Employment Qualifications,Person–Job Fit,Underemployment Attributions,and Hiring Recommendations: A three‐study investigation

Using an experimental design across three studies and four samples, we investigated the effects of employment qualification level (i.e., underqualified, adequately qualified, or overqualified) on hiring recommendations, and how the relationship was influenced by person–job (P‐J) fit and underemployment attributions. In Study 1, we tested and found support for the strength and effectiveness of the employment qualification level manipulation. In Study 2, the results demonstrated that overqualified applicants received higher ratings on objective P‐J fit, subjective P‐J fit, and hiring recommendations than underqualified applicants. Also, overqualified applicants were rated higher on objective and subjective P‐J fit than adequately qualified applicants. However, the results indicated no significant differences between adequately qualified and overqualified applicants on hiring recommendations. Finally, P‐J fit was found to fully mediate the employment qualification level–hiring recommendation relationship, but only subjective P‐J fit (i.e., and not objective P‐J fit) was a significant mediator. In Study 3, we assessed the potential effects of underemployment attribution (i.e., internal‐controllable vs. external‐uncontrollable) on interviewer hiring recommendation. Results demonstrated that applicants who made an external‐uncontrollable attribution for their overqualification were perceived negatively and received lower ratings on hiring recommendations than applicants who made an internal‐controllable attribution for their underemployment. Furthermore, the underemployment attribution‐hiring recommendation relationship was found to be fully mediated by subjective (but not objective) P‐J fit. Contributions of these results to theory, research, and practice, strengths and limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Dual Equivalent Two-valued Under-determined and Over-determined Interpretations for Łukasiewicz’s 3-valued Logic Ł3

?ukasiewicz three-valued logic ?3 is often understood as the set of all 3-valued valid formulas according to ?ukasiewicz’s 3-valued matrices. Following Wojcicki, in addition, we shall consider two alternative interpretations of ?3: “well-determined” ?3a and “truth-preserving” ?3b defined by two different consequence relations on the 3-valued matrices. The aim of this paper is to provide (by using Dunn semantics) dual equivalent two-valued under-determined and over-determined interpretations for ?3, ?3a and ?3b. The logic ?3 is axiomatized as an extension of Routley and Meyer’s basic positive logic following Brady’s strategy for axiomatizing many-valued logics by employing two-valued under-determined or over-determined interpretations. Finally, it is proved that “well determined” ?ukasiewicz logics are paraconsistent.     

Impact of induced joy on literacy in children: does the nature of the task make a difference?

This research examined whether induced joy influences fifth graders’ performance in literacy tasks. Children were asked to recall a joyful experience, used as a joy induction, before completing either a grammar (Study 1) or textual comprehension task (Study 2). The grammar task involved understanding at the surface level and retrieval of appropriate declarative and procedural knowledge, but limited elaboration unlike the textual comprehension task, which tackled inference generation. By differentiating tasks based on depth of processing required for completion we aimed at testing the validity of two concurrent hypotheses: that of a facilitating effect and that of a detrimental effect of induced joy. Compared to controls, joy induced children showed better performance on the grammar task – specifically children with lower language ability. No differences across groups emerged as a function of joy induction on the text comprehension task. Results are discussed with respect to emotion effects on cognition.     

Testing the Situationism Scale in Europe: Scale validation,self‐regulation and regional differences

The term situationism refers to an individual's belief about the importance of a behaviour's context. This study tested whether the degree of situationism expressed by individuals in various regions of Europe was consistent with self‐regulation and cross‐cultural theories. The English version of a Situationism Scale (measuring beliefs about the relation between the environment and one's own behaviour) was translated into five additional languages: Dutch, German, Hungarian, Italian and Slovenian. Young adults (N = 1106, M_Age = 22.9 years, 79% female) across Europe responded to one of the six language versions of the scale as part of a larger survey. Results indicated that: new language versions were psychometrically valid; there was a positive relation between situationism and the use of situation‐control strategies; and situationism was higher for individuals from regions that are Eastern European and relatively more interdependent, compared with individuals from regions that are Western European and relatively less interdependent. As the first evaluation of the Situationism Scale outside America, this study supports the Scale's validity and suggests not only may some effects of situationism be universal, but between‐ and within‐culture differences in situationism exist. Overall, when making judgments and decisions about the self, cultural background and individual differences in situationism may come into play.     

