The impact of pre-employment integrity testing on employee turnover and inventory shrinkage losses

A major home improvement chain located primarily in the western United States initiated the use of thePersonnel Selection Inventory, a written integrity test, as part of its pre-employment hiring process. For two years only, those job applicants who passed this test and other pre-employment criteria were hired by the chain. Following the introduction of the inventory, there was: (1) a 50% reduction in the number of employee terminations for theft, illegal drug use, and violence over a five year period and (2) a savings in shrinkage losses that amounted to over two million dollars over a two year period.     

The accuracy of aimed movements to visual targets during development: the role of visual information

Children aged 1.5 to 8 years were required to touch accurately an illuminated target lamp located on a vertical board. Movements were made when visual information was complete (target lit for 3 s, room illuminated; partial (target lit for 3 s, room dark, and reduced (target lit for 0.7 s, room dark). Dependent variables were response accuracy, reaction time, and movement time. Accuracy decreased with decreasing availability of visual information and improved with age under all conditions. Reaction times were shorter in the dark (Conditions 2 and 3) than in the light; they decreased with age up to age 5 and did not continue to decrease thereafter. Movement time did not change with age under Conditions 1 and 3 but tended to increase with age under Condition 2. Slower movements were more accurate at all ages, provided visual feedback could be utilized. Increased reliance on the strategy "slower movements yield higher accuracy" was held to account for developmental changes under Condition 2, whereas in Conditions 1 and 3 improvement in the efficiency of motor preprogramming was implicated.     

Pastoral theologian of the year,William Barr Oglesby,Jr.

This article acknowledging and celebrating William Barr Oglesby, Jr. as Pastoral Theologian of the Year for 1983, was originally published inPastoral Psychology 32(1) in Fall, 1983. As a result of some errors that inadvertently modified both the tone and the meaning of the text, we are republishing this article here in its entirety.     

Differences in visual sensitivity among mindfulness meditators and non-meditators

Tachistoscopic presentation of light flashes was used to test for differences in visual sensitivity among 3 groups of practitioners of Buddhist mindfulness meditation and non-meditator-controls. Meditation practitioners were able to detect light flashes of shorter duration than the non-meditators. There were no differences among the meditator groups. There were no differences among the groups in ability to discriminate between closely spaced successive light flashes. The lower detection threshold for single light flashes for the meditators may reflect an enduring increase in sensitivity, perhaps the long-term effects of the practice of mindfulness meditation on certain perceptual habit patterns. The lack of significant differences in the discrimination of successive light flashes probably reflects the resistance of other perceptual habit patterns to modification. The results support the statements found in Buddhist texts on meditation concerning the changes in perception encountered during the practice of mindfulness.     

A test of vaccine endorsement by political in- versus out-group sources: Effect on vaccination likelihood and exploration of mediation through perceived bias and liking

This study investigated whether political endorsements from in- versus out-group political elites would influence likelihood of COVID-19 vaccination. In March 2021, we ran an experiment with Democrats and Republicans in the United States to examine whether they would be more likely to get vaccinated following endorsements by former Presidents Obama or Trump. Participants reported greater likelihood of getting vaccinated if the vaccine was endorsed by an elite from their own rather than the opposing party. This effect was driven by Trump, who increased vaccination likelihood among Republicans but decreased it among Democrats. We also investigated the mechanisms underlying this persuasion effect and found that perceived bias and liking were plausible mediators, whereas perceived trustworthiness and expertise were not. This study highlights the potential of having endorsements from both Democrat and Republican political elites to increase support for health behaviors in a politically charged climate.     

Functional equivalence between same-different classifications and judged similarity of Markov patterns

This experiment represented an initial at tempt at comparing same-different classifications and similarity judgments of Markov histoforms sampled from three different schema families. A measure of individual stimulus variability was more strongfy related to classification responses than to judged similarity. Dichotomous responses, derived from the similarity data by imposing threshold criteria, were found to be highly similor to real classification responses when the threshold values were estimated directly from the latter; little correspondence, however, was obtained using optimal classification criteria. The results support the notion that somewhat different features are used in making classification responses and similarity judgments, and indicate the need for developing more sensitive tasks involving controlled scanning of pattem information.     

Visual and tactual form discrimination: Psychophysical comparison within and between modalities

Intermodal perceptual equivaience was investigated, using visual and tactual oddity discrimination and cross-modal matching-to-sample tasks. Four groups of Ss were presented with 100 problems made up of randomly derived forms from five levels of sidedness. The same quadratic relationship was observed for all tasks as a function of complexity, with optimal performance at eight sides. Comman information utilization, as indicated by intercorrelations of performance variables and by correlational analyses with differences in form measures, was not as pronounced within side classes. Evidence concerning the nature of pattern-feature usage in discrimination was obtained from graphical analyses.     

Schematic concept formation: Feature measures and constraint redundancy as predictors

Constraint redundancy (R_c) was varied in order to manipulate the statistical structure of sets of patterns. Measures of pattern features and R_c were related to the categorization by Ss who had experienced different types of preexposure to sets of patterns from the same stimulus domain. Both R_c and pattern measures were related to the categories produced by Ss in a schematic-concept-formation (SCF) task.     

Recognition assessed by D' and by a non-parametric alternative (the A-index) as a function of the number of choices

Freedom from restrictive assumptions and ease of psychological interpretation are two basic criteria for a satisfactory measure of recognition performance. The A-index (Brown, 1965a) comes close to fulfilling these criteria. It is based on the proportion of wrong choices rejected in a multi-choice test as revealed by the number of choices required to select the correct choice. It can be transformed into the d' measure of signal detection theory (SDT) if the standard assumptions of this theory hold, but not in general. Two experiments on the recognition of words-in-noise are described. In the first there were 3, 5, 8 or 16 choices. They were typed on a card which was displayed to the listener during the presentation of a word. On both measures 5-, 8- and 16-choice recognition did not differ significantly, while 3-choice recognition was slightly, but significantly, superior. The second experiment concerned the effect of delaying the display of the card until 2 sec. after presentation. No evidence for an effect was obtained. In both experiments, there was suggestive but not conclusive evidence that the d' measure tended to overestimate recognition efficiency.