Salivating,and Thinking in Different Languages

This study investigated age, sex, and title of therapist as determinants of patients' preferences. In general it was found that (a) “psychologists” and “psychiatrists” were preferred to “behavioral consultants,” “emotional counselors,” and “psychoanalysts” who, in turn, were preferred to “social workers”; (b) male therapists were preferred to female therapists; and (c) 40-year-old therapists were preferred to 55-year-old therapists who, in turn, were preferred to 25-year-old therapists.     

Motives and Values to Achieve: Different Constructs With Different Effects

ABSTRACT Motives to achieve and values associated with achievement were conceptualized as distinct and independent personality constructs, one nonconscious, the other conscious, each predictive of a different type of achievement-related behavior It was hypothesized that (a) motive and value measures would be uncorrelated, (b) motives would predict “operant” or spontaneous behaviors while values would predict “respondent” or stimulus-driven behaviors, and (c) motives and values would interact such that subjects with high values relating to achievement would perform better than those with low values, but only when their motives were also high Hypotheses (a) and (b) were strongly supported m two studies, and Hypothesis (c) was supported in Study 2 In that study, the motive for achievement was a particularly strong predictor of operant math performance among those subjects who valued achievement as opposed to affiliation The findings suggest that nonconscious (motive) and conscious (value) measures are both useful in different cases–the former for predicting “real” (doing) activity, the latter for predicting self-report (thinking) responses Questions concerning how motives and values might combine to predict different kinds of behavior are addressed     

Major Factors of Personality

Summary

French has recently resurveyed the literature regarding personality factors in order to (a) update his previous survey and (b) complement, in the noncognitive domain, the prestigious French, Ekstrom, and Price kit of reference tests for cognitive factors. This recent survey of personality factors is limited in at least two respects: (a) it relies on studies which are, in most cases, limited in size of item pools; (b) it has been greatly influenced by the two systems of Cattell and Guilford. Rather than rely on the pre-1971 literature (which belongs to an era when the factor analysis of a hundred variables was “a large factor analysis”), the writer has undertaken research aimed at accurate delineation of personality factors using itemfactoring coupled with item analysis. The article has two purposes: (a) to compare the factors in French's survey with those emerging in very recent work, and (b) to make the point that we are now likely to achieve greater comprehensiveness and accuracy in the identification of major personality factors.     

Socioeconomic Status and the Diagnostic Significance of Healthy and Unhealthy Group Rorschach Content

Three hypotheses were put to test, using group Rorschach protocols and a content scoring approach: (a) when neutral content is disregarded, upper social class subjects (Ss) will report predominantly “healthy” group Rorschach content while lower social class Ss will report predominantly “unhealthy” content; (b) perceiving “unhealthy” content will prove an abnormal diagnostic indicant only among upper social class Ss; (c) these findings will hold across racial identity. Rorschach content data and independent measures of personality were obtained from five samples of adolescent Ss differing in race and social class. The experimental hypotheses were supported. A theoretical interpretation making use of social class values is presented to explain the findings.     

The Determiners of Energy Expenditure in String-Pulling by the Rat

A follow-up was made of 18 male dyslexic children (RDs) and a group of matched controls (Cs), who had all been judged free from emotional and school adjustment problems two years earlier, (a) to see if RDs' reading deficit had been overcome, (b) to measure “emotional overlay,” and (c) to find predictors of success in learning to read. Results showed that at the time of the follow-up (a) none of the RDs had overcome his reading disability despite remediational efforts; (b) RDs had significantly lower achievement levels and significantly more adjustment problems than Cs; (c) low scores for WISC Full Scale IQ, Vocabulary subtest, and Coding subtest were associated with large reading deficits two years later; and (d) high WISC Arithmetic and Coding subtest scores were associated with large gains in reading skill. Physiological measures did not predict size of deficit or gain in reading skill over time.     