Psychological strengths and subjective well-being in South African white students

This study investigated the role of individual resources, notably self-efficacy, gratitude, and hope, in subjective well-being of white dormitory students at a historically white institution of higher learning. Using a convenience sample of white students (N?=?227), we tested the role of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, and hope as indicators of a latent factor, labelled personal resources, in a structural equation model with subjective well-being as the latent output variable, measured by self-esteem and satisfaction with life. Path analyses indicated a reasonable fit between the data and our hypothesised theoretical model which proposed positive relations between levels of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, dispositional hope, self-esteem and satisfaction with life. White students were psychologically doing well, considering above-midpoint levels obtained for levels of generalised self-efficacy, gratitude, dispositional hope, and satisfaction with life However, scores obtained for self-esteem and adult dispositional hope were below the mid-point and neutral respectively, indicating that White students do not agree that they experience high levels of these two psychological strengths. White female students experienced higher levels of hope, gratitude, and life satisfaction, while no significant gender differences were found for generalised self-efficacy and self-esteem. The results of this study highlight the potential for using psychological strengths to promote well-being in racially diverse students.     

The relationship between employees’ experience of performance management and work engagement within a South African organisation

The study investigated the relationship between employees’ experience of performance management and work engagement. Participants were a convenience sample of employed adults (N=202; females=59%, middle management?=?48%, White?=?54%, tenure more than 9 years?=?48%) in an organisation in the vehicle and asset-based finance industry. They completed the Performance Management Questionnaire (PMQ) and Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES). Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the proportion of variance of work engagement that is explained by employees’ experience of performance management. Results revealed that only empowerment significantly predicted work engagement. These findings suggest that when employees experience performance management as empowering, they are also likely to have higher levels of work engagement.     

Subjective Situations and Logical Omniscience

The beliefs of the agents in a multi-agent system have been formally modelled in the last decades using doxastic logics. The possible worlds model and its associated Kripke semantics provide an intuitive semantics for these logics, but they commit us to model agents that are logically omniscient. We propose a way of avoiding this problem, using a new kind of entities called subjective situations. We define a new doxastic logic based on these entities and we show how the belief operators have some desirable properties, while avoiding logical omniscience. A comparison with two well-known proposals (Levesque's logic of explicit and implicit beliefs and Thijsse's hybrid sieve systems) is also provided.     

Sample size, confidence, and contingency judgement.

According to statistical models, the acquisition function of contingency judgement is due to confidence increasing with sample size. According to associative models, the function reflects the accumulation of associative strength on which the judgement is based. Which view is right? Thirty university students assessed the relation between a fictitious medication and a symptom of skin discoloration in conditions that varied sample size (4, 6, 8 or 40 trials) and contingency (delta P = .20, .40, .60 or .80). Confidence was also collected. Contingency judgement was lower for smaller samples, while confidence level correlated inversely with sample size. This dissociation between contingency judgement and confidence contradicts the statistical perspective.     

Polysynaptic potentiation at different levels of rat olfactory pathways following learning

This study was aimed at investigating the consequences of learning on late polysynaptic components of evoked field potential signals recorded in parallel at different levels of the olfactory pathways. For this, evoked field potentials induced by electrical stimulation of the olfactory bulb were recorded simultaneously in the anterior piriform cortex, the posterior piriform cortex, the lateral entorhinal cortex, and the dentate gyrus. The different parameters of late components were measured in each site before and after completion of associative learning in anesthetized rats. In the learning task, rats were trained to associate electrical stimulation of one olfactory bulb electrode with the delivery of sucrose (positive reward) and stimulation of a second olfactory bulb electrode with the delivery of quinine (negative reward). In this way, stimulation of the same olfactory bulb electrodes used for inducing field potentials served as a discriminative cue in the learning paradigm. The data confirmed previous observation that learning was associated with a lowering in late-component-1 intensity of induction in the posterior piriform cortex. The use of simultaneous recording allowed us to further specify the consequences of learning on late-component distribution in the studied network. Indeed the data showed that whereas before learning, late component 1 was rather uniformly distributed among the recorded sites; following learning, its expression was facilitated preferentially in the posterior piriform cortex and lateral entorhinal cortex. Furthermore, learning was accompanied by the emergence of a new late component (late component 2), which occurred simultaneously in the four recording sites. The possible involvement of potentiation of polysynaptic components in recognition and/or consolidation processes will be discussed.