Better Never to Have Been Born

The pro‐life paradox, as I call it, begins with a single claim endorsed by many American Christians: infants and young children are innocent in the sight of God because they cannot yet take responsibility for their spiritual well‐being. With this in mind, I argue that pro‐life believers have unwittingly fallen victim to a theological paradox in which their attempts to save the earthly lives of unborn children make it theoretically possible for said children to die an eternal death. On the one hand, many Christians trust in an eventual spiritual reckoning where God will separate the “sheep” from the “goats” (see Matthew 25:31–46), ushering the former into heaven while damning the latter to hell. However, those who cannot yet repent and seek salvation are not blamed for their spiritual failings. If they die, they go to heaven because they are too young and intellectually immature to know any better. But if dead children are spiritually blameless, then abortion practitioners have perversely and paradoxically saved millions of unborn souls by removing human volition (and thus damnation itself) from the equation and by making it possible for the unborn to experience the joys of heaven without the temptations of earth.     

The Role of Defense in the Life Story

In modern societies, adults typically provide their lives with some sense of unity and purpose by constructing self-defining life stories that serve as their identities. Such stories are told to others and to an internalized audience or listener who serves as an ultimate judge and interpreter of the narrative. Defense mechanisms specify narrative strategies that persons use to shape how their lives are told to others and to their internalized audiences. Life events and experiences are incorporated into a life story to the extent that the internalized audience can make sense of the telling. Defenses function to make some stories more tellable than they might otherwise be and to keep other potentially storied accounts from ever reaching the status of being told.     

The Multiculturally Responsive Versus the Multiculturally Reactive: A Study of Perceptions of Counselor Trainees

Findings suggest that the completion of or exposure to multicultural counseling coursework or literature does not necessarily indicate an acceptance of or valuing of multicultural counseling literature. Survey results of counselor trainees' observations and perceptions of peers whose perspectives on diversity differ are presented and discussed. Implications for training and supervision are addressed.     

The internal representation of numbers

A principle of second-order isomorphism asserts that the functional similarities among internal representations parallel the structural similarities among the external objects to which those representations correspond. In accordance with this principle, subjects were asked to rate the similarities of all pairs of the numbers 0 through 9 in each of 24 conditions distinguished by the forms into which they were to be mentally transformed and then judged-including the visual forms of rows of dots and Arabic numerals, the auditory form of spoken English names, and the amodal form of the abstract concepts of the integers themselves. Similarity ratings were found to depend entirely upon the form in which the numbers were to be judged and not at all upon the form in which they were actually presented. Regardless of the form presented, multidimensional scaling solutions for each of the 24 conditions were readily interpretable in terms of structural properties of the form judged-curvature and closure for visual numerals; number of syllables, initial consonant, and vowel phoneme for auditory names; and numerical magnitude, odd-evenness, etc., for abstract concepts. Reanalyses of chronometric data are presented to illustrate how a fuller understanding of human cognitive processes may be attainable by using such structural models of internal representation in conjunction with studies of overt confusion and reaction time.     

HELPLESSNESS AND THE ANALYST’S WAR AGAINST FEELING IT

In our view helplessness is a primal, often intolerable feeling. It underlies and intensifies other feelings that are also hard to bear. Both analyst and patients face helplessness, and both resort to defenses, often intensely, in order to avoid it. The intensity of this battle can merit calling it a war. The analyst’s war is conducted using distancing, anger, blaming and disparaging as well as by intellectualizing the patient’s struggles. Patients then find themselves abandoned and helplessly alone. We analysts, of course, want not to fall into the trap of war, and we try to free ourselves from waging it. A major way we accomplish this is through continuously working, often with the help of analysis and self-analysis, to increase our capacity to maintain our emotional stability in the face of these intensities. We learn to find new forms of awareness, beyond words and ideas. It requires a new understanding of what is threatening to us, which fosters a deeper capacity to empathize with the patient. This helps us to find the psychic, physical and emotional space within ourselves in which to hold our helplessness and other profound affective experiences. In this way we become an increasingly steady resource for our patients as well as for ourselves.     

