Variables related to pro-choice attitudes among undergraduates

Pro-choice attitudes among undergraduates were assessed to determine the extent of anti-abortion sentiments during President Reagan's first term in office, which was marked by his support of the anti-abortion issue as well as by increased media coverage of the right-to-life movement. Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 840 participants enrolled in introductory psychology classes at a university in central Texas during the week prior to the presidential election of 1984. Students were asked if they would approve or disapprove of abortion under four different circumstances. Results indicated that the majority of both males and females were in favor of allowing abortion under all four conditions.     

Resources,Masculinities, and Gender Differences Among Pro-life Activists

Abortion politics are often about “pro-choice” and “pro-life” countermovements trying to gain power by winning the support of political bystanders. While more is known about the reasons people become pro-choice activists, far less research has examined the motives for pro-life men and women. To address the factors that mobilize abortion activism, this study examined the role of education, religious contexts, and gendered expectations in predicting pro-life activism. After surveying 820 college students, our data highlights the importance of activist networks in inspiring activism among pro-life advocates. In gender subsamples, being a biblical literalist, being married, and endorsing patriarchal family structures were linked to more pro-life activism among women, while embracing authoritarian outlooks, having less education, being poorer, and attending religious services did so for men. Implications for gender differences in pro-life activism and the complex ways in which pro-life attitudes intersect with traditional gender roles were explored.     

Verbal retention after shadowing and after listening

Ss shadowed or listened to stories that had been recorded at 1 word/sec (wps), 2 wps, and 3 wps. They then took tests of word recognition, semantic retention, and syntax recognition. At the slowest rate, shadowers’ word recognition and semantic retention were somewhat higher than listeners’ scores, but this difference disappeared at faster rates. Significant positive correlations among all three retention scores were observed for listeners, but for shadowers word recognition was unrelated to either of the other two retention measures. The results are discussed in terms of monitoring during shadowing. Implications for experiments on selective attention are considered.     

Automatic vigilance for task-related information: Perseverance after failure and inhibition after success

In three experiments, the influence of failure and success on persistent automatic vigilance task-related information was investigated. Participants first had to work on a series of synonym selection problems for which negative and positive feedback was given independently of their performance. In the second part of the experiments, words from the synonym selection problems were presented as distractors in a dual task with speeded responses. Interference effects of the distractors served as a measure of automatic vigilance for the previous synonym selection problems that was unbiased by strategic processes. Interference effects were stronger for words from failure tasks than for words from success tasks. Comparing the success and failure conditions against a neutral baseline suggested that this difference was due to both a perseverance of automatic vigilance for failure tasks and an inhibition of cognitive accessibility after success.     

Odor intensity after self-adaptation and cross-adaptation

Psychophysical functions for the odor intensity of n-propanol and n-pentanol were obtained after no adaptation and after self-adaptation and cross-adaptation. Adaptation caused the psychophysical function to become steeper and generally concave downward in log-log coordinates. Increase in the in tensity of a: self-adapting stimulus produced relatively greater increases in the steepness of the functions than did increases in adapting duration. A comparison between the odorants revealed that propanol and pentanol have equal self-adapting effects when their respective adapting concentrations are matched for subjective intensity. Cross-adaptation had approximately the same effect as self-adaptation on the form of the psychophysical function, but a cross-adapting stimulus of a specified subjective intensity was less effective than a self-adapting stimulus of the same intensity. Adaptation to pentanol caused a larger reduction in the perceived intensity of propanol than adaptation to propanol caused in the perceived intensity of pentanol.     

Selective exposure and dissonance after decisions

Well-known literature reviews from the 1960s question whether cognitive dissonance underlies experimental participants' selective exposure of themselves to consonant messages and avoidance of dissonant ones. A meta-analytic review of 16 studies published from 1956 to 1996 and involving 1,922 total participants shows that experimental tests consistently support the supposition that dissonance is associated with selective exposure (r = .22, p < .001). Statistical power exceeded .99. Advances in statistical methodology and increased attention to selecting appropriate tests of dissonance theory were essential to finally resolving this question.     

Musical preferences during and after relaxation and exercise

Effects of the listening context on responses to music largely have been neglected despite the prevalence of music listening in our everyday lives. This article reports 2 studies in which participants chose music of high or low arousal potential during (Experiment 1) or immediately after (Experiment 2) exercise or relaxation. In Experiment 1, participants preferred appropriate arousal-polarizing music over arousal-moderating music. In Experiment 2, participants preferred arousal-moderating music over arousal-polarizing music, such that their listening times contrasted clearly with those in the first study even though the same music and methods were used. Thus musical preferences interact with the listening situation, and participants' music selections represent an attempt to optimize their responses to that situation. When motivated to maintain a state of polarized arousal, listeners use music to achieve this; when they have no such goal, they use music to moderate arousal.     

Personality and anxiety variation before and after menstruation

Thirty women subjects were studied on E, N, P, L, state anxiety, and trait anxiety, in order to investigate personality variation during the premenstrual and postmentrual stages. Atypically, the t-ratio of correlated means revealed significant decreases in E and L at the postmenstrual stage, and the more commonly reported shifts in neuroticism, anxiety, and sometimes psychoticism were not evident.