Appraising Loftus and Palmer (1974) post-event information versus concurrent commentary in the context of sport

Two experiments were conducted to examine framing effects in sport. In Experiment 1, a conceptual replication [Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585–589], participants watched a hockey collision, with the hit described later in a written format as a “contact”, “bump”, or “smash”. This manipulation resulted in no differences in participants’ report of how fast the players were skating, their intentions, and the outcome of the hit. In Experiment 2, participants watched the same video clip with ongoing commentary. Those who heard the announcer describing the event as “contact” estimated a higher skating speed than participants who were exposed to the “smash” commentary. Participants who were exposed to the “bump” commentary rated the repercussions of the collision as less severe than did those exposed to the other commentaries. These findings show that the perception of magnitude hierarchy may be domain specific and suggest future avenues for exploring framing effects when one is exposed to visual stimuli.     

Detection of Malingering of Psychiatric Disorder With the Personality Assessment Inventory: An Investigation of Criminal Defendants

582 Ss in 8 experiments viewed 1 of 9 films portraying models involved in achievement (Ach), affiliation (Aff), or neutral (Neu) activity. Ss who viewed Ach models after an interval of adaptation to the setting produced more TAT n Ach immediately after the film than other adapted Ss. Under other conditions, Ss who viewed Ach models produced significantly less n Ach than Ss who viewed non-Ach models. Results were ordered to a “subself” conception of personality organization and three theoretical propositions: (a) Models elicit fantasy thematically similar to their activity unless S is incompatibly preoccupied, (b) in which case models cause suppression of similar fantasy; but (c) in fantasy both elicitation and suppression are short-lived.     

Stability and Change in Psychosocial Resources during Caregiving and Bereavement in Partners of Men with AIDS

ABSTRACT This study examines the effects of caregiving and bereavement on psychosocial resources in HIV + and HIV? caregivers of men with AIDS. We explored three hypotheses regarding these effects: the “wear and tear” hypothesis, which asserts that the chronic stress of caregiving and bereavement diminishes resources; the “enhancement” hypothesis, which asserts that caregiver resources may increase in response to increased demands; and the “personality” hypothesis, which asserts that psychosocial resources reflect stable personality characteristics. We addressed four questions: (a) What are the effects of caregiving on resources? (b) How do these resources vary by the imminence of the partner's death? (c) What is the effect of the partner's death on these resources? and (d) How does the caregivers' HIV serostatus influence the effects of caregiving and bereavement on resources? Support for the personality hypothesis predominated, with some support for the wear and tear hypothesis, depending on the resource in question. In general, HIV seropositivity did not put people at additional risk for resource depletion.     

The Fallacy of the Private-Public Self-Focus Distinction

ABSTRACT Taking the distinction between Aristotelian and Galilean modes of thought (Lewin, 1931) as a background, the bifurcation of the self-focus concept into “private” and “public” types of self-focus is discussed critically A theoretical connection between the private-public distinction and other central concepts within the self-awareness literature is found to be lacking Further, it is found that (a) the relation between the theoretical definitions of “private” and “public” and their respective empirical definitions is not explicated, that (b) the public half of the dichotomy does not involve a focus of attention toward or away from the self, and perhaps most important, that (c) the conceptual work surrounding the private-public distinction illustrates how an Aristotelian approach to theorizing prevents the raising of pertinent questions     

Attitude toward the Ten Commandments

Summary

This study investigated helping behavior on Election Day, 1972, at 20 polling places in southeastern Michigan. One experimenter, posing as a “campaign worker,” dropped his political literature as he attempted to give some to a subject approaching or exiting from the polls, while a second experimenter recorded the subject's behavior and then ascertained the subject's presidential preference and/or party affiliation. It was found that (a) subjects were more likely to help the “campaign worker” if he had the same political preference; (b) McGovern supporters were more likely to help than were Nixon supporters; and (c) neither sex of subject or campaign worker, nor whether the interaction took place before or after voting, was significantly related to the likelihood of helping behavior occurring.     

Person, situation, and person-by-situation interaction components in person perception

The hypothesis that people store situation and person-by-situation interaction information as well as trait information about one another's behavior was tested by administering modified S-R Inventories of Anxiousness and Hostility to 54 male and 59 female undergraduates. Subjects rated the strength of affect that would be evoked by a series of situations in the two same-sex college students whom they knew best, the best-known opposite-sex person, a casually known same-sex person, and the “average college student.” Indices were constructed to measure the extent of (a) perceived average differences among people (traits), (b)perceived average differences over situations, and (c) perceived person-by-situation interaction. Analyses of variance showed that: (a) the ratings of the two best-known same-sex persons and the best-known opposite-sex person contained more interactive information than did the ratings of a casually known person and (b) females perceived more situational variability in the behavior of their own sex than did males. The amount of perceived person-by-situation interaction did not differ as a function of sex of rater or affect to be rated. It was concluded that the naive psychologist, like many professional psychologists, is an interactionist.     

