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Which Personality Traits Are Most Important to Employers?
While most employers evaluate job candidates on their skills and experience, many companies are increasingly using personality measures to determine whether a candidate is a good fit. According to a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, nearly 20% of employers say they use some type of personality test as part of the hiring process. In a new study published in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science, psychologists Paul R. Sackett and Philip T. Walmsley of the University of Minnesota analyzed several large data sets of hiring and job performance information to find out which personality attributes companies value most.
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Why Hands-Free Phones Are A Driving Danger
By now, we should all know that talking on a cell phone while driving is a bad idea. So far, 14 states have banned driving with a handheld phone, but researchers caution that hands-free phones may be just as dangerous and distracting. In 2011 the National Transportation Safety Board called for an end to all cellphone use in the car saying, "there is no difference between hand-helds and hands-free." New research from a team of psychological scientists from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada further confirms that even hands-free phone conversations can have a negative impact on driver performance.
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‘The New Statistics’ Video Tutorial Is Now Online
Leading scholars in psychology and other disciplines are advocating the use of the “new statistics” — effect sizes, confidence intervals, and meta-analysis — to help scientists enhance the way they conduct, analyze, and report their research. APS’s flagship journal, Psychological Science, has been inviting authors to use the new statistics as part of a comprehensive effort to enhance behavioral research. In a new online tutorial workshop, APS Fellow Geoff Cumming, an emeritus professor at La Trobe University in Australia and a leader in the new statistics movement, explains why these changes are necessary and suggests ways psychological scientists can implement them.
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Companies That Provide Job Training May Earn Greater Employee Loyalty
There’s one thing that the United States Congress can agree on: the potential of job training. This summer, in a rare act of bipartisanship, Congress approved new legislation focused on increased funding for job training for US workers. The hope is that providing workers with more job training opportunities will help kickstart the US economy by getting more unemployed Americans back in the workforce. Congress isn’t alone in seeing job training as a beneficial tool. A new study from a team of European researchers found that job training may also be a good strategy for companies looking to hire and retain top talent.
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Brain Wave May Be Used to Detect What People Have Seen, Recognize
Brain activity can be used to tell whether someone recognizes details they encountered in normal, daily life, which may have implications for criminal investigations and use in courtrooms.
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Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) Pilot Seeks Proposals
The Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) pilot seeks to support bold interdisciplinary projects in all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research. INSPIRE has no targeted themes and serves as a funding mechanism for proposalsthat are required both to be interdisciplinary and to exhibit potentially transformative research (IDR and PTR, respectively). Complementing existing NSF efforts, INSPIRE was created to handle proposals whose: Scientific advances lie outside the scope of a single program or discipline, such that substantial funding support from more than one program or discipline is necessary.
