Human values in the team leader selection process

The selection process of team leaders is fundamental if the effectiveness of teams is to be guaranteed. Human values have proven to be an important factor in the behaviour of individuals and leaders. The aim of this study is twofold. The first is to validate Schwartz's survey of human values. The second is to determine whether there are any relationships between the values held by individuals and their preferred roles in a team. Human values were measured by the items of the Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) and the preferred roles in a team were identified by the Belbin Self Perception Inventory (BSPI). The two questionnaires were answered by two samples of undergraduate students (183 and 177 students, respectively). As far as the first objective is concerned, Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) was performed at the outset to examine how well the two-dimensional circular structure, as postulated by Schwartz, was represented in the study population. Then, the results of this analysis were compared and contrasted with those of two other published studies; one by Schwartz (2006) and one by Ros and Grad (1991). As for the second objective, Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to assess the associations between the ratings on the SVS survey items and the ratings on the eight team roles as measured by the BSPI.     

Belief-desire reasoning as a process of selection

Human learning may depend upon domain specialized mechanisms. A plausible example is rapid, early learning about the thoughts and feelings of other people. A major achievement in this domain, at about age four in the typically developing child, is the ability to solve problems in which the child attributes false beliefs to other people and predicts their actions. The main focus of theorizing has been why 3-year-olds fail, and only recently have there been any models of how success is achieved in false-belief tasks. Leslie and Polizzi (Inhibitory processing in the false-belief task: Two conjectures. Developmental Science, 1, 247-254, 1998) proposed two competing models of success, which are the focus of the current paper. The models assume that belief-desire reasoning is a process which selects a content for an agent's belief and an action for the agent's desire. In false belief tasks, the theory of mind mechanism (ToMM) provides plausible candidate belief contents, among which will be a 'true-belief.' A second process reviews these candidates and by default will select the true-belief content for attribution. To succeed in a false-belief task, the default content must be inhibited so that attention shifts to another candidate belief. In traditional false-belief tasks, the protagonist's desire is to approach an object. Here we make use of tasks in which the protagonist has a desire to avoid an object, about which she has a false-belief. Children find such tasks much more difficult than traditional tasks. Our models explain the additional difficulty by assuming that predicting action from an avoidance desire also requires an inhibition. The two processing models differ in the way that belief and desire inhibitory processes combine to achieve successful action prediction. In six experiments we obtain evidence favoring one model, in which parallel inhibitory processes cancel out, over the other model, in which serial inhibitions force attention to a previously inhibited location. These results are discussed in terms of a set of simple proposals for the modus operandi of a domain specific learning mechanism. The learning mechanism is in part modular--the ToMM--and in part penetrable--the Selection Processor (SP). We show how ToMM-SP can account both for competence and for successful and unsuccessful performance on a wide range of belief-desire tasks across the preschool period. Together, ToMM and SP attend to and learn about mental states.     

Looking at selection from a social process perspective: Towards a social process model on personnel selection

Traditional selection practice and research has exclusively focused on ''product'' and ''procedural'' characteristics of selection (e.g., reliability, validity of selection tools). This perspective is characterized by assumptions underlying the ''psychometric'' model on selection. Mainly triggered by environmental changes and present-day assessment practices, a new perspective on selection has emerged since the beginning of the 1990s, namely the negotiation perspective. The negotiation perspective pays attention to the social-emotional processes during selection. In this article, we explore the process side of personnel selection to a further extent. Based on relevant literature and research findings, we present a conceptual model of job applicants' expectations and appreciation of the selection encounter. The Social Process model on Selection (SPS model) contains eight process characteristics. We assume job applicants to value/have expectations of: (1) provision of general information on the job opening, (2) participation and control, (3) openness to assertiveness, (4) creation of transparency of testing, (5) provision of feedback, (6) guarantee of objectivity and standardization, (7) assurance of human treatment, and (8) respect for privacy and job relevance of information gathering. Directions for further research are discussed.     