Bradley — Terry — Luce models to incorporate within‐pair order effects: Representation and uniqueness theorems

The paper presents different representation theorems for the Bradley — Terry — Luce (BTL) models of Beaver and Gokhale and of Davidson and Beaver. In particular, algorithms that can be used in constructing BTL scales are provided. The uniqueness theorems show that the Davidson — Beaver model should be preferred to the Beaver — Gokhale model since the multiplicative order effect parameter is uniquely determined whereas the additive effect parameter is merely a ratio scale. Finally, a relationship to the simple BTL model is established. Let p(a, b) denote the probability that a is chosen when (a, b) is presented in a fixed order. Then the probabilities p(a, b) satisfy the Beaver — Gokhale model if and only if the balanced probabilities p_b(a, b):= ½ (p(a, b) + 1–p (b, a)) satisfy the simple BTL model.     

Influence of Levels of Abstractness on Reasoning Ability

Judgment by students of faculty effectiveness have relied, for the most part, on subjectively expressed responses to a series of “effectiveness traits” (cues). Simple averaging schemes have summarized the aggregate judgments, often resulting in (a) treating all cues as if they were of equal importance, and (b) inattention to the effects or measurement of individual differences of judges.

Multiple regression was used in this study to derive (empirically) individual cue utilization patterns (i.e., weights) for 10 effectiveness traits. Ss were compared to their subjectively expressed judgment scheme. Results indicate that Ss were moderately successful in expressing their actual cue utilization patterns; however, different judgment schemes were clearly observed.     

Attitudes and action: The effects of behavioral intent and perceived effectiveness of acts

Based on the assumption that an individual's behavioral intentions mediate the relationship between his attitudes and behaviors, an attempt was made to obtain a direct assessment of (a) subjects' intentions with regard to a series of acts varying in behavioral thresholds and (b) the perceived instrumentality of these acts for achieving one's goals After the reliability of the Intentions Scale was established, it was combined multiplicatively with ratings of perceived effectiveness to form a combined Action Potential Index (AP) The index resulted in significantly greater predictive validity than a conventional attitude assessment instrument. A second study was undertaken to determine the consistency of the AP-index across issues. The high correlations obtained for the AP-index across three issues suggested the operation of an “activism” personality dimension     

Variations in Level of Moral Judgment as a Function of Type of Dilemma and Moral Choice

This study compares the predictive power of two models of moral judgment: (a) Kohlberg's model, which predicts stage consistency across varying content, and (b) a model that predicts variations in stage as a function of complex interactions between people and social contexts. Forty university students were asked to make and justify choices on three moral dilemmas—a dilemma involving the sale of defective merchandise (selling dilemma) and two dilemmas from Kohlberg's test of moral judgment. Half the participants made hypothetical choices on the selling dilemma; the other half were offered a selfish incentive—money—for concealing the defects in the merchandise. In support of the interactional model, (a) participants scored lower on the selling dilemma than on Kohlberg's test, (b) the monetary incentive affected moral choices, (c) participants justified the choice to conceal defects in the merchandise with significantly lower stage moral judgments than they invoked in support of the decision to disclose its defects, and (d) participants who upheld the choice to disclose supported it with higher stage justifications than those who rejected it. Surprisingly, however, participants who stood to make money disclosed more about the defects in the article and charged less than participants who did not.     

An Experiment in Judging Personalities

Use of the semantic differential technique has largely been restricted to “paper and pencil” settings and student populations. In this study, adult respondents in an interview setting were asked to evaluate two concepts—use of lake (a) as a source of electric power and (b) as a recreational area—by means of eight seven-point scales. Results indicated considerable conceptscale interaction, suggesting that Osgood's interpretation of the semantic differential may be restricted by both technique of data collection and subpopulation. Respondent hostility might be an intervening variable. The semantic differential technique appeared to yield a preliminary evaluation of the two concepts, suggesting its use as an indicator of orientation.