The Behavioral Genetics of Religiousness

Behavioral geneticists have sought to characterize the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in religiousness. Behavioral genetic methodology is described and twin and adoption studies of religiousness are reviewed. It is concluded that familial resemblance for religiousness is due largely to shared environmental factors in childhood and adolescence, but to genetic factors in adulthood. Additional evidence shows that there is a genetic correlation between religiousness and antisocial and altruistic behavior. Claims for the discovery of a “God gene” are premature and unlikely, as any genetic influence is likely to represent the aggregate effect of many genetic factors.     

Self‐Monitoring and Job Performance: The moderating role of tenure

Previous research on the relationship between self‐monitoring and job performance has neglected the role of tenure even though both theory and preliminary evidences suggest that job incumbents' tenure should be a strong moderator. The current study investigates the role of organizational tenure on the relationship between self‐monitoring and job performance (number of new contracts sold) in a sample of sales insurance agents. Consistent with expectations, tenure moderates the relationship between self‐monitoring and job performance, i.e., self‐monitoring is positively correlated with job performance for job incumbents with less tenure but not for those with more tenure. We propose that the relationship between self‐monitoring and job performance depends on the job incumbents' ability and opportunity to control the cues available to those who interact with and/or appraise the performance of the job incumbent.     

The need for an evolving concept of validity in industrial and personnel psychology: Psychometric, legal, and emerging issues

The Trinitarian view of validity (namely content, criterion-related, and construct) has dominated psychology for almost a half century. In industrial and personnel psychology especially, content and criterion-related (in particular) forms of validity have served as workhorses. Such a limited focus has lead to a stagnation of the area and the inability to incorporate more theory into the research and practice of personnel psychology. Therefore, we review the evolution of the concept of validity in the psychology discipline, with a particular emphasis on industrial and personnel psychology. We then review the legal and statutory history within industrial and personnel psychology that has helped to shape the concept of validity over the years. Finally, we examine some emerging trends in industrial and personnel psychology, including the issue of graduate training, which may have important consequences on how we conceptualize validity in the future in both our research and practice of personnel psychology.     

Other People’s Problems: Student Distancing,Epistemic Responsibility,and Injustice

In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, students sometimes use “distancing strategies” to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege, deny their complicity in systemic injustice. While I am sympathetic to this analysis, I argue that there is much at stake in student distancing that the current literature fails to recognize. On my view, distancing perpetuates socially sanctioned forms of ignorance and unknowing, through which students misrecognize not only their complicity in injustice, but also the ways that injustice shapes the world, their lives, and their knowledge. Thus, distancing is pedagogically problematic because it prevents students from understanding important social facts, and because it prevents them from engaging with perspectives, analyses, and testimonies that might beneficially challenge their settled views and epistemic habits. To substantiate this new analysis, I draw on recent work on epistemologies of ignorance, especially José Medina’s account of “active ignorance.” In order to respond to student distancing, I argue, it is not sufficient for teachers to make students aware of injustice, or of their potential complicity in it. Beyond this, teachers should cultivate epistemic virtue in the classroom and encourage students to take responsibility for better ways of knowing. The article ends by outlining several classroom practices for beginning this work.     

Shame,guilt, and facial emotion processing: initial evidence for a positive relationship between guilt-proneness and facial emotion recognition ability

Shame and guilt are closely related self-conscious emotions of negative affect that give rise to divergent self-regulatory and motivational behaviours. While guilt-proneness has demonstrated positive relationships with self-report measures of empathy and adaptive interpersonal functioning, shame-proneness tends to be unrelated or inversely related to empathy and is associated with interpersonal difficulties. At present, no research has examined relationships between shame and guilt-proneness with facial emotion recognition ability. Participants (N?=?363) completed measures of shame and guilt-proneness along with a facial emotion recognition task which assessed the ability to identify displays of anger, sadness, happiness, fear, disgust, and shame. Guilt-proneness was consistently positively associated with facial emotion recognition ability. In contrast, shame-proneness was unrelated to capacity for facial emotion recognition. Findings provide support for theory arguing that guilt and empathy operate synergistically and may also help explain the inverse relationship between guilt-proneness and propensity for aggressive behaviour.     

