a look into the temporary employment industry and its workers

This article offers a brief overview of the contingent worker industry and its employees. In addition to defining temporary worker, the authors describe the importance of the temporary worker industry to the U.S. economy and the forces that have driven this industry's rapid growth. The changing profile of temporary workers, the benefits and drawbacks of temporary work, and ways employment counselors can help clients make the best use of temporary work arrangements are also discussed.     

The inconceivability of zombies

I argue for the claim that if Lewis’s regularity theory of laws were true, we could not know any positive law statement to be true. Premise 1: According to that theory, for any law statement true of the actual world, there is always a nearby world where the law statement is false (a world that differs with respect to one matter of particular fact). Premise 2: One cannot know a proposition to be true if it is false in a nearby world (the epistemological safety principle). The conclusion that no law statement can be known to be true follows immediately from the two premises.     

How regulatory fit enhances motivational strength during goal pursuit

Higgins' (2000) theory of regulatory fit proposes that motivational strength will be enhanced when the manner in which people work toward a goal sustains (rather than disrupts) their regulatory orientation. This enhanced motivational strength in turn should improve efforts at goal attainment. In Experiment 1, predominantly promotion‐ and prevention‐focused participants were given the goal of writing a report on their leisure time, and were assigned either eagerness‐ or vigilance‐framed means to use. Promotion/eagerness and prevention/vigilance participants were about 50% more likely to turn in their reports than promotion/vigilance and prevention/eagerness participants. In Experiment 2, participants read either a promotion‐ or a prevention‐framed health message urging them to eat more fruits and vegetables, and were then asked to imagine either the benefits of compliance or the costs of non‐compliance. Promotion/benefits and prevention/costs participants subsequently ate about 20% more fruits and vegetables over the following week than promotion/costs and prevention/benefits participants. The implications of regulatory fit's enhancement of motivational strength are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting burnout and job satisfaction in workplace counselors: the influence of role stressors,job challenge,and organizational knowledge

The present study examines the antecedents of burnout and job satisfaction among counselors employed in workplace settings. Workplace counselors face the unique demands of managing dual client relationships (individual and organization) within the counseling setting. Antecedents of the job‐related outcomes of burnout and satisfaction are likely to vary from other counseling settings as a function of these unique demands. Survey results from 82 workplace counselors indicated that role conflict was a significant predictor of the experience of burnout and that intrinsic job satisfaction was significantly predicted by the counselors' perceptions of job challenge, as well as by the level of organizational knowledge.     

Mapping the contours of faith in the land of separation: spiritual geographies for children

According to Jean Piaget, children begin to develop a concept of an object, such as that it has sides that are not visible from the child's perspective or that it is likely to be where one saw it last, in early infancy. By the close of the prelinguistic phase at about 2 years old, the child has developed a mature object concept, one that comprehends the object as a continuing entity even when it is not visible. Many children's picture books demonstrate Piaget's concept of object permanence through narrative and image. This paper offers a close reading of three classics, Goodnight moon, Harold and the purple crayon and Where the wild things are, in an explanation of how children are able to develop faith in an invisible, omnipresent deity.     

Adrenal hormone excretion and irrational thinking

Stress reactions to irrational thinking were assessed by studying the relationships between adrenal hormone levels and various psychological scales and indicators of stress symptoms. Of the psychological tests, the Jones Irrational Beliefs Test correlated significantly (negatively) with noradrenaline level. Further, both noradrenaline and adrenaline levels were strongly predicted by physiological variables and irrational beliefs.     

Behavioural treatment of obsessional-compulsive patients in routine clinical practice

There is a paucity of information available about the extent to which findings from research studies of behavioural treatments can be generalised to routine clinical practice. The characteristics and treatment at a series of 36 patients with obsessional-compulsive disorders who were referred to a National Health Service Behaviour Therapy Clinic are described. It appears that the methods developed and evaluated in research trials have been incorporated into everyday clinical practice, with some modifications (e.g. less in vivo practice but more home task assignment). The outcomes reported in the research trials were replicated in the clinical setting, and were shown to be achieved economically in terms of therapist time.     

On the numerical approximation of the bivariate normal (tetrachoric) correlation coefficient

In this paper a rapid and reliable method is found for estimating the value of the Bivariate Normal Correlation Coefficient, ρ, given values of the joint probability and the normal deviates,h andk, or the related areas. This technique finds useful application in the computational approximation of the tetrachoric correlation coefficient,r, when the underlying distributions may be assumed to be normal.