Interracial roommate relationships: A mechanism for promoting sense of belonging at university and academic performance

The current study investigated whether intergroup contact through roommate assignment in college dormitories affects the academic well-being of minority and majority students at a predominantly White university. Participants were first-year students randomly assigned to either a majority or minority group roommate. During the beginning and end of their first semester at college, participants completed a questionnaire packet which included ratings of their sense of belonging and identification with their university. At the end of the school year, participants’ official grade point averages (GPA) were also recorded. In general, students randomly assigned to an interracial roommate relationship reported an increased sense of belonging at university at the end of the first semester at college. Specifically for minority students, those randomly assigned to a majority group roommate reported a stronger sense of belonging at university and received a higher GPA than minority students randomly assigned to a minority roommate. Analyses suggested that sense of belonging partially mediated the effect of room type on minority students’ GPA. Room type did not affect majority students’ GPA. These findings have implications for improving academic satisfaction, performance, and retention.     

Eysenck's incubation of fear hypothesis: an experimental test

The present experiment was designed to test Eysenck's hypothesis that repeated exposure to an unreinforced CS of brief duration following acquisition of a classical aversive CR may lead to a progressive increase in the strength of that CR, provided that the UCS is intense and the CR has drive-like properties. Using a between-groups design, normal human subjects were given identical classical acquisition trials, followed by extinction trials where CS duration was either 2, 8 or 16 sec. The UCS was of fixed high intensity. Dependent measures were tonic and phasic heart rate and skin conductance. No evidence of incubation was found as a function of CS duration. Nor was there any indication that CS duration differentially affected resistance to extinction. A small number of subjects showed evidence of incubation with heart rate measures during extinction. However, there was no indication that this enhancement was governed by the parameters suggested by Eysenck. UCR amplitude, which showed a positive correspondence with CS-bound activity throughout the trials, did not reliably predict incubation. Problems concerning both the definition and the demonstration of incubation are discussed.     

Guns, testosterone, and aggression: an experimental test of a mediational hypothesis

We tested whether interacting with a gun increased testosterone levels and later aggressive behavior. Thirty male college students provided a saliva sample (for testosterone assay), interacted with either a gun or a children's toy for 15 min, and then provided another saliva sample. Next, subjects added as much hot sauce as they wanted to a cup of water they believed another subject would have to drink. Males who interacted with the gun showed significantly greater increases in testosterone and added more hot sauce to the water than did those who interacted with the children's toy. Moreover, increases in testosterone partially mediated the effects of interacting with the gun on this aggressive behavior.     

Automatically activated racial attitudes as predictors of the success of interracial roommate relationships

Study 1 indicated that roommate relationships involving randomly paired interracial freshmen were characterized by less extensive joint activity and were more likely to dissolve than those involving randomly paired White freshmen. Study 2 explored whether the automatically activated racial attitudes of White freshmen who had been randomly assigned to share rooms with Black freshmen would predict the stability and duration of the roommate relationships. The racial attitudes of the White freshmen were measured unobtrusively via a priming procedure at the beginning of the fall semester. White students’ automatically activated racial attitudes, but not their motivation to control prejudiced reactions, predicted the longevity of the relationships. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.     

The power of love: mediation of rejection in roommate relationships of dependents and self-critics

This research examined roommate responses to dependent and self-critical personality styles in the hope of finding individuals for whom rejection may be more likely. Interpersonal traits associated with dependency and self-criticism along the love and dominance axes of the Circumplex also were investigated to clarify patterns contributing to roommate rejection. Both dependents and self-critics were more depressed throughout the year. Dependents, however, were perceived as more submissive and loving and were better accepted by roommates. Self-critics were seen as submissive and hostile and were more likely to be rejected. Structural equation modeling indicated that the personality-rejection effects were mediated by perceived interpersonal traits along the love axis and their associated affective consequences for roommates.     

The effect of university roommate contact on ethnic attitudes and behavior

This study examined the effect of living with White, Asian American, Latino, or African American roommates on affective, cognitive, and behavioral indicators of prejudice among university students. We used a five-wave panel study with approximately 2000 students to examine the effect of roommate contact in two ways: First, through a field experimental test by examining prejudice as a function of living with randomly assigned roommates during the first year of university. Second, net of pre-existing attitudes, we examined the effects of voluntary roommate contact during the second and third year of university on fourth year prejudice. Consistent with contact theory, both randomly assigned and voluntary contact decreased prejudice. Also, there was generalization to other outgroups, particularly from Black roommates to Latinos, and vice versa. Finally, an interesting exception was found for contact with Asian American roommates, whether randomly assigned or voluntary, which tended to make attitudes towards other groups more negative. Potential explanations for this result are discussed.     

