–egalitarian values attenuate the intolerant tendencies of authoritarians. The current investigation tested the model in a survey experiment conducted in a diverse adult sample (N = 388). We measured participants' levels of authoritarian predisposition and endorsement of humanitarian values. Participants were then randomly told that Americans in general had either negative, positive, or mixed opinions about immigrants and immigration (social norm condition), and then asked about their attitude toward immigrants. Consistent with the model, authoritarianism was negatively related to attitudes toward immigrants in the negative norm condition. However, authoritarians' tendency toward intolerance was attenuated when they thought that Americans in general had positive opinions about immigrants. Also as predicted, when societal norms were depicted as mixed, authoritarians' attitudes depended upon endorsement of humanitarian values: humanitarian authoritarians held positive attitudes and non-humanitarian authoritarians held the most negative attitudes toward immigrants. Implications for understanding the effects of authoritarian predispositions in varying social contexts are discussed.     

Design and Evaluation of a Decision Aid for Inviting Parents to Participate in a Fragile X Newborn Screening Pilot Study

The major objectives of this project were to develop and evaluate a brochure to help parents make an informed decision about participation in a fragile X newborn screening study. We used an iterative development process that drew on principles of Informed Decision Making (IDM), stakeholder input, design expertise, and expert evaluation. A simulation study with 118 women examined response to the brochure. An independent review rated the brochure high on informational content, guidance, and values. Mothers took an average of 6.5 min to read it and scored an average of 91.1 % correct on a knowledge test. Most women rated the brochure as high quality and trustworthy. When asked to make a hypothetical decision about study participation, 61.9 % would agree to screening. Structural equation modeling showed that agreement to screening and decisional confidence were associated with perceived quality and trust in the brochure. Minority and white mothers did not differ in perceptions of quality or trust. We demonstrate the application of IDM in developing a study brochure. The brochure was highly rated by experts and consumers, met high standards for IDM, and achieved stated goals in a simulation study. The IDM provides a model for consent in research disclosing complicated genetic information of uncertain value.     

Effects of Participation in a First Women's Studies Course on Collective Self‐Esteem,Gender‐Related Attitudes,and Emotional Well‐Being1

We studied the psychological sequelae of participation in a first women's studies course. It was hypothesized that this course would impact women's social identities (collective self‐esteem, CSE) and attitudes about gender (sexist and feminist beliefs). Further, we hypothesized that more liberal attitudes about gender would enhance mood, whereas awareness of devaluation (public CSE) would reduce mood. Female students enrolled in Psychology of Women (n= 55) and Introductory Psychology (n= 41) provided data at the beginning and end of an academic semester. As predicted, Psychology of Women students endorsed significantly more liberal attitudes about gender and awareness of devaluation over the course of the semester. Further, acceptance of feminist attitudes buffered against anxiety, whereas awareness of devaluation increased anxiety. The net effect was a nonsignificant change in anxiety for Psychology of Women students over time.     

Persuasive Impact of Organizational Value Statements in a Recruitment Context1

Two experiments were conducted to examine the persuasive impact of different types of evidence supporting an organizational recruitment message. In the first experiment, information on organizational values, presented in a recruitment brochure, was supported using statistical, anecdotal, or no evidence. Graduating university students who were attending a job fair (N = 69) were most attracted to the company as an employer when statistical evidence was presented. In the second study, an employed sample (N= 172) received organizational value evidence in the context of either a recruitment brochure or a community newspaper article. Whereas we replicated the findings of the first study in the brochure condition, we found that anecdotal information was most persuasive in the newspaper condition. We conclude that predicting the persuasive impact of evidence for organizational values requires knowledge of both the type of evidence to be employed and the medium in which that evidence is conveyed.     

Values,expectations, and the prediction of social action: An expectancy-valence analysis

Two studies were conducted to test hypotheses about the relationship of values to action within the context of expectancy-valence theory. In these studies, university students who had previously completed the Rokeach Value Survey answered questionnaires that related to social movement organizations and that contained attitude items, expectancy items, and measures of willingness to assist these organizations. It was predicted that (1) value rankings from the Rokeach Value Survey will be systematically related to attitudes toward social movement organizations; (2) both attitudes and outcome expectancies (subjects' estimates of how helpful their action will be) will be correlated with measures of willingness to act on behalf of an organization; and (3) attitudes and expectancies will jointly account for more of the variance in action measures than either attitudes or expectancies can account for independently. Results showed that hypotheses were consistently supported across two measures of action, two contrasting organizations, hypothetical and actual commitments to act, and two subject samples. These results extend the scope of the expectancy-valence approach by incorporating general values (conceived as motives) into the analysis, and they have practical implications for social movement strategies.The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of John Mann and John Crosbie in compiling and analyzing the data reported here.     

Sexual misconduct in psychotherapy: reactions to a consumer-oriented brochure

Reactions of subjects to a brochure addressing the topic of sexual intimacy in psychotherapy was assessed. Fifty-four psychotherapy clients and 52 licensed psychologists responded favorably to the brochure, with the majority indicating that the brochure should be made available before therapy begins or during the first session. Potential clients (120 college students) read either the brochure on sexual misconduct or a control brochure containing general information about psychology. Subjects who read the sexual misconduct brochure showed increased ability to understand what is appropriate and inappropriate therapist behavior, see unwanted touch as nontherapeutic, regard a therapist talking a lot about his or her own sex life as inappropriate, view sex in the therapeutic relationship as inappropriate, and intend to behave assertively within the session if their therapist's behavior should make them feel uncomfortable. Subjects who read the control brochure showed no such changes.     

The Moderating Effects of Dispositional Affectivity on Performance and Task Attitudes in a Goal‐Setting Context1

This study examined the effects of goal difficulty, negative affectivity (NA), and positive affectivity (PA) on performance and task attitudes on a complex task. Research participants played an air traffic controller (ATC) simulation and were assigned either an easy or difficult goal at 2 different points in time: early during skill acquisition, and after several experimental trials. We hypothesized that the effect of difficult goals would vary depending on whether they were administered early and late during skill acquisition. We also hypothesized that NA and PA would moderate the effect of goal difficulty. Neither the early nor late goal assignments related to performance or task attitudes as hypothesized. Instead, PA and NA both moderated goal‐outcome relationships.