Establishing the Cross-Situational Convergence of the Ability to Identify Criteria: Consistency and Prediction Across Similar and Dissimilar Assessment Center Exercises

In selection contexts, applicants’ ability to identify criteria (ATIC) refers to individual differences in the accuracy of perceptions with regard to what is required to be successful in evaluative situations. Despite promising findings regarding this construct, the cross-situational consistency necessary to infer that ATIC is a stable characteristic has generally been assessed in situations that have similar demands in terms of the competencies required for success. The purpose of this study was to provide a strong test of the theory underlying the construct by examining convergence in ATIC scores across assessment center (AC) exercises with very different demands. Participants (N?=?173) of a developmental AC completed 6 exercises and made ATIC judgments following the completion of each exercise. These judgments were used to create ATIC scores and to examine the consistency of these scores across exercises with similar and dissimilar demands. Results showed that ATIC scores converged across both similar and dissimilar exercises. Furthermore, participants who shifted their perceptions across dissimilar exercises the most were those who scored high in ATIC, whereas across similar exercises those who scored high in ATIC were those who evaluated the situations more similarly. Overall, ATIC demonstrated strong predictive ability, as it correlated with overall AC performance (r = .40) and predicted performance equally well across pairs of similar and dissimilar exercises.     

Establishing the Measurement Equivalence of Online Selection Assessments Delivered on Mobile versus Nonmobile Devices

Recent usage data suggest job applicants are completing online selection assessments using mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) in greater numbers. To determine the appropriateness of this new technology, this study examined the measurement equivalence of selection assessments delivered on mobile and nonmobile devices (e.g., personal computers). Measurement invariance tests conducted with multigroup confirmatory factor analysis suggest mobile versions of a cognitive ability‐type assessment, two biodata assessments, a multimedia work simulation, and a text‐based situational judgment test appear to be equivalent to nonmobile versions. However, mobile device user latent means were half a standard deviation lower than their nonmobile counterparts for the situational judgment test. Implications for mobile device usage within selection and assessment are discussed.     

Taking responsibility for health in an epistemically polluted environment

Proposals for regulating or nudging healthy choices are controversial. Opponents often argue that individuals should take responsibility for their own health, rather than be paternalistically manipulated for their own good. In this paper, I argue that people can take responsibility for their own health only if they satisfy certain epistemic conditions, but we live in an epistemic environment in which these conditions are not satisfied. Satisfying the epistemic conditions for taking responsibility, I argue, requires regulation of this environment. I describe some proposals for such regulation and show that we cannot reject all regulation in the name of individual responsibility. We must either regulate individuals’ healthy choices or regulate the epistemic environment.     

Thinking emergence as interaffecting: approaching and contextualizing Eugene Gendlin’s Process Model

Prior to A Process Model, Gendlin’s theoretical and practical work focused on the interfacing of bodily-felt meaningfulness and symbolization. In A Process Model, Gendlin does something much wider and more philosophically primary. The hermeneutic and pragmatist distinction between the concept of experience, on the one hand, and actual experiential process, on the other, becomes for Gendlin the methodological basis for a radical reconceptualization of the body. Wittgenstein’s formulation of “meaning” as “language-use in situations” is spelled out by Gendlin in embodied terms, yielding a profound new grasp of language, meaning, situation, language-use and culture as interactional body-process. Gendlin, in building his text, answers the pragmatist critique of a wrong progression of thinking where the results of an inquiry are read back to be its premises. With his central concept “eveving” (“everything interaffected by everything”) Gendlin shows how the seeming determinacy of preceding structure is opened in the actual occurring. He thereby elaborates a new conception of continuity where the possibility for responsive novelty is emergent in the event itself. The conceptual development of the text itself instances this kind of emergent novelty. We will somewhat follow Gendlin’s own path in using language-in-situations as entry-point into his more fundamental process-thinking, thereby asking ourselves how to engage his new kind of model. In the last part, we introduce some of the philosophical roots of Gendlin’s A Process Model.     

Four reasons to prefer Bayesian analyses over significance testing

Inference using significance testing and Bayes factors is compared and contrasted in five case studies based on real research. The first study illustrates that the methods will often agree, both in motivating researchers to conclude that H1 is supported better than H0, and the other way round, that H0 is better supported than H1. The next four, however, show that the methods will also often disagree. In these cases, the aim of the paper will be to motivate the sensible evidential conclusion, and then see which approach matches those intuitions. Specifically, it is shown that a high-powered non-significant result is consistent with no evidence for H0 over H1 worth mentioning, which a Bayes factor can show, and, conversely, that a low-powered non-significant result is consistent with substantial evidence for H0 over H1, again indicated by Bayesian analyses. The fourth study illustrates that a high-powered significant result may not amount to any evidence for H1 over H0, matching the Bayesian conclusion. Finally, the fifth study illustrates that different theories can be evidentially supported to different degrees by the same data; a fact that P-values cannot reflect but Bayes factors can. It is argued that appropriate conclusions match the Bayesian inferences, but not those based on significance testing, where they disagree.     

On Representations of Intended Structures in Foundational Theories

Journal of Philosophical Logic - Often philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians employ a notion of intended structure when talking about a branch of mathematics. In addition, we know that there...     

Gender Differences in Biobehavioral Aftereffects of Stress on Eating,Frustration, and Cardiovascular Responses1

Eating, persistence, and cardiovascular responses were evaluated after exposure to a 25‐min noise stressor with or without perceived control. Participants were healthy men (n = 29) and women (n = 34), aged 21 to 45 years. There were no group differences in cognitive task performance or blood pressure during the stressor. However, perceived control resulted in lower mean blood pressure and heart rate after cessation of the stressor for men and women. Women without perceived control displayed greater frustration levels following the stressor, and frustrated women ate more bland food than did nonfrustrated women. Perceived control and frustration did not affect food consumption among men following the stressor. These findings indicate that there are health‐relevant gender differences in biobehavioral responses that occur in the aftermath of stressor exposure. In addition, perceived control was especially important for women to attenuate the behavioral and biological effects of stressor exposure.     

Self-Deception and Moral Responsibility

The self‐deceived are usually held to be moral responsible for their state. I argue that this attribution of responsibility makes sense only against the background of the traditional conception of self‐deception, a conception that is now widely rejected. In its place, a new conception of self‐deception has been articulated, which requires neither intentional action by self‐deceived agents, nor that they posses contradictory beliefs. This new conception has neither need nor place for attributions of moral responsibility to the self‐deceived in paradigmatic cases. Accordingly, we should take the final step toward abandoning the traditional conception, and drop the automatic attribution of responsibility. Self‐deception is simply a kind of mistake, and has no more necessary connection to culpability than have other intellectual errors.