Whom would you rather help: an acquaintance not responsible for her plight or a responsible sibling?

When 2 persons--an acquaintance who could not have avoided a problem and a close relative who is responsible for her own plight--ask for help, attribution theory and sociobiology conflict about who will receive help. Attribution theorists assume that the nonresponsible acquaintance will be supported, but sociobiologists argue that the responsible sibling will receive help. The authors tested the hypothesis that characteristics of the situation affect which theory better predicts help giving. The results confirmed that in situations that do not affect life and death, a nonresponsible acquaintance would receive more help than a responsible sibling. But in life-or-death situations, inasmuch as the reproductive fitness of the person in need is in danger, a responsible sibling would be supported more than a nonresponsible acquaintance.     

Boys' and girls' perceptions of parental discipline in transgression situations

Children's perceptions of parental discipline methods and their perceptions of child gender differences in their parents' choices of discipline methods were assessed. One hundred and seventy 8‐year‐old children (78 boys, 92 girls) in two‐parent families were asked about disciplinary behaviour in five transgression situations. The results pointed to gender differences when the children were talking about themselves. Boys believed that they would receive more physical punishment, milder requests and less induction than girls. Children also indicated that their parents would choose a different response if they (themselves) were of the other sex. Both boys and girls reported that their parents would treat boys more severely than they would girls. The results showed that the responses of those children with a sibling of the other sex did not reveal any gender‐differentiated experience of their parents' discipline strategies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Moral Status of Nonresponsible Threats

Most people believe that it is permissible to kill a nonresponsible threat, or someone who threatens one's life without exercising agency. Defenders of this view must show that there is a morally relevant difference between nonresponsible threats and innocent bystanders. Some philosophers, including Jonathan Quong and Helen Frowe, have attempted to do this by arguing that one who kills a bystander takes advantage of another person, while one who kills a threat does not. In this paper, I show that the proposals offered by Quong and Frowe have unacceptable implications. I then argue that those who claim that nonresponsible threats may be killed face a dilemma generated by the possibility of a stationary threat, or someone who endangers another person's life without moving. Unless we arbitrarily distinguish between stationary and moving nonresponsible threats, it is unclear how the permission to kill nonresponsible threats is to be explicated. I conclude that nonresponsible threats are not legitimate targets of self‐defence.     

Personality Traits and Friendship Formation in Adolescent Girls

Summary

The present experiment demonstrated that Ss led to believe that an external cause is responsible for their arousal at seeing a woman in pain will be less likely to help her than those attributing their arousal to sympathy for her. Ten men and 10 women were told that exposure to an aversive noise would produce symptoms of physiological arousal; another 10 men and 10 women were told that irrelevant symptoms might occur. Those expecting irrelevant symptoms from noise bombardment helped a woman with a hurt knee significantly more than those expecting the noise to cause symptoms typical of arousal; these results provided support for both Schachter's cognitive attribution theory of emotion and Aronfreed's empathy theory of altruism.     

The Effect of Social and Situational Factors on the Intended Response to Aggression Among Adolescents

ABSTRACT

In this study, I explored intended response to aggression among adolescents. I drew hypotheses from social identity theory, cost/benefit considerations, and social information processing model. I asked 217 Jewish and Muslim male adolescents in this study to assess their intended use of aggression in 12 hypothetical conflict situations (vignettes), in which I manipulated the opponent's religion, gender, acquaintance, and severity of aggression. I mainly found that male adolescents respond to aggression by same-religion opponents more moderately than to cross-religion aggression; their response is more moderate to cross-gender aggression than to same-gender aggression; response is more moderate to the aggression of familiar opponents than to that of unfamiliar ones; and response is less severe toward moderate than toward severe aggression.     

Reactions to receiving expected and unexpected help from a person who violates or does not violate a norm

Different factors may affect reciprocity and attraction to an aid-giver. Sixty white South African high school students participated in a “record contest”. Hints provided by the quizmaster enabled them to win a prize. His help was expected or unexpected and, in providing this help, the quizmaster either did or did not violate a specific norm against doing so. It was predicted that recipients of unexpected help would display more reciprocity than recipients of expected help, but that the aid-giver would be derogated only when he behaved in both an unexpected and counternormative way and that, in general, attraction and reciprocity would be unrelated. These hypotheses were supported. They suggest that reciprocity is normally not mediated by attraction and that neither expectancy violation nor counternormative behavior will be itself produce derogation of an aid-giver. They further suggest recipients of unexpected help probably feel more obliged to repay an aid-giver than do recipients of expected help.     

