EFFECTS OF HANDICAP AND JOB CHARACTERISTICS ON SELECTION EVALUATIONS

An experiment was conducted using 211 upper division and graduate business administration students who evaluated hypothetical job applicants. The applicant was either an amputee, an epileptic, or "normal." The job either involved public contact or it did not; and, it either involved supervisory responsibilities or it did not. Generally, handicapped applicants were evaluated no differently than normal applicants. Epileptic applicants, however, were expected to establish better relationships with clients and customers as well as with other employees than were normal applicants. Further, amputees were offered a smaller salary than normals. Implications for future research and unfair discrimination are discussed.     

The perception of collative properties in visual stimuli

Two experiments were conducted to determine how quickly subjects respond to collative properties (e. g., Complexity, Uncertainty) of visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 subjects were presented with reproductions of paintings and artificial patterns which varied in collative properties (e. g., Uncertainty, Redundancy). Subjects were able to discriminate these properties on related verbal scales after only a single glance (50 msec) as well as after multiple glances (500 and 5000 msec). In Experiment 2 subjects were presented with pairs of paintings and patterns differing along collative dimensions (e. g., High versus Low Uncertainty) in an exploratory choice paradigm. The results show that for exploratory choice subjects were particularly sensitive to unity or order after only a single glance (50 msec) and to diversity or complexity after multiple glances (500 and 5 000 msec). In general, the data for the single glance condition are consistent with theories which attribute holistic processing to the initial phase of perception.     

Behavior Therapy: A Survey of Procedures for Counselors

Behavior therapy has expanded dramatically as a result of its demonstrated effectiveness with many types of human problems. This article provides the counselor a current survey of behavior therapy procedures as well as information concerning their applicability and validity.     

Improving Career Decision Making With Adults: Use of Portfolios

This article provides a model for developing a career portfolio process for use with high school students and adults functioning in various types of learning endeavors as they seek credentials or licenses for various careers.     

PERSONALITY MEASURES AS PREDICTORS OF JOB PERFORMANCE: A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW

The purpose of this study was to investigate conflicting findings in previous research on personality and job performance. Meta-analysis was used to (a) assess the overall validity of personality measures as predictors of job performance, (b) investigate the moderating effects of several study characteristics on personality scale validity, and (c) appraise the predictability of job performance as a function of eight distinct categories of personality content, including the "Big Five" personality factors. Based on review of 494 studies, usable results were identified for 97 independent samples (total N = 13,521). Consistent with predictions, studies using confirmatory research strategies produced a corrected mean personality scale validity (.29) that was more than twice as high as that based on studies adopting exploratory strategies (.12). An even higher mean validity (.38) was obtained based on studies using job analysis explicitly in the selection of personality measures. Validities were also found to be higher in longer tenured samples and in published articles versus dissertations. Corrected mean validities for the "Big Five" factors ranged from .16 for Extroversion to .33 for Agreeableness. Weaknesses in the reporting of validation study characteristics are noted, and recommendations for future research in this area are provided. Contrary to conclusions of certain past reviews, the present findings provide some grounds for optimism concerning the use of personality measures in employee selection.     

THE DETERMINANTS OF DISCIPLINARY DECISIONS: THE CASE OF EMPLOYEE DRUG USE

This study examined the disciplinary decision rules that managers employ when responding to substance abuse violations. We suggested that because of competing perspectives about the role and purpose of disciplinary systems, substantial inconsistency is likely to exist across managers in how they respond to violations. Using policy capturing techniques, we found substantial diversity across the 93 managers studied in how they respond to violations. Further, cluster analysis indicated that we could group the 93 managers into retributive, corrective, individual rights, and mixed clusters. The results also suggest that the type of decision rule that a manager employs is influenced by his/her attitude toward punishment and toward drug use. The implications of these findings for disciplinary programs in general and substance abuse policies in particular are discussed as well.     

Handling of missing values in path models for opinions or attitudes

In this article we show, by means of a practical example of a path model to explain opinions or attitudes and using a dataset well-known in The Netherlands, that the intercorrelations of the variables may be highly dependent on the number of variables and the corresponding number of missing data involved. As a consequence, differences could arise in the results of multiple regressions and path analyses. (The role of a suppressant variable in a path model will be touched on in passing.) Subsequently, the way that the character of the sample can change when a more rigid listwise selection of cases is applied is demonstrated. Since a practical example is involved, substantive arguments may be used for choosing a strategy of handling of the missing values. In our view, with reference to path models of opinions or attitudes, these arguments lead not to the use of one of the current imputation techniques or sophisticated methods to estimate the population values of the model parameters, but to what may be called a differentiated listwise selection.     

Memory for Orientation in the Natural Environment

Previous work has demonstrated that memory for information to which people have been exposed for a prolonged period in everyday life may be very poor. One interpretation of such findings is that we tend to remember only information that is likely to be of future functional relevance. However, it is also noticeable that previous investigations have in general studied memory concerning artefacts of arbitrary design rather than the natural environment. As the product of an evolutionary process, it is possible that memory is in general adapted towards dealing with the natural rather than the artificial. For example, in the case of one frequently encountered artefact it has been shown that people retain little information as to whether the head on a coin faces to left or right. The present study probed a naturally occurring counterpart to this, by examining recall of the orientation of the crescent moon. For a new moon it is the right-hand side of the moon that is illuminated whereas for an old moon it is the left-hand side, in the northern hemisphere. The results of Experiment 1 indicated no retention of this information by participants (though, as the results of Experiment 4 confirmed, participants did remember that the new and old moons have opposite orientations). The results of Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed the absence of retention when recall was cued by reference to the solar cycle rather than the lunar cycle, either singly or in combination. It is concluded that, contrary to expectation, memory for the natural environment is in this case no better than memory for the artificial environment, consistent with the primary role in determining the content of everyday memory being taken by functional relevance. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.