SETTING CUTOFF SCORES: LEGAL, PSYCHOMETRIC, AND PROFESSIONAL ISSUES AND GUIDELINES

Cutoff scores are used in a variety of settings to help managers make personnel decisions. Although cutoff scores are used widely, information about their derivation and appropriate use is scattered in the legal, psychometric, and professional literatures. The purpose of this paper is to analyze critically and to integrate these diverse literatures, to summarize what is known and what is unknown about the use and misuse of cutoff scores. Alternative methods are examined in relation to legal precedents set by the courts, to psychometric principles, and to the various sets of professional guidelines. Directions for future research are suggested, and we conclude with a set of recommendations regarding acceptable professional practice in this area.     

Missouri: The History of a User Friendly Program

The University of Missouri-Columbia has been a major training ground in counseling psychology for more than 40 years. Its development and influence on the field are explored through the use of historical archives and comments from faculty, graduates, and APA site visit reports.     

Subliminal Self-Help Tapes and Academic Achievement: An Evaluation

Marketing claims of effectiveness in improving academic achievement through the use of commercially prepared subliminal audiotapes were investigated. Students enrolled in a career development class were randomly assigned to an active treatment group (n=25), an inactive treatment group (n=26), or a control group (n=22). Participants in the treatment group listened to tapes with subliminal affirmations masked by ocean waves. The inactive treatment group listened to placebo tapes with ocean waves but no subliminal messages. Dependent variables used were final examination scores from the class and current semester grade point average. No treatment differences on either dependent measure were found. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

What is Conscious Attention?

Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. William James Principles of Psychology     

A TRICKLE‐DOWN MODEL OF ABUSIVE SUPERVISION

Much of the abusive supervision research has focused on the supervisor–subordinate dyad when examining the effects of abusive supervision on employee outcomes. Using data from a large multisource field study, we extend this research by testing a trickle‐down model of abusive supervision across 3 hierarchical levels (i.e., managers, supervisors, and employees). Drawing on social learning theory and social information processing theory, we find general support for the study hypotheses. Specifically, we find that abusive manager behavior is positively related to abusive supervisor behavior, which in turn is positively related to work group interpersonal deviance. In addition, hostile climate moderates the relationship between abusive supervisor behavior and work group interpersonal deviance such that the relationship is stronger when hostile climate is high. The results provide support for our trickle‐down model in that abusive manager behavior was not only related to abusive supervisor behavior but was also associated with employees’ behavior 2 hierarchical levels below the manager.     

OPEN-MINDEDNESS

Abstract: Open-mindedness is typically at the top of any list of the intellectual or "epistemic" virtues. Yet, providing an account that simultaneously explains why open-mindedness is an epistemically valuable trait to have and how such a trait is compatible with full-blooded belief turns out to be a challenge. Building on the work of William Hare and Jonathan Adler, I defend a view of open-mindedness that meets this challenge. On this view, open-mindedness is primarily an attitude toward oneself as a believer, rather than toward any particular belief. To be open-minded is to be aware of one's fallibility as a believer, and to acknowledge the possibility that anytime one believes something, one could be wrong. In order to see that such an attitude is epistemically valuable even to an already virtuous agent, some details of the skills and habits of the open-minded agent are elucidated.     

Claiming Insufficient Knowledge

When speakers produce “I don't knows” in ordinary conversation, they claim insufficient knowledge about the matters at hand. Analysis of diverse conversational environments reveal, however, that speakers’claims nevertheless accomplish a variety of subtle actions. “I don't knows” may be strategically and ambiguously deployed across the following achievements: (a) marking uncertainty and concerns about next-positioned opinions, assessments, or troubles; (b) constructing neutral positions, designed to mitigate agreement and disagreement, by disattending and seeking closure on other-initiated topics (e.g., moving toward completing stories or working to avoid troubling issues); and (c) postponing or withholding acceptance of others’invited and requested actions. By examining moments where insufficient knowledge claims are contingently used as a resource, understandings of proactive yet delicately managed interactional conduct are forwarded. Such conduct is shown to be anchored in ordinary conversations but adapted in similar yet distinct ways within institutional interactions such as courtroom cross-examination.     

Process-governed changes in the temporal properties of ordered recalls

Pollio, H. R., Linder, W. & Foote, R. A. Process-governed changes in the temporal properties of ordered recalls. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 114–120.-Two different experiments were run in which Ss were given a large number of recall trials involving binary digits. Half of the Ss were taught a binary coding rule while half were not. As expected, Rule Ss showed consistently more extended recalls and tended to produce temporal output protocols mirroring the structural properties imposed by the coding rule. Present results were compared to results obtained from other free recall studies and led to the conclusion that human Ss when allowed by stimulus or task constraints always structure recall in whatever way they can and that the specific details of how recall is accomplished must always be specific to the particular combination of subjects, materials, and task constraints used in any given experiment.