Experimenter Modeling Effects as Determinants of Subject's Responses

Abstract

Ames, Louise Bates, Metraux, Ruth W., Walker, Richard N. Adolescent Rorschach Responses. New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1959, xi plus 313. $8.50. Reviewed by Mortimer M. Meyer

Bass, B. F. and Berg, I. A. Objective Approaches to Personality Assessment. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1959, pp. x-233. $4.95. Reviewed by Wilson H. Guertin

Bellak, L. (Ed.), Ostow, M., Pumpian-Mindlin, E., Stanton, A. H., and Szasz, T. S. Conceptual and methodological problems in psychoanalysis. New York: Annals of the N. Y. Academy of Sciences, 1959, p. 973–1134. Reviewed by A. I. Rabin

Buros, Oscar K. (Ed.) The fifth mental measurements yearbook. Highland Park, N.J.: Gryphon Press, 1959. Reviewed by Bertram R. Forer

Caligor, Leopold. A New Approach to Figure Drawing. Springfield, III.: Charles Thomas, Publisher, 1957, pp. 148, $4.50. Reviewed by Emanuel F. Hammer, Ph.D.

Hallower, Molly. Personality Change and Development. New York and London: Grune &; Stratton. 1958. 383 pp. $10.00. Reviewed by Theodore H. Blau

Ledwith, Nettie H. Rorschach responses of elementary school children. Pittsburgh: Univ. Pittsburgh Press, 1959. Reviewed by Mortimer M. Meyer

Tomkins, Silvan S. and Miner, John B. PAT Interpretation. Springer Publishing Company, Inc., New York, 1959. 184 pp. Reviewed by Leonard P. Ullmann     

Experimenter Behavior as an Unintended Determinant of Experimental Results

Sound motion pictures were made of 19 Es conducting a person perception experiment with 53 Ss. Ss' task was to rate the degree of success or failure of people pictured in photos. From some of the Ss, Es had been led to expect ratings of success and from some ratings of failure. Actually, Ss were assigned at random to the “success-perceiving” or “failure-perceiving” group, Es showed significant behavioral variation in the way in which they conducted the experiment, Es whose experimental behavior reflected greater interpersonal involvement or warmth obtained ratings of the photos as more successful, Es whose experimental behavior reflected a greater task orientation, greater competence, and a more professional manner obtained ratings significantly more in accordance with their expectancy, regardless of the particular nature of that expectancy.     

The Meaning of Rorschach Inkblots,Responses and Determinants as Perceived by Children

Fifteen semantic-differential scales were applied to the Rorschach inkblots, to nine common Rorschach responses representing various Rorschach determinants, and to two determinants not embodied in responses. Ss consisted of third, sixth, and ninth grade public school children separated by sex within each group. Children significantly differentiated the inkblots on the semantic scales, with older children differentiating the blots more sharply. Girls differentiated the blots at an earlier age than did boys. Individual cards differed widely in regard to their strongest connotations. Children significantly differentiated the majority of responses and determinants on the semantic scales for all age groups. The connotations of the cards, responses and determinants tended to be consistent with commonly held Rorschach interpretations. In general, the findings for children were consistent with the results previously reported for adults. The connotations of chromatic inkblots were found to differ significantly from those of achromatic blots for the third and ninth grades, but not for sixth grade children. Statistically significant clusters of meaning for three age groups of children were found to exist, based on the presence of movement determinants and on a combination of movement, shading and chromatic color. Only for the sixth and ninth grade girls did the semantic scales have a single hierarchy of importance for ordering or differentiating both inkblots and responses of determinants. A communality of connotative meaning between inkblots on the one hand, and responses and determinants commonly associated with the blots on the other, is found only for ninth grade children. Low intergroup agreement was found across grades in mean scale ranking for the inkblots, but high agreement in mean scale ranking of responses and determinants.     

