AFFIRMATION AND DENIAL IN EVALUATIVE DESCRIPTIONS

Children made a series of evaluative judgements of 20 nonsense words, which they were told to imagine were people's names. Each subject judged half the names in terms of two-category rating scales containing an affirmative (A) response category which was evaluatively positive (E +) and a negative (n) category which was evaluatively negative (E -), e.g. ‘happy-not happy’, the other half were judged in terms of scales where the A category was E -, and the N category E +, e.g. ‘rude - not rude’. The main finding was a highly significant tendency for subjects to give more A than N responses, irrespective of evaluative content: in addition, a tendency for subjects to give more E - than E + responses, irrespective of grammatical form, approached significance.     

EFFECTS OF RATER-CONCEPT-SCALE INTERACTIONS AND USE OF DIFFERENT FACTORING PROCEDURES UPON EVALUATIVE FACTOR STRUCTURE

Subjects (N=225) drawn from ten subpopulations were asked to rate nine different concepts on 39 evaluative semantic differential scales plus the “strong-weak” and “fast-slow” scales. Nineteen separate factor analyses (principal factoring with iteration followed by Varimax rotation) were performed for: (1) all subjects rating all concepts, (2–10) all subjects rating each concept, (11) adult males rating all concepts, (12) adult females rating all concepts, (13) college students rating all concepts, (14) nonstudents rating all concepts, (15) fifth grade students rating all concepts, (16) all males rating “Liz Taylor,” (17) all females rating “Liz Taylor,” (18) all males rating “your father,” and (19) all females rating “your father.” Rotated factor loadings greater than .50 are displayed for all analyses. There is little apparent similarity among the factor structures. In addition, oblique (Oblimin) and Quartimax rotations are performed for two of the analyses (all subjects rating “LBJ” and “U.S. Government”). The three rotated factor structures for each concept differ radically.     

AN EVALUATIVE REVIEW OF FAMILY INTERACTION RESEARCH

This article will review in detail the current status of quantifiable family interaction research. It will concentrate on the work done since 1960. An extensive reference list and glossary covering key workers and their concepts are appended.     

DEVELOPMENT AND DIFFERENTIATION OF ACQUAINTANCE IN ENGAGED AND MARRIED COUPLES

Five married and 5 engaged couples, matched on socio-economic and interactional criteria, completed the Allport-Vernon-Lindzey Study of Values and Gordon's personality tests and predicted their mate's answers on these tests. Married partners predicted significantly better than engaged partners on the Study of Values but not on the Gordon tests. With the second part of the Study of Values, engaged couples predicted the mate's preferred motives relatively better than non-preferred ones, whereas married partners were equally well acquainted with both types. The results are discussed in terms of pain-avoidance by cognitive means in open versus closed ecological fields.     

COGNITIVE TUNING AND DIFFERENTIATION OF ARGUMENTS IN COMMUNICATION

In an experiment examining the effects of cognitive tuning and attitudinal position upon individuals’ cognitive differentiation in generating arguments supporting and opposing an attitude issue, 162 undergraduate students were “tuned” either as potential sources (transmission tuning) or potential receivers (reception tuning) of a persuasive communication on one of two issues. They then prepared two lists of arguments, one positive and one negative for one of the attitude issues, after which they completed an attitude measure in both issues. As predicted, the subjects made salient and reported significantly more arguments consistent with than inconsistent with their attitudes toward the issues. More importantly, those persons prepared to function as communication sources generated significantly more arguments consistent with and fewer arguments inconsistent with their attitudes than did subjects expecting to receive persuasive communications on the issues.     

THE EFFECT OF ELICITATION METHODS ON PERSONAL CONSTRUCT DIFFERENTIATION AND VALENCE

The effect of personal construct elicitation methods on construct content and structure was addressed in two studies. In Study 1, a between-subjects design was used to compare Kelly's (1955) original Triadic Difference method of elicitation with a Dyadic Opposite method. Study 2 used a fully-crossed, mixed factorial design to compare Kelly's (1955) Triadic Difference method with Epting, Suchman, and Nickeson's (1971) Triadic Opposite method. Results showed that "difference" methods of construct elicitation produced significantly higher levels of construct differentiation, lower numbers of positive emergent construct poles, and less socially undesirable implicit construct poles than "opposite" methods (see also Caputi & Reddy, in press). Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to a critical reappraisal of repertory grid methods.     

SOCIAL CONFORMITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION12

This study examined the role of socialization experiences in the development of psychological differentiation. In each of three countries (Holland, Italy, Mexico) two villages were selected as presenting a contrasting picture with regard to degree of emphasis on conformity to family, religious and political authority. It was hypothesized that within the pair of villages in each country children from the village which stressed social conformity would tend to be more field dependent and show other signs of less developed differentiation than children from the village in which social conformity was less emphasized. In each of the six villages approximately 100 children (boys and girls, aged 9–11 and 13–15) were studied. Differentiation was assessed by a battery of tests of field-dependence-independence and the figure-drawing test. In every comparison of mean test scores between pairs of villages, in each of the three countries, children from the village in which social conformity was stressed obtained scores reflecting less differentiated functioning. Village differences were significant for every measure of differentiation in all three countries. Addition alanalyses of the data from the tests of differentiation and other tests used yielded results essentially consistent with findings from previous studies.     

