Personality and absenteeism: a meta‐analysis of integrity tests

Until recently, research focus has been on a variety of demographic, attitudinal, and organizational variables in predicting and explaining absenteeism. If personality traits predict absenteeism, then it may be possible to use measures of these traits to identify and select job applicants and thereby reduce absenteeism rates. In this research, our goal was to examine whether integrity tests could be used to predict absenteeism. Meta‐analysis was applied to studies of the validity of pre‐employment integrity tests for predicting voluntary absenteeism. Twenty‐eight studies based on a total sample of 13 972 were meta‐analysed. The estimated mean predictive validity of personality‐based integrity tests was 0.33. This operational validity generalized across various predictor scales, organizations, settings, and jobs (SD_ρ = 0.00). Overt integrity tests, however, showed much lower predictive validity for absenteeism and greater variability than personality‐based tests (ρ = 0.09; SD_ρ = 0.16). The results indicate that a personnel selection approach to reducing absenteeism in organizations may be a useful strategy, particularly if personality‐based integrity tests are utilized. Potential explanations for differences between these results and those found for Big Five measures of personality are offered. Future research investigating models of absenteeism should incorporate the personality constructs assessed by integrity tests. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Believe It Or Not: Religious and Other Paranormal Beliefs in the United States

Paranormal beliefs are often divided between those that are central to traditional Christian doctrine, such as the belief in heaven and hell, and those that are commonly associated with the supernatural or occult, such as the belief in ESP and psychic healing. This study employs data from a recent nationwide random sample general population survey to catalog the social correlates of paranormal beliefs and to examine the relationships between religious and other paranormal beliefs. The results indicate that standard social background factors do a poor job of accounting for who believes in paranormal phenomena and that the importance of specific background factors changes dramatically from phenomenon to phenomenon. The results also show that the correlations between belief in religious phenomena and other paranormal phenomena are largely insignificant. These findings call into question many prevailing theories about paranormal beliefs.     

Existential Trauma Therapy with Men After a Heart Attack

An existential trauma therapy treatment approach with men who are recovering from a heart attack is described as well as the treatment elements within the approach. Single-subject design case material is provided to evaluate and illustrate the described treatment approach.     

Now you see it, now you don't: controlling for contingencies and stimulus repetitions eliminates the Gratton effect

The Gratton (or sequential congruency) effect is the finding that conflict effects (e.g., Stroop and Eriksen flanker effects) are larger following congruent trials relative to incongruent trials. The standard account given for this is that a cognitive control mechanism detects conflict when it occurs and adapts to this conflict on the following trial. Others, however, have questioned the conflict adaptation account and suggested that sequential biases might account for the Gratton effect. In two experiments, contingency biases were removed from the task and stimulus repetitions were deleted to control for stimulus bindings. This eliminated the Gratton effect in the response times in both experiments, supporting a non-conflict explanation of the Gratton effect. A Gratton effect did persist in the errors of Experiment 1; however, this effect was not produced by the type of errors (word reading errors) that a conflict adaptation account should predict. Instead, tentative support was found for a congruency switch cost hypothesis. In all, the conflict adaptation account failed to account for any of the reported data. Implications for future work on cognitive control are discussed.     

Preliminary psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II: a revised measure of psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance

The present research describes the development and psychometric evaluation of a second version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II), which assesses the construct referred to as, variously, acceptance, experiential avoidance, and psychological inflexibility. Results from 2,816 participants across six samples indicate the satisfactory structure, reliability, and validity of this measure. For example, the mean alpha coefficient is .84 (.78–.88), and the 3- and 12-month test–retest reliability is .81 and .79, respectively. Results indicate that AAQ-II scores concurrently, longitudinally, and incrementally predict a range of outcomes, from mental health to work absence rates, that are consistent with its underlying theory. The AAQ-II also demonstrates appropriate discriminant validity. The AAQ-II appears to measure the same concept as the AAQ-I (r = .97) but with better psychometric consistency.     

