A measure of interpersonal dependency

Interpersonal dependency refers to a complex of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors revolving around needs to associate closely with valued other people. Its conceptual sources include the psychoanalytic theory of object relations, social learning theories of dependency, and the ethological theory of attachment. A review of existing self-report inventories revealed none that adequately assessed interpersonal dependency. A new 48-item self-report inventory which assesses interpersonal dependency in adults was developed using a sample of 220 normals and 180 psychiatric patients. It was cross-validated on two additional samples. Three components of interpersonal dependency emerged: emotional reliance on another person, lack of social self-confidence, and assertion of autonomy. The relationship of these components with normals and patients was discussed, as well as with the concepts of attachment and dependency.     

Passion and dependency in online shopping activities.

This study examines the influence of harmonious passion (HP) and obsessive passion (OP) to online shopping dependency. The results show that both HP and OP might lead to online shopping dependency and online shoppers with OP are more dependent on online shopping activities. In addition, this study also found out that HP and OP could be denoted as a sequence of different intensities of passion, where HP might be a necessity of OP.     

Physical interpersonal relationships and social anxiety among online game players.

Many online game players spend inordinate amounts of time in their favorite virtual worlds. A large percentage of these players are teenagers who show behaviors normally associated with physical addiction. Parents, educators, and social scientists are therefore saying that online games are sources of social problems. The authors surveyed 174 Taiwanese college-age online players to collect data on the potential effects of online games on the quality of interpersonal relationships and levels of social anxiety. According to the results, the quality of interpersonal relationships decreased and the amount of social anxiety increased as the amount of time spent playing online games increased.     

Sensation-seeking and differentially arousing television commercials

The authors predicted (a) that disinhibited consumers would react more favorably to advertising that was high in arousal and (b) that inhibited consumers would react more favorably to advertising that was low in arousal. They tested these predictions by having U.S. college students evaluate both the commercial and the product being marketed in 1 of 2 beer commercials. The prospective buyers then completed a measure of dispositional sensation-seeking tendencies. Although the participants who differed in disinhibition reacted differently to the 2 commercials, the nature of their responses was more complex than predicted.     

Sensation-seeking and selection of entertainment

The relationship between entertainment activity preference and sensation-seeking was investigated by survey and actual movie selection and viewing. Cardiac rate and rate change was monitored during movie selection and viewing. High sensation-seeking (HSS) females reported preferences for activities centered about alcohol, sexually-explicit materials and ‘rock’ music. HSS males reported preferences for sexually-explicit materials and news/documentary reports. Low sensation-seeking (LSS) males and females reported preferences for the musical stage, theatrical drama and comedy, and romantic/dramatic novels. HSS males and HSS females allotted high proportions of viewing time to an ‘action’ movie, and changed channels more frequently than LSS. The indices of cardiac response utilized in this study were unrelated to movie viewing activities, a result which does not support the ‘optimal level of arousal’ view of sensation-seeking proposed by Zuckerman (1979).     

Online deception: prevalence, motivation, and emotion.

This research has three goals: first, to find out how prevalent online deception is within a sample of Israeli users, second, to explore the underlying motivations to deceive online, and third, to discover the emotions that accompany online deception. A web-based survey was distributed in 14 discussion groups, and the answers of 257 respondents were analyzed. It was found that, while most of the respondents believe that online deception is very widespread, only about one-third of them reported engaging in online deception. Frequent users deceive online more than infrequent users, young users more than old, and competent users more than non-competent. The most common motivations to deceive online were "play" on the one hand and privacy concerns on the other. Most people felt a sense of enjoyment while engaging in online deception. The results are discussed in light of a possible mechanism for changing personal moral standards.     

Sensation-seeking and preference for emotional visual stimuli

The Zuckerman Sensation-seeking Scale (SSS) was administered to 190 men and 197 women, who were also asked to choose 5 pictures out of a group of 21. Seven of these pictures had been rated as emotionally positive, 7 as emotionally neutral and 7 as emotionally negative. Choices of the high and low sensation-seeking groups were compared, and it was found that the high sensation-seekers had a stronger preference for the hegative stimuli than the lows, and the low sensation-seekers had a stronger preference for the positive stimuli than the highs. The results are discussed in terms of optimum level of arousal.     

A study of Internet addiction through the lens of the interpersonal theory.

