经济地位和计量地位:社会地位比较对主观幸福感的影响及其年龄差异

采用麦克阿瑟梯子启动方法对个体的社会地位比较进行启动,主要探讨社会经济地位和社会计量地位对年轻人和老年人主观幸福感作用的年龄差异。120名年轻人(27.26±4.80岁)和120名老年人(65.12±6.49岁)参加了正式实验。实验首先测量被试的主观幸福感,3~7天后启动社会地位比较,随后再次测量主观幸福感。社会地位比较分为4种启动条件,即经济上行比较、经济下行比较、计量上行比较和计量下行比较,被试被随机分配到其中一种启动条件。结果发现:年轻人的主观幸福感更容易受到社会经济地位比较的影响,而老年人的主观幸福感更容易受到社会计量地位比较的影响。由于原有的等级评定方式并未验证启动的有效性,补充实验通过对麦克阿瑟梯子进行改进降低了锚定化的影响,为启动的有效性提供了直接的证据。本研究验证了主观幸福感悖论,并从社会比较的角度解释了老年人维持主观幸福感的机制,同时改进了麦克阿瑟梯子等级评定方法使其适用于中国情境。     

Social information processing and sociometric status: Sex,age, and situational effects

Theoretically based measures of social information-processing patterns in specific situations were developed and administered to popular, average, socially rejected, and socially neglected girls and boys in the first, third, and fifth grades (total n=95). Measures included interpretations of peers' intentions, quantity and quality of responses generated to problematic stimuli, evaluations of responses, and enactments of particular responses. Three kinds of situations were generated empirically as stimuli: being teased, being provoked ambiguously, and initiating entry into a peer group. Deviant children (rejected and neglected) were found to respond deficiently compared to average and popular children, but only in the situation in which they were teased. Older children performed more competently than younger children in all three situations. Interactions among gender, sociometric status, and age also were found. Findings were interpreted as evidence of the elusiveness and complexity of social information-processing defects among low sociometric status children.The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the staff of the Monroe County Community School Corporation in the conduct of this research. This research was supported by an Indiana University doctoral dissertation grant and an Indiana University Women's Studies Grant awarded to the first author, and by NIMH Grant 37062 awarded to the second author. The authors wish to thank Steven R. Asher and Kenneth H. Rubin for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Connectivity and generalized cliques in sociometric group structure

By using the concepts of antimetry andn-chain it is possible to define and to investigate some properties of connectivity in a sociometric group. It is shown that the number of elements in a group, the number of antimetries, and the degree of connectivity must satisfy certain inequalities. Using the ideas of connectivity, a generalized concept of clique, called ann-clique, is introduced.n-cliques are shown to have a very close relationship to the existence of cliques in an artificial structure defined on the same set of elements, thus permitting the determination ofn-cliques by means of the same simple matrix procedures used to obtain the clique structures. The presence of two or morem-cliques, wherem is the number of elements in the group, is proved to mean an almost complete splitting of the group.     

The relationship between assertion and sociometric status of children

A correlational study was conducted in an effort to examine the relationship between children's level of assertive skill and their social (sociometric) status. The Ss were 15 male and 15 female elementary school children ranging in age from 9 to 11 yr. Each S was administered: (a) positive and negative peer nominations and roster and rating scale sociometrics; (b) self-report questionnaires concerning their assertive behavior; and (c) standardized interviews to assess knowledge of assertive behavior. In addition, teachers' ratings of children's interpersonal behavior were obtained. Results indicated some degree of correspondence between assertion indices and sociometric ratings. However, correlation coefficients generally were in the low-to-moderate range. Also, several scales from children's self-report and teacher's ratings of children's assertive behavior differentiated high- and low-popular children. Results are discussed in terms of: (1) the utility of employing multiple criteria in assessing social functioning of children; and (2) the need to determine empirically the relevance of assertive and other interpersonal skills in childrens' social repertoires.     

Learned helplessness in social situations and sociometric status

Learned helplessness theory may provide a framework within which the correlates of sociometric status in children can be fruitfully investigated. Several parallels between learned helplessness and the characteristics of sociometric status groups are noted. It is argued that children who are rejected, and especially neglected, by peers are likely to manifest learned helplessness in social situations. In addition, reanalysis of Goetz and Dweck's (1980) study on learned helplessness in social situations provides data to support this viewpoint as: (a) rejected and neglected children resembled learned helpless children in regard to both attributions and behaviour following social rejection; (b) neglected children showed greater behavioural deterioration following rejection than rejected children. The implications of the proposed integration of research on learned helplessness and sociometric status are outlined, especially in relation to clinical disorders in children.     

