Applicant attraction to organizations and job choice: a meta-analytic review of the correlates of recruiting outcomes

Attracting high-performing applicants is a critical component of personnel selection and overall organizational success. In this study, the authors meta-analyzed 667 coefficients from 71 studies examining relationships between various predictors with job-organization attraction, job pursuit intentions, acceptance intentions, and job choice. The moderating effects of applicant gender, race, and applicant versus nonapplicant status were also examined. Results showed that applicant attraction outcomes were predicted by job-organization characteristics, recruiter behaviors, perceptions of the recruiting process, perceived fit, and hiring expectancies, but not recruiter demographics or perceived alternatives. Path analyses showed that applicant attitudes and intentions mediated the predictor-job choice relationships. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for recruiting theory, research, and practice.     

Activation of adenosine receptors in the posterior cingulate cortex impairs memory retrieval in the rat

Adenosine A1 and A2A receptor agonists and antagonists have been reported to alter learning and memory. The aim of our study was to investigate the involvement of adenosinergic system in memory retrieval into posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) of Wistar rats. To clarify this question, we tested specifics agonist and antagonists of adenosine A1 and A2A receptors in rats submitted to a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task. The stimulation of adenosine A1 and A2A receptors by CPA and CGS21680, respectively, impaired memory retrieval for inhibitory avoidance task, into PCC. These findings provide behavioral evidence for the role of adenosinergic system in the memory retrieval into PCC.     

Universal sex differences in the desire for sexual variety: tests from 52 nations, 6 continents,and 13 islands

Evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that men and women possess both long-term and short-term mating strategies, with men's short-term strategy differentially rooted in the desire for sexual variety. In this article, findings from a cross-cultural survey of 16,288 people across 10 major world regions (including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Middle East, Africa, Oceania, South/Southeast Asia, and East Asia) demonstrate that sex differences in the desire for sexual variety are culturally universal throughout these world regions. Sex differences were evident regardless of whether mean, median, distributional, or categorical indexes of sexual differentiation were evaluated. Sex differences were evident regardless of the measures used to evaluate them. Among contemporary theories of human mating, pluralistic approaches that hypothesize sex differences in the evolved design of short-term mating provide the most compelling account of these robust empirical findings.     

The effect of text coherence and modality on metamemory judgements

This study examined the effects of text coherence and modality on the metamemory judgements of Ease of Learning (EOL) and Judgement of Learning (JOL), and on the object-level measure of recall. Previous work found that sentence material set in a coherent, ordered text context was not judged as more memorable than that presented in a context of sentences in a disordered sequence, even though an ordered sequence helped recall (Shaddock & Carroll, 1997). The current study modified Shaddock and Carroll's design by changing the texts used from expository to narrative text. The metamemory judgements and recall were now found to be significantly more sensitive to material learned in an ordered sequence than to material learned in a disordered sequence. Also, JOLs and recall were more sensitive to material that was originally learned in an auditory mode (spoken presentation) than in a visual mode (verbal presentation). The results are discussed in terms of a cue-utilisation approach to metamemory judgements.     

Aging and judgments of duration: Effects of task complexity and method of estimation

The effects of aging on judgments of short temporal durations were explored using the prospective paradigm and the methods of verbal estimation and production. Younger and older adults performed a perceptual judgment task at five levels of complexity for periods of 30, 60, and 120 sec. Participants either continued to perform the task for a specified interval (production) or were stopped and then verbally estimated the interval. Older adults gave shorter verbal estimates and longer productions than did younger adults. The methods of verbal estimation and production yielded approximately equal duration judgment ratios once range effects were taken into account. Task complexity had little effect. The major conclusion is that duration judgment ratios decrease from younger to older adults when the intervals are filled with a mental task.     

Adolescents' relationships to siblings and mothers: a multivariate genetic analysis.

Research has consistently demonstrated that children's behavior toward their siblings tends to resemble interactions occurring in the parent-child relationship. This study examined the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences to the covariation between sibling relationships and mother-adolescent relationships. Reported and observed family interactions were assessed for 719 same-sex sibling pairs of varying degrees of genetic relatedness. The covariance between mother-adolescent and sibling interactions was decomposed into genetic, shared, and nonshared environmental components. The overlapping effects of shared environment on the two relationship subsystems explained most of the covariance. Smaller but significant genetic and nonshared environmental effects were also found. The consistency of these findings with family processes, such as modeling, is discussed.     

GENDER-RELATED PATTERNS OF HELPING AMONG FRIENDS

In this study, the social role theory of gender and helping (Eagly & Crowley, 1986) was applied to understand gender differences in helping behavior. Relationships among criterion variables of time spent helping and help quality; and key predictors of problem severity, empathic tendency, anger, sympathy, closeness, causal controllability, coping, and self-efficacy were applied. Participants from a large community sample ( N = 1,004) described situations in which they helped a friend and completed questionnaires describing factors that influenced their actions. Recipients of the help also filled out similar questionnaires. It was found that across many problem settings women spend more time helping, give higher quality help, and feel more empathy and sympathy in response to their friends' problems. Further, the presence of anger toward a friend is associated with more time spent helping but a lower quality of help. In contrast, men rate their friends' problems as more controllable/blameworthy and experience more anger. Further, controllability has a greater influence on a number of help-related variables. For both men and women, self-efficacy and perception of problem severity are the greatest direct predictors of helping.     

From chaos to new life: Ritual enactment in the passage from illness to health

Illness irreversibly alters our lives and our relationships. More than a physical or psychological experience, the passage of illness is an existential crisis that is potentially transformative for an individual and his or her loved ones. It is through ritual enactment that we can most fully experience the transformative potential of illness. Rituals are common during illness, but are underutilized for the critically-important reintegration period following acute illness, when personal, interpersonal, and communal healing must occur. Pastoral counselors and others who comfort and counsel the sick and their loved ones should encourage religious and secular ritual enactment to ease this passage.     

Individual differences in visual imaging and the voluntary control of heart rate.

The role of visual imagery in the bidirectional control of heart rate (HR) was explored in 24 subjects. While voluntary HR increases were reliably demonstrated with and without HR feedback, appropriate HR decreases were modest and inconsistent. Changes in respiration rate (RR) generally paralleled the alterations in HR. Eighteen of the subjects reported conventionally using visual imagery to effect HR changes. For these subjects, vividness of visual imagery scores and the extent of HR change showed indications of a direct relationship in the HR increase condition. However, in the HR decrease condition, it was concomitant RR changes which were associated with the vividness and the control of imagery production. The remaining six subjects, who reported not employing visual imagery, demonstrated superior HR acceleration to the imaging subjects. Further, while the imaging subjects did not benefit from the introduction of feedback, the six non-imaging subjects showed reliably greater HR acceleration as a result of feedback introduction.