The impact of pre-employment integrity testing on employee turnover and inventory shrinkage losses

A major home improvement chain located primarily in the western United States initiated the use of thePersonnel Selection Inventory, a written integrity test, as part of its pre-employment hiring process. For two years only, those job applicants who passed this test and other pre-employment criteria were hired by the chain. Following the introduction of the inventory, there was: (1) a 50% reduction in the number of employee terminations for theft, illegal drug use, and violence over a five year period and (2) a savings in shrinkage losses that amounted to over two million dollars over a two year period.     

Reducing Affective Polarization: Warm Group Relations or Policy Compromise?

Hostility between rival political partisans, referred to as affective polarization, has increased in the United States over the last several decades generating considerable interest in its reduction. The current study examines two distinct sets of factors that potentially reduce affective polarization, drawn respectively from a group-based and a policy-based model of its origins. Specifically, we contrast the degree to which warm social relations and policy compromise reduce affective polarization. In two experimental studies (N = 937), respondents read a mock news story about an observed interaction between Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, and Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader. The leaders either interact in a warm or hostile manner and independently compromise, or fail to compromise, on immigration matters. In both studies, warm leader relations reduced affective polarization whereas policy compromise did not. We consider the implications of these findings for the study of affective polarization and its reduction.     

Unpacking grit: Motivational correlates of perseverance and passion for long-term goals

In two cross-sectional studies, we explored the motivational orientations correlates of the character strength of grit and its two component facets: perseverance of effort and consistency of interests over time. Specifically, we examined how individual differences in grit are explained by distinct approaches to pursuing happiness in life: pleasure in immediately hedonically positive activities, meaning in activities that serve a higher, altruistic purpose, and engagement in attention-absorbing activities. In both samples, grit demonstrated medium-sized associations with an orientation toward engagement, small-to-medium associations with an orientation toward meaning, and small-to-medium (inverse) associations with an orientation toward pleasure. These motivational orientations differentially related to the two facets of grit: pursuing engagement was more strongly associated with perseverance of effort, whereas pursuing pleasure was more strongly (inversely) associated with consistency of interests over time. Collectively, findings suggest that individual differences in grit may derive in part from differences in what makes people happy.     

Edited correspondence on the status of homosexuality in DSM-III

In 1973, after a prolonged period of social agitation and professional conflict, the American Psychiatric Association deleted homosexuality from its official listing of psychiatric disorders (DSM-II). In its place a new classification for homosexuals distressed over their orientation was to be included in DSM-II. Four years later an acrimonious dispute surfaced over the status of homosexuality in the revised APA nomenclature of disorders (DSM-III). The edited correspondence of the participants in this dispute is presented here as a way of revealing the lingering conflict over homosexuality within American psychiatry.     

Recognition of iconicity doesn't come for free

Iconicity – resemblance between a symbol and its referent – has long been presumed to facilitate symbolic insight and symbol use in infancy. These two experiments test children's ability to recognize iconic gestures at ages 14 through 26 months. The results indicate a clear ability to recognize how a gesture resembles its referent by 26 months, but little evidence of recognition of iconicity at the onset of symbolic development. These findings imply that iconicity is not available as an aid at the onset of symbolic development but rather that the ability to apprehend the relation between a symbol and its referent develops over the course of the second year.     

Mental representation and two kinds of eliminativism

The battle over the proper place of mental representation in cognitive science is often portrayed as a clash between realism and eliminativism. But this simple dichotomy belies the variety of different ontological positions available. This article investigates the various stances that one can adopt toward the ontology of mental representation, and in so doing, shows that eliminativism is in fact best understood as two distinct positions: a posteriori eliminativism and a priori eliminativism. Furthermore, I show that a priori eliminativism faces two crippling challenges. I argue that once we put a priori eliminativism aside, determining the ultimate ontological status of representation can be postponed while we assess its utility across different domains of cognitive science—something all remaining positions can agree on.     

VARIETIES OF VIRTUE ETHICS

The revival of virtue ethics over the last thirty-five years has produced a bewildering diversity of theories, which on the face of it seem united only by their opposition to various features of more familiar Kantian and Utilitarian ethical theories. In this paper I present a systematic account of the main positive features of virtue ethics, by articulating the common ground shared by its different varieties. I do so not to offer a fresh defence of virtue ethics, but rather to provide a conceptual map that locates its main claims and arguments in relation to those of rival theories, and identifies its distinctive contribution to contemporary ethics. I set out six specific claims which are made by all forms of virtue ethics, and I explain how these claims distinguish the theory from recent character-based forms of Kantian ethics and Utilitarianism. I then use this framework to briefly survey two main strands of virtue ethics which have been developed in the literature.¹     

Special Relativity,Coexistence And Temporal Parts: A Reply To Gilmore

In two earlier works (Balashov, 2000a: Philosophical Studies 99, 129–166; 2000b: Philosophy of Science 67 (Suppl), S549–S562), I have argued that considerations based on special relativity and the notion of coexistence favor the perdurance view of persistence over its endurance rival. Cody Gilmore (2002: Philosophical Studies 109, 241–263) has subjected my argument to an insightful three fold critique. In the first part of this paper I respond briefly to Gilmore’s first two objections. I then grant his observation that anyone who can resist the first objection is liable to succumb to the third one. This, however, opens a way to other closely related relativistic arguments against endurantism that are immune to all three objections and, in addition, throw new light on a number of important issues in the ontology of persistence. I develop two such novel arguments in the second half of the paper.     

