Optimizing Prediction of Attrition With the U.S. Army's Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM)

The regression framework is often the method of choice used by psychologists for predicting organizationally relevant outcomes from test scores. However, alternatives to regression exist, and these techniques may provide better prediction of outcomes and a more effective means of classifying examinees for selection and placement. This research describes two of these alternatives—decision tree methodology and optimal appropriateness measurement (OAM)—and how they were used to optimize the prediction of attrition among a sample of first-term enlisted soldiers (N?=?22,537) using a temperament inventory called the Assessment of Individual Motivation (AIM). Results demonstrated that the OAM approach provided better differentiation between “stayers” and “leavers” after 12 months than either the traditional logistic regression or the decision tree methods.     

The Influence of National Culture on the Perceived Fairness of Grading Procedures: A Comparison of the United States and China

Although the desire to be treated fairly is a fundamental human preference, perceptions of fair treatment can be influenced by cultural beliefs and values. For this article, the author used a scenario-based experimental study to examine students' fairness perceptions of grading procedures in 2 countries with distinct national cultures, China and the United States. The results suggest that culture can influence students' perceptions of the fairness of 2 aspects of procedural justice: voice and interpersonal justice. Chinese students were more likely to value interpersonal justice (i.e., being treated with dignity and respect, and being provided with explanations of grading procedures) and perceived the lack of interpersonal justice as less fair than did U.S. participants. In contrast, U.S. students were more likely to perceive voice (i.e., the opportunity to discuss and appeal a grading decision) as fair. These findings are connected to differences in the cultural values of the United States and China.     

Looking Beyond the Church Tax: Families and the Disaffiliation of Austrian Roman Catholics

This study aims to understand the reasons why Roman Catholics leave the church based on the example of Austria, a country with high rates of disaffiliation since the 1980s. Although previous research focused mainly on the church tax, this study provides a more comprehensive analysis based on a mixed‐methods approach that reveals the central relevance of the family in the process. We began by conducting and analyzing 19 qualitative interviews with former Catholics. Next we used the Generations and Gender Survey (two‐wave representative panel data) to study the characteristics of Catholics who disaffiliated in the intersurvey period (2008–2012). Two types could be distinguished in the qualitative and the quantitative sample: attached and distant leavers. Both rarely attended religious services and were critical of the church, but attached leavers held a private form of religiosity and engaged in religious practices whereas distant leavers self‐identified as agnostics or atheists. The church tax was the main reason for disaffiliation among attached leavers while distant leavers disaffiliated on ideological grounds. One identical factor, however, was of major importance for explaining church‐leaving behavior among both types: family‐related matters and experiences. We conclude that family members and family transitions play a major role in the process of religious disaffiliation.     

Developing Sales Force Relationalism: The Role of Distributive and Procedural Justice

Sales force justice perceptions can play an important role in the development of relational norms or relationalism; however, little research has explored the linkages between justice and the development of sales force relationalism. The relational justice model—that is, neutrality, trust, and respect—was tested with regard to direct effects on sales force perceptions of distributive and procedural justice, and in, subsequently, manager–sales force relationalism. The findings, from a sample of business-to-business salespeople, support the hypothesized relationships between the constructs in the relational model and distributive and procedural justice. Neutrality, trust, and respect significantly and positively affect both distributive and procedural justice, which directly affects the development of sales force relationalism. The results have implications for sales force management and future research endeavors.     

Evangelical Civil War on the College Campus,White Evangelical Right Framing Resistance to Racial Justice in 2020s America

This paper examines a civil war brewing among evangelicals on the college campus over racial justice—calls for greater racial equality, equity, and inclusion—in the era of Black Lives Matter (BLM). It examines how the white evangelical right are framing their resistance to racial justice and redrawing the color line in the contemporary college evangelical landscape not with distant “social justice warriors” in broader secular society, but with those right inside their evangelical community who, at varying levels, are coming out in support for racial justice in 2020s America. To do this, I first examine the varied campus evangelicals that support racial justice and how they express and frame their support as proper religious practice. I then explicate how the white evangelical right utilize a strategy of colorblind-othering to fight against these co-evangelicals that support racial justice. Data for the study come from the Landscape Study of Chaplaincy and Campus Ministry (2019–22).     

The Place of Self‐Respect in a Theory of Justice

This essay provides a critical examination of Rawls' (and Rawlsians') conception of self‐respect, the social bases of self‐respect, and the normative justification of equality in the social bases of self‐respect. I defend a rival account of these notions and the normative ideals at stake in political liberalism and a theory of social justice.

I make the following arguments: (1) I argue that it is unreasonable to take self‐respect to be a primary social good, as Rawls and his interpreters characterize it; (2) secondly, drawing on a distinction made by Darwall, I argue that recognition respect provides a far more suitable notion of respect for a theory of justice than Rawls' notion of appraisal respect; (3) thirdly, I argue that Rawls' treatment of self‐respect and the social bases of self‐respect as empirical conceptions should be rejected in favor of normative notions of a reasonable or justified self‐respect and equality in reasonable social bases of self‐respect; (4) I argue that Rawls' notions of political liberalism and public reason provide a way of grounding a notion of the reasonable social bases of self‐respect in political ideals of the person implicit in modern economic institutions, and family relations, ignored by Rawlsians—but as central to reasonable social bases of self‐respect and justice, as Rawlsians' ideal of persons as free and equal citizens.     

Does online social support uniquely buffer effects of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic?: A natural experiment

In-person sources of social support buffer effects of stress on mental health. However, online social support inconsistently demonstrates stress-buffering effects. Highly stressful circumstances, such as the first month of COVID-19 lockdown, may be necessary to benefit from support received from online networks. We investigated whether online support demonstrated an increased stress-buffering effect on depressive symptoms during the first month of COVID-19 lockdown. We collected cross-sectional data on three distinct groups of participants from February to April 2020—preceding lockdown (pre-COVID; n = 53), up to four weeks following university closures (initial lockdown; n = 136), and the final weeks of the semester (later lockdown; n = 127). Initial lockdown participants reported significantly more stress than pre-COVID but not later lockdown participants. The online social support by stress by COVID phase interaction was only significant for the initial versus later lockdown comparison. Online support buffered stress during initial lockdown but not later lockdown. Stress-buffering effects of offline support were observed and did not depend on COVID phase. Online support may only buffer stress when stress is heightened and offline support is less available.     

The Relationship Between Perceptions of Fairness and Voluntary Turnover Among Retail Employees1

Research on the relationship between perceived fairness and employee turnover has tended to focus on turnover intentions rather than behavior, and the few studies that have assessed actual turnover have reported inconsistent results. In the present study, we examined the interactive effects of distributive, procedural, and interactional justice on turnover among 159 retail employees. Results showed that the effect of distributive justice on turnover was stronger when interactional justice was perceived as low rather than high. Our findings also suggest that disproportionate turnover group base rates favoring stayers over leavers can affect results of justice turnover research.     

Exploration of Ethical Debates through Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss,Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Smith’s On Beauty

This essay examines debates over alternative ethical formulations that break from the Kantian model through contemporary fiction—Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005). The essay returns to the theory, the ethics of care, put forward by Carol Gilligan in In a Different Voice (1982), which has regained significance in the context of questions surrounding care in contemporary ethical thinking. While the three novels are concerned with ideas of care, beauty, justice and the tyranny of the mainstream, this essay examines particular themes in particular texts which suggest that ideas with otherwise subversive potential—like care or beauty or justice—lose their radicalism when they are incorporated within the impersonal, masculinist mainstream. Carol Gilligan’s feminine ethics of care, with its respect for the particular, is not only still important as the stimulus to thinking about alternatives to overarching ethical discourses, but it could also re-confer these concepts of care, beauty and justice their revolutionary potential.     

The Relation Between People's Connection With a Target and the Perceived Importance of Justice

We propose that actors will perceive justice as more important with respect to a target when they experience moderate versus extremely high or extremely low connection with the target. In two studies, we manipulated actors’ connection with (e.g., similarity to) a target and the target's standing on the appropriate justice criterion. Both studies yielded the predicted curvilinear relation between connectedness and the perceived relevance of justice. In Study 2, actors’ decisions were more affected by the justice criterion in the moderate versus extreme connectedness conditions. Our findings have important implications for the interplay between connection with others and moral motivations.     

Perspective‐taking induction mitigates the effect of partner attachment avoidance on self–partner overlap

Adult attachment avoidance has long been associated with relationship turmoil and dissatisfaction, and some research has highlighted the clinical potential of perspective‐taking (PT) training for ameliorating attachment avoidance‐related relationship difficulties. Prior research also suggests that prosocial sequelae of PT are mediated by increased self–other overlap. This study examined how a brief PT induction preceding an unresolved conflict discussion interacted with individual differences in attachment avoidance to influence postconflict ratings of self–partner overlap. The authors found that the PT induction buffered the effect of partner—but not one's own—avoidance on self–partner overlap. Main effects of PT condition and both actor and partner avoidance were also detected, and results remained unchanged when controlling for indirect intracouple overlap and relevant individual and couple characteristics.     

Procedural justice and compliance behaviour: the mediating role of emotions

Procedural justice researchers have consistently found that if authorities treat people with trust, fairness, respect and neutrality, people will not only be more willing to cooperate with authorities, but they will also be more likely to comply with authority decisions and rules. New research in this area has gone on to explore the role that emotions play in response to procedural justice and injustice. What this new research has neglected to do, however, is examine whether emotions mediate the effect of procedural justice on subsequent compliance behaviour in real life settings. Using longitudinal survey data collected in two real‐life contexts (Study 1: a taxation dispute (N = 652), and Study 2: workplaces (N = 2366)), the present study will show that perceptions of procedural justice influence the emotions experienced by people, but more importantly these emotional reactions (i.e. anger and happiness) mediate the effect of justice on subsequent compliance behaviour. In other words, it is these positive and negative emotional reactions to perceived justice or injustice that go on to predict who will and will not comply with authority decisions and rules. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimism as a predictor of the effects of laboratory‐induced stress on fears and hope

The objective of the current study is to explore optimism as a predictor of personal and collective fear, as well as hope, following laboratory‐induced stress. Students (N = 107; 74 female, 33 male) were assigned randomly to either the experimental (stress—political violence video clip) or the control group (no‐stress—nature video clip). Questionnaires of fear and hope were administered immediately after the experiment (Time 1) and 3 weeks later (Time 2). Structural equation modeling indicated the following: (a) Optimism significantly predicted both fear and hope in the stress group at Time 1, but not in the no‐stress group. (b) Optimism predicted hope but not fear at Time 2 in the stress group. (c) Hope at Time 1 significantly predicted hope at Time 2, in both the stress and the no‐stress groups. (d) Gender did not predict significantly fear at Time 1 in the stress group, despite a significant difference between genders. This study supports previous studies indicating that optimism plays an important role in people's coping with stress. However, based on our research the data raise the question of whether optimism, by itself, or environmental stress, by itself, may accurately predict stress response.     

Testimonial Injustice and a Case for Mindful Epistemology

In her 2007 book Epistemic Injustice Miranda Fricker identifies testimonial injustice as a case where a hearer assigns lower credibility to a speaker due to “identity prejudice.” Fricker considers testimonial injustice as a form of epistemic injustice since it wrongs the speaker “in her capacity as a knower.” Fricker recommends developing the virtue of “testimonial justice” to address testimonial injustice. She takes this virtue to involve training in a “distinctly reflexive critical social awareness.” The main goal of this article is to argue that Fricker's proposed training falls short of the target and that a cultivation of the capacity of being present—the ability to be mindful—would be necessary to develop the critical social awareness that Fricker requires. I want to explore the impact of compassion and open-mindedness—virtues cultivated in mindfulness training—on testimonial justice specifically and virtue epistemology generally. In attempting to develop an epistemic account informed by mindfulness—a mindful epistemology—my primary goal is to bring Buddhist insights on how to anchor the mind by training it to be fully present and attentive into the focus of mainstream Western philosophy. More specifically, I argue that doing so allows us to appreciate the crucial role that a prediscursive level of cultivation plays in the development of testimonial justice.     

A multidimensional examination of marital conflict and subjective health over 16 years

Guided by stress process perspectives, this study conceptualizes marital conflict as a multidimensional stressor to assess how three aspects of conflict—frequency of disagreements, breadth of disagreements, and cumulative disagreements—impact subjective health. Longitudinal data of married couples spanning 16 years (n = 373 couples) were analyzed using multilevel modeling. For husbands, more frequent disagreements than usual within a given year were associated with poorer subjective health. For wives, the greater cumulative effects of disagreements over 16 years were harmful for subjective health. We discuss how gendered self‐representations and relationship power issues help explain the findings. This research demonstrated the importance of examining multiple aspects of marital conflict to reveal that their subjective health consequences function differently for wives and husbands.     

Organization justice evaluations, job control, and occupational strain.