Biased information processing in the escalation paradigm: information search and information evaluation as potential mediators of escalating commitment

Escalation of commitment denotes decision makers' increased reinvestment of resources in a losing course of action. Despite the relevance of this topic, little is known about how information is processed in escalation situations, that is, whether decision makers who receive negative outcome feedback on their initial decision search for and/or process information biasedly and whether these biases contribute to escalating commitment. Contrary to a widely cited study by E. J. Conlon and J. M. Parks (1987), in 3 experiments, the authors found that biases do not occur on the level of information search. Neither in a direct replication and extension of the original study with largely increased test power (Experiment 1) nor under methodologically improved conditions (Experiments 2 and 3) did decision makers responsible for failure differ from nonresponsible decision makers with regards to information search, and no selective search for information supporting the initial decision or voting for further reinvestment was observed. However, Experiments 3 and 4 show that the evaluation of the previously sought information is biased among participants who were responsible for initiating the course of action. Mediation analyses show that this evaluation bias in favor of reinvestment partially mediated the responsibility effect on escalation of commitment.     

The Heart on the Sleeve and the Secret Self: Estimations of Hidden Emotion in Self and Acquaintances

ABSTRACT This research investigated how estimations of subjectively experienced emotion and estimations of displayed emotion varied with the familiarity of the target person Subjects imagined themselves, a close friend, a moderate friend, or a casual acquaintance in a series of brief affect-eliciting situations, and then estimated the degree to which the designated person would both feel and display specific emotions Subjects consistently estimated that people, including themselves, would feel more emotion than they displayed This discrepancy between experienced feeling and displayed feeling increased as a linear function of familiarity with the person The amount of undisplayed affect–the estimated “secret self”–was generally smallest for a casual acquaintance, greater for a moderate friend, still greater for a close friend, and greatest of all for the self The magnitude of this familiarity effect, however, varied with the social desirability of the emotion If an emotion was socially desirable, subjects estimated that familiar persons would both feel the emotion more and display it more than less familiar others would If an emotion was socially undesirable, subjects also estimated that familiar others would feel it more than unfamiliar others would However, they estimated that familiar and less familiar others would display socially undesirable emotions to about the same degree, and estimated that they themselves would display these emotions significantly less than others Consequently, although subjects always perceived     

Constructing a theory of the triple typology: Some (second) thoughts on nomothetic and idiographic approaches to personality

Our fundamental scientific task is to convert observations of particular persons behaving in particular ways in particular situations into assertions that certain kinds of persons will behave in certain kinds of ways in certain kinds of situations, that is, to construct triple typologies or equivalence classes—of persons, of behaviors, and of situations—and to fashion theories of personality that relate these equivalence classes to one another. It is argued that the different approaches to the study of personality are distinguished from one another not by whether they are idiographic or nomothetic but by the strategies they employ for constructing—or ignoring—each of these three types of equivalence classes. The likely attributes of a successful interactional theory of personality—one that would embrace the entire triple typology—are proposed and discussed.     

Social reactions to adult crying: the help-soliciting function of tears

The authors investigated how people believe they respond to crying individuals. Participants (N = 530) read 6 vignettes describing situations in which they encountered a person who either cried or did not cry. Participants reported they would give more emotional support to and express less negative affect toward a crying person than a noncrying person. However, regression analyses revealed that participants judged a crying person less positively than a noncrying person and felt more negative feelings in the presence of a crying person than a noncrying person. The valence of the situation strongly moderated these reactions. Overall, results support the theory that crying is an attachment behavior designed to elicit help from others.     