Creative potential and the sociometric status of children

The social adaptation problems of highly creative children were first discussed by Torrance (1961a, 1961b), but there is still no clear consensus as to whether or not creative children suffer from social rejection. The social status of these children in classroom groups deserves attention because of the educational and developmental importance of sociometric position. The present study utilized a multivariate approach to sociometric status (exploratory principal‐components analysis). The principal components were subjected to cluster analysis, which produced a clear sociometric taxonomy, comprising “neglected,”; “popular,”; “academic,”; and “rejected”; groups. Most of the highly creative children were in the neglected group. Further exploration using path analysis demonstrated that the child's self‐perceived social distance from other group members represents an intervening variable which is related to creative potential and is negatively associated with popularity in classroom groups.     

Young children's attention to dyadic conversation as modified by sociometric status

Forty-eight American children, 12 popular and 12 rejected children from Grades 3 and 6, were paired with same-sex friends and nonfriends on an interactive task. Children were videotaped and their interactions judged for the amount and type of attention each child in the dyad gave to each other and the conversation. Main dependent measures included mutual engagements, acknowledgement of the partner, getting the attention of the partner, attention to the conversation, and social impact of the utterances. Both rejected and popular children attended to the conversation and the partner, but rejected children appeared to overattend in several ways. The interactions of rejected children and their matches involved more mutual engagements, conversational initiators, facilitators, terminators, and nonverbal attention-getting devices. Sex and developmental effects were also found.     

The influence of diverse interaction contexts on students' sociometric status

Despite there being numerous studies on sociometric status, research that analyzes this variable from a contextualized viewpoint taking into account the different school settings in which a pupil establishes relationships is rare. The aim of this study is to analyze the stability of sociometric status in different school settings. For this purpose, 522 students filled in a sociometric questionnaire that investigated two different settings: the academic setting, which refers to the formal classroom setting; and the leisure setting, which investigates a more informal and playful setting like the playground. The main results indicate that identification percentages are almost the same in both settings. Nonetheless, all sociometric types are contextually dependent, and some are more dependent than others. Thus, rejection is observed as being the most independent of context, whereas the most dependent is that of controversial pupils. Differential analyses show that sex modifies the results obtained. It is shown that, excluding a few exceptions, combinations of sociometric types in both settings investigated can be made. These results are discussed in connection with the methodology used to identify sociometric types and their practical implication for better school adjustment.     

Interpersonal problem-solving ability and sociometric status in elementary school children

The relationships among a measure of problem-solving ability, school grade level, and interpersonal functioning as assessed by sociometric measures were investigated. Previous research has shown these relationships to be significant but the reliability and validity of the problem-solving measures used have been seriously questioned. This study attempted to replicate previous findings while using a reliable and valid measure of interpersonal problem solving. Two sociometric measures were administered to 463 second-, fourth-, and sixth-graders from which 179 pupils were sociometrically identified as populars, rejecteds, neglecteds, and controversials. These subjects were subsequently administered the Purdue Elementary Problem Solving Inventory. Dunn's multiple comparison procedure was used to analyze the existing relationships among grade levels and among sociometric categories. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences in interpersonal problem-solving ability among grade levels but no significant differences were found among sociometric categories. The implications of the findings for social skills training are discussed.     

The relationship between children's sociometric status and ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion

This study explored the relationship between children's sociometric status (SMS) and ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions. As expected, high SMS children obtained significantly higher emotion recognition scores than did low SMS children. However, there was an unanticipated inverse correlation between low SMS children's recognition scores from adult photgraphs and child photographs. Possible reasons for the observed relationships are discussed.     

Behavioral and sociocognitive correlates of ratings of prosocial behavior and sociometric status

Although peers' and teachers' evaluations of children's prosocial behavior and peers' sociometric ratings frequently have been used in studies of social development, the validity of young children's ratings of others has been questioned, as has that for teachers' ratings of prosocial behavior. In this study, preschoolers' ratings of peers' sociometric status and prosocial behavior, as well as teachers' ratings of children's prosocial dispositions, were obtained. These were correlated with children's naturally occurring prosocial or social behavior; ratings of prosocial behavior also were correlated with children's prosocial moral reasoning and prosocial self-attributions. Peers' sociometric ratings were positively related to children's sociability whereas prosocial ratings were related to helping (but not sharing) behavior. Teachers' ratings of prosocial behavior were not related to frequency of prosocial behaviors, but were positively related to developmentally mature moral judgments and self-reported motives.