The Effects of Applicant Résumé Contents on Recruiters' Hiring Recommendations: The Mediating Roles of Recruiter Fit Perceptions

The résumé is the most commonly used selection tool for organisations. Past studies have demonstrated that recruiter hiring recommendations can be predicted based on the content of applicant résumés. However, the mechanisms underlying the links between résumé contents and hiring recommendations remain unclear. The present study extends previous research by examining the mediating roles of recruiters' multi‐faceted fit perceptions in a field setting. Data were collected from 216 organisational recruiters who participated in campus recruitment at seven universities in Taiwan. The results showed that applicant work experience and educational background increased recruiter hiring recommendations through recruiter perceived person–job (P–J) fit. In addition, applicant work experience predicted recruiter perceived person–organisation (P–O) fit, which in turn enhanced recruiter hiring recommendations.     

Psychological Flexibility at Work and Employees' Proactive Work Behaviour: Cross‐Level Moderating Role of Leader Need for Structure

How to promote employees to be proactive behaviourally is a significant issue in the literature because it would benefit organisations in several ways. Drawing on the acceptance and commitment model, we proposed a new antecedent, psychological flexibility that might contribute to employees' proactive work behaviour. Furthermore, we investigated how the contextual role of supervisor need for structure exhibits a cross‐level moderating effect on the relationship between employee psychological flexibility at work and proactive work behaviour based on interactionism. Data from 241 full‐time employees and their corresponding 45 managers indicated that employee psychological flexibility was positively associated with proactive work behaviour. More importantly, the supervisor need for structure played a moderating role, suggesting that employees would demonstrate greater proactive work behaviour especially when the supervisors have a high need for structure. Implications for psychological flexibility, proactivity, and person‐situation interactional research are discussed.     

Rawlsian Civic Education: Political not Minimal

abstract In Political Liberalism and later work John Rawls has recast his theory of justice as fairness in political terms. In order to illustrate the advantages of a liberal political approach to justice over liberal non‐political ones, Rawls discusses what kind of education might be required for future citizens of pluralistic and democratic societies. He advocates a rather minimal conception of civic education that he claims to derive from political liberalism. One group of authors has sided with Rawls’ political perspective and educational proposal, holding that a political approach and educational requirements that are not too demanding would have the advantage of being acceptable to a wide range of citizens with different religious, moral and philosophical perspectives. A second group of authors have criticized Rawls’ educational recommendations, holding that the production of a just society composed of reasonable citizens requires a more demanding civic education and, hence, that the political approach is not viable. The present paper argues that both groups are only partially right, and that there is a third way to understand civic education in Rawlsian terms, a way that is political but not minimal.     

Children and adults both see ‘pirates’ in ‘parties’: letter‐position effects for developing readers and skilled adult readers

Developing readers often make anagrammatical errors (e.g. misreading pirates as parties), suggesting they use letter position flexibly during word recognition. However, while it is widely assumed that the occurrence of these errors decreases with increases in reading skill, empirical evidence to support this distinction is lacking. Accordingly, we compared the performance of developing child readers (aged 8–10 years) against the end‐state performance of skilled adult readers in a timed naming task, employing anagrams used previously in this area of research. Moreover, to explore the use of letter position by developing readers and skilled adult readers more fully, we used anagrams which, to form another word, required letter transpositions over only interior letter positions, or both interior and exterior letter positions. The patterns of effects across these two anagram types for the two groups of readers were very similar. In particular, both groups showed similarly slowed response times (and developing readers increased errors) for anagrams requiring only interior letter transpositions but not for anagrams that required exterior letter transpositions. This similarity in the naming performance of developing readers and skilled adult readers suggests that the end‐state skilled use of letter position is established earlier during reading development than is widely assumed.     

Statistical analysis of fuzzy-set data from neuronal networks

In this study, we describe the process of transforming neuron polarization values that meet the assumptions of ratio data into ordinal data. This is a crisp-to-fuzzy set transformation. A computerized simulation of the application of this process is discussed and nonparametric methods of analyzing fuzzy-set data are presented.     

