NEGLIGENT HIRING AND DEFAMATION: AREAS OF LIABILITY RELATED TO PRE-EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES

Research on pre-employment inquiries has not been extensive. The limited validity and utility of employment references has been documented, but other types of background checks have not been adequately discussed. However, recent legal trends in the areas of negligent hiring and defamation are leading employers to reevaluate their use of pre-employment inquiries and, particularly, references in hiring. Principles of law in these two areas are discussed and issues of concern to I/O psychologists are presented.     

A prototype matching model of satisfaction in same‐sex friendships

The hypothesis that people experience greater friendship satisfaction when their friendship matches the prototype of intimacy interactions was tested. Consistent with this hypothesis, both women and men reported the greatest satisfaction when their “real‐world” friendship matched the prototype of intimacy interactions. This relation was even stronger when the friendship matched prototypical intimacy interaction patterns (e.g., self‐disclosure) than when it matched nonprototypical patterns (e.g., practical support). Thus, there is evidence that people rely on relational knowledge—in this case, complex knowledge of patterns of relating—when evaluating the quality of their friendships.     

Prototype analysis of the concept of compassionate love

Social scientists are turning their attention to compassionate love, arguing that this kind of love may promote the greatest social good. The central thesis of this research was that compassionate love might be best understood as a prototype rather than a classically defined concept. Six studies were conducted with in Canada and the United States. In Study 1, participants generated features of compassionate love. Studies 2 and 3 revealed that some features (e.g., trust, caring) are considered more central to the concept of compassionate love than others (e.g., sacrifice, sympathy). This prototype structure was confirmed in studies of reaction time (Study 4), memory (Study 5), and logical inferences (Study 6). The implications of a prototype conceptualization of compassionate love for theorizing and research in this relatively new area are discussed.     

POETRY AGAINST EVIL: A BULGAKOVIAN THEOLOGY OF POETRY1

The essay introduces Sergei Bulgakov's theology of creation and evil in order to develop a theology of language, conceiving language as the path along which humans receive their own givenness, but also participate in the creation of the world. Poetry's attention to the difficulty of language, its acceptance of artificial disciplines, and its nonrational mode of knowledge uniquely attune it to language's creative—and destructive—potential. Like a monastery for language, poetry enacts a linguistic askesis, schooling its language and its readers in conversion. The essay includes a close reading of Gjertrud Schnackenberg's poem, “Supernatural Love.” A conclusion situates the essay's program for a theology of literature in relation to Henri de Lubac's work on spiritual exegesis and Hans Urs von Balthasar's use of literature in his theology.     

An Interpersonal Communication Perspective on Images of Political Candidates

Much of the research dealing with the relationship between candidate images and candidate preferences has attempted to assess dimensions of the candidate's image that are relatively “personal” in nature. By and large, most of this research focuses on static traits—for example, aspects of the candidate's persona relating to such dimensions as warmth, attractiveness, or dynamism. In contrast, the current study attempts to assess the degree to which candidate preferences are significantly associated with observable behavior. This was done by asking respondents to evaluate Ronald Reagan and Walter Mandate with an instrument normally used to assess elements of interpersonal communication. It was found that communication behavior ratings of Reagan and Mandate significantly predicted differential preferences for these candidates, even after controlling for the respondents’ political orientations.