Previous studies have presented conflicting claims regarding reasons that people become addicted to the Internet. In this study, we attempted to identify predictors of Internet addiction based on Sullivan's interpersonal theory and Internet addiction literature. In our research model, it is hypothesized that good parent-child relationship positively correlates with good interpersonal relationships, which in turn are hypothesized to correlate with undesirable social anxiety. In addition, both parent-child and interpersonal relationships are hypothesized to negatively correlate with Internet addiction, whereas the level of social anxiety is hypothesized to positively correlate with Internet addiction. The results of this study confirm the research model hypotheses, indicating that the quality of parent-child relationship is indeed positively correlated to the quality of our participants' interpersonal relationships and that frustrating interpersonal relationships may raise the level of social anxiety. In addition, interpersonal relationships, the parent-child relationship, and social anxiety all influence Internet addiction, as predicted by the model. Finally, the more social anxiety and discontent with their peer interactions the participants experienced, the more addicted they were to the Internet.     

Ethics, deception, and 'Those Milgram experiments'

Critics who allege that deception in psychology experiments is unjustified frequently cite Stanley Milgram's 'obedience experiments' as evidence. These critics say that arguments for justification tend to downplay the risks involved and overstate the benefits from such research. Milgram, they add, committed both sins. Critics are right to point out that research oversight is often susceptible to self-serving abuse. But stating a priori how beneficial a given experiment will be is a tall order for psychologists, or anyone else. At the same time, critics themselves have difficulty in showing what is wrong with deception, and how subjects in these experiments suffer. Hence, it becomes unclear what the psychologists, including Milgram, are prone to downplay. There is also room to wonder how the Milgram studies can illuminate the debate over deception. Although Milgram probably exaggerated the scientific significance of his own work, critics who exaggerate its moral and historical significance do little to clarify the status of deception.     

Rate dependency, behavioral mechanisms, and behavioral pharmacology.

Behavioral pharmacology has become increasingly independent of the experimental analysis of behavior. At its beginning, behavioral pharmacology was closely related to the experimental analysis of behavior, with developments in each field aiding the other. Early attempts to systematize data in behavioral pharmacology culminated with the development of the rate-dependency concept, but as this principle was found to have more limited generality than originally was hoped, a theoretical void developed. This circumstance was followed by increased reliance on pharmacological theory as a basis for experimentation and interpretation, with an attendant decrease in emphasis on environmental variables and behavioral interpretations. Lack of interplay between behavioral pharmacology and the experimental analysis of behavior is detrimental to both disciplines because each could contribute significantly to the other. The current trend might be reversed if more research were directed at elucidating behavioral mechanisms of drug action.     

Contrasting effects of self-schema priming on lexical decisions and interpersonal stroop task performance: evidence for a cognitive/interactionist model of interpersonal dependency

Four experiments tested a key tenet of Bornstein's (1992, 1993) cognitive/interactionist (C/I) model of interpersonal dependency: that priming the helpless self-schema (HSS) alters processing of dependency-related information in dependent--but not nondependent--individuals. Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of subliminal lexical priming and an emotional priming manipulation on lexical decision (LD) judgments for dependency-related words and control words. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the effects of these same priming procedures on Interpersonal Stroop Task (IST) performance. As predicted, priming the HSS produced contrasting effects on different outcome measures, decreasing LD latencies, but increasing IST response times. Results are discussed in the context of the C/I model, and suggestions for future studies are offered.     

Gender, Internet identification, and Internet anxiety: correlates of Internet use.

This paper reports a study that investigated the effects of gender, Internet anxiety, and Internet identification on use of the Internet. The study involved 608 undergraduate students (490 females and 118 males). We surveyed the students' experience with the Internet, as well as their levels of Internet anxiety and Internet identification. We found a number of gender differences in participants' use of the Internet. Males were proportionally more likely to have their own web page than were females. They used the Internet more than females; in particular, they were more likely to use game websites, to use other specialist websites, and to download material from the Internet. However, females did not use the Internet for communication more than males. There was a significant positive relationship between Internet identification and total use of the Internet, and a significant negative relationship between Internet anxiety and total use of the Internet. Controlling for Internet identification and Internet anxiety, we found a significant and negative correlation between gender and use of the Internet. In total, all three of our predictors accounted for 40% of the variance in general Internet use: with Internet identification accounting for 26%, Internet anxiety accounting for 11%, and gender accounting for 3%.