MOR is a reliable tool for measuring non-cognitive attributes in medical school candidates. It has high content and face validity. Furthermore, its implementation conveys the importance of maintaining humanist characteristics in the medical profession to students and faculty staff.

Many factors contribute to status quo perseverance, some justifiable, some not. We focus on an advantage accruing to a policy from just calling it status quo, which is that the mere label makes it look better. When comparing pros and cons of competing policies, labeling one "status quo" sets it up as the reference point with respect to which pros and cons are potentially either losses or gains. Since "losses loom larger than gains", pros one has weigh more than pros one does not, while the reverse holds for cons, thereby tilting the overall balance of pros and cons in favor of the policy designated as status quo. Direct evidence for this account is presented by showing that: (a) A policy's attractiveness increases when it is labeled status quo; (b) A policy's attractiveness is predictable from its pros and cons; and (c) The magnitude of status quo enhancement is predictable from a quantitative model that measures aversion to potential losses (accruing to having it replaced). Alternative processes, which may be valid in other paradigms, are obviated in the present one.

CONTEXT Assessment centres used in evaluating the non-cognitive attributes of medical school candidates must generate scores that reflect as accurate a measurement as possible of these attributes. Thus far, reliability coefficients for such centres have been based on limited samples and individual administrations, without reference to the error of variance that may result from retesting, or from the existence of multiple centres designed to measure the same attributes. METHODSThe National Institute for Testing and Evaluation in Israel has developed and administered two assessment centres: MOR is used by two medical schools and one dental school, and MIRKAM by another medical school. Each centre comprises eight or nine behavioural stations, a standardised biographical questionnaire, and a judgement and decision-making questionnaire. We calculated generalisability coefficients for each centre's eight or nine stations by year, composite reliability coefficients for the overall assessment centres, test-retest correlation coefficients for repeaters, and a correlation coefficient between the centres. DISCUSSION The minimal reliability desirable for high-stakes decision making (0.80) was obtained only for 14 or 15 stations with questionnaires. Nevertheless, the values obtained are considerably higher than reliability coefficients for single interviews. The questionnaires contribute significantly to the accuracy of the measurement. These reliability measures constitute an upper threshold for measures of validity.

Evidence, anecdotal and scientific, suggests that people treat (or are affected by) products of prestigious sources differently than those of less prestigious, or of anonymous, sources. The “products” which are the focus of the present study are poems, and the “sources” are the poets. We explore the manner in which the poet’s name affects the experience of reading a poem. Study 1 establishes the effect we wish to address: a poet’s reputation enhances the evaluation of a poem. Study 2 asks whether it is only the reported evaluation of the poem that is enhanced by the poet’s name (as was the case for The Emperor’s New Clothes) or the enhancement is genuine and unaware. Finding for the latter, Study 3 explores whether the poet’s name changes the reader’s experience of it, so that in a sense one is reading a “different” poem. We conclude that it is not so much that the attributed poem really differs from the unattributed poem, as that it is just ineffably better. The name of a highly regarded poet seems to prime quality, and the poem becomes somehow better. This is a more subtle bias than the deliberate one rejected in Study 2, but it is a bias nonetheless. Ethical implications of this kind of effect are discussed.

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The study provides important evidence for the validity of the MMI. Additional studies are required to reevaluate the predicted validity of the MMI.

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