Expressive Writing to Cope with Hate Speech: Assessing Psychobiological Stress Recovery and Forgiveness Promotion for Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,or Queer Victims of Hate Speech

This study examined whether expressive writing could help lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer (LGBQ) hate speech victims increase forgiveness for offenders, and accelerate cortisol recovery following a discussion task in which they recalled the details of their experiences. Participants (N = 46) were assigned to a benefit‐finding, traumatic disclosure writing, or control condition. The findings indicate that benefit‐finding promoted forgiveness and reduced cortisol values, whereas traumatic disclosure writing only accelerated cortisol recovery. Analyses of the linguistic features of victims' narratives revealed that the amount of emotion‐related words related to cortisol recovery, whereas the greater use of cognitive words was related with forgiveness. Implications for theory, methodological comparison, and future research are discussed.     

An Examination of the Validity and Incremental Value of Needed‐at‐Entry Ratings for a Customer Service Job

We examined needed‐at‐entry ratings of knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) provided by job experts (N= 285) during a job analysis for a customer service manager position. To serve as an external referent, a group of industrial and organisational psychologists (N= 31) rated the perceived trainability of each KSAO. Analyses revealed only limited support for the validity of inferences drawn from job experts' needed‐at‐entry ratings. Consistent with our hypotheses, less validity evidence was found for ratings of the more person‐oriented and abstract “AO” attributes than for the more job‐oriented and concrete “KS” attributes. In general, job experts tended to rate attributes as needed‐at‐entry that psychologists thought could be developed on the job. We also found that failing to collect needed‐at‐entry ratings, and relying on only the more common importance‐to‐the‐job ratings, would have resulted in a rather different set of critical KSAOs identified for assessment during the selection process.     

Explicating the Openness to Experience Construct and its Subdimensions and Facets in a Work Setting

Recent meta‐analyses (e.g. Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001 ) found openness to experience, a factor in the five‐factor model of personality, to be uncorrelated with job performance. We argue that, among others, insignificant validity is due to the broad and heterogeneous nature of the construct. In line with our hypotheses, we found internal structure of openness to be multidimensional. Further analyses on subdimensional and facet level revealed large differences in criterion‐ and construct‐related validity. It could be demonstrated that a subdimension labeled epistemic curiosity and, especially, the facet openness to ideas, which includes aspects like curiosity, flexibility, willingness to learn, and creativity, are highly relevant for work‐related criteria and so far understudied in organizational research.