Political identification and the defining issues test: reevaluating an old hypothesis

Research on the association between the development of moral judgment (as measured by the Defining Issues Test [DIT]; J. R. Rest, 1979) and political attitudes has demonstrated that these factors are often reliably related. N. Emler (1987, 1990) and colleagues have asserted that DIT scores actually measure test-takers' political identity rather than their developmental level. To test this claim, these researchers have designed "faking studies" in which respondents are asked to complete the DIT as if they were of a particular political orientation, regardless of their real political views. These faking studies have yielded contradictory conclusions, whereas tests of the incremental validity of the DIT have provided some evidence for its empirical distinctiveness. In the present study, the authors reexamined this issue by pitting scores on the DIT, Version 2 (DIT-2; J. R. Rest, D. Narvaez, S. J. Thoma, & M. J. Bebeau, 1999) against several more concrete measures of political identification in several predictive models of attitudes toward human rights and civil liberties. DIT-2 scores and political identification emerged as significant predictors in nearly all regression analyses.     

Interracial contact and changes in the racial attitudes of white college students

College campuses are among the most racially diverse settings in our segregated society. For many students, especially non-Hispanic whites, college represents the first time they have come into significant contact with members of other groups. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, this paper explores the effects of campus diversity and various types of interracial contact on the racial and ethnic attitudes of white students over the course of four years in college. The findings are largely consistent with the contact hypothesis, particularly with respect to changes in attitudes towards blacks. White students who report having a close friend who is black and those who have dated or had a romantic partner who is black express less social distance towards blacks in their senior year, as do white students who were involved in extracurricular activities in which blacks are the majority. Participating in extracurricular activities dominated by blacks is also associated with more positive views of the impact of affirmative action on academic standards expressed as students were leaving college. Although there is evidence that both stereotypes and social distance towards groups are mitigated by intergroup contact, stereotypes appeared to be somewhat more resistant to change. The findings suggest that institutions should continue efforts to diversify their student populations, and also promote involvement in extracurricular activities for students from all groups.     

Mood and alcohol consumption: an experience sampling test of the self-medication hypothesis

In this investigation the authors applied the experience sampling method to prospectively test the self-medication hypothesis. In vivo reports gathered in the context of daily life demonstrated that nervousness was the only negative mood state to predict increases in alcohol consumption later in the course of the day. Further examination of this within-person relationship demonstrated that men were more likely to consume alcohol when nervous than were women, but this association was unrelated to family history of alcoholism, problem drinking patterns, or trait anxiety and depression. Consistent with the self-medication hypothesis, cross-sectional analyses also confirmed that alcohol consumption was generally associated with lower levels of nervousness; this effect varied by several demographic and clinical variables. These findings are discussed in terms of the diversity of reasons for alcohol consumption and their potential for explaining problem drinking.     

Responsibility and obsessive-compulsive disorder: an experimental test

To test the causal status of responsibility in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), an experiment was executed in which responsibility was experimentally manipulated. OCD patients, non-OCD anxiety controls, and non-patients executed a classification task in either a high or a low responsibility (LoRes) condition. Subjective ratings related to danger and responsibility indicated that the manipulation was successful. Subjective OCD-like experiences and checking behaviors were higher in OCD patients in the high responsibility (HiRes) condition than in all other groups. Although the checking subscale of the Padua Inventory correlated with subjective ratings in the OCD patients in the HiRes condition, it was not associated with checking behaviors. The results confirm the hypothesis that responsibility plays a causal role in OCD.     

A new test of an old hypothesis: a quantification of sequence in the Rorschach

Rorschach interpretation often assumes that successive responses are not independent of one another but rather that they are part of a series of interconnected events. In this study, methods that have been used to analyze event sequence data were applied to Rorschach protocols. Results from a nonclinical group of 102 university students showed that location scores on successive responses were repeated more frequently than was predicted by chance. There was also a tendency for subjects to make transitions from larger to smaller or more detailed areas of the inkblot on successive responses. In addition, we found that subjects tended to make transitions from more adequate to less adequate use of form, and that the unusual and minus form categories tended to be repeated. A modest association between transition frequencies and individual differences in anxiety, but not between transition frequencies and depression or overall symptomatology, was demonstrated.     