Visual attention as a multilevel selection process

Natural visual scenes are cluttered and contain many different objects that cannot all be processed simultaneously. Therefore, attentional mechanisms are needed to select relevant and to filter out irrelevant information. Evidence from functional brain imaging reveals that attention operates at various processing levels within the visual system and beyond. First, the lateral geniculate nucleus appears to be the first stage in the processing of visual information that is modulated by attention, consistent with the idea that it may play an important role as an early gatekeeper in controlling neural gain. Second, areas at intermediate cortical-processing levels, such as V4 and TEO, appear to be important sites at which attention filters out unwanted information by means of receptive field mechanisms. Third, the attention mechanisms that operate in the visual system appear to be controlled by a distributed network of higher order areas in the frontal and parietal cortex, which generate top-down signals that are transmitted via feedback connections to the visual system. And fourth, the pulvinar of the thalamus may operate by integrating and coordinating attentional functions in concert with the fronto-parietal network, although much needs to be learned about its functional properties. The overall view that emerges from the studies reviewed in this article is that neural mechanisms of selective attention operate at multiple stages in the visual system and beyond and are determined by the visual processing capabilities of each stage. In this respect, attention can be considered in terms of a multilevel selection process.     

There are Kinds and Kinds of Kinds: Ben-Yami on the Semantics of Kind Terms

Hanoch Ben-Yami has argued that the theory of the semantics of natural kind terms proposed by Kripke and Putnam is false and has proposed an allegedly novel account of the semantics of kind terms. In this article, I critically examine Ben-Yami’s arguments. I will argue that Ben-Yami’s objections do not show that Kripke and Putnam’s theory is false, but at most that the specific versions of it held by Kripke and Putnam have some weaknesses. Moreover, I will argue that Ben-Yami’s account is not a novel account but it is only an unsatisfactory version of Kripke and Putnam’s theory.     

The effects of levels of information conflict on visual selection

Previous studies have reported an increasing monotonic relationship between stimulus incongruity and visual selection. The present investigation extended the former research to show the generality of this relationship by (1) using sets of stimuli with five increasing levels of novelty, (2) generating stimuli which have decreasing probabilities of occurring in the real world, and (3) extending the types of stimuli to include two new types of novelty-functional and role. The results support a theory of visual selection concerning the resolution of informational conflicts rather than a theory concerning optimal levels of arousal.     

Three Kinds of Social Kinds

Could some social kinds be natural kinds? In this paper, I argue that there are three kinds of social kinds: 1) social kinds whose existence does not depend on human beings having any beliefs or other propositional attitudes towards them (e.g. recession, racism); 2) social kinds whose existence depends in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them, though attitudes need not be manifested towards their particular instances (e.g. money, war); 3) social kinds whose existence and that of their instances depend in part on specific attitudes that human beings have towards them (e.g. permanent resident, prime minister). Although all three kinds of social kinds are mind‐dependent, this does not make them ontologically subjective or preclude them from being natural kinds. Rather, what prevents the third kind of social kinds from being natural kinds is that their properties are conventionally rather than causally linked.     

Two Kinds of Time-Consciousness and Three Kinds of Content

This paper explores the distinction between perceiving an object as extended in time, and experiencing a sequence of perceptions. I argue that this distinction cannot be adequately described by any present theory of time-consciousness and that in order to solve the puzzle, we need to consider perceptual content as having three distinct constituents: Explicit content, which has a particular phenomenal character, modal content, or the kind of content that is contributed by the psychological mode, and implicit content, which lacks phenomenal character. These notions are then further clarified and related to each other.     

Responsibility and the Kinds of Freedom

In this paper I seek to identify different sorts of freedom putatively linked to moral responsibility; I then explore the relationship between such notions of freedom and the Consequence Argument, on the one hand, and the Frankfurt-examples, on the other. I focus (in part) on a dilemma: if a compatibilist adopts a broadly speaking “conditional” understanding of freedom in reply to the Consequence Argument, such a theorist becomes vulnerable in a salient way to the Frankfurt-examples.     

Primary process thinking in the same children at two developmental levels

Analysis of primary process thinking of the same children at kindergarten level and at grade four revealed that amount of primary process thinking was relatively constant with development, contrary to predictions based on psychoanalytic theory. However, the two facets of primary process thinking, i.e., drive related ideation and formal deviations of thought follow different lines of development with the former increasing and the latter decreasing in quality and type with age.     

