An Empirical Investigation of Critical Success Factors in the Personal Selling Process for Homogenous Goods

This study uses a Critical Success Factor approach to evaluate a representative set of 51 selling techniques with the intent of determining what techniques are more critical to sales success for salespeople who sell homogenous products than others and what techniques are associated with failure. A set of twelve techniques were identified that distinguished salespeople in the top decile from those in the bottom decile.     

Examining predictors and outcomes of a career calling among undergraduate students

The current study examined predictors and outcomes of a career calling among 292 undergraduate students at two time points over a three-month period. Using structural equation modeling, a model was tested that examined the extent to which calling, life meaning, the search for life meaning, vocational clarity, and personal growth at Time 1 would predict these same variables at Time 2. Results showed that calling was a significant predictor of personal growth and life meaning and that life meaning, the search for life meaning, and vocational self-clarity significantly predicted the presence of a calling. Although findings demonstrating calling as a predictor variable are consistent with previous research, these results also demonstrate the potential reciprocal relation of calling to proximal work and well-being variables over time. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Effects of perspective taking on courtroom decisions

Four experiments examined the hypothesis that perspective taking with a defendant would lead to greater empathy, which would mediate lowered perceptions of culpability, with lowered culpability mediating a lower probability of guilt and recidivism. Experiments 1 and 2 established that perspective taking leads to a lower probability of guilty verdicts and recidivism, mediated by a decreased perception of the defendant's culpability. Experiment 2 showed that it does so by increasing empathy. Experiment 3 showed that perspective taking also heightens the perception of culpability through increased empathy for the victim. Experiment 4 showed that decreased culpability is in part driven by leniency, which is also a function of empathy. We tie our findings into other research investigating links between empathy and perspective taking.     

Is Negligence a First Cousin to Intentionality? Lay Conceptions of Negligence and Its Relationship to Intentionality

In three studies, we examined lay conceptions of negligence and how they are used when making judgments about actors' intentions, negligence, and blame. Study 1 examined the extent to which participants agreed about what constitutes negligence and accidents. After finding a high level of agreement between participants, Study 2 explored the features that defined participants' folk understanding of negligence. Additionally, we examined if definitions of negligence overlapped with key features of definitions of intentionality proposed in the literature. Study 2 suggested there were some key overlapping features and differences between negligence and intentionality. Finally, Study 3 examined how two key features of intentionality and negligence (knowledge and awareness) were related to attributions of negligence, accidental causation, blame, and desire to punish. The findings suggested that knowledge and awareness are positively related to judgments of negligence, blame, and desire to punish. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examining Moderators of Signature Strengths Use and Well-being: Calling and Signature Strengths Level

This study examined the relation between signature strengths use and satisfaction with a sample of diverse undergraduate students. We measured strengths use and satisfaction in both the life and academic domains and identified two possible moderators of this relation: the level of one’s signature strengths and the presence of calling. Results revealed a three way interaction between signature strengths use, signature strengths level, and calling in the prediction of life satisfaction and a two way interaction between signature strengths use and calling in the prediction of academic satisfaction. Contrary to our hypotheses, people low in calling and high in signature strengths level showed the strongest relation between signature strengths use and life satisfaction. For the academic domain, participants low in calling showed the strongest relation between strengths use and academic satisfaction but those high in calling still benefited from using their strengths. Implications for future research and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Retrieval practice over the long term: Should spacing be expanding or equal-interval?

If multiple opportunities are available to review to-be-learned material, should a review occur soon after initial study and recur at progressively expanding intervals, or should the reviews occur at equal intervals? Landauer and Bjork (1978) argued for the superiority of expanding intervals, whereas more recent research has often failed to find any advantage. However, these prior studies have generally compared expanding versus equal-interval training within a single session, and have assessed effects only upon a single final test. We argue that a more generally important goal would be to maintain high average performance over a considerable period of training. For the learning of foreign vocabulary spread over four weeks, we found that expanding retrieval practice (i.e., sessions separated by increasing numbers of days) produced recall equivalent to that from equal-interval practice on a final test given eight weeks after training. However, the expanding schedule yielded much higher average recallability over the whole training period.     

The Police Officer's Dilemma: A Decade of Research on Racial Bias in the Decision to Shoot

We review sociological, correlational, and experimental research that examines the effect of a target's race on the decision to shoot. Much of this work involves computer‐based simulations of a police encounter, in which a participant must decide whether or not to shoot a potentially hostile target who is either Black or White. Experimental work with undergraduate participants reveals a clear pattern of bias (a tendency to shoot Black targets but not Whites), which is associated with stereotypes linking Blacks with the concept of danger. Subsequent work with police officers presents a more complex pattern. Although police are affected by target race in some respects, they generally do not show a biased pattern of shooting. We suggest that police performance depends on the exercise of cognitive control, which allows officers to overcome the influence of stereotypes, and we conclude with potential implications of this research for law enforcement.     

Calling and career adaptability among undergraduate students

The present study examined the relation of calling and career adaptability with a sample of 330 undergraduate students. The presence of a calling weakly to moderately correlated with the four components of adaptability — concern, control, curiosity, and confidence. A moderated, multiple mediation model was used to test the potential mediating effects of the four components of career adaptability on career decision self-efficacy (CDSE) and how these relations differed according to strengths use. Using bootstrapping techniques, concern and confidence were found to be significant mediators in the calling–CDSE relation. Additionally, strengths use was found to moderate the relation between curiosity and CDSE, with curiosity being a significant mediator at high levels of strengths use. After including the mediators in the model, the relation of calling to CDSE was weakened, but still significant, indicating partial mediation. These results suggest that calling relates to greater levels of CDSE in part because of increased concern, curiosity (when strengths use is high), and confidence. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Molinist Thomist Calvinism: A Synthesis

Abstract: In recent years, attempts to reconcile God's exhaustive providential control over the future and human freedom frequently appeal to Molinism. Through the theory of Middle Knowledge, it is claimed, God can exercise meticulous providence over free creatures while preserving the libertarian agency of those creatures. Historically, both Thomist and Reformed theologians have critiqued the theory of Middle Knowledge for effectively eliminating God's aseity, making God's knowledge in some sense dependent on some non-God reality. In this paper, I aim to push the discussion forward by integrating Thomist, Molinist, and Reformed perspectives in the view I call Molinist Thomist Calvinism. By resourcing each of these views, I try to offer a coherent way to affirm God's meticulous providence, including God's unconditional election of some and not others, and morally significant human freedom.