The impact of drug screening on selection decisions

This paper discusses the use of drug screening for employee selection decisions. Common methods of drug screening are described, and a recent study of drug screening accuracy is summarized. It is argued that drug screening is subject to the same standards as are other selection procedures, and that human resource professionals must assume responsibility for understanding the potential problems associated with drug screening. Issues relevant to determining the benefits of drug screening are discussed, and an illustration of the impact of drug screening on decision accuracy is presented. It is suggested that, in many instances, the value of drug screening in the selection process may be low enough to warrant serious concern. Implications for human resource research and practice are noted.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 95th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in New York; August 31, 1987. The authors would like to thank Michael Bramel for his assistance in locating and summarizing some of the medical literature cited, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Using the microcomputer as a visual aid in the statistics classroom

A microcomputer running a spreadsheet program makes an excellent visual aid for demonstrating statistical concepts and procedures. Some advantages of this setup over traditional visual aids are described. Several statistical demonstrations that I have found to work well are presented.     

Discrimination of facial expressions of emotion by depressed subjects

A frequent complaint of depressed people concerns their poor interpersonal relationships. Yet, although nonverbal cues are considered of primary importance in interpersonal communication, the major theories of depression focus little attention on nonverbal social perception. The present study investigated the ability of depressed, disturbed control, and normal American adults to make rapid discriminations of facial emotion. We predicted and found that depressed subjects were slower than normal subjects in facial emotion discrimination but were not slower in word category discrimination. These findings suggest that current theories of depression may need to address difficulties with nonverbal information processing. There were also no significant differences between depressed and disturbed control subjects, suggesting that the unique social-behavioral consequences of depression have yet to be identified.     

One-session treatment for specific phobias

A rapid and effective treatment for specific phobias, in which the treatment is done in one single session, is described in detail. The treatment method consists of a combination of exposure in vivo and modeling. The short- and long-term outcome for a consecutive series of 20 patients are reported. Mean treatment time was 2.1 h and at follow-up after an average of 4 yr 90% were much improved or completely recovered.     

A controlled comparative investigation of psychological treatments for chronic sleep-onset insomnia

A sample of physician-referred chronic insomniacs was randomly allocated to either progressive relaxation, stimulus control, paradoxical intention, placebo or no treatment conditions. Treatment process and outcome were investigated in terms of mean and standard deviation (night to night variability) measures of sleep pattern and sleep quality. Only active treatments were associated with significant improvement, but the nature of treatment gains varied. In particular, stimulus control improved sleep pattern, whereas relaxation affected perception of sleep quality. All improvements were maintained at 17 month follow-up. Results are discussed with reference to previous research and guidelines are given for clinical practice.     

Negativism and countertransference

The purpose of this work is to explore the phenomenon of negativism and the analyst's response to it during the course of analytic work with a patient in whom negativism is a central behavioral pattern. Melville's short story, "Bartleby the Scrivener," describing in telling detail the response of a sympathetic lawyer to profound and pervasive negativism in his legal scribe, is discussed as a literary analogy to the analyst-analysand dyad. Aspects of the concept of negativism within psychoanalysis are discussed. The potential usefulness of understanding certain unexpected countertransference responses to pervasive negativism is explored, as this is a relatively neglected area of psychoanalytic technique. A case is presented describing the analysis of a patient whose character, like Bartleby's, is a mixture of profound negativism along with schizoid, obsessional, and masochistic elements.     

Emotional disturbance and the development of self-consciousness in adolescence

The development of self-consciousness and its relationship to emotional disturbance was examined in early and late adolescence. The Imaginary Audience Scale was administered to emotionally disturbed and nondisturbed adolescents. As predicted, results indicated that self-consciousness decreased with age in nondisturbed adolescents. For the emotionally disturbed adolescents, the development of self-consciousness in temporary situations did not follow consistent patterns, as indicated by interaction effects. A significant negative relationship was found between intelligence test scores and self-consciousness in the disturbed group. The findings support the premise that social-cognitive shifts found in early to late adolescence are disrupted in disturbed populations. The mediating role of social experience as a factor in cognitive and emotional development is discussed.