FEMALE VS. MALE ABSENCE RATES: A TEMPORAL ANALYSIS

The purpose of this research is to test the importance of temporal trends within absenteeism data for males and females. The data support previous findings of higher absenteeism rates for women when compared to men. The data also indicate the importance of temporal trends as suggested by Dansereau, Alutto, and Markham (1978). Conclusions are drawn concerning the use of absence rates as dependent variables.     

JOB-RELATEDNESS OF A POSTTRAINING JOB KNOWLEDGE CRITERION USE TO ASSESS VALIDITY AND TEST FAIRNESS

Significant job-relatedness was found for a posttraining job knowledge test criterion using an application of Lawshe's content validity method. The aide test was used as a criterion to assess the predictive validity of a vocabulary test and a civil service test with samples of black ( N = 43) and white ( N = 62) psychiatric aides. Significant validities were found on both tests, but a vocabulary test proved to be the better predictor of the criterion in both samples. The obtained validities were discussed in terms of differential validity, test fairness, and sample size. This study demonstrated that a content validity method could be applied to criteria as well as selection tests. It was concluded that content validity methods may be able to help solve the problem of criterion relevance in validation research by providing quantitative evidence of the job-relatedness of criteria.     

COHERENTISM AND THE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION OF MORAL BELIEFS: A CASE STUDY IN HOW TO DO PRACTICAL ETHICS WITHOUT APPEAL TO A MORAL THEORY

This paper defends a coherentist approach to moral epistemology. In “The Immorality of Eating Meat” (2000), I offer a coherentist consistency argument to show that our own beliefs rationally commit us to the immorality of eating meat. Elsewhere, I use our own beliefs as premises to argue that we have positive duties to assist the poor (2004) and to argue that biomedical animal experimentation is wrong (2012). The present paper explores whether this consistency‐based coherentist approach of grounding particular moral judgments on beliefs we already hold, with no appeal to moral theory, is a legitimate way of doing practical ethics. I argue (i) that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is a legitimate way to justify moral judgments, (ii) that these moral judgments possess as much epistemic justification and have as much claim to objectivity as moral judgments grounded on particular ethical theories, and (iii) that this internalistic coherentist method of grounding moral judgments is more likely to result in behavioral guidance than traditional theory‐based approaches to practical ethics. By way of illustrating the approach, I briefly recapitulate my consistency‐based argument for ethical vegetarianism. I then defend the coherentist approach implicit in the argument against a number of potentially fatal metatheoretical attacks.     

The effects of social (dis)engagement on status conferral: A context dependent account

The functionalist perspective of status suggests that, to attain status, individuals need to be socially engaging and contribute to a group. In contrast, the signaling perspective of status indicates that people often perceive a lack of social engagement as a status cue and thus confer status on someone who is socially disengaging. Integrating these two important perspectives in the status literature, we propose a context dependent account of social (dis)engagement and status conferral in groups and organizations. Whereas social engagement (e.g., contributing to a group and connecting with its members) results in status attainment in task contexts, social disengagement (e.g., withholding benefits from a group and distancing oneself from its members) leads to status attainment in social contexts. A laboratory study and an online experiment provide partial empirical support for our predictions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Lines of advance in psychoanalytic psychotherapy

Freud's 1919 paper is taken as a starting-point to review how far we have advanced towards fulfilment of his prophetic remarks about the need to develop psychoanalytic psychotherapy for the masses. A glance is taken back to some of the circumstances and characters involved in Budapest where the paper was given at the 1918 congress, where there was much talk about the need to do something about the war neuroses. Similar pressures led to the founding of the Tavistock Clinic and Cassel Hospital in the UK, long before the start of the NHS. The pressures of both world wars advanced the applications of psychoanalysis; the next wave of pressures may come from NHS changes and entry into Europe. The history of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the UK is also considered via looking briefly at the history and development of psychoanalytic publications, of the Tavistock Clinic, of psychoanalytic training, of child psychotherapy and the emergence of adult (non-medical) psychotherapy. There have always been tensions between exponents of the pure gold of analysis and the needs of its wider applications. More flexible arrangements and boundaries are necessary if we are to spread psychoanalysis beyond London and to fulfil Freud's own hopes about the large-scale application of psychoanalytic therapy.