Toward an Explanation of Applicant Reactions: An Examination of Organizational Justice and Attribution Frameworks

This study used the organizational justice and attribution theory frameworks to understand the processes by which applicants perceive and react to selection procedures and decisions. Actual applicants were studied at two stages in a selection process (i.e., pre-application and post-offer). Interactions between process and outcome fairness were observed for intentions (recommendation and reapplication) and self-assessed performance. Although the form of the interaction was specific to each measure, in general fair procedures resulted in more favorable perceptions, and this become more pronounced when individuals also perceived fair outcomes. An interaction was also observed for process fairness and the actual selection decision; self-efficacy was lowest for those who were selected and perceived unfair procedures. The causal attributions for the selection decision were related to intentions and self-perceptions, and applicants demonstrated self-serving biases, but only when procedures were perceived as fair. Potential links between the organizational justice and attribution frameworks were also examined. Both frameworks were found to provide insight into the psychological processes that influence applicants' intentions and self-perceptions.     

When views about alternative medicine,nature and god come in the way of people's vaccination intentions

In spite of the safety and efficiency of the COVID-19 vaccines and the many promotion efforts of political and expert authorities, a fair portion of the population remained hesitant if not opposed to vaccination. Public debate and the available literature point to the possible role of people's attitudes towards medical institutions as well as their preference for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) on their motivations and intentions to be vaccinated. Other potential ideological factors are beliefs about environmental laissez-faire and divine providence insofar as they encourage people to let the pandemic unfold without human interference. In three cross-sectional samples (total N = 8214), collected at successive moments during the Belgian vaccination campaign, the present research examines the distal role of these psychological and ideological factors on vaccination intentions via motivational processes. Study 1 gauges the relation between trust in medical institutions and preference for CAM on intentions to get vaccinated via motivations. Study 2 examined the role of beliefs in the desirability of letting nature take its course (‘environmental laissez-faire beliefs’) on vaccination intention via motivations. Study 3 tests whether people's adherence to environmental laissez-faire and beliefs about divine providence are linked to their motivations for vaccination via trust in the medical institutions and CAM. Results show that adherence to CAM has a deleterious effect on vaccination intentions, whereas trust in medical institutions has a positive effect. Both ideological factors pertaining to external control are only moderately related, with environmental laissez-faire beliefs having stronger effects on CAM, medical trust and vaccination motivations. We discuss the importance of this set of results in light of the growing interest in CAM and the increasing presence of messages appealing to the environment.     

EVALUATION OF AN INPATIENT PROGRAM AIMED AT PREPARING “HARD-TO-PLACE” CHRONICALLY MENTALLY ILL FOR THE COMMUNITY

A program designed to prepare long-stay “hard-to-place” psychiatric inpatients for successful community placement was evaluated. Fifteen patients in the Intensive Learning Center (ILC) program were assessed at 5- and 10-month intervals following baseline. In addition, their functioning was compared to a criterion related comparison group of 26 patients who had been transferred to community placements 18 months earlier. Two informant driven measures were used: The Rehabilitation Evaluation of Hall and Baker (REHAB), (Baker & Hall, 1988) and, Adaptive Behavior Scale (ABS), (Nihira, Foster, Shellhaas, & Leland, 1975). The results indicated significant improvement in the ILC patients adaptive functioning after 5 months, but this improvement was not consistently sustained at the 10 month follow-up. Comparisons between the ILC and community groups were made at 10 months and suggested considerable overlap in functioning between the two groups. The implications of the findings for program development and implementation as well as for discharge planning are discussed.     