论责任心的类型与层级

责任心的类型多种多样,并且,自个体步入前习俗水千开始,其责任心就既不再是有与无的关系,也不是一个平面关系,而是一个呈金字塔形的层级关系。就正确责任心而言,将“他律型责任心”与“自律型责任心”、“硬角色责任心”与“软角色责任心”进行排列组合,并考虑到量的差异,就生出了发展水平高低不同的多层次责任心：其中,拥有他律型硬角色责任心,是做个有责任心之人的底线。拥有第二层次的责任心有两种典型做法：一是拥有一般水平的自律型硬角色责任心;二是拥有他律型软角色责任心。个体二旦拥有一般水平的自律型软角色责任心,其责任心就达到了第三层次。拥有第四层次的责任心有两种典型做法：拥有高水平的自律型硬角色责任心,或拥有舍小我成大我且自律型软角色责任心。拥有高水平自律型软角色责任心,是做一个有责任心之人的最高境界。     

Spurious Causal Kinds: A Problem for the Causal-Power Conception of Kinds

There is an assumption common in the philosophy of mind literature that kinds in our sciences—or causal kinds, at least—are individuated by the causal powers that objects have in virtue of the properties they instantiate. While this assumption might not be problematic by itself, some authors take the assumption to mean that falling under a kind and instantiating a property amount to the same thing. I call this assumption the “Property-Kind Individuation Principle”. A problem with this principle arises because there are cases where we can sort objects by their possession of common causal powers, and yet those objects do not intuitively form a causal kind. In this short note, I discuss why the Property-Kind Individuation Principle is thus not a warranted metaphysical assumption.     

An analysis of an optimal selection process for characteristics and technical performance of baseball pitchers

Selection of a qualified pitcher has relied previously on qualitative indices; here, both quantitative and qualitative indices including pitching statistics, defense, mental skills, experience, and managers' recognition were collected, and an analytic hierarchy process was used to rank baseball pitchers. The participants were 8 experts who ranked characteristics and statistics of 15 baseball pitchers who comprised the first round of potential representatives for the Chinese Taipei National Baseball team. The results indicated a selection rate that was 91% consistent with the official national team roster, as 11 pitchers with the highest scores who were recommended as optimal choices to be official members of the Chinese Tai-pei National Baseball team actually participated in the 2009 Baseball World Cup. An analytic hierarchy can aid in selection of qualified pitchers, depending on situational and practical needs; the method could be extended to other sports and team-selection situations.     

The development of the ego: biological and environmental specificity in the psychopathological developmental process and the selection and construction of ego defenses

This paper suggests that differences in early sensory processing, integration, and differentiation, contribute, in highly specific ways, to characteristics of the ego, deficits in ego functions, and the ego's tendency to employ certain defenses (when certain pathogenic environmental experiences are present). Specifically (1) auditory-verbal-affective vulnerabilities may be associated with disorders of thought and obsessive-compulsive patterns, especially when coupled with environments that tend to confuse affective meanings at behavioral-gestural and symbolic levels; (2) visual-spatial-affective vulnerabilities may be associated with disorders of affect regulation and hysterical patterns, especially when coupled with environments that lack empathy and/or limit setting; (3) spatial, motor movement (vestibular) vulnerabilities may be associated with phobic and/or counterphobic tendencies. The author contends that these hypotheses are sufficiently specific and testable to lead to new research opportunities.     

The influence of action on visual search: behavioral response toward stimuli modifies the selection process

In five experiments, we investigated how simple actions (as assessed via a go/no-go task) influence visual search. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants responded (go) when a color name (cue) matched a colored shape (prime), and did not respond (no-go) when they mismatched. Participants then searched a visual array for a tilted line, either embedded within the prime (valid prime) or within a different shape of a different color (invalid prime). For go trials, but not for no-go trials, the validity of the prime influenced search behavior so that faster RTs were observed when the prime was valid as compared with when it was invalid. In Experiment 3, the go/no-go task was based on the shape of the prime. The color of the prime, but not the shape, was re-presented in the search array, and its validity produced a similar pattern as in Experiments 1-2. In Experiment 4, participants responded when the color name and prime mismatched. Reaction times indicated that attentional set had an influence on the validity differences in Experiments 1-3. In Experiment 5, the go/no-go task was based on whether a digit matched a digit appearing within the prime. Go trials produced similar validity effects as observed in Experiments 1-3.     

Realism and Human Kinds

It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind-independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind-independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind-dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain possibilities of ignorance and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can proceed along a purely causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the kinds of the social and human sciences. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy.