Prophetic visions in 1988: A critical reappraisal

This paper reviews the research into a specific aspect of neardeath experiences (NDEs): the prophetic vision (PV). PVs are subjectively compelling flashforwards of planetary-wide cataclysms and eventual regeneration that sometimes occur during or in the immediate aftermath of an NDE. Previous research has shown that the most frequently mentioned year for the culmination of the geophysical calamities foreseen in PVs was 1988. I argue that PVs should be understood as manifestations of a collective prophetic impulse that historically tends to arise during periods of cultural crisis. PVs are thus expressions of the felt need for cultural renewal and therefore should not be taken literally as prognostic of drastic physical changes on Earth.     

Ego,moral, and faith development in near-death experiencers: Three case studies

Near-death experiencers (NDErs) commonly report shifts in basic values and attitudes, toward intensified compassion and a sense of unconditional love, sprituality, and a sense of mission, and away from materialism and competitiveness. Some researchers have suggested that these attitudinal shifts represent a new stage in human evolution, which will produce major social change. However, knowledge of these reputed NDE aftereffects has been based on NDErs' subjective reports, unverified by objective measures. This study examined relationships between three NDErs' levels of moral, ego, and faith development, as measured by standardized instruments, and extensive qualitative data describing their NDEs and personal attributes. The results suggest that currently available instruments, designed to measure the lower self, may not reflect the awakening to a transpersonal plane of functioning that follows an NDE.Dr. Newsome is in the private practice of psychotherapy and counseling. This paper was derived in part from her Ph.D. thesis submitted to Walden University.     

Recent developments in non-traditional employment testing: An introduction

The purpose of this special issue of theJournal of Business and Psychology is to provide a review and update of several key types of non-traditional employment tests. Non-traditional employment tests can be divided into two categories. One category consists ofbiological/physiological tests. The second category consists ofnarrow-based personality tests. A framework for thinking about non-traditional employment tests is provided.     

Individual response profiles in the behavioral assessment of personality

A long-standing problem in the behavioural assessment of personality is the individual specificity of responses. Often, different persons externalize the same trait in different responses. One solution to this problem is to aggregate many different responses. The paper compares the power of response aggregation for predicting self-and other-ratings of personality with two alternative strategies of response selection: the nomothetic strategy of selecting the response with the highest overall predictive power, and the more idiographic strategy of selecting, for each individual, the most extreme response. Seventy subjects were videotaped in a sequence of social situations inducing shyness to various degrees. Five different nonverbal measures of shyness all correlated significantly with the subjects' self- or other-rated shyness, and showed low correlations across subjects and a substantial cross-situational consistency of response profiles. Response aggregation and both strategies of response selection were found to be equally powerful in predicting the subjects' self- and other-ratings of shyness from the five behavioural responses. Therefore, these findings somewhat dampen the hope often expressed in recent theoretical discussions of personality assessment that more respect for the individual case may improve nomothetic assessment procedures.     

The Tichborne Claimant: Person identification following very long intervals

An account is given of the nineteenth-century case of the Tichborne Claimant, in which someone purporting to be Sir Roger Tichborne, a missing heir, arrived in England from Australia 13 years after Sir Roger had been assumed drowned at sea. Many people, including Lady Tichborne, Sir Roger's mother, positively identified him. Others insisted that he was an impostor. A civil court and a criminal trial each found against The Claimant for various reasons, but the question of The Claimant's true identity remains open to this day. The case of the Tichborne Claimant is used to illustrate issues in identification that are of contemporary interest. The particular matter of how faces change over time is briefly discussed.     

The masculinity—Irrationality relationship explored: Searching for a common denominator

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relative empirical support for two alternative ways of interpreting the relationship between masculinity and irrationality. The common denominator in this particular relationship was theoretically assumed to either reflect a person's locus of control expectations or his/her level of self-esteem.Two separate empirical studies were performed with groups of undergraduate university students. Both studies replicated earlier results, thus supporting the masculinity hypothesis as the one accounting for the relationship between sex-role orientation and irrationality.Of the two possible common denominators explaining this relationship, level of self-esteem was the one receiving the strongest empirical support. Some interesting gender differences concerning these two possible common denominators were also found.Ole Johan Hovland, Cand.paed., is Assistant professor of Personality Assessment at the Department of Personality Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, and maintains a small private practice in Laksevåg, Bergen, Norway. FranÇoise De Lange Alsaker, Cand.psychol., is a Research fellow in the field of personality development at the Department of Personality Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. Fred Vollmer, Mag.art., is Senior Lecturer in personality psychology at the University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.     

Attitudes toward older and younger adults: a meta-analysis

Attitudes toward the elderly have been examined in a number of empirical studies, yet the question of whether the elderly are viewed more negatively than younger persons has not been resolved. A meta-analysis of the literature was conducted to examine this question; results demonstrated that attitudes toward the elderly are more negative than attitudes toward younger people. However, smaller differences between the evaluations of elderly and younger targets were found when (a) the study used measures of personality traits (compared with measures of competence), (b) there were a larger number of dependent measures included in the effect size, (c) specific information was provided about the target person (compared with when a general target such as old person was used), and (d) a between-subjects design (compared with a within-subjects design) was used. These results support Lutsky's (1981) conclusion that age, in and of itself, seems to be less important in determining attitudes toward the elderly than other types of information. The methodological limitations within the literature and a need to consider multiple components of attitudes toward older individuals are discussed.     

Absence of age-related proneness to short-term retroactive interference in the absence of rehearsal

Age differences in short-term retroactive interference, unconfounded with age differences in rehearsal in the retention interval of the Brown-Peterson Task, were not found in a cross-sectional study of adults 18-32 and 64-78 years of age. Degree of retroactive interference was manipulated conjointly with distractor interval length (0-15 s). Individual memory span was assessed and used as the list length in order to achieve stimulus equivalence of memory loads across individuals and age groups. An attention-demanding matching task that adjusted itself in difficulty to the individual's attentional capacity was used as the distractor activity. Covert rehearsal during the retention interval was inferred using several measures, including a comparison of distractor task performance in the presence and in the absence of a memory load, and rehearsers were excluded from the primary analyses. We conclude that there is no interference proneness with increasing age in the present study.