Commands as Divine Attributes

Theories of ethics that attempt to incorporate divine speech or commands as necessary elements in the construction of moral obligations are often viewed as vulnerable to a challenge based on the so‐called Euthyphro dilemma. According to this challenge, opponents of theistic ethics suppose that divine speech either informs one of a preexisting set of values and obligations, which makes it inconsequential, or is entirely arbitrary, which makes it irrational. This essay analyzes some of the debates on the nature of divine commands in eleventh‐century works of Islamic jurisprudence (u?ūl al‐fiqh). I show that Mu?tazilī jurisprudents advanced the view that divine commands were actions performed in time that had concrete manifestations, while Ash?arīs argued that divine speech in general, and commands in particular, were eternal divine attributes. After exposing certain weaknesses in the Euthyphro‐inspired objections to theistic ethics, I argue that the Ash?arī idea of commands as divine attributes is a promising move for scholars interested in defending a divine command view of moral obligation.     

God's Attributes as God's Clarities: Wolf Krötke's Doctrine of the Divine Attributes

Abstract: For the Berlin systematic theologian Wolf Krötke, the doctrine of the divine attributes presents God as, first, one who is clear and luminous in himself, and, second, as one who communicates his clarity in the eventfulness of Jesus Christ. Krötke modifies the traditional approach to the doctrine by redescribing God's attributes in terms of clarities which, in turn, are indicative of the glory of God. In this article, I expound and analyse Krötke's understanding of the clarities of truth, love, power and eternity as proper to God in his relationally rich reality shining forth, with an eye to the character of the renewal of human life thereby effected. Critical comments are also raised in relation to Krötke's proposal, particularly with respect to his lack of a robust doctrine of the immanent Trinity and the necessity of maintaining such.     

An Exploratory Diagnostic Model for Ordinal Responses with Binary Attributes: Identifiability and Estimation

Psychometrika - Diagnostic models (DMs) provide researchers and practitioners with tools to classify respondents into substantively relevant classes. DMs are widely applied to binary response data;...     

Victim's Response And Alcohol-Related Factors As Determinants Of Women's Responses To Violent Pornography

Women suffer a variety of detrimental effects from exposure to violent pornography. This study examined the role of specific situational cues embedded within a violent pornographic story, as well as alcohol consumption and alcohol expectancies, to determine potential mechanisms through which these effects occur. Female social drinkers ( N = 123), recruited from the community at large, participated in a between-subjects factorial experiment varying two situational cues—victim response (pleasure vs. distress) and story character beverage consumption (alcohol vs. mineral water)—and participant beverage consumption (alcohol vs. placebo vs. tonic). Results indicate that participants' identification with the victim plays a key role in affecting their responses and that alcohol-related factors appear to exacerbate the negative impact of pornography.     

Client Cognitive Responses as a Function of Quality of Counselor Verbal Responses

This study examined the relationship between high and low quality counselor responses in four response modes and client cognitions. Twenty-one university students participated in two sessions of brief counseling that included high and low quality counselor responses in paraphrasing, questioning, reflection of feeling, and self-disclosure. After each counseling session, participants used Kagan's (1975) interpersonal process recall method to report their cognitions in response to these counselor responses. Results indicated that the participants had more favorable cognitions toward the counselor associated with high quality counselor paraphrasing and reflection of feeling responses. Participants' cognitions directed toward themselves did not differ in response to any of the four high and low quality counselor responses. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Semantic Determinants and Psychology as a Science

One central but unrecognized strand of the complex debate between W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson over the status of psychology as a science turns on their disagreement concerning the compatibility of strict psychophysical, semantic-determining laws with the possibility of error. That disagreement in turn underlies their opposing views on the location of semantic determinants: proximal (on bodily surfaces) or distal (in the external world). This paper articulates these two disputes, their wider context, and argues that both are fundamentally misconceived. There is no special tension between error and strict semantic-determining laws; moreover, the purported bearing of that issue on the dispute over the location of semantic determinants depends upon a mistaken conception of the relation between the nomic status of generalizations and degree of distance between explanans and it explananda. Finally, the wider significance of these conclusions for related contemporary debates is noted. And independent considerations about the possibility of communication, also present in Quine's and Davidson's thinking, are brought to bear on the question of the location of semantic determinants. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Values as Determinants of the Motivation to Lead

We examined the incremental contribution of personal values in predicting individuals' motivation to lead (MTL) in a military personnel sample (n = 231). We operationalized self-transcendence through personal values (spirituality, integrity, and willingness to serve) and self-enhancement value orientation through desire for power/achievement. In multivariate analyses, personal values made significant incremental contributions in explaining of all three forms of MTL. Personal values had the largest incremental effect in explaining noncalculative MTL. Self-enhancement values had a larger positive relationship with affective-identity and social-normative MTL than did self-transcendence values. Inversely, self-transcendence values had a significantly larger relationship with noncalculative MTL.     