ECOLOGY,CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION

A model which examined interrelationships among ecological setting, cultural adaptation and psychological differentiation was proposed. Details of each element of the model were discussed, and behavioural predictions were made. Specifically, hunters and gatherers, who were migratory and low in population density and food accumulation were expected to exhibit high levels of psychological differentiation in perceptual, social and affective areas of psychological differentiation. Conversely, sedentary peoples who were higher in population density and food accumulation were expected to exhibit lower levels of differentiation, while those peoples who were ecologically intermediate were expected to exhibit moderate levels. Sampling in Amerindian communities, and comparing these new data to previous African, Australian, and Eskimo data, led to the conclusion that higher levels of differentiation in perceptual, social and affective domains do indeed characterize hunters and gatherers. However, such differences within a single culture area were minimal. An examination of the cross-cultural stability of the concept of psychological differentiation suggested greatest internal consistency for hunters and gatherers, and less for sedentary peoples; constant relationships with socialization emphases were found, while variations in sex differences were related to features of socio-cultural stratification.     

THE EFFECT OF REPERTORY GRID SCALE SIZE AND RATING DIRECTION ON STRUCTURAL MEASURES OF DIFFERENTIATION

Previous work by Soldz and Soldz (1989) indicated that variations in repertory grid features can have a significant impact on the interpretation of the Landfield Functionally Independent Construction Score (FIC), which is a measure of cognitive differentiation. In this study, we showed that four different grid measures (FIC, Total number of zeroes, and the number of midpoint ratings used to indicate either equality or nonapplicability) can be effected by the use of a certain scale size (3-point, 7-point, 13-point), and by the direction of administration (completing the grid in a downwards direction vs. an across-wise direction). In addition, correlations between the number of zero ratings and the total FIC scores for each of the different scale sizes and directions showed evidence to support and to qualify previous work conducted by Soldz and Soldz (1989). In general, high positive correlations were found, suggesting the impact of zero ratings on FIC scores. But the magnitude of the correlations between the zero ratings and the total FIC scores varied as a function of the scale size, the direction of administration, and the meaning of the zero rating (neutrality vs. nonapplicability), raising theoretical, as well as procedural, considerations for future repertory grid research.     

DIFFERENTIATION OF CHARACTER NEUROSIS AND SYMPTOM NEUROSIS ON THE BASIS OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TWO SERIAL EXPERIMENTS

The difference between two serial tests as regards signs of hysteria and obsession-compulsion is compared with differences in number of symptoms reported by the patient. Signs in the more formal colour-word test, measuring habitual behaviour patterns, correspond to fewer symptoms than signs in a tachistoscopic test revealing more of the perceptual representation (content) of behaviour disorders. This difference is supposed to reflect important aspects of the difference between character neurosis and symptom neurosis.     

A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION

A cross-cultural study of psychological differentiation of Canadian and Pakistani high school students was undertaken to examine the nature of psychological differentiation in relation to differences in age/grade, gender, and academic programs. The study involved 707 Canadian students from grades 6, 8, 10, and 12; and 349 Pakistani students from grades 8, 9, 10, and 12. The Group Embedded Figures Test was employed as a measure of the field-dependence-independence cognitive style. Analyses of data included two-way and three-way analyses of variance to determine the effects of grade, gender, and academic program upon GEFT scores. Differences in psychological differentiation between high school students in the two cultures were discussed in terms of Berry's eco-cultural model.     

DIFFERENTIATION OF PSYCHOTIC SUBJECTS BY MEANS OF THE META-CONTRAST TECHNIQUE

S mith , G. J. W. Differentiation of psychotic subjects by means of the metacontrast technique. Scad. J. Psychol ., 1968, 9, 3–44.—Sixtyeight psychotic patients tested with the meta-contrast technique (MCT) were divided in six sub-groups according to focal symptoms. Many sub-groups clearly differed with respect to MCT results. In the schizophrenic groups serial discontinuity due to regression was particularly prominent; in the paranoid, non-schizophrenic groups, marked subliminal influence on the frame percept plus other signs of projection. The meaning of psychotic color responses to black-and-white stimuli was also discussed.     

FURTHER EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOQUACITY AND CONSTRUCT DIFFERENTIATION

This report addressed the convergent validity of the RCQ provided by the Paragraph Completion Test, and discriminant validity information provided by the Talkaholic Scale. Eighty undergraduates enrolled in an introductory communication class at a large midwestern university completed three questionnaires. Correlations indicated that the RCQ and the Paragraph Completion Test were only slightly related ( r = .37, p < .0005). The RCQ and the Talkaholic scale were negligibly related. Weak relationships observed between construct differentiation and construct organization indicate the need for further research on factors that affect construct-differentiated people's ability to integrate social information.     

THREE TYPES OF FAMILY STRUCTURE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION: A STUDY AMONG THE JAUNSAR-BAWAR SOCIETY*

The study examines the influence of family structure and family experiences on psychological differentiation in children. Three types of families, viz., monogamous, polyandrous and polygynandrous were selected from the polyandrous society of Jaunsar-Bawar in the Cis-Himalayan region of India. 175 boys and girls of age groups 7-9 and 13-15 years, belonging to the three types of families, were administered the Story-Pictorial EFT, Indo-African EFT and BD tests. Family experiences of the child were assessed through ratings and interview. A 2×3×2 ANOVA performed on differentiation scores revealed significant age and sex effects. Family effect was not statistically significant. But the data suggested a strong trend in the expected direction. The findings have been discussed in terms of the characteristic family patterns of Jaunsar-Bawar and acculturation factors.