HARKing's Threat to Organizational Research: Evidence From Primary and Meta‐Analytic Sources

We assessed presumed consequences of hypothesizing after results are known (HARKing) by contrasting hypothesized versus nonhypothesized effect sizes among 10 common relations in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial and organizational psychology research. In Study 1, we analyzed 247 correlations representing 9 relations with individual performance in 136 articles published in Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology and provide evidence that correlations are significantly larger when hypothesized compared to nonhypothesized. In Study 2, we analyzed 281 effect sizes from a meta‐analysis on the job satisfaction–job performance relation and provide evidence that correlations are significantly larger when hypothesized compared to nonhypothesized. In addition, in Study 2, we documented that hypothesized variable pairs are more likely to be mentioned in article titles or abstracts. We also ruled out 13 alternative explanations to the presumed HARKing effect pertaining to methodological (e.g., unreliability, publication year, research setting, research design, measure contextualization, publication source) and substantive (e.g., predictor–performance pair, performance measure, satisfaction measure, occupation, job/task complexity) issues. Our results suggest that HARKing seems to pose a threat to research results, substantive conclusions, and practical applications. We offer recommended solutions to the HARKing threat.     

Editorial: Evidence on Questionable Research Practices: The Good,the Bad,and the Ugly

Purpose

Questionable research or reporting practices (QRPs) contribute to a growing concern regarding the credibility of research in the organizational sciences and related fields. Such practices include design, analytic, or reporting practices that may introduce biased evidence, which can have harmful implications for evidence-based practice, theory development, and perceptions of the rigor of science.

Design/Methodology/Approach

To assess the extent to which QRPs are actually a concern, we conducted a systematic review to consider the evidence on QRPs. Using a triangulation approach (e.g., by reviewing data from observations, sensitivity analyses, and surveys), we identified the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Findings

Of the 64 studies that fit our criteria, 6 appeared to find little to no evidence of engagement in QRPs and the other 58 found more severe evidence (91 %).

Implications

Drawing upon the findings, we provide recommendations for future research related to publication practices and academic training.

Originality/value

We report findings from studies that suggest that QRPs are not a problem, that QRPs are used at a suboptimal rate, and that QRPs present a threat to the viability of organizational science research.

     

Of mice and marbles: Novel perspectives on burying behavior as a screening test for psychiatric illness

Burying forms part of the normal behavioral routine of rodents, although its expression is species-specific. However, it has been suggested that aberrant burying behavior, of which marble-burying (MB) is an example, may represent neophobic and/or compulsive-like behavior. In the present investigation, we assessed MB in an established animal model of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD)—namely, spontaneous stereotypy in the deer mouse—to establish whether high (H) stereotypy is associated with neophobia and/or another compulsive endophenotype, i.e. MB, as compared to nonstereotypical (N) controls. A three-trial, one-zone MB test was performed over three consecutive evenings both before and after chronic treatment with high-dose (50 mg/kg/day) oral escitalopram. Neophobia was measured via the number of marbles buried during the first pre- and posttreatment MB trials, and compulsive-like behavior via the number of marbles buried over all pre- and posttreatment MB trials. The data from the present study support earlier findings that burying is a normal behavioral routine (inherent burying behavior, IBB) that is expressed by all deer mice, irrespective of stereotypical cohort, and is not associated with either neophobia or compulsiveness. Indeed, chronic escitalopram treatment, which is similarly effective in treating clinical anxiety and OCD, as well as in attenuating H behavior, failed to influence IBB. Although 11 % of the animals presented with a unique burying endophenotype (high burying behavior), escitalopram also failed to attenuate said behavior, necessitating further investigation as to its relevance. In conclusion, MB cannot be regarded as a measure of anxiety-like or compulsive behavior in the deer mouse model of OCD.