Depressed mood and environmental mastery as potential pathways linking family relationship quality and disease self-management for African Americans with hypertension

African Americans are at significantly greater risk of hypertension and worse cardiovascular outcomes than other racialized groups, yet hypertension intervention effects remain limited. Thus, it is necessary to understand the potential mechanisms whereby interventions may be more effectively targeted to improve health. Supported by prior research evidence and guided by the Biobehavioral Family Model, this study examined associations between family relationship quality, psychological wellbeing, and self-management behaviors for African Americans with hypertension. Data were pooled from three Midlife Development in the U.S. projects, resulting in a sample of 317 African Americans (63.4% female, M_age = 53.32) with self-reported high blood pressure in the past 12 months. We tested four cross-sectional multiple mediator models, with depressed mood and environmental mastery mediating associations between family strain and exercise, smoking, problematic alcohol use, and stress-eating. Environmental mastery mediated the association between greater family strain and decreased odds of achieving recommended exercise levels; greater odds of reporting problematic alcohol use; and greater stress-eating. Though family strain was associated with depressed mood in each model, this variable did not serve as an indirect pathway to self-management behaviors. Family strain, and the potential pathway identified via environmental mastery, may be a meaningful predictor of disease self-management for African Americans with hypertension. Longitudinal studies are needed to examine directionality and to support intervention trials for improving self-management and hypertension outcomes.     

On the longevity of behavioral interventions for challenging behavior

The capacity for a treatment to maintain its effects over time may be the most critical component of behavioral interventions for challenging behavior as treatments that fail to persist are likely to be of little value to society. We reviewed the quality and quantity of different types of post-intervention data for the treatment of challenging behavior in studies published over the last 7 years. We found that for the majority of participants at least one measure of maintenance, fading, or follow-up was reported but with limited information regarding the quality of those measures. Reports of secondary variables related to post-intervention data (e.g., latency to measurement) were also uncommon. We discuss possible explanations for the paucity of post-intervention data, barriers to obtaining post-intervention data, strategies for obtaining these data, and implications for the external validity of behavioral interventions for challenging behavior. We provide recommendations for increasing the probability that post-intervention data are included in applied research on challenging behavior.     

The effect of the two-chair dialogue intervention on self-compassion - adding an emotional evocative component to a basic Rogerian condition

Objective

How people relate to themselves when facing distress or failure influences general psychological well-being and vulnerability to psychological disorders. The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of an emotionally evocative intervention on self-compassion.

Methods

The data were retrieved from a larger study of Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) utilising a multiple baseline design comparing two treatment phases. The baseline phase consisted of 5, 7 or 9 therapy sessions where the therapist solely adhered to Rogerian relational conditions, as prescribed in EFT. A two-chair dialogue intervention was then added for five sessions. The sample consisted of 18 self-critical clients with clinically significant symptoms of depression and/or anxiety. The “Self-Compassion Scale” (SCS) was administered pre, mid and post therapy.

Results

The baseline phase did not lead to significant changes in self-compassion. However, the addition of the two-chair dialogue was associated with a significant increase in self-compassion. This increase was due to reductions in the negative subscales, especially the isolation subscale.

Conclusion

The emotionally evocative two-chair dialogue was associated with a significant change in self-to-self relating, compared to relational conditions alone. The two-chair dialogue, thus, seems to be a promising intervention for promoting healthier self-to-self relating.     

Tightness shifts in the U.S. and China: Implications of tightening or loosening norms during the coronavirus pandemic

Emergent research identifies cultural tightness-looseness as an important factor for understanding cross-national outcome differences during the coronavirus pandemic. Because perceived tightness-looseness can be measured as an individual-level difference rather than a nation-level difference, and because tightness-looseness may shift during large-scale crises, we investigated whether such shifts occurred early in the coronavirus pandemic in both China (a relatively tight nation, n = 3642) and the U.S. (a relatively loose nation, n = 3583) across three cohorts. Tightness increased across cohorts in China and reduced across cohorts in the U.S. These changes transmitted corresponding indirect effects whereby compliance and institutional trust (scientific and government) about the pandemic were increased in China across cohorts, but decreased in the U.S. across cohorts. These patterns extend advice that national governments can increase compliance and trust via “tightening” by cautioning against norm-setters signaling the reverse (that norms about compliance are loose) given the outcomes observed in the U.S. samples.