A test of the reward-value hypothesis

Rats retain source memory (memory for the origin of information) over a retention interval of at least 1 week, whereas their spatial working memory (radial maze locations) decays within approximately 1 day. We have argued that different forgetting functions dissociate memory systems. However, the two tasks, in our previous work, used different reward values. The source memory task used multiple pellets of a preferred food flavor (chocolate), whereas the spatial working memory task provided access to a single pellet of standard chow-flavored food at each location. Thus, according to the reward-value hypothesis, enhanced performance in the source memory task stems from enhanced encoding/memory of a preferred reward. We tested the reward-value hypothesis by using a standard 8-arm radial maze task to compare spatial working memory accuracy of rats rewarded with either multiple chocolate or chow pellets at each location using a between-subjects design. The reward-value hypothesis predicts superior accuracy for high-valued rewards. We documented equivalent spatial memory accuracy for high- and low-value rewards. Importantly, a 24-h retention interval produced equivalent spatial working memory accuracy for both flavors. These data are inconsistent with the reward-value hypothesis and suggest that reward value does not explain our earlier findings that source memory survives unusually long retention intervals.     

Parts of visual objects: an experimental test of the minima rule

Three experiments were conducted to test Hoffman and Richards's (1984) hypothesis that, for purposes of visual recognition, the human visual system divides three-dimensional shapes into parts at negative minima of curvature. In the first two experiments, subjects observed a simulated object (surface of revolution) rotating about a vertical axis, followed by a display of four alternative parts. They were asked to select a part that was from the object. Two of the four parts were divided at negative minima of curvature and two at positive maxima. When both a minima part and a maxima part from the object were presented on each trial (experiment 1), most of the correct responses were minima parts (101 versus 55). When only one part from the object--either a minima part or a maxima part--was shown on each trial (experiment 2), accuracy on trials with correct minima parts and correct maxima parts did not differ significantly. However, some subjects indicated that they reversed figure and ground, thereby changing maxima parts into minima parts. In experiment 3, subjects marked apparent part boundaries. 81% of these marks indicated minima parts, 10% of the marks indicated maxima parts, and 9% of the marks were at other positions. These results provide converging evidence, from two different methods, which supports Hoffman and Richard's minima rule.     

Toward a diversity hypothesis: Multidimensional effects of intergroup contact

The long-standing and important contributions of the contact hypothesis in reducing prejudice in intergroup situations is augmented by the introduction of the diversity hypothesis. The diversity hypothesis argues that the positive consequences of diversity will occur when the following four conditions are met: (a) full participation occurs across all levels of society for membres of diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural groups; (b) the degree of participation approximates an appropriate index of representation for racial and ethnic groups; (c) common purpose across these levels of diversity is created; and (d) cultural identity is valued. The empirical evidence for these conditions and implications for the organizational advantages of diversity are discussed.     

Alcohol and aggression: A test of the affect-arousal hypothesis

Forty-eight male social drinkers participated in a study designed to test the interaction between prevailing mood and alcohol on aggressive behavior in a 2 × 3 factorial design. Half of the subjects underwent a positive mood-induction procedure, while the other half underwent a negative mood-induction procedure. Within each of these conditions, one-third of the subjects received 1.32 ml/kg of 95% ethanol, one-third received placebo drinks, and the rest remained sober. Aggression was measured using a modified version of the Buss aggression machine. Results indicated that subjects receiving alcohol were significantly more aggressive than placebo or sober subjects. The mood-induction procedure, while significantly altering affect, did not affect aggressive responding. These findings are discussed with respect to levels of blood-alcohol and alcohol-aggression theories.     

Lightness constancy: a direct test of the illumination-estimation hypothesis

Many models of color constancy assume that the visual system estimates the scene illuminant and uses this estimate to determine an object's color appearance. A version of this illumination-estimation hypothesis, in which the illuminant estimate is associated with the explicitly perceived illuminant, was tested. Observers made appearance matches between two experimental chambers. Observers adjusted the illumination in one chamber to match that in the other and then adjusted a test patch in one chamber to match the surface lightness of a patch in the other. The illumination-estimation hypothesis, as formulated here, predicted that after both matches the luminances of the light reflected from the test patches would be identical. The data contradict this prediction. A second experiment showed that manipulating the immediate surround of a test patch can affect perceived lightness without affecting perceived illumination. This finding also falsifies the illumination-estimation hypothesis.