Children's Other-Oriented Behaviors in Distress Situations

Children’s other-oriented behaviors in distress situations, when observed, appear to be different depending on the kind of distress situations. The authors investigated developmental differences in children’s other-oriented behaviors by comparing two distress situations: participant-caused/other-victim and other-caused/participant-victim situations. The kinds of other-oriented behaviors younger and older children engaged in were observed under an experimental setting—two tasks that involved accidentally collapsing the object the other constructed. The results showed that other-oriented behaviors were observed irrespective of age and situations. However, the developmental changes of these behaviors were different between the two situations: Older children showed more kinds of other-oriented behaviors than younger children did in the participant-caused situation, whereas no differences between ages were observed in the participant-victim situation. Other-oriented behaviors toward the victim when the participants were at fault appeared to develop during the preschool years, whereas other-oriented behaviors toward those responsible for participants’ distress appeared to be difficult for preschoolers. The developmental origin of and changes in other-oriented behaviors in cases when children are victims should be further investigated, in additional age groups, as should the influence of cultural context.     

The utility of modern theories of intergroup bias for research on antecedents to team identification

ObjectivesMuch of the literature on team identification has focused on assessing outcomes to the construct rather than on motives for its development and maintenance. This article comments on research and theorising in social psychology that can contribute to an understanding of motives for team identification.DesignA review and comment on the application of theories of intergroup bias to the study of team identification.MethodFour modern theories of intergroup bias—social identity theory, optimal distinctiveness theory, uncertainty-identity theory, and terror management theory—are overviewed. Potential applications of these theories to future research on motives for team identification are also offered.ResultsIt is argued that the four theories share similar tenets with reference to motives for social identity. A programme of research that evaluates these motives in the context of sport team identification is offered.ConclusionsIt is hoped that this paper will stimulate research into precursors of team identification and that the findings from such research will help sport teams and governing bodies to promote or control certain types of spectator behaviour.     

Rivals without a cause? Relative performance feedback creates destructive competition despite aligned incentives

Whether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments.     

Downward mobility and Rawlsian justice

Technological and societal changes have made downward social and economic mobility a pressing issue in real-world politics. This article argues that a Rawlsian society would not provide any special protection against downward mobility, and would act rightly in declining to provide such protection. Special treatment for the downwardly mobile can be grounded neither in Rawls’s core principles—the basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle—nor in other aspects of Rawls’s theory (the concept of legitimate expectations, the idea of a life plan, the distinction between allocative and distributive justice, or the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory). Instead, a Rawlsian society is willing to sacrifice particular individuals’ ambitions and plans for the achievement of justice, and offers those who lose out from justified change no special solicitude over and above the general solicitude extended to all. Rather than guaranteeing the maintenance of any particular individual or group’s economic position, it provides all of its members—the upwardly mobile, the downwardly mobile, and the immobile—a form of security that is at once more generous and more limited: that they will receive the liberties, opportunities, and resources promised by the principles of justice.     

Treatment preference and acceptability: Epistemology and locus of control

Abstract

Treatment preference and acceptability were investigated in 397 female university students. Three audiovisual vignettes depicting a client and therapist discussing a body image disturbance problem were presented to subjects. Predictions were that subjects would prefer one of three therapy approaches—behavioral, cognitive—rational, or cognitive—constructivist—as a function of personal epistemology and locus of control. Overall, subjects rated the constructivist therapy approach more favorably than either the cognitive—rational or behavioral approach. Similarly, subjects evaluated the constructivist therapist more positively than either the rational or behavioral therapist. After degree of subject identification with the target problem was controlled, results indicated that matching subjects who had an external locus of control orientation to a behavioral or cognitive-rational therapist resulted in more favorable assessments of that therapist. Matching subjects who had an internal locus of control orientation to a constructivist therapist resulted in more positive assessments of that therapist. Implications for matching in clinical practice are discussed.     

Public attitudes toward—and identification of—cluttering and stuttering in Norway and Puerto Rico

