The new issue of the Journal of Mundane Behavior is out, and has several worthwhile articles (and one impenetrable one which I’m not blinking). First, Validating Your Merit in Letters of Application for Employment: “We

find and describe five supporting sources that letter writers use to convince readers of their merit:

Self-report, important others, objective indicators, achievements, and previous roles and experiences.

The idea of introducing evidence to convince target people (e.g., potential employers) can be generalized

to any context in which actors seek to convince a judgmental audience about self-presentation claims.

This idea, which we label ‘self-validation,’ suggests that the ‘truth’ in self-presentation and in

applications for employment is not as clear as may be thought.” This could actually be useful in thinking about how to write these letters.