The Process Mechanisms Linking Recruiter Positive Moods and Organizational Attraction

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanisms through which recruiters' positive moods lead to organizational attraction. Participants consisted of 161 applicant–recruiter dyads from 55 companies in Taiwan. Results show that recruiters' felt positive moods were positively related to applicant's perceptions of informativeness and competence, which, in turn, influenced organizational attraction. In addition, recruiters felt that positive moods were positively related to their display of positive moods, which were positively related to applicant's positive moods, which, in turn, affected organizational attraction.     

Three-year-olds Remember a Novel Event from 20 Months: Evidence for Long-term Memory in Children?

Abstract

Thirty-seven 3-year-old children, who had learned a 9-action event sequence (“making Play-Doh spaghetti”) when they were 20 months old, returned to the lab to determine whether they would be able to verbally and/or behaviourally recall the event after a 12- to 22-month delay. Children originally participated in the event either one or three times and experienced different parts of the event either at three distinct locations (spatial condition) or at a single location (nonspatial condition). Results show very little evidence of long-term memory for the event after one to two years. Returning children did not verbally recall the event, and they did not perform more actions or sequence the event more accurately than controls, with the exception of the older experimental children who had a tendency to sequence the event more accurately than same-aged controls. Although the results indicate that young children's memory for novel events is not very enduring, there were individual differences in children's ability to remember the event. These differences are discussed in terms of potential differences in cognitive abilities and changing knowledge about retrieval strategies or memory.     

Collaborative recall of details of an emotional film

Collaborative inhibition refers to the phenomenon that when several people work together to produce a single memory report, they typically produce fewer items than when the unique items in the individual reports of the same number of participants are combined (i.e., nominal recall). Yet, apart from this negative effect, collaboration may be beneficial in that group members remove errors from a collaborative report. Collaborative inhibition studies on memory for emotional stimuli are scarce. Therefore, the present study examined both collaborative inhibition and collaborative error reduction in the recall of the details of emotional material in a laboratory setting. Female undergraduates (n = 111) viewed a film clip of a fatal accident and subsequently engaged in either collaborative (n = 57) or individual recall (n = 54) in groups of three. The results show that, across several detail categories, collaborating groups recalled fewer details than nominal groups. However, overall, nominal recall produced more errors than collaborative recall. The present results extend earlier findings on both collaborative inhibition and error reduction to the recall of affectively laden material. These findings may have implications for the applied fields of forensic and clinical psychology.     

Examining the long-term stability of overgeneral autobiographical memory

Overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) is a proposed trait-marker for vulnerability to depression, but relatively little work has examined its long-term stability. This study investigated the stability of OGM over several years in 271 late adolescents and young adults participating in a larger longitudinal study of risk for emotional disorders. The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) was administered twice, with test–retest intervals ranging from approximately 3 to 6 years. There was evidence of significant but modest stability in OGM over several years. Specifically, Spearman rank correlations (ρs) between the proportions of specific and categoric memories generated on the two AMTs were .31 and .32, respectively. We did not find evidence that the stability of OGM was moderated by the length of the test–retest interval. Furthermore, the stability coefficients for OGM for individuals with and without a lifetime history of major depressive disorder (MDD) were relatively similar in magnitude and not significantly different from one another (ρs=.34 and .42 for the proportions of specific and categoric memories for those with a history of MDD; ρs=.31 for both the proportions of specific and categoric memories for those without a history of MDD). Implications for the conceptualisation of OGM are discussed.     

From the Galleries to the Clinic: Applying Art Museum Lessons to Patient Care

Increasingly, medical educators integrate art-viewing into curricular interventions that teach clinical observation—often with local art museum educators. How can cross-disciplinary collaborators explicitly connect the skills learned in the art museum with those used at the bedside? One approach is for educators to align their pedagogical approach using similar teaching methods in the separate contexts of the galleries and the clinic. We describe two linked pedagogical exercises—Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) in the museum galleries and observation at the bedside—from “Training the Eye: Improving the Art of Physical Diagnosis,” an elective museum-based course at Harvard Medical School. It is our opinion that while strategic interactions with the visual arts can improve skills, it is essential for students to apply them in a clinical context with faculty support—requiring educators across disciplines to learn from one another.     

Meta‐stereotypes,Social Image and Help Seeking: Dependency‐Related Meta‐stereotypes Reduce Help‐Seeking Behaviour

People who need help can be reluctant to seek it. This can be due to social image concerns. Here, we investigate if these concerns may be prompted by a salient negative meta‐stereotype: the belief that one's group is judged negatively by another group. Specifically, we researched group members' help‐seeking behaviour in the context of a dependency‐related meta‐stereotype. In a two‐condition study (N = 45), we manipulated participants' belief that their national group was judged dependent by a significant out‐group. We then examined their subsequent help‐seeking behaviour on a real‐world task. Participants whose social identity as a group member was salient showed greater reluctance to seek help when the meta‐stereotype was made prominent compared with when it was not. This suggests that, in a context where social image and social identity concerns are relevant, group members are willing to sacrifice the possibility of accessing needed help in order to avoid confirming a negative stereotype of their group. The implications of these results for helping transactions and community development are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Worry about terror among young adults living in ongoing security uncertainty

The aim of the current study was to investigate worry about terror as a mediating variable, with the exogenous variables being media viewing, differentiation of self, and trait anxiety, and the endogenous variables being somatic symptoms and perceptions of security‐related stress. Participants were divided into two groups by age/academic level: 248 high school students and 191 university students. A pathway correlation model was used to investigate worry about terror as a mediating variable. The central finding was that worry about terror was a significant mediating variable in the relationship between the extent of media viewing following terror events and the level of perception of security‐related stress. That is, young people who said they worried a lot reported a high level of stress relating to the terror events they saw covered in the media. In addition, trait anxiety was found to have an effect on stress perception only via the level of worry about terror. This means that high levels of stress are not experienced by all highly trait‐anxious people, but only by those who suffer from higher levels of worry about terror.     

Examination of ethnic group differential responding on a biodata instrument

Biodata is a selection device that is often cited for high criterion validity and low adverse impact, yet little research examines the latter point. Further, little is known about whether differential biodata item responding by ethnic group occurs, and if so, whether this impacts ethnic group differences, predictive bias, adverse impact, and criterion validity. Data from 5,242 applicants for a government agency position indicated that elimination of biodata item response options with differential ethnic group selection rates from scoring consideration resulted in a large decrease in ethnic group differences, no predictive bias, less potential adverse impact, and a nonsignificant decrease in criterion validity. Results are compared to a general mental ability measure. Implications and future research directions are discussed.