Choosing How to Choose: Institutional Pressures Affecting the Adoption of Personnel Selection Procedures

The gap between science and practice in personnel selection is an ongoing concern of human resource management. This paper takes Oliver's framework of organizations' strategic responses to institutional pressures as a basis for outlining the diverse economic and social demands that facilitate or inhibit the application of scientifically recommended selection procedures. Faced with a complex network of multiple requirements, practitioners make more diverse choices in response to any of these pressures than has previously been acknowledged in the scientific literature. Implications for the science‐practitioner gap are discussed.     

Psychische Faktoren gastrointestinaler Erkrankungen

The list of potential or proven associations between psychological and intestinal functions in healthy subjects and in patients with functional and organic bowel disorders demonstrates that although these associations are manifold they are to a large extent incompletely understood, primarily of academic interest and not yet ready to be integrated into everyday clinical practice. However, of immediate practical relevance are psychotherapeutic as well as psychopharmacological approaches. It is, however, required that clinicians, both medical and psychological, are aware of the mechanisms of regulation of intestinal functions through central (CNS) and peripheral (ENS) neural circuits.     

Gemmules and Elements: On Darwin’s and Mendel’s Concepts and Methods in Heredity

Inheritance and variation were a major focus of Charles Darwin’s studies. Small inherited variations were at the core of his theory of organic evolution by means of natural selection. He put forward a developmental theory of heredity (pangenesis) based on the assumption of the existence of material hereditary particles. However, unlike his proposition of natural selection as a new mechanism for evolutionary change, Darwin’s highly speculative and contradictory hypotheses on heredity were unfruitful for further research. They attempted to explain many complex biological phenomena at the same time, disregarded the then modern developments in cell theory, and were, moreover, faithful to the widespread conceptions of blending and so-called Lamarckian inheritance. In contrast, Mendel’s approaches, despite the fact that features of his ideas were later not found to be tenable, proved successful as the basis for the development of modern genetics. Mendel took the study of the transmission of traits and its causes (genetics) out of natural history; by reducing complexity to simple particulate models, he transformed it into a scientific field of research. His scientific approach and concept of discrete elements (which later gave rise to the notion of discrete genes) also contributed crucially to the explanation of the existence of stable variations as the basis for natural selection.     

Mental age and cognitive stage in young handicapped and at-risk children

This research addressed the question of whether stage-related patterns of early cognitive development, reported for normally developing children in the first two and a half years of life, may also characterize the development of at-risk and handicapped children when mental age rather than chronological age is used to organize the data. Performance on a psychometric infant test and two neo-Piagetian-based stage measures was assessed for 95 at-risk and handicapped children. Mental age predicted cognitive level of performance for levels 1 to 3, representing the first year and a half of development, but did not predict the highest level, symbolic functioning. In addition, transition points between levels were observed at mental ages similar to the chronological ages when these transitions have been reported for normally developing infants, for all but the last level. The significance of the correspondence between the psychometric measure and the stage measures is discussed and several alternatives for the breakdown at the highest level are considered.     

Classes and collections: Internal organization and resulting holistic properties

This work presents an analysis of a type of concept, the collection, not readily characterized by class inclusion models. Collections, the referents of collective nouns (e.g., pile, family, bunch), are argued to differ from classes in (a) how membership can be determined, (b) part-whole relationships, (c) internal structure, and (d) the nature of the higher order units they form. From this analysis, it is hypothesized that the psychological integrity of collections is greater than that of classes. Collections and objects, in contrast to classes, both require specified relationships among the parts and both result in a coherent psychological unit. It was suggested that objects form a relatively more stable unit than collections. Corresponding to this analysis the degree of psychological integrity is hypothesized to lead to different degrees of difficulty in making part-whole comparisons for objects, collections, and classes in modified Piagetian class-inclusion paradigms. The hypothesized difference in performance was found for collections and classes and an alternative linguistic explanation for the greater success with collections was eliminated. However, children performed equally well on tasks involving collections and objects, raising the possibility that when elements are organized into collections, they form psychological units which are as coherent as objects.     

Core Self‐Evaluations in Germany: Validation of a German Measure and its Relationships with Career Success

The present study reports the results of a validation of a German version of the Core Self‐Evaluations Scale (CSES) and its relationships with career success. Data were collected in three occupational samples to address various aspects of validation. Our results confirm the proposed one‐factor structure of the scale as well as convergent, discriminant, criterion, and predictive validity. Furthermore, the German CSES shows incremental validity over the individual core traits (neuroticism, self‐esteem, self‐efficacy, and locus of control), the Big Five, and positive and negative affect. Thus, the German version of the Core Self‐Evaluations Scale is a reliable, valid, and economic measure for both research and practical applications. Furthermore, hypothesised relationships of core self‐evaluations with objective as well as subjective career success were confirmed. Possible explanations of these relationships are discussed. On présente dans cet article une étude de validation d'une version allemande de la Core Self‐Evaluation Scale (CSES) avec son rapport au succès professionnel. Les données ont été recueillies auprès d'échantillons relevant de trois métiers pour couvrir plusieurs aspects de la validation. Nos résultats confirment la structure unifactorielle attendue ainsi que les validités convergente, discriminante, prédictive et critérielle. En outre, la CSES allemande présente une validité incrémentielle pour le Big Five, les émotions positives et négatives et les traits centraux individuels (névrotisme, estime de soi, auto‐efficience et locus of control). La version allemande de la CSES est par conséquent un outil fidèle, valide et économique aussi bien pour la recherche que pour les applications pratiques. Sans compter qu'ont été confirmées les relations supposées des auto‐évaluations centrales avec le succès professionnel, qu'il soit objectif ou subjectif. On analyse les raisons possibles de ces relations.     

The multinomial model of prospective memory: validity of ongoing-task parameters

The objective of this research was to provide additional experimental validation of the multinomial processing tree (MPT) model of event-based prospective memory (Smith & Bayen, 2004). In particular, the parameters that measure trial-type detection in the ongoing task were examined. In three experiments with different response instructions, event-based prospective memory tasks were embedded in ongoing color-matching tasks. The results support the validity of the MPT model, that is, manipulations of ongoing-task difficulty affected the ongoing-task parameters of the MPT model, while leaving the estimates for the prospective and the retrospective components of prospective memory unaffected.     

The use of schematic knowledge about sources in source monitoring

Source monitoring refers to mental processes leading to attributions regarding the origin of information. We tested Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay's (1993) assumption that prior source-relevant knowledge is used in some source-monitoring tasks. In two experiments using different domains of schematic knowledge, two sources presented information that was expected for one source and somewhat unexpected for the other. In a later source-monitoring test, participants decided whether items had been presented by Source A, by Source B, or were new. The results of both experiments show that source identification is better for expected items than for somewhat unexpected items. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that when participants do not remember the source of information, they guess that it was presented by the expected source. These results provide evidence for the claim that source monitoring can be based on prior knowledge and support a guessing hypothesis.