CANDIDATE PERSISTENCE AND PERSONALITY TEST PRACTICE EFFECTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR STAFFING SYSTEM MANAGEMENT

Candidates persist in selection settings for numerous reasons, prompting several concerns regarding staffing-system management. Predictors of the propensity to retest and personality test practice effects were investigated among a sample of 15,338 candidates who applied for supervisory positions (and 357 who repeated the selection process) over a 4-year period with a large organization in the service industry. Results reveal greater likelihood of retesting among internal candidates and overall evidence of small-to-moderate personality test practice effects. Compared to passing candidates who retested for various reasons, failing candidates pursued alternative response strategies upon retesting and generated dimension-level practice effects that reached .40 to .60, whereas passing candidates generally replicated their initial profiles. For several subscales, low initial scores were associated with practice effects that exceeded a full standard deviation. Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed.     

SLAVERY AND DOMINATION AS POLITICAL IDEAS IN AUGUSTINE'S CITY OF GOD

The purpose of this article is to explore the meaning of domination and slavery in the political philosophy of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), particularly in the major work of his later years, the City of God. It offers an exploration of this aspect of Augustine's thought in the light of relatively recent scholarship on the meaning of these terms for political philosophy (in particular, the work of Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit). It finds that, in Augustine's eyes, the nature of domination or slavery in the political sphere differed from its nature in the domestic sphere.     

Reincarnation and the Akashic Field: A Dialogue with Ervin Laszlo

This article argues that Laszlo's concept of the Akashic Field (A-field) does not render the concept of reincarnation either redundant or unnecessary, that reincarnation is a fact of nature, something the universe is doing at this stage of its evolution. Not only is Laszlo's theory compatible with the concept of rebirth, it actually strengthens that theory by clarifying some of the processes involved. This article presents a rationale for the belief that through reincarnation the universe is giving birth to a transpersonal individuality that does endure outside space–time and is not dissolved back into the quantum vacuum.     

Perceiving low self‐esteem in close others impedes capitalization and undermines the relationship

Disclosing positive experiences to others (i.e., “capitalization”) is associated with personal and interpersonal benefits (Gable & Reis, 2010). Unfortunately, people who perceive low self‐esteem (LSE) in close others are reluctant to capitalize, holding back from those they expect will be unsupportive (MacGregor & Holmes, 2011). In Study 1, we extend previous findings by demonstrating the importance of the type of experience disclosed; participants capitalized less positively with an (ostensibly) LSE friend when disclosing an accomplishment, not a positive experience attributed to happenstance. In Study 2, we demonstrate the external validity of the phenomenon by examining real discussions between romantic partners. Participants capitalized less positively with their LSE partner, behavior associated with lower relationship satisfaction 6 weeks later (particularly for women).     

IS IT WORTH IT TO WIN THE TALENT WAR? EVALUATING THE UTILITY OF PERFORMANCE‐BASED PAY

Although the business press suggests that "winning the talent war," the attraction and retention of key talent, is increasingly pivotal to organization success, executives often report that their organizations do not fare well on this dimension. We demonstrate how, through integrating turnover and compensation research, the Boudreau and Berger (1985) staffing utility framework can be used by I-O psychologists and other HR professionals to address this issue. Employing a step-by-step process that combines organization-specific information about pay and performance with research on the pay-turnover linkage, we estimate the effects of incentive pay on employee separation patterns at various performance levels. We then use the utility framework to evaluate the financial consequences of incentive pay as an employee retention vehicle. The demonstration illustrates the limitations of standard accounting and behavioral cost-based approaches and the importance of considering both the costs and benefits associated with pay-for-performance plans. Our results suggest that traditional accounting or behavioral cost-based approaches, used alone, would have supported rejecting a potentially lucrative pay-for-performance investment. In addition, our approach should enable HR professionals to use research findings and their own data to estimate the retention patterns and subsequent financial consequences of their existing, and potential, company-specific performance-based pay policies.