Evaluating Item-Sort Task Methods: The Presentation of a New Statistical Significance Formula and Methodological Best Practices

Purpose

An item-sort task is a common method to reduce over-representative item lists during the scale-creation process. The current article delineates the limitations and misapplications of the accepted statistical significance formula for item-sort tasks and proposes a new statistical significance formula with greater utility across a wider range of item-sort tasks.

Design

First, a simulation study compares the two formulas in an array of conditions that vary on sample size and number of assignment choices. Second, an empirical study compares the results of three separate item-sort tasks across the two formulas for statistical significance.

Findings

In the empirical study, the proposed formula produces more correct retention decisions than the existing formula across all three item-sort tasks. In the simulation study, the proposed formula is more appropriate than the existing formula under most conditions. The two formulas function identically in item-sort tasks with only two assignment choices.

Implications

Researchers could obtain erroneous results when misapplying the existing item-sort task statistical significance formula to cases with more than two assignment choices. The proposed formula corrects this limitation, ultimately providing accurate results more often than the existing formula. Applying the proposed formula could help future research and practice throughout the scale development process.

Originality

Despite widespread use, few attempts have been made to improve scale-creation pretest methods, particularly item-sort tasks. The current study demonstrates that even conventional statistical methods are susceptible to misuse and misapplication, and future research could benefit from the reexamination of other common methods.

     

Normative and idiosyncratic measures of positive and negative affect in sport

Objectives: The purposes of the study were to: (a) ascertain the degree of similarity amongst normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect; (b) test the notion of reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions; (c) analyse the differences on the intensity of facilitating-positive, facilitating-negative, inhibiting-positive, and inhibiting-negative performance emotion content categories, and (d) test whether competitive trait anxiety intensity could predict pre-performance normative or idiosyncratic negative affect intensity.Design: A cross-sectional study design was employed using normative and idiosyncratic measures of affect.Methods: Experienced male soccer and volleyball players (N =124) were individually assessed. Normative scales were the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) used as a sport-specific trait measure of competitive affect, and the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS) administered for the assessment of competitive trait anxiety. Idiosyncratic affect occurring prior to or during optimal and poor competitions was identified in the conceptual framework of the Hanin's Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) model (Hanin, Y.L. (1997). Emotions and athletic performance: Individual zones of optimal functioning model. European Yearbook of Sport Psychology, 1, 29–72).Results: Findings revealed low overlap amongst the PANAS items and the idiosyncratic items, reversal effects on the functional impact and the hedonic tone of emotions, higher level of positive affect associated with optimal performance when compared with all other affect categories, and lower levels of facilitating-negative category when compared with the facilitating-positive. Moreover, sport trait anxiety intensity was found to predict negative affect intensity as assessed by the PANAS normative scales and by the idiosyncratic items. For idiosyncratic affect, however, significant differences emerged only when comparing individuals with very high or very low anxiety symptoms.Conclusions: Idiosyncratic affect scales together with normative scales are recommended for research and applied purposes. The functional impact as well as the hedonic tone of emotion items need to be examined according to individual perception.     

Attachment Change in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy and Sexual Satisfaction Outcomes in a Two-year Follow-up Study

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated attachment based approach to couple therapy. From an EFT perspective, sexual functioning is viewed within the context of an attachment bond, but sexual satisfaction in EFT has not been empirically tested. We examined self-reported sexual satisfaction across 24?months in a sample of 32 couples who received an average of 21 EFT sessions. We found that sexual satisfaction increased across six time points from pre to post therapy and across follow-up (6, 12, 18, and 24?months), and that decreases in attachment avoidance from pre to post therapy predicted increases in sexual satisfaction across time. These findings provide evidence that EFT may help couples improve their sexual satisfaction by reducing attachment avoidance in therapy.