Building Alliances with (In)Voluntary Clients: A Study Focused on Therapists’ Observable Behaviors

This study aimed to compare therapists’ observable behaviors to promote alliances with involuntary and voluntary clients during brief family therapy. The therapists’ contributions to fostering alliances were rated in sessions 1 and 4 using videotapes of 29 families who were observed in brief therapy. Using the System for Observing Family Therapy Alliances, trained raters searched for specific therapist behaviors that contributed to or detracted from the four alliance dimensions: engagement in the therapeutic process, an emotional connection with the therapist, safety within the therapeutic system, and a shared sense of purpose within the family. The results showed that when working with involuntary clients, therapists presented more behaviors to foster the clients’ engagement and to promote a shared sense of purpose within the family. However, in the fourth session, the therapists in both groups contributed to the alliance in similar ways. The results are discussed in terms of (a) the therapists’ alliance‐building behaviors, (b) the specificities of each client group, and (c) the implications for clinical practice, training, and research.     

Programming a randomized dependent group contingency and common stimuli to promote durable behavior change

Low levels of academic engagement may impede students’ acquisition of skills. Intervening on student behavior using group contingencies may be a feasible way to increase academic engagement during group instruction. The current study examined the effect of a randomized dependent group contingency on levels of academic engagement for second‐grade participants receiving small‐group reading and writing instruction. The results showed that a randomized dependent group contingency increased the academic engagement of primary participants and several of the other participants during small‐group instruction. The findings also showed that high levels of academic engagement were maintained when common stimuli were present and the dependent group contingency was withdrawn.     

Possible Selves in Adolescence: Development and Validation of a Scale for their Assessment

Possible selves (PSs) have a significant role in adolescents' development. For this reason, it is of great importance to have adequate measures to operationalize them. The aim of this work is to present the construction and validation of a scale to assess PSs at the end of high school in multiple domains. Participants were adolescents (n = 320) of both sexes (female = 51.3%) from high-schools in Buenos Aires City, Argentina (age, M = 14.9, SD = 1.5). The scale was developed based on a literature review and a previous qualitative study. Expert judges' assessment revealed that it has good content validity. The scale's structure was studied with exploratory factor analysis and a 5-factor structure with theoretical meaning was found. Spearman's correlations between current and future self-perceptions show evidence of convergent validity. Mann-Whitney U test shows that the scale can discriminate by sex and age. The scale shows adequate to very good internal consistency. These results show that the scale has adequate psychometric properties to assess PSs in Argentine adolescents. The advantages of this scale relative to existing measures of PSs are discussed. Scale development allows us to know more about how adolescents think they will be during a significant life transition such as the end of high school. This is particularly important for planning interventions that focus on motivation and behavior regulation.     

Symmetry and stimulus class formation in humans: Control by temporal location in a successive matching task

Symmetry refers to the observation that subjects will derive B‐A (e.g., in the presence of B, select A) after being trained on A‐B (e.g., in the presence of A, select B). Whereas symmetry is readily shown in humans, it has been difficult to demonstrate in nonhuman animals. This difficulty, at least in pigeons, may result from responding to specific stimulus properties that change when sample and comparison stimuli switch roles between training and testing. In three experiments with humans, we investigated to what extent human responding is influenced by the temporal location of stimuli using a successive matching‐to‐sample procedure. Our results indicate that temporal location does not spontaneously control responding in humans, although it does in pigeons. Therefore, the number of functional stimuli that humans respond to in this procedure may be half of the number of functional stimuli that the pigeons respond to. In a fourth experiment, we tested this assumption by doubling the number of functional stimuli controlling responding in human participants in an attempt to make the test more comparable to symmetry tests with pigeons. Here, we found that humans responded according to indirect class formation in the same manner as pigeons do. In sum, our results indicate that functional symmetry is readily observed in humans, even in cases where the temporal features of the stimuli prevent functional symmetry in pigeons. We argue that this difference in behavior between the two species does not necessarily reflect a difference in capacity to show functional symmetry between both species, but could also reflect a difference in the functional stimuli each species responds to.