The Role of Situational Interviews in Fostering Positive Reactions to Selection Decisions

We investigated the effect of interview format and employment equity program strength on perceptions of fairness. We used job seekers and vignettes to test the hypotheses. The participants reported lukewarm support for employment equity programs. The use of a situational interview in the selection process of an organisation that had adopted an employment equity program contributed to higher perceptions of fairness vis‐à‐vis the use of an unstructured interview. The results also showed that the inclusion of a situational interview in the selection process mitigated negative reactions to the selection decision when a strong employment equity program was in place as well as when a female visible minority was hired. Nous avons évalué l'impact sur la perception de justice du style d'entretien et de la rigueur d'une charte d'équité relative à l'emploi. On a fait appel à des demandeurs d'emploi et utilisé un test de jugement situationnel pour éprouver les hypothèses. Les répondants se sont montrés peu enthousiastes en ce qui concerne les chartes d'équité relatives à l'emploi. Le choix d'un entretien structuré dans le processus de sélection d'une organisation qui avait adopté une charte d'équité relative à l'emploi a amélioré la perception de justice portant sur un entretien ordinaire. Il apparaît aussi que la présence d'un entretien structuré dans le processus de sélection atténuait les réactions négatives consécutives au résultat de la sélection quand existait une sérieuse charte d'équité relative à l'emploi et quand était embauchée une minorité féminine non négligeable.     

Attraction and exchange in continuing and noncontinuing dating relationships

Measures enabling one to assess general feelings about a relationship, social exchange behaviors, and the particularism and symbolism of resources given to and received from another were examined longitudinally in 38 dating couples. These variables were first measured shortly after a couple began to date and again approximately 4 months later. We found that in contrast to what might be expected from prevailing theories of relationship development, the later status of couples (still dating or broken up) could be predicted with a high degree of accuracy from the initial measures. This finding corroborates and extends previous work dealing with same-sex friendships. Couples who were still dating 4 months later demonstrated greater love, more relationship-maintaining behaviors, more favorable evaluations of the dating relationship, and greater amounts of self-disclosure at the time of initial contact than did couples who broke up. Over time, these differences (as well as others) between couples who did and who did not continue dating intensified. In terms of the types of resources subjects gave and received from their dating partner, more particularistic and more symbolic resources were exchanged in continuing couples only later. Although both continuing and noncontinuing couples showed a decrease in the correlation between the love that members reported, this was offset in continuing daters by increasingly similar reports of reward, equity, and liking. Results are discussed in terms of initial versus gradually evolving differences between continuing and noncontinuing relationships.     

Inmates' perceptions of determinate and indeterminate sentences

The movement to replace indeterminate with determinate sentencing is among the most important recent developments in the criminal justice field. While the views of citizens and scholars on the subject have been widely promulgated, little is known about those of the ultimate “consumers” of sentencing reform, namely, inmates. This article examines the views of a systematic sample of inmates in a maximum security institution in Massachusetts. Subjects' opinions were sought on the relative merits of the two typs of sentencing, and possible behavioral and deterrent effects of a proposed switch to determinate sentencing. More inmates were found to be either opposed to or undecided about than in favor of determinate sentencing.     

The concept of the ‘Other’ in modern Arab thought: From Muhammad cAbdu to Abdallah Laroui

The primary condition for the progress, or indeed the survival, of human societies is their effective coalescence into one human society’ (Zurayk 1994, 96).     

Chronometric analysis of apparent spotlight failure in endogenous visual orienting

Subjects made speeded responses to peripheral luminance increments or decrements preceded by informative central precues. In 4 experiments one of these stimuli was much more likely to occur than the other. In a simple detection task, the likely and unlikely stimuli showed equivalent cuing effects. In a discrimination task (bright/dim), the likely stimuli showed cuing but the unlikely one did not (spotlight failure), and there was a tendency to make the likely response when the unlikely stimulus occurred at the cued location. In Experiment 5, the 2 stimuli were equally likely, and a choice was required. Large cuing effects were observed for both stimuli with no evidence of a speed-accuracy trade-off. A logogen-activation framework is described within which criterion and sensitivity adjustments are needed to accommodate the full pattern of results. Endogenous orienting appears to enhance processing of all stimuli at attended (relative to unattended) locations, an effect that may be masked by specific stimulus or response expectancies.     

EFFECTS OF PICTURE PROMPTS ON THE ACQUISITION OF COMPLEX VOCATIONAL TASKS BY MENTALLY RETARDED ADOLESCENTS

The effects of using picture prompts on the acquisition, generalization, and maintenance of complex vocational tasks were evaluated within a multiple baseline design across subjects and tasks. Five moderately and severely mentally retarded adolescents were first trained to use picture prompts to guide their performance on one or more complex tasks. Following training, posttesting with and without the picture prompts was conducted to evaluate the effects of training and to determine maintenance effects over a 2- to 4-week interval. Generalization of performance across tasks was assessed with three of the students who were provided novel tasks (with and without picture prompts) without training. Results indicated that picture prompts can be successfully used to promote both acquisition and generalization of performance, and that subsequent training time on a novel task was reduced when the use of picture prompts had been previously trained.     

Cardiac orienting responses of 6- and 16-week-old infants

Since previous data suggested that the magnitude of orienting evidenced by cardiac deceleration increased over the first 16 weeks of life, 6- and 16-week-old infants were compared on various characteristics of orienting: habituation, dishabituation, and magnitude of deceleration to stimulus offset as well as to stimulus onset. Neither the change in stimulus following habituation trials nor the stimulus offset produced a large enough response to confidently evaluate age differences suggested by the data. Stimulus onset elicited a pronounced deceleration which for the two age groups was of equivalent magnitude on initial trials and declined similarly with stimulus repetition. It was suggested that similarity of the two age groups on these parameters was due to control of state within a narrow alert range, and that, in general, younger infants are less likely than older infants to show orienting when conditions for orienting are marginal.