Book reviews

Science as Salvation: a Modern Myth and its Meaning, Mary Midgley, 1994. London, Routledge x +256pp., Hb 04 15062713, £35; Pb 04 15107733, £8.99

Philosophical Naturalism, David Papineau, 1993 Oxford, Basil Blackwell xii +219pp., Hb 0631189025, £40; Pb 0631189033, £14.99

F. H. Bradley, Writings on Logic and Metaphysics, James W. Allard & Guy Stock (Eds), 1994. Oxford, Clarendon Press xv+357pp, Hb 0–198–24445–2, £40.00; Pb 0–198–24438‐X, £14.95

Invariance and Heuristics: Essays in Honour of Heinz Post, Steven French & Harmke Kamminga (Eds), 1993 Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 148 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht

Beyond Reason: Essays on the Philosophy of Paul Feyerabend, GONZALO MUNÉVAR (Ed.), 1991. Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers xxi + 535pp., hb, ISBN 0–7923–1272–4, £104.20

World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, Paul Horwich (Ed.), 1993. Cambridge, MA, Bradford Books/MIT Press vi + 356pp., pb, ISBN 0262581388, £14.95

Realism Rescued: How Scientific Progress is Possible, Jerold L. Aronson, Rom Harré & Eileen Cornell Way, 1994 London, Duckworth vii +213pp., Hb 0715624768, £30.00

Scientific Nihilism: On the Loss and Recovery of Physical Explanation, Daniel Athearn, 1994. State University of New York Press, Albany ix + 387pp., Hb ISBN 0–7914–1807–3, £52

Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, William Lane Craig & Quentin Smith, 1993. Oxford, Clarendon Press x +342pp., Hb 0198263481, £35; Pb 019826383X, £13.95     

Energetic, Informational, and Triggering Causes

There are three main kinds of causal connections between two events: the transfer of energy, the transfer of information and the triggering of the transfer of one of them or both. There are also other kinds of causal connections. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Is Personality Related to Assessment Center Performance? That Depends on How Old You Are

Despite compelling arguments that performance in the assessment center (AC) should be related to personality, past research has failed to demonstrate a consistent link between personality and AC performance. This study investigated whether managerial candidates’ age could be moderating, and thus obscuring, specific personality–AC performance relations. A large sample of managers (N = 371) participated in an AC and also completed the leadership relevant personality scales of achievement, dominance, and exhibition from the Personality Research Form-E (PRF-E; Jackson, D. N. (1984). Manual for the personality research form. Port Huron, MI: Research Psychologists Press). Consistent with hypotheses, age moderated the relations of dominance and exhibition with AC performance (p < .05), such that dominance and exhibition were more strongly related to AC performance for older as opposed to younger managers. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for the criterion-related and construct validity of ACs.

Ideal objects as models in science

Three main concepts of model in science are distinguished: (1) semantical model of a theory; (2) real model of another real thing; (3) mathematical model of a real thing. The last concept is the most important for the empirical sciences. The mathematical model is not identical with a theory: it is an ideal object which is directly described by the theory. We have here an intermediate level between reality and theory.     

Approximative truth of fact-statements,laws, and theories

Summary The paper is a sketch of a conception of approximative truth (or verisimilitude). The concepts of relative error, and degree of inadequacy are introduced. By means of them the concept of truth-content of quantitative facts-statements, laws and theories is defined. Laws and theories accepted in science have a high truth-content, i.e. they are approximately true.     

Use of Force and Home Safety: An Impact Assessment of Oklahoma’s Stand Your Ground Law

Subsequent to Florida’s enactment of the first castle doctrine law in 2005, no less than 22 additional states have passed some sort of legislation that allows civilians to use deadly force to protect their property from violent and nonviolent offenders. Given the pervasiveness of these legislative acts, it becomes increasing important to find out whether or not they achieve their manifest goal of reducing the amount of crime within a jurisdiction. Toward this end, we employ interrupted time series modeling techniques to assess the impact of Oklahoma’s Stand Your Ground Law on the number of residential and non-residential burglaries. The findings indicate that while the legislative initiative achieved its manifest goal of reducing the number of residential burglaries, it simultaneously had the unintended consequence of increasing the number of non-residential burglaries.     

Association between tryptophan hydroxylase 2 gene polymorphism and completed suicide

The association between suicide and a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs1386483) was examined in the recently identified tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) gene. Blood samples of 143 suicide victims and 162 age- and sex-matched controls were examined. The frequency of the TT genotype in the TPH2 polymorphism was higher in suicide victims than in controls (17.5% vs. 8.6%; p = 0.02), particularly in those with a history of repeated suicide attempts (53.3% vs. 8.6%; p < 0.0001). The examined TPH2 polymorphism was found to be associated with suicide. This genetic marker may be particularly important in understanding risk of multiple suicide attempts. Further analyses are needed to confirm these results.     

Relaxation‐induced cortisol changes within lunch breaks – an experimental longitudinal worksite field study

The aim of the worksite study presented here is to elucidate the cortisol reducing impact of different ways of spending lunch breaks. With the help of the so‐called silent room cabin concept it was possible to induce a relaxation opportunity that provides visual and territorial privacy. In order to evaluate its proposed effects, 14 call centre agents were distributed to either 20 min progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) or small talk break group. Participants were analysed in a controlled trial for a period of 6 months (1 day each month with five daily measurements at awakening, awakening +30 min, start of lunch break, end of lunch break, and bedtime) using saliva cortisol measurements as a stress indicator. Results indicated that only the PMR break reduced awakening, lunchtime, and bedtime cortisol response. Although further intervention research is required, our results suggest that post‐lunch PMR may sustainably reduce participants' cortisol states in real worksite settings.     

Choosing job-related personality traits: Developing valid personality-oriented job analysis

Although personality assessment has proven utility in pre-employment testing, little is known about how one should choose the personality traits that are most job-related. We developed a Personality-oriented Job Analysis (POJA) process for choosing job-related personality traits. We evaluated this process using 15 expert raters and approximately 330 medical students who each completed six different “jobs” in which their performance was evaluated. There was consistency across experts in POJA ratings of the job-relevance of personality traits. Also, POJA ratings of the personality traits correlated with the actual criterion-validity of the traits. Traits that received the highest POJA ratings tended to predict job performance. To our knowledge, this is the first published work to present evidence of the criterion-validity of POJA.     

The development of young children's memory strategies: First findings from the Würzburg Longitudinal Memory Study

This article reports the first findings of the Würzburg Longitudinal Memory Study, which focuses on children's verbal memory development, particularly the acquisition of memory strategies. At the beginning of the study, 100 kindergarten children (mean age 6 1/2 years) were tested on various memory measures, including sort-recall, text recall, short-term memory capacity, and metamemory. Assessments were repeated twice, with adjacent measurement points separated by 6-month time intervals. One major goal of the initial phase of the study concerned the exploration of the utilization deficiency phenomenon, which refers to the fact that young children who spontaneously use a memory strategy for the first time do not experience immediate memory benefits. Results obtained for the sort-recall task showed that, among those children who acquired a sorting strategy between Times 1 and 2, only a small proportion experienced the utilization deficiency problem. Additional analyses demonstrated that these few children also performed more poorly on the short-term memory tasks and the text recall measure when compared with the groups of efficient strategy users, suggesting that utilization deficiency is accompanied by a more general memory capacity problem. Overall, the findings revealed enormous variability in the early acquisition of memory strategies, indicating that the utilization deficiency phenomenon might not be as frequent as is assumed in the relevant literature.