Distinctiveness Benefits Novelty (and Not Familiarity), but Only Up to a Limit: The Prior Knowledge Perspective

Novelty is a pivotal player in cognition, and its contribution to superior memory performance is a widely accepted convention. On the other hand, mnemonic advantages for familiar information are also well documented. Here, we examine the role of experimental distinctiveness as a potential explanation for these apparently conflicting findings. Across two experiments, we demonstrate that conceptual novelty, an unfamiliar combination of familiar constituents, is sensitive to its experimental proportions: Improved memory for novelty was observed when novel stimuli were relatively rare. Memory levels for familiar items, in contrast, were completely unaffected by experimental proportions, highlighting their insensitivity to list‐based distinctiveness. Finally, no mnemonic advantage for conceptual novelty over familiarity was observed even when novel stimuli were extremely rare at study. Together, these results imply that novel and familiar items are processed via partially distinct mechanisms, with (at least some facets of) novelty not providing a mnemonic advantage over familiarity.     

Verificationism, Realism And Scepticism

Verificationism has often seemed attractive to philosophers because of its apparent abilityto deliver us from scepticism. However, I argue that purely epistemological considerationsprovide insufficient reason for embracing verificationism over realism. I distinguish twotypes of sceptical problem: those that stem from underdetermination by the actual data,and those that stem from underdetermination by all possible data. Verificationismevades problems of the second sort, but is powerless in the face of problems of the firstsort. But problems of the first sort are equally pressing. Furthermore, there is some reasonto think that the two types of problem have a common origin. Thus the desire to avoidscepticism provides insufficient reason for adopting verificationism.     

Prioritization by transients in visual search

There is an ongoing debate as to whether prioritizing new objects over old objects (the so-calledpreview benefit) is the result of top-down inhibition of old objects (i.e., visual marking; Watson & Humphreys, 1997) or attentional allocation to new objects, presented with a luminance transient (Donk & Theeuwes, 2001). In the two experiments reported here, we tested whether prioritization by luminance transients alone can produce a subset-selective search similar to the preview effect. Subjects viewed multiobject displays while a subset of objects was briefly flashed. The subjects prioritized up to 14 flashed objects over at least 14 nonflashed objects. Since prioritization by luminance transients can produce a subsetselective search on its own, it may well play an important role in the preview benefit.     

Examining the long-term stability of overgeneral autobiographical memory

Overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) is a proposed trait-marker for vulnerability to depression, but relatively little work has examined its long-term stability. This study investigated the stability of OGM over several years in 271 late adolescents and young adults participating in a larger longitudinal study of risk for emotional disorders. The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) was administered twice, with test–retest intervals ranging from approximately 3 to 6 years. There was evidence of significant but modest stability in OGM over several years. Specifically, Spearman rank correlations (ρs) between the proportions of specific and categoric memories generated on the two AMTs were .31 and .32, respectively. We did not find evidence that the stability of OGM was moderated by the length of the test–retest interval. Furthermore, the stability coefficients for OGM for individuals with and without a lifetime history of major depressive disorder (MDD) were relatively similar in magnitude and not significantly different from one another (ρs=.34 and .42 for the proportions of specific and categoric memories for those with a history of MDD; ρs=.31 for both the proportions of specific and categoric memories for those without a history of MDD). Implications for the conceptualisation of OGM are discussed.     

Writing about Islam for Youth: A Study of Two Authors and Two World Views

This is a study of two authors who wrote about Islam for youth: Florence Mary Fitch and Reza Aslan. Fitch's book, Allah, the God of Islam: Moslem Life and Worship (1950), and Aslan's No God but God: The Origins, Evolution of Islam (2011b) offer both historical and current views of Islam and the Prophet Mohammad. Although they wrote some 61 years apart, a review of their works reveals similar views, especially concerning the need for reform in Islam. This study reveals two different worldviews about the development of Islam. Fitch's views, although generally supportive of Islam, reflect Western society's view of Islam and Mohammad over half a century ago, while Aslan, a Muslim-reformist, emphasizes current democratic and humanitarian aspects of Islam that are well-suited for the modern world. Subjects discussed include Mohammad's revelations from Allah, the conquering of Mecca by Mohammad and the ending of idolatry, the beginning of Islam as a dominant religion, the role of women in Islam, the hijab and its origins and use, the jihad and its various meanings and applications, the Quran and its conflicting interpretations, the development and decline of the Caliphate, and the decentralization of Islam. The discussion ends with this quote from Aslan: “The Islamic Reformation is already here.”     