PurposeThe study sought to compare public attitudes toward cluttering versus stuttering in Norway and Puerto Rico and to compare respondents’ identification of persons known with these fluency disorders.MethodAfter reading lay definitions of cluttering and stuttering, three samples of adults from Norway and three from Puerto Rico rated their attitudes toward cluttering and/or stuttering on modified versions of the POSHA-Cl (for cluttering) and POSHA-S (for stuttering). They also identified children and adults whom they knew who either or both manifested cluttering or stuttering.ResultsAttitudes toward cluttering were essentially unaffected by rating either cluttering only or combined cluttering and stuttering on the same questionnaire in both countries. The same was also true of stuttering. Attitudes were very similar toward both disorders although slightly less positive for cluttering. Norwegian attitudes toward both disorders were generally more positive than Puerto Rican attitudes. The average respondent identified slightly more than one fluency disorder, a higher percentage for stuttering than cluttering and higher for adults than children. Cluttering–stuttering was rarely identified.ConclusionGiven a lay definition, this study confirmed that adults from diverse cultures hold attitudes toward cluttering that are similar to—but somewhat less positive than—their attitudes toward stuttering. It also confirmed that adults can identify cluttering among people they know, although less commonly than stuttering. Design controls in this study assured that consideration of stuttering did not affect either the attitudes or identification results for cluttering.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to: (a) describe the effects—or lack thereof—of considerations of stuttering on attitudes toward cluttering; (b) describe differences in public identification of children and adults who either clutter or stutter; (c) describe differences between attitudes toward cluttering and stuttering in Norway and Puerto Rico.     

COLLEGE WOMEN'S FEARS AND PRECAUTIONARY BEHAVIORS RELATING TO ACQUAINTANCE RAPE AND STRANGER RAPE

Past research on women's fear of rape has focused on women's fears relating to stranger rape, even though most rapes are acquaintance rapes. In this study, 139 undergraduate women completed a questionnaire concerning their fears, precautionary behaviors, and beliefs relating to acquaintance and stranger rape. Women reported being more fearful of rape by strangers than by acquaintances, and they reported engaging in more precautionary behaviors because of fear of stranger rape than of acquaintance rape. When asked to self-generate situations in which they feared rape, they generated more situations in which they feared stranger rape than acquaintance rape. Paradoxically, they estimated that acquaintance rape was more common. Precautionary behaviors were best predicted by level of fear. A history of acquaintance rape had no effect on women's responses. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed.     

7岁儿童在助人情境中的行为表现及其与父母教养方式的关系

在实验室结构观察中穿插3个助人情境,观察119名7岁儿童(男42,女77)的行为表现,并考察其三种行为与父母教养方式的关系。结果发现:7岁儿童在三种情境中的助人行为无显著的性别差异,在"搬桌子"和"砸脚"情境中男孩的游戏行为显著多于女孩,观望行为显著少于女孩。儿童的行为表现与同性别的家长教养方式关系更强。     

Perceived responsibility for disease onset affects HIV/AIDS Education

Abstract

Ninety-nine participants were assigned to one of three experimental conditions in which they viewed an AIDS education videotape that systematically manipulated whether or not the educator would be perceived as responsible for HIV infection. Participants were administered pre and post-video affect measures, and an HlV/AIDS knowledge test after watching the video. Participants who viewed the speaker who acquired HIV through a blood transfusion (perceived not responsible) and those who viewed the speaker who did not reveal mode of acquisition (control) performed significantly better on the knowledge test compared to those who viewed the speaker who acquired HIV through unprotected sexual inttrcourse (perceived responsible). In addition. male participants in the perceived responsible condition reported a significant increase in sensation-sceking after viewing the video. Finally, females experienced a significantly greater increase in anxiety as a result of seeing the video than did males. Implications of these tindings for the design and implmentation of AIDS education programs were discussed.     

Assertiveness and cognitive processing in interpersonal situations

This study examined social skills components that precede the delivery of a skilled overt interpersonal response. Using a cognitive-behavioral systems approach to assertiveness, a task analysis of how women receive and process information in interpersonal situations requiring an assertive response to men was performed. Forty women were assigned to high- or low-assertive groups based on their Rathus Assertiveness Schedule scores. In small group sessions, each woman viewed four videotaped problem situations requiring an assertive response to both pleasant and angry males. After viewing each scene, each woman completed three questionnaires: (a) receiving information, (b) processing-generation of alternatives and decision making, and (c) processing-generation of consequences. High- and low-assertive participants were found to differ in their evaluation of consequences, for response options, particularly how a male would likely to behave to them. High-assertive participants were judged to evaluate more correctly than low-assertive participants the likely behavior of males if response options were implemented. All participants generated more complex alternatives and more assertive responses to situations involving an angry male as compared to a pleasant male. No differences were found between groups in their ability to receive information accurately. Correlational results were supportive of a cognitive-behavioral systems approach of assertion, that is, the emission of a skilled response depends on a chain of preceding responses.Thanks are due to Vida Dyson and Lenard Jason for their comments on an early draft of this paper.