THE FUTURE OF CRITERION-RELATED VALIDITY1

As a result of rejection by personnel psychologists of the erroneous law of small numbers and of the adoption of correct inferential procedures, the future of criterion-related validity promises to be bright. Probable future developments include: (a) widespread appreciation of the low statistical power characteristic of small samples; (b) rejection of the traditional belief that validities are situationally specific; (c) widespread validity generalization based on new methods; (d) research demonstrations that rational estimates of validity are often superior in accuracy to empirical estimates; (e) widespread acceptance of research findings showing that single-group and differential validity by race are artifactual rather than substantive in origin and that test unfairness by race is a nonproblem; (f) increased application of decision-theoretic dollar utility analyses to selection programs; and (g) progress in the establishment of general principles and theories about trait-performance relations in the world of work.     

The kiss of the porcupines: From attributing responsibility to forgiving

How to maintain relatedness in the context of being harmed by others, especially an intimate partner, is a fundamental human challenge. Forgiveness provides a way of meeting this challenge as it removes the barrier to relatedness caused by a transgression. But scientists know very little about forgiveness and its role in close relationships. This article therefore offers a conceptual analysis of forgiveness. The analysis then serves as the foundation for an organizational framework that can be used to study forgiveness in close relationships. Finally, preliminary data are presented that speak to some of the issues introduced in the article.     

Observational evaluative conditioning of an embedded stimulus element

Evaluative conditioning refers to the observation that the mere paired presentation of a neutral stimulus (CS) with a liked or disliked stimulus (US) may result in the neutral stimulus itself acquiring positive or negative valence. In most studies, the CS is an autonomous, invariant stimulus, and the subject directly experiences both CS and US. In this experiment, we investigated whether evaluative conditioning can be extended to a situation wherein the CS is no more than an invariant element of a complex, variable stimulus configuration, and wherein the subject experiences the CS–US co-occurrences indirectly, i.e. by observing a socius who is exposed to the CS–US pairings and facially expresses either liking or disliking the US. During acquisition, subjects watched video-taped sequences of an actor drinking a glass containing a liquid and facially expressing either liking or disliking the drink. The stimulus element which was systematically paired with the actor's facial expression of liking or disliking, was whether the glass contained a ‘foot’ or no ‘foot’ (CS), while other characteristics of the scenes were systematically varied and paired equally often with an expression of like and dislike. Next, valence ratings were obtained for pictures in which the CS element (foot/no foot) was embedded. A clear observational evaluative learning effect could be demonstrated when the feature CS was embedded in objects identical to those presented during learning, but not when it was embedded in new objects. These data demonstrate the possibility of vicarious evaluative conditioning of an embedded stimulus element, but probably at a lower level of abstraction than intended.     

自我客体化对女性心理健康的影响及其机制

性客体化理论从社会文化的角度, 解释了女性的性别角色社会化和性客体化经历是怎样影响并转化为心理健康问题的。自我客体化的女性, 从第三者的角度把自己的身体看作物体, 持续监视自己的身体, 并与社会理想体型对比产生差距, 便形成了身体羞耻、焦虑、“心流”体验的减少及身体内部感知的迟钝, 最终导致进食障碍、抑郁、性功能障碍和物质滥用等心理健康问题。近年来已有大量研究验证了女性自我客体化与这些心理健康问题之间的关系及形成机制, 并取得了丰硕成果。未来研究应关注实验群体的多样化, 相关设计和实验研究相结合来探究两者之间的因果关系, 同时运用脑科学技术探究其认知神经机制。另外还要从预防和干预的角度对女性自我客体化展开研究。     

A test of the joint model of causal attribution

The joint model integrates Mill's methods of difference and agreement for making causal attributions, and introduces a novel type of context attributions which reflect the opposite categories of the standard attribution responses provided in previous covariation research external versus the person, general versus the stimulus, and stable versus the occasion). The joint model predicts that attributions to standard causes require Mill's method of difference and that attributions to context causes require Mill's method of agreement. Two empirical studies demonstrated that the joint model fitted adequately with all of subject's standard and context attribution responses, in contrast to earlier theorizing and data involving only the method of difference (cf. Cheng & Novick, 1990) or only the method of agreement (cf. Hilton, Smith & Kim, 1995) which received less empirical support. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.