Peter Martyr Vermigli on grace and free choice

Abstract

Within contemporary scholarship there has been considerable debate over the character and scope of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s scholasticism, which has sought to locate his thought between the two poles of the ‘via Thomae’ and the ‘via Gregorii.’ This paper traces the Augustinian-Thomist polarity throughout Vermigli’s doctrine of grace and free choice. In particular it seeks to discover Gregorian distinctives in his thought, namely, doctrinal points shared by Vermigli and Rimini, representing a development of Augustine and a departure from Aquinas. Without denying the important Thomist and Aristotelian elements of his thought, this paper concludes that renewed attention now needs to be paid to his profound debt to late-medieval Augustinian scholasticism and its global impact on his theology.     

RELIGION AND FRANCIS BACON'S SCIENTIFIC UTOPIANISM

Francis Bacon often is depicted as a patriarch of modernity who promotes human rational action over faith in divine Providence and as a secular humanitarian who realized that improvement of the human condition depended on human action and not on God's saving acts in history. Bacon's New Atlantis is usually described as a “scientific utopia” because its ideal order, harmony, and prosperity are the result of the investigations of nature conducted by the members of Solomon's House. I challenge these characterizations by showing that Bacon's so‐called scientific utopianism is grounded in his religious convictions that his age was one of Providential intervention and that he was God's agent for an apocalyptic transformation of the human condition. I examine the centrality of these religious themes in two of his philosophical works, The Advancement of Learning and The Great Instauration, which are well known for setting out Bacon's critique of the state of learning and for presenting the principles of his epistemology. Analysis of The Advancement of Learning demonstrates Bacon's conviction that his reform of natural philosophy was part of a Providentially guided, twofold restoration of the knowledge of nature and the knowledge of God. Examination of The Great Instauration reveals that Bacon sees his age as one of apocalyptic transformation of the human condition that restores humanity to a prelapsarian state. Analysis of the New Atlantis shows that utopian perfection can be achieved only through a combination of right religion and the proper study of nature. Moreover, when the “scientific” work of Solomon's House is recontextualized within the religious themes of salvation and deliverance that permeate the New Atlantis, the full scope of Bacon's “scientific utopianism” can be seen, and this project is not the one usually portrayed in scholarly treatments. Bacon's program for rehabilitating humanity and its relation to nature is not a secular, scientific advance through which humanity gains dominion over nature and mastery of its own destiny but rather one guided by divine Providence and achieved through pious human effort.     

Projectible predicates in analogue and simulated systems

We investigate the relationship between two approaches to modeling physical systems. On the first approach, simplifying assumptions are made about the level of detail we choose to represent in a computational simulation with an eye toward tractability. On the second approach simpler, analogue physical systems are considered that have more or less well-defined connections to systems of interest that are themselves too difficult to probe experimentally. Our interest here is in the connections between the artifacts of modeling that appear in these two approaches. We begin by outlining an important respect in which the two are essentially dissimilar and then propose a method whereby overcoming that dissimilarity by hand results in usefully analogous behavior. We claim that progress can be made if we think of artifacts as clues to the projectible predicates proper to the models themselves. Our degree of control over the connection between interesting analogue physical systems and their targets arises from determining the projectible predicates in the analogue system through a combination of theory and experiment. To obtain a similar degree of control over the connection between large-scale, distributed simulations of complex systems and their targets we must similarly determine the projectible predicates of the simulations themselves. In general theory will be too intractable to be of use, and so we advocate an experimental program for determining these predicates.

the object of the natural history which I propose is...to give light to the discovery of causes and supply a suckling philosophy with its first food. Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration

     

“Out of the Broom Closet”: The Social Ecology of American Wicca

The fastest growing form of religious identification, spirituality, or “new” religious movement in American society over the last decade is Wicca and related forms of “Neo-Paganism.” However, with no national organization and minimal local organization, little is known about its distribution across a privatized religious landscape nor about the features of state social and cultural environments that are receptive or contrary to its spread. This study uses Internet data to create estimates of the comparative strength of Wiccan-Pagan identification across the 50 states and conducts multivariate analyses of the ability of variables suggested in prior research to explain its distribution. Not only are the findings consistent with expectations, but differences in correlates of Wicca using the Internet data in contrast to existing measures of “New Age” spirituality highlight the empirical importance of maintaining distinctions between the two.     

Children’s Knowledge of the Quantifier <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dou</Emphasis> in Mandarin Chinese

The quantifier dou (roughly corresponding to English ‘all’) in Mandarin Chinese has been the topic of much discussion in the theoretical literature. This study investigated children’s knowledge of this quantifier using a new methodological technique, which we dubbed the Question-Statement Task. Three questions were addressed: (i) whether young Mandarin-speaking children know that dou is a universal quantifier that quantifies over the elements to its left, (ii) whether they know that dou is an adverb of quantification (Q-adverb) which can (unselectively) bind any variable in its domain, and (iii) whether they know that dou can quantify over wh-words. The main finding was that, by age four, Mandarin-speaking children have the relevant knowledge. The results reflect the early availability of adult-like linguistic knowledge of dou-quantification.