Messianic hopes and the crisis of relativism: A common process in pastoral counseling

This essay explores the dynamics underlying the search for a Messiah in psychotherapy. It argues that the disenchantment with one's Messiah emerges primarily from the confrontation with multiple messiahs, and hence, the personal crisis of relativism. The nature of this personal crisis is investigated through the developmental scheme of William Perry. Suggestions are made as to how pastoral counselors can help those struggling with the problem of relativism.The Southeastern Illinois Center for Pastoral Counseling is located at 100 South Church Street, Carmi, Illinois, 62821.     

The validity of Mobley's (1977) model of employee turnover

Unlike earlier tests of an oversimplified version of this model, the validity of W. Mobley's (1977, Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 237-240) original turnover model was fully investigated. Constructs that were neglected in prior studies were assessed and previously examined constructs were operationalized with more reliable measures. Measures of all constructs in Mobley's model were obtained from a survey of 192 hospital employees. Turnover data were collected a year following survey administration. Following the theoretical causal ordering of Mobley's constructs, each construct was regressed on all causally prior constructs. In general, each construct was accurately predicted by the linear combination of predictors representing its causal determinants. In the majority of instances, the best predictor of a model construct was the construct's immediate causal antecedent. Further, an alternative model was evaluated and compared with Mobley's model using path analysis.     

QUESTIONING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF BEHAVIOR MODELING TRAINING IN AN INDUSTRIAL SETTING1

The intention of this study was to improve behavioral modeling's effectiveness by substituting managers for professional trainers and to evaluate the effect on 44 male supervisors using Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation: reaction, learning, behavior on the job, and performance. Twenty-two supervisors were trained with six behavior modeling modules and the effect was compared to a control group consisting of 22 supervisors. The research also examined the effects of trainees’ self-esteem and the perceived power of the trainers. The results showed that behavior modeling resulted in favorable reactions and an increase in learning, but did not produce behavior change on the job, or improved performance results. Power and self-esteem did not moderate the training effectiveness. The findings are compared with previous behavior modeling research. The discussion concludes with a recommendation for researchers to identify more complete theoretical models which explain behavioral change on the job (e.g., Maltz's theory of psycho-cybernetics) as opposed to relying solely on Bandura's social learning theory.     

EFFECTS OF JOB ATTRIBUTES AND RECRUITING PRACTICES ON APPLICANT DECISIONS: A COMPARISON1

Previous research on the factors which affect applicant decisions concerning jobs has focused on the effects of either job attributes or recruiting practices. The present study examined the simultaneous impact of job attributes and recruiting practices on the likelihood of job acceptance by actual job applicants. Path analysis revealed that job attributes but not recruiting practices influenced the likelihood of job acceptance by graduating college students (N= 200). Given that college students might be expected to be the job applicants most swayed by recruiting practices because of their lack of work experience, the results suggest that the emphasis placed on recruiting practices as determinants of applicant decisions may be overstated in the literature.     

Polydipsia's contribution to temporal discrimination of rats on a fixed interval schedule

This experiment concerned the contribution of polydipsia on the temporal discrimination of rats during a fixed-interval 60-sec. schedule. In this study, the timing accuracy of 12 rats which had access to water during training was compared to that of 12 rats which had no water during training. The rats were trained for 25 sessions on an FI 60-sec. schedule. In early sessions before polydipsia was fully developed, no differences existed between the timing accuracy of the water group and no-water group. As the amount of water drunk by the water group increased as the number of sessions increased, a parallel increase was noted in the timing accuracy of the water group. In the final sessions, a significant difference was found between the timing accuracy of rats in the water group and that of those in the no-water group. It was concluded that polydipsia facilitated the development of the temporal discrimination which is characteristic of a fixed-interval 60-sec. schedule.     

Cognitive, perceptual, and personal-social development of prematurely born preschoolers

This study was designed to determine possible differences in the cognitive, perceptual, and personal-social development of prematurely and maturely born 3-yr.-olds which might foreshadow later learning problems. The subjects were 40 prematurely born graduates of a neonatal intensive care unit (birth weight less than 2,500 gm, less than 37 wk. gestation) matched on the pair-level with full-term controls on sex, race, post-conceptual age, and socioeconomic background. All subjects were singletons and parity was matched at the group level. No differences were found between the groups on tests of higher mental processes including the General Cognitive, Verbal, Quantitative, and Memory Scales of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities, and researcher-devised measures of problem-solving competence. No differences in parental reports of personal-social development were noted. Prematures did not perform as well as controls on perceptual performance tasks, and this difference was interpreted as reflecting relatively impaired visual-motor coordination.