Societal rule evaluations: Adolescent offenders' reasoning about moral,conventional, and personal rules

This study investigated adolescent offenders' (81 felons and 83 misdemeanants) evaluations of three types of societal rules (moral, conventional, and personal) on dimensions pertaining to importance, sanctions, authority, and individual choice. In addition, participants selected the acts which should be under personal jurisdiction. Participants provided reasons (i.e., justifications) to support their evaluations. The judgment evidence suggests that the moral rules were considered the most important, the transgressions the most wrong, the violators the most deserving of punishment, and the acts the least acceptable when permitted by an authority. With regard to these same dimensions, conventional rules and violations were ranked second; whereas, the personal rules were ranked third. Offender status differences were obtained for importance ratings and for deservedness of punishment. Justifications for moral events reflected reasoning from both the moral (e.g., other's welfare) and conventional (e.g., social order) domains. Reasoning about conventions involved both conventional and personal concerns; whereas, justifications about personal issues focused on individual prerogatives. The implications of these data are discussed. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

The Measurement of Masculinity and Femininity: Historical Perspective and Implications for Counseling

Masculinity and femininity are both psychological and sociocultural constructs that test developers have attempted to assess for many years. The author examines the history of the measurement of masculinity and femininity from the 1920s through 2000, addresses relevant theory, and considers criticisms of masculinity and femininity measurement as well as the challenges of responding to them. Implications of the use of such measures by counselors, researchers, and counselor educators are discussed.     

Applicant self-selection: correlates of withdrawal from a multiple hurdle process

The authors examined applicant self-selection from a multiple hurdle hiring process. The relationships of the selection status of 3,550 police applicants (self-selected out prior to 1 of the hurdles, passing, or failing) and perceptions of the organization, commitment to a law enforcement job, expectations regarding the job, employment status, the need to relocate, the opinions of family and friends, and perceptions of the hiring process were examined. Differences between those who stayed in the process and those who self-selected out were observed in most areas, and those who self-selected out at early stages differed from those self-selecting out at later stages. African Americans' and women's perceptions also differed from the majority group, indicating some of the difficulties an organization faces in attempting to diversify.     

Correlates of Mental Disorders in the Quebec General Population of 6 to 14-Year Olds

Previous epidemiological studies of correlates of child and adolescent mental disorders in the general population have focused more on child/adolescent and socioeconomic/sociodemographic characteristics than on family characteristics. Moreover, there are no generally accepted methods to analyze and interpret correlates. The purpose of the Quebec Child Mental Health Survey in this regard was twofold: (1) to identify correlates of DSM-III-R internalizing and externalizing disorders according to informant (youth, parent, teacher), for three age groups (6–8, 9–11, and 12–14 years), including relevant family characteristics not considered in previous studies; and (2) to interpret the relative importance of risk indicators by ranking correlates according to strength and consistency of association across age groups. Logistic regression models suggest the inconsistency of correlates across informants. The ranking of correlates reveals that individual and family characteristics make a more important contribution than do socioeconomic characteristics, thereby supporting the relevance of proximal variables in the development of psychopathology.     

Online measures of basic language skills in children with early focal brain lesions

Twenty children with early focal lesions were compared with 150 age-matched control subjects on 11 online measures of the basic skills underlying language processing, a digit span task, and 6 standardized measures. Although most of the children with brain injury scored within the normal range on the majority of the tasks, they also had a disproportionately high number of outlier scores on the reaction time tests. This evidence for a moderate impairment of the basic skills underlying language processing contrasts with other evidence suggesting that these children acquire normal control of the functional use of language. Furthermore, these children scored within the normal range on a measure of general cognitive ability, suggesting that there is no particular sparing of linguistic functions at the expense of general cognitive functions. Using the MPD procedure (Valdés-Pérez & Pericliev, 1997), we found that the controls and the five clinical groups could be best distinguished with two measures of online processing (word repetition and visual number naming) and one standardized test subcomponent (the CELF Oral Directions subtest). The 12 children with left hemisphere lesions scored significantly lower than the 8 other children on the CELF-RS measure. Within the group of children with cerebral infarct, the nature of the processing disability could be linked fairly well to site of lesion. Otherwise, there was little relation between site or size of lesion and the pattern of deficit. These results support a model in which damage to the complex functional circuits subserving language leads to only minor deficits in process efficiency, because of the plasticity of developmental processes.