Economic predictors of differences in interview faking between countries : economic inequality matters, not the state of economy

Many companies recruit employees from different parts of the globe, and faking behavior by potential employees is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It seems that applicants from some countries are more prone to faking compared to others, but the reasons for these differences are largely unexplored. This study relates country-level economic variables to faking behavior in hiring processes. In a cross-national study across 20 countries, participants (N = 3839) reported their faking behavior in their last job interview. This study used the random response technique (RRT) to ensure participants anonymity and to foster honest answers regarding faking behavior. Results indicate that general economic indicators (gross domestic product per capita [GDP] and unemployment rate) show negligible correlations with faking across the countries, whereas economic inequality is positively related to the extent of applicant faking to a substantial extent. These findings imply that people are sensitive to inequality within countries and that inequality relates to faking, because inequality might actuate other psychological processes (e.g., envy) which in turn increase the probability for unethical behavior in many forms

Human Gamma Oscillations during Slow Wave Sleep

Neocortical local field potentials have shown that gamma oscillations occur spontaneously during slow-wave sleep (SWS). At the macroscopic EEG level in the human brain, no evidences were reported so far. In this study, by using simultaneous scalp and intracranial EEG recordings in 20 epileptic subjects, we examined gamma oscillations in cerebral cortex during SWS. We report that gamma oscillations in low (30–50 Hz) and high (60–120 Hz) frequency bands recurrently emerged in all investigated regions and their amplitudes coincided with specific phases of the cortical slow wave. In most of the cases, multiple oscillatory bursts in different frequency bands from 30 to 120 Hz were correlated with positive peaks of scalp slow waves (“IN-phase” pattern), confirming previous animal findings. In addition, we report another gamma pattern that appears preferentially during the negative phase of the slow wave (“ANTI-phase” pattern). This new pattern presented dominant peaks in the high gamma range and was preferentially expressed in the temporal cortex. Finally, we found that the spatial coherence between cortical sites exhibiting gamma activities was local and fell off quickly when computed between distant sites. Overall, these results provide the first human evidences that gamma oscillations can be observed in macroscopic EEG recordings during sleep. They support the concept that these high-frequency activities might be associated with phasic increases of neural activity during slow oscillations. Such patterned activity in the sleeping brain could play a role in off-line processing of cortical networks

Kulturelle Unterschiede im Faking-Verhalten

Due to globalization, organizations face the challenges of international personnel selection. Systematic cross-cultural differences in applicants’ behavior are a threat for the utility and fairness of personnel selection. This dissertation is the first to examine on a large scale how countries’ cultural characteristics can explain cross-cultural differences in faking behavior. Across three large-scale studies, meaningful country-level relationships between culture and faking were identified. Positive attitudes toward faking in job interviews, actual faking on a personality test, and academic faking are subject to systematic cross-cultural differences. Overall, cultural in-group collectivism and uncertainty avoidance were revealed as especially relevant. The empirical results are discussed in the light of research on cross-cultural as well as applied psychology. Implications and avenues for future research are carefully explicated.Aufgrund von Globalisierung werden Organisationen mit Herausforderungen internationaler Personalauswahl konfrontiert. Systematische kulturelle Unterschiede im Bewerberverhalten sind eine Bedrohung für den Nutzen und die Fairness von Personalauswahl. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird zum ersten Mal großmaßstäblich im großen Maßstab untersucht, inwiefern kulturelle Ländermerkmale Unterschiede im Faking-Verhalten erklären können. In drei umfangreichen Studien, werden bedeutsame Zusammenhänge auf Länderebene zwischen Kultur und Faking identifiziert. Es zeigen sich systematische kulturelle Unterschiede in positiven Einstellungen zu Faking in Jobinterviews, in tatsächlichem Faking-Verhalten und in akademischem Faking. Kultureller In-Group Collectivism und Uncertainty Avoidance erwiesen sich als besonders bedeutsam. Die empirischen Ergebnisse werden diskutiert vor dem Hintergrund von Forschung zu kulturvergleichender sowie angewandter Psychologie. Implikationen und mögliche zukünftige Forschung werden sorgfältig dargelegt

Hierarchical nesting of slow oscillations, spindles and ripples in the human hippocampus during sleep

Contains fulltext : 149191.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)During systems-level consolidation, mnemonic representations initially reliant on the hippocampus are thought to migrate to neocortical sites for more permanent storage, with an eminent role of sleep for facilitating this information transfer. Mechanistically, consolidation processes have been hypothesized to rely on systematic interactions between the three cardinal neuronal oscillations characterizing non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Under global control of de- and hyperpolarizing slow oscillations (SOs), sleep spindles may cluster hippocampal ripples for a precisely timed transfer of local information to the neocortex. We used direct intracranial electroencephalogram recordings from human epilepsy patients during natural sleep to test the assumption that SOs, spindles and ripples are functionally coupled in the hippocampus. Employing cross-frequency phase-amplitude coupling analyses, we found that spindles were modulated by the up-state of SOs. Notably, spindles were found to in turn cluster ripples in their troughs, providing fine-tuned temporal frames for the hypothesized transfer of hippocampal memory traces