Using the BIDR to Distinguish the Effects of Impression Management and Self‐Deception on the Criterion Validity of Personality Measures: A Meta‐Analysis

Although the use of personality tests for personnel selection has gained increasing acceptance, researchers have raised concerns that job applicants may distort their responses to inflate their scores. In the present meta‐analysis, we examined the effects of the two dimensions of social desirability, impression management and self‐deception, on the criterion validity of personality constructs using the balanced inventory of desirable responding (BIDR). The results indicate that impression management and self‐deception did not create spurious effects on the relationship between personality measures and performance, nor did they function as performance predictors. Moreover, removing the influence of impression management or self‐deception from personality measures did not substantially attenuate the criterion validity of personality variables. Implications of the results and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Caregiver involvement in applied behavior-analytic research: A scoping review and discussion

We conducted a scoping review to characterize the role of caregiver involvement in behavior-analytic research. We reviewed eight behavioral-learning journals from 2011–2022 for works that included children or caregivers as participants and characterized caregiver involvement as passive (implications for caregivers, input, social validity) and active (implementation, caregiver behavior, training, caregiver-collected data). The review identified 228 studies, and almost all (96.1%; n = 219) involved caregivers in some capacity; 94.3% (n = 215) had passive involvement (26.8% had only passive involvement; n = 61), 69.3% (n = 158) had active involvement (1.8% had only active involvement; n = 4), and 3.9% (n = 9) had neither passive nor active involvement. Involvement generally increased over publication years. The most common types of involvement were implications for caregivers, implementation, and input; caregiver-collected data were rare. We propose considerations when engaging caregivers in research and suggest new avenues of inquiry related to caregivers' treatment objectives and social validity, treatment implementers, and caregiver-collected data.     

Gender and race differences in young adults’ body dissatisfaction

Differences by gender and race (White or Black) in two aspects of college students’ body dissatisfaction—dissatisfaction with specific body parts and physique anxiety—were examined. Four hundred and ninety-one students completed surveys assessing both aspects of body dissatisfaction and eight risk factors for body dissatisfaction from biological, psychological, and sociocultural domains. Mean levels of dissatisfaction with body parts varied by gender, race, and a Gender × Race interaction. Mean levels of physique anxiety varied by gender and race. Both dissatisfaction with body parts and physique anxiety were correlated with risk factors from each domain, and factors from each domain accounted for unique variance in each aspect of body dissatisfaction. Because the prediction of each aspect of body dissatisfaction did not vary by gender, race, or a Gender × Race interaction, findings validate a general multidimensional risk model of body dissatisfaction for young adults.     

Verbal Sexual Coercion and Perceived Victim Responsibility: Mediating Effects of Perceived Control

Verbal coercion involves unwanted sexual penetration compelled by psychological pressure. It was hypothesized that, to the degree that verbal coercion is seen as controllable, victims may be held more responsible. Two samples of US undergraduates rated perceptions of hypothetical sexual coercion scenarios. In Study 1, participants (N = 120) read scenarios of either verbal coercion or rape by a male dating partner. Participants perceived verbal coercion as more controllable than rape, which accounted for the greater responsibility attributed to verbal coercion victims. In Study 2, participants (N = 275) read scenarios involving either male-to-female or female-to-male verbal coercion. Participants perceived female-to-male coercion as more controllable, which accounted for the greater responsibility attributed to a verbally coerced man.     

Cognitive costs of exposure to racial prejudice

This study examined how encountering racial prejudice affects cognitive functioning. We assessed performance on the Stroop task after subjects reviewed job files that suggested an evaluator had made nonprejudiced, ambiguously prejudiced, or blatantly prejudiced hiring recommendations. The cognitive impact of exposure to ambiguous versus blatant cues to prejudice depended on subjects' racial group. Black subjects experienced the greatest impairment when they saw ambiguous evidence of prejudice, whereas White subjects experienced the greatest impairment when they saw blatant evidence of prejudice. Given the often ambiguous nature of contemporary expressions of prejudice, these results have important implications for the performance of ethnic minorities across many domains.     

Guided self-help versus pure self-help for perfectionism: a randomised controlled trial

Perfectionism is known to be a risk factor for the development and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive (OC) and depressive symptoms. The purpose of the present study was to test the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioural self-help therapy for perfectionism, and to examine the effect of such treatment on OC and depressive symptomatology. The study compares the effectiveness of guided self-help (GSH, n=24) with pure self-help (PSH, n=25) therapy. Both GSH and PSH were found to be effective in reducing perfectionism, and also in reducing OC and depressive symptomatology. Overall, participants in the GSH condition experienced greater symptom improvement than participants in the PSH condition, and treatment gains for both groups were largely maintained at 3-month follow-up. Twenty percent of PSH participants experienced clinically significant increases in depressive symptoms over the treatment and follow-up period (compared to 0% in the GSH condition), suggesting that PSH may be a less suitable strategy than GSH in treating this population. Overall, the findings suggest that self-help for perfectionism is effective in reducing OC and depressive symptomatology in non-clinical individuals, with GSH being superior to PSH.     

Taking Cognitive-Behavior Therapy to School: A School-Based Mental Health Approach

This paper offers an overview using cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) within a school system. In addition to providing services to individual students, this article provides an overview of implementing CBT into a system of school-wide mental health services. Interventions are discussed at three levels—universal school-wide interventions, target interventions with at-risk students, and intensive interventions with students in need. Examples of specific programs or intervention are given for each level.     

Unconscious semantic priming in the absence of partial awareness

In a recent paper in Psychological Science, Kouider and Dupoux reported obtaining unconscious Stroop priming only when subjects had partial awareness of the masked distractor words (i.e., could consciously perceive subword features that enabled reconstruction of whole words). Kouider and Dupoux conjectured that semantic priming occurs only when such partial awareness is present. The present experiments tested this conjecture in an affective categorization priming task that differed from Kouider and Dupoux’s in using masked distractors that subjects had practiced earlier as visible words. Experiment 1 showed priming from practiced words when subjects had no partial awareness of those words. Experiment 2 showed that, in the absence of partial awareness, practiced words yielded priming but not-practiced words did not. Experiment 3 corroborated Experiment 1 and 2s results using a different test of partial awareness. These results suggest that unconscious processing (rather than partial awareness) of subword elements drives masked semantic priming by practiced words.