Subjects' assessment of the processing demands of a series of orienting tasks

This study is designed to show that subject are able to assess the processing demands made by a series of orienting tasks. With the help of 6 psychology majors, 56 orienting questions were generated which could be applied to a black and white photograph of a human face. Using a systematic ranking and reduction procedure, 3 groups of 12 undergraduate majors then ordered all or a subset of these questions in terms of their relative processing demands, resulting finally in a representative set of 7 questions. Two further groups of 12 subjects then ranked these questions by considering them in relation to a photograph of a male and a female face respectively. Inter-subject agreement was demonstrated for both of these latter rankings which were also shown to be independent of the stimulus photograph used. In Part 2 of the study, the validity of the orienting question ranking was shown by using the questions in an incidental learning task. Significant positive correlations were found between processing demand and recognition scores and between processing demand and processing time. The results are discussed in relation to metacognition, introspection and consciousness.     

Sex of Experimenter and Intelligence as Factors in Maze Learning: A Further Comparison of Maze and Sex Differences

(Murphy, Lois Barclay. Social Behavior and Child Personality. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937. Pp. 333.)     

Rorschach Responses as an Index of Narcissism

A two-part study was conducted to investigate the uniqueness and interpretive meaning-fulness of Rorschach reflection responses. In Part I, 80 Rorschach protocols were collected from overt homosexuals, character disorders, depressed patients recently suicidal, and a control group of college students. Homosexuals and sociopaths gave significantly more reflection and C and CF responses than did either of the other two groups. In Part 2 of the investigation two groups of 40 subjects each were selected from a population of college students and industrial workers on the basis of their score on a sentence completion test, especially devised to focus on the self. The high narcissism group gave a significantly greater number of reflection responses, pair type responses, and C and CF responses than did the low narcissism group.     

Changes in Experimental Hypotheses as Determinants of Experimental Results

Two experiments are reported in which changes in Es' (N = 11) experimental hypotheses led to changes in the data they obtained from their Ss-(N = 87). Monitoring of Es' experimental procedure sometimes led to an increase, sometimes to a decrease in the effects of Es' expectancies. For both experiments male. Es significantly exerted the expected biasing effects upon both their male and female Ss. Female Es similarly influenced their female Ss but obtained data from their male Ss significantly opposite to the direction of their hypotheses.     

Reinforcement Probability and Delay as Determinants of Human Impulsiveness

In behavior theory, “impulsiveness” refers to the choice of an immediate, small reinforcer over a delayed, large reinforcer. Such behavior generally is attributed to a reduction in the value of the large reinforcer as a function of the duration of delay. In contrast, social learning theorists have suggested that human impulsiveness can result from a lowered “expectancy” (subjective probability) of reinforcement. Effects of probability and delay were assessed by asking adults to make repeated choices between reinforcement schedules in which the reinforcers were slides of entertainment figures. An immediate, 5-s reinforcer was consistently chosen over an immediate, 40-s reinforcer if the probability of receiving the large reinforcer had previously been low (.20), implying that impulsiveness can occur without time-based discounting. However, reinforcement delay was also influential: Choice between a certain, small reinforcer and an uncertain, large reinforcer varied according to which reinforcer was immediate and which delayed.

     

Gender-Role Congruence and Self-Referencing as Determinants of Advertising Effectiveness

In an initial experiment, men and women with varied gender-role orientations evaluated gender-stereotyped and nonstereotyped advertisements for gendered products that are actually used by both sexes. Consistent with a gender-role congruence model of advertising effectiveness, traditional participants (masculine men; feminine women) responded more favorably to traditional (i.e., gender-stereotyped) than to nontraditional advertisements, whereas nontraditional participants (androgynous individuals; feminine men; masculine women) reacted somewhat more favorably to the nontraditional advertisements. Experiment 2 revealed that when encouraged to self reference, traditional participants became much more responsive to nontraditional advertisements, even more so than were the nontraditional participants. Practical implications of these results are discussed.