Personnel selection involves exchanges of information between job market actors (applicants and organizations). These actors do not have an incentive to exchange accurate information about their ability and commitment to the employment relationship unless it is to their advantage. This state of affairs explains numerous phenomena in personnel selection (e.g., faking). Signaling theory describes a mechanism by which parties with partly conflicting interests (and thus an incentive for deception) can nevertheless exchange accurate information. We apply signaling theory to personnel selection, distinguishing between adaptive relationships between applicants and organizations, among applicants, and among organizations. In each case, repeated adaptations and counteradaptations between actors can lead to situations of equilibrium or escalation (arms races). We show that viewing personnel selection as a network of adaptive relationships among job market actors enables an understanding of both classic and underexplored micro- and macro-level selection phenomena and their dynamic interactions.
Following the recent avian influenza and pandemic (H1N1) 2009 outbreaks, public trust in medical and political authorities is emerging as a new predictor of compliance with officially recommended protection measures. In a two-wave longitudinal survey of adults in French-speaking Switzerland, trust in medical organizations longitudinally predicted actual vaccination status 6 months later, during the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 vaccination campaign. No other variables explained significant amounts of variance. Trust in medical organizations also predicted perceived efficacy of officially recommended protection measures (getting vaccinated, washing hands, wearing a mask, sneezing into the elbow), as did beliefs about health issues (perceived vulnerability to disease, threat perceptions). These findings show that in the case of emerging infectious diseases, actual behavior and perceived efficacy of protection measures may have different antecedents. Moreover, they suggest that public trust is a crucial determinant of vaccination behavior and underscore the practical importance of managing trust in disease prevention campaigns.
In the wake of major events, whether these be terrorist attacks 1 , global pandemics such as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak 2,3 or presidential elections 4 , conspiracy theories predictably surge across the Internet. Conspiracy theories, defined as beliefs that a group of actors are colluding in secret to reach a malevolent goal 5,6 , are common across times, cultures and populations 7,8 . Accumulating research has revealed that a reliable predictor of belief in one conspiracy theory is belief in another conspiracy theory 1,[9][10][11] . It therefore appears that people differ in their predisposition to explain events as conspiracies, which is sometimes referred to as 'conspiracy mentality' or the 'conspiracy mindset' [12][13][14] . The conspiracy mindset is closely associated with belief in a wide range of existing specific conspiracy theories, as well as the endorsement of conspiracy theories created by researchers for experimental purposes 15 . It differs from concrete conspiracy beliefs in that it taps into the general propensity to suspect that conspiracies are at play, uncontaminated by concrete events, actors or contexts.The political realm in particular is one key area where conspiracy beliefs are salient and thriving 16 . For instance, conspiracy theories are intrinsically connected to the rhetoric of populist political leaders who arguably exploit conspiracy theories for strategic reasons 17,18 . Importantly, citizens' belief in conspiracy theories predicts voting behaviour and intentions 19,20 and non-normative political action 21,22 . Traditionally, conspiracy beliefs have been associated with authoritarian worldviews 23,24 , as exemplified by positive relations between conspiracy beliefs and right-wing authoritarianism [25][26][27] . Stripping a politically right-wing stance from the surplus meaning of authoritarianism (and its strong connection to traditions and authorities), many studies have found a linear relationship between self-reported political orientation and conspiracy endorsement 16,28,29 , suggesting that conspiracy beliefs are more common at the political right than at the political left [30][31][32][33] .However, in contrast to this simple, linear relation, numerous findings point to a curvilinear relation between political orientation
ABSTRACT-Pointing was shown to focus attention in dialogue. Pairs of people talked and gestured to identify targets from arrays visible to both of them. Arrays were located at five distances: arm length (0 cm), 25 cm, 50 cm, 75 cm, and 100 cm. Some pairs could point; others could not. People relied more on pointing and less on language as distance decreased. Pointing especially suppressed descriptions of target location, suggesting that it was used to focus attention on a spatial region.The ease of dialogue belies the close coordination of participants' actions that takes place. People interacting coordinate turns (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), eye gaze (Argyle & Cook, 1976), and other behaviors. But one of the most important things they coordinate is attention. People have a joint focus of attention if they are attending to the same object and are mutually aware of it (Baron-Cohen, 1995;Clark & Marshall, 1981).Joint attention simplifies referring by circumscribing a subdomain, either within discourse (Brennan, 1995;Grosz & Sidner, 1986) or within shared visual space. In a collaborative building task (Beun & Cremers, 1998), pairs used assumptions about joint visual attention to reduce collaborative effort. Speakers produced referring utterances (e.g., ''the red block'') that were ambiguous with respect to the task domain, but the utterances were effective because they were unambiguous with respect to the subdomain within attentional focus. Eyetracking studies show that people use joint-attention assumptions to rapidly circumscribe subdomains (Brown-Schmidt, Campana, & Tanenhaus, 2002;Velichkovsky, 1995). Joint attention is an important conversational resource.The present study investigated whether pointing is used to coordinate attention. Several authors have suggested it does (Buchler, 1940;Clark, 2003), but no experiments have directly addressed this question. Pointing gestures are closely coordinated with language (Marslen-Wilson, Levy, & Tyler, 1982) and processed automatically (Langton & Bruce, 2000). Inaccuracy in detection of the referents of pointing (Butterworth & Itakura, 2000) suggests that pointing shifts attention into the visual periphery, rather than identifying referents. In conversation, pointing marks initial reference to objects (Levy & McNeill, 1992) But pointing is often considered ambiguous (Pechmann & Deutsch, 1982;Schmidt, 1999), on the basis of the assumption that it is used mainly to locate a referent precisely. Standard accounts of deixis (Lyons, 1981) make this assumption. And it is embodied in study designs that involve selecting targets from a small number of alternatives (O'Neill & Topolovec, 2001;Thompson & Massaro, 1986). Such designs preclude the study of pointing as a device for achieving joint attention.An alternative is that pointing is neither more nor less ambiguous than language. Rather, it is part of a composite signal combining both linguistic and gestural methods of reference (Bavelas & Chovil, 2000;Clark, 1996;Engle, 1998;McNeill, 1985;Schmauks, 1991). Differe...
The ‘behavioural immune system’ is composed of mechanisms that evolved as a means of facilitating behaviours that minimized infection risk and enhanced fitness. Recent empirical research on human populations suggests that these mechanisms have unique consequences for many aspects of human sociality—including sexual attitudes, gregariousness, xenophobia, conformity to majority opinion and conservative sociopolitical attitudes. Throughout much of human evolutionary history, these consequences may have had beneficial health implications; but health implications in modern human societies remain unclear. This article summarizes pertinent ways in which modern human societies are similar to and different from the ecologies within which the behavioural immune system evolved. By attending to these similarities and differences, we identify a set of plausible implications—both positive and negative—that the behavioural immune system may have on health outcomes in contemporary human contexts. We discuss both individual-level infection risk and population-level epidemiological outcomes. We also discuss a variety of additional implications, including compliance with public health policies, the adoption of novel therapeutic interventions and actual immunological functioning. Research on the behavioural immune system, and its implications in contemporary human societies, can provide unique insights into relationships between fitness, sociality and health.
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