Impression management and overclaiming on job applications: Related to future sales performance?

Despite decades of research on the role of socially desirable responding (SDR) in hiring contexts, it remains unclear whether job applicant SDR is related to future employee performance. Drawing on a large sample of 1,084 retail sales employees and their original job application data, this study examined the predictive validity of two operationalizations of SDR: (a) impression management captured using a personality scale and (b) overclaiming familiarity with a list of products that were directly relevant to the job. Neither measure was used to inform the hiring decisions. Results showed that job applicant impression management and overclaiming were unrelated to four indicators of future sales performance as employees. Implications for organizational selection policies involving applicant SDR are discussed.     

Using Prayer as an Intervention With Clients Who Are Substance Abusing and Addicted and Who Self‐Identify Personal Faith in God and Prayer as Recovery Resources

This article describes how the authors use prayer with clients who self‐identify their personal faith in God and who have used prayer as a helpful recovery agent or who believe prayer would be helpful to their personal recovery.     

HOLISTIC BIOLOGY: WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT MATTERS

Recent developments toward a more holistic biology do not eliminate reductionism and determinism, but they do suggest more complex forms of them, in which there are multiple, interacting influences, as there are in complex or chaotic systems. Though there is a place in biology for both systemic and atomistic modes of explanation, for those with a theological perspective the shift to complex explanations in biology is often welcome. It suggests a more subtle view of divine action in which God's purposes are affected through engagement with the complex systems of creation rather than by discrete interventions. It also invites us to connect the biological interdependence with the interdependence in the nature and purposes of God, and it is consonant with a mystical vision of the unity of all things.     

Are Ethics Training Programs Improving? A Meta-Analytic Review of Past and Present Ethics Instruction in the Sciences

Given the growing public concern and attention placed on cases of research misconduct, government agencies and research institutions have increased their efforts to develop and improve ethics education programs for scientists. The present study sought to assess the impact of these increased efforts by sampling empirical studies published since the year 2000. Studies published prior to 2000 examined in other meta-analytic work were also included to provide a baseline for assessing gains in ethics training effectiveness over time. In total, this quantitative review consisted of 66 empirical studies, 106 ethics courses, 150 effect sizes, and 10,069 training participants. Overall, the findings indicated that ethics instruction resulted in sizable benefits to participants and has improved considerably within the last decade. A number of specific findings also emerged regarding moderators of instructional effectiveness. Recommendations are discussed for improving the development, delivery, and evaluation of ethics instruction in the sciences.     

Children’s spirituality and the practice of meditation in Irish primary schools

Abstract

This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore the child’s experience of meditation in Irish primary schools and its impact on children’s spirituality. Using a phenomenological, hermeneutic, mystagogical methodology, it describes how children experience the practice of meditation, the benefits they consider they gain from it and the nature of its impact, if any, on their spirituality. Seventy children, aged 7 to 11, were interviewed. The study is original in that the interview protocol contained novel processes designed to elicit from children their experience, if any, of the transcendent in meditation and in its depth of analysis of the spiritual fruits of the practice. The study concludes that meditation does have the capacity to nourish the innate spirituality of the child. It offers a heuristic model outlining the key elements of the child’s experience of meditation, stresses the importance of personal spiritual experience and supports the introduction of meditation in primary schools.     

Utopian Vision: A Grand Solution for a Scholarly Dilemma

Reconciling the Zen‐like paradox on the back of every red penny—“out of many, one”—is not for the faint of heart. It is a diversity motto, and a lofty desire that the United States claims to covet. But can its citizens, undocumented or otherwise, even agree on what it is? Is not the desire to maintain a strong sense of community in conflict with a Noah's Ark conception of diversity? Using my personal experience in an intentional community determined to foster racial integration, I explore the complicated possibility of having it both ways. To do so, however, we must construct a notion of community, diversity, and The Good Life that will make us believe and work for this synthesis. Our reactions to the word “utopia” offer a glimpse of the challenges ahead.     

An Introduction to the Best Practices Section in the Journal of Counseling & Development

The authors present an introduction to the Best Practices section in the Journal of Counseling & Development. The section, announced in the fall of 2003, updates counselors on the latest research evidence to support their counseling practices. Four invited experts in the counseling profession (D. Bubenzer, J. G. Garci, T. Sexton, & J. West) discuss the role of best practices in counseling.