A FIELD STUDY OF APPLICANT REACTIONS TO EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES: DOES THE RECRUITER MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Previous cross-sectional field and laboratory research has provided mixed results as to whether recruiter characteristics and behaviors influence applicant reactions to employment opportunities. The present research was conducted to examine the effect of recruiter characteristics using a pre-post study design in a naturally occurring setting. In addition, the effects of several potential moderators on recruiter influence were tested. Results indicated that recruiter characteristics had an impact on perceived job attributes, regard for job and company, and likelihood of joining the company. There was little evidence that the effect of recruiter characteristics was moderated by selected applicant, job, or interviewer variables.     

The Employer Ranel in Guidance and Placement

One approach to the placement of job applicants who need extra help is the use of a panel of experts to provide a link between the appraisal of the candidate and the needs of the labor market. This article reports applications of the panel approach in three different settings.     

Transference with the borderline client

This paper addresses the question of what is involved in psychodynamic counselling with borderline clients. The concept of borderline functioning or structure is explained and the technical difficulties of working in this area noted, especially in the establishment of a working alliance. The types of transference manifestations with borderline clients are then described, looking in particular at the emergence of a psychotic transference. Two case examples are given of working with borderline clients, where the transference was dominated by primitive elements, provoking powerful countertransference reactions in the counsellor. How both the client and the counsellor can be contained in the therapeutic work is then addressed. Finally, some implications of this discussion are drawn out for the training of psychodynamic counsellors, in order to equip them best for working with borderline clients. Three features of what a training should offer are identified: it should provide students with the opportunity for the exploration of the psychotic parts of their own personality; it should allow for and encourage the internalization of psychoanalysis itself as a sustaining internal object; and it should provide students with the experience of working with clients over sufficient time and at sufficient depth so they can learn about the timing and effectiveness of interventions in work with borderline clients.     

Fixation and Regression in the Family Life Cycle

In spite of the obvious fact that families differ significantly depending upon their current stage of the life cycle, most of the family therapy literature focuses on intervening in ongoing family interaction without specific attention to the dimension of family development. Family sociologists, on the other hand, while not dealing with modifying family functioning, have provided more detailed tools with which to understand variations in family functioning based on stages of family development. Our work with families in acute distress suggests the need to increase the specificity with which our assessments and interventions are tailored, by incorporating the family developmental view. This paper explores the utility of the family developmental view using the concepts of fixation and regression in the family life cycle. These concepts were found to be relatively refined and quite pragmatic assessment devices that assist therapists in specifying developmental issues of the family. Case examples of actual families in crisis are presented in order to demonstrate the utility of these conceptual tools.     

Concepts and Conceptual Analysis

Conceptual analysis is undergoing a revival in philosophy, and much of the credit goes to Frank Jackson. Jackson argues that conceptual analysis is needed as an integral component of so-called serious metaphysics and that it also does explanatory work in accounting for such phenomena as categorization, meaning change, communication, and linguistic understanding. He even goes so far as to argue that opponents of conceptual analysis are implicitly committed to it in practice. We show that he is wrong on all of these points and that his case for conceptual analysis doesn't succeed. At the same time, we argue that the sorts of intuitions that figure in conceptual analysis may still have a significant role to play in philosophy. So naturalists needn't disregard intuitions altogether.     

Prosocial Behavior and Religion: New Evidence Based on Projective Measures and Peer Ratings

An important discrepancy seems to exist between self-reports and laboratory studies regarding prosociality among religious people. Some have even suggested that this involves moral hypocrisy on the part of religious people. However, the assumption of the four studies reported here is that the impact of religiousness on prosociality is limited but exists, and does not reflect self-delusion. In Study 1 ( N = 106), religious young adults tended not to use indirect aggression in dealing with hypothetical daily hassles. In Study 2 ( N = 105), female students' religiosity was associated with willingness to help close targets in hypothetical situations but the effect was not extended to unknown targets. In Studies 3 ( N = 315, 105 triads) and 4 ( N = 274, 109 targets), religious targets not only reported high altruistic behavior and empathy, but were also perceived as such by peers (friends, siblings, or colleagues) in three out of four cases. Other results from the studies suggested that the prosociality of religious people is not an artifact of gender, social desirability bias, security in attachment, empathy, or honesty.     

PAIRED COMPARISON EVALUATIONS OF MANAGERIAL EFFECTIVENESS BY PEERS AND SUPERVISORS

Paired comparison evaluations were solicited for a relatively small group ( N = 20) of savings and loan association branch managers. Peer evaluations were obtained from 16 of these managers; supervisory evaluations were obtained from 4 officers. Inter-judge agreement (both within and between groups) was high. Further, this agreement extended beyond the derived paired comparison score to certain independently measured psychological characteristics of the persons evaluated. The peer-generated evaluations assisted the officers in making acceptable promotional decisions. In addition, discussion by the 4 officers of differences between their independently made evaluations made explicit a previously covert but potentially important difference in perspective about the determinants of managerial effectiveness. Ratings assigned by one officer reflected his implicitly heavy weight to human relations skill as a component of branch manager effectiveness; those assigned by the other 3 tended to give more weight to knowledge about financial matters related to the savings and loan industry.