To explore how organizational justice evaluations affect the occupational stress process, the authors formulated and tested the following 2 hypotheses: (a) The effect of job control on strain is mediated by justice evaluations, and (b) justice evaluations moderate the effect of job control on occupational strain. The results of structural equation modeling, based on data collected from 688 employees, suggest that job control affects strain through justice evaluations. Thus, the results of this study supported the 1st hypothesis and provided evidence that perceptions of the organization are potential factors contributing to employee health.     

The Wax and Wane of Narcissism: Grandiose Narcissism as a Process or State

Though grandiose narcissism has predominantly been studied in structural terms—focused on individuals' general tendencies to be more or less narcissistic—we tested whether it also has a meaningful process or state component. Using a daily diary study methodology and multilevel modeling (N = 178 undergraduates, 146 female; M_age = 18.86, SD = 2.21), we examine whether there is significant variability in daily state narcissism and whether this variability relates systematically to other psychological states (i.e., self‐esteem, stress) and daily events. We assessed state narcissism and daily experiences over a 10‐day period. We observed significant within‐person variability in daily narcissism. Notably, this variability was not simply random error, as it related systematically to other psychological states and daily events. Specifically, state narcissism was higher when people experienced more positive agentic outcomes (e.g., having power over someone) or more positive communal outcomes (e.g., helping someone with a problem). State narcissism was lower on days people experienced greater felt stress. These relations held when state self‐esteem, gender, and trait narcissism were controlled. These findings suggest that grandiose narcissism has a meaningful process or state component.     

Who Will Volunteer? Religiosity, Everyday Racism, and Social Participation Among African American Men

This study explores the relative importance of everyday racism, empathic concern, communalism, and religiosity as predictors of pro-social involvement (i.e., volunteerism and membership in political/social justice organizations) among a sample of African American men (N = 151). Church involvement emerged as a positive predictor of the likelihood that these men were involved in volunteer work as well as the number of hours that men dedicated to volunteer work. Communalism positively predicted the amount of time (in hours per year) that men were involved in volunteer work. Subjective religiosity and the stress of everyday racism were associated with a greater likelihood of being a member of a political–social justice organization. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Assessing Workplace Emotional Intelligence: Development and Validation of an Ability-based Measure

Existing measures of Emotional Intelligence (EI), defined as the ability to perceive, understand, and manage emotions for productive purposes, have displayed limitations in predicting workplace outcomes, likely in part because they do not target this context. Such considerations led to the development of an ability EI measure with work-related scenarios in which respondents infer the likely emotions (perception) and combinations of emotion (understanding) that would occur to protagonists while rating the effectiveness of ways of responding (management). Study 1 (n = 290 undergraduates) used item-total correlations to select scenarios from a larger pool and Study 2 (n = 578) reduced the measure—termed the NEAT—to 30 scenarios on the basis of structural equation modeling. Study 3 (n = 96) then showed that the NEAT had expected correlations with personality and cognitive ability and Study 4 (n = 85) demonstrated convergent validity with other ability EI measures. Last, study 5 (n = 91) established that the NEAT had predictive validity with respect to job satisfaction, job stress, and job performance. The findings affirm the importance of EI in the workplace in the context of a valid new instrument for assessing relevant skills.     

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Social justice (which includes retributive and distributive justice) is most clearly satisfied by a system of Divine rewards and punishments: an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly just Being could determine in each case how much effort was made and effect the appropriate distribution of rewards and punishments. A correct understanding of social justice naturally leads us to suppose that there is an afterlife, a God, a free choice — though it is logically possible at least that social justice could be satisfied in some future (very advanced) human society. There will still be those who have their doubts about the correctness of any view according to which justice cannot be attained by fallible creatures who have an incomplete knowledge of one another's behaviour. But, surely, these doubts are not sufficient to discredit my view. There is no a priori reason for rejecting such a view. There is nothing about our use of the term ‘justice’ and its cognates which implies that such a view is mistaken. (Otherwise the statement “There is no justice in this world’ would be meaningless.) To the contrary, there are widely held religious views, Christian as well as non-Christian, which take this view quite seriously. If there is no a priori reason for rejecting this view, then there must be some independent reason for rejecting it. In other words, we need some independent reasons for believing that social justice can be attained by fallible creatures with limited knowledge. The mere fact that we might feel uncomfortable with my theory is not reason enough to reject it. Finally, those who do experience this discomfort might ask themselves whether such discomfort stems from their moral experience or whether they are simply intent on finding justice in imperfect human institutions.