Binge-Drinking: A Test of the Role of Group Norms in the Theory of Planned Behaviour

A study was undertaken to assess the utility of the theory of planned behaviour in the prediction of students' binge-drinking. Additionally, a perspective was utilised to address the usually weak contribution of subjective norms in predicting behavioural intentions. Respondents were 289 undergraduate students. The study employed a longitudinal design, with the predictors of performing the behaviour under consideration assessed prior to the measure of reported behaviour. Support was found for the application of the theory of planned behaviour to binge-drinking. A reconceptualisation of norms in the theory of planned behaviour, from a social identity theory/self-categorization theory perspective, was also supported; consistent with expectations, the norms of a behaviourally relevant reference group predicted intentions to binge-drink, especially for participants who identified strongly with the reference group. The results are discussed in relation to measures which may help to reduce the incidence of binge-drinking by university students.     

Dialectical beliefs and savings tendency: Opposite patterns in good versus bad current status

People often experience a dilemma: whether we should invest now for a better future or save now for an unexpected future. The current research investigated the influence of dialecticism, a constellation of lay beliefs stating that the world is full of constant changes, coexisting contradictions, and interdependent relationships, on people's savings tendencies when they are with good versus bad status. Study 1 verified that dialectical beliefs were negatively associated with optimistic expectations among people with good status (i.e., high socioeconomic status) but positively associated with optimistic expectations among people with bad status (i.e., low socioeconomic status). Next, Studies 2 and 3 examined the interaction effect between dialectical beliefs and people's current status in predicting their savings tendencies in the investment scenarios with the focus on savings decision‐making and emotional experiences related to savings scenarios, respectively. Finally, to test generalizability, Study 4 examined people's savings tendencies in the situation that they needed to prevent failure instead of doing investments. The results converged to support the hypothesis that stronger dialectical beliefs predicted greater savings tendencies among people with good current status but weaker savings tendencies among people with bad current status. These findings demonstrated that the effect of dialectical beliefs on savings tendencies varies as a function of the characteristics of the situations, which advances the theoretical understanding of dialecticism in decision‐making research.     

College student stereotypes of female behavior: Maternal professional women and assertive housewives

Traditional gender stereotypes were normative in that it was believed good mental health depended on members of each gender acquiring the appropriate gender role. Current research that describes subcategories of females (housewife, professional woman, Playboy bunny) suggests that the traditional stereotype cannot be normative. Two studies investigated college student's stereotypic expectations about female behavior related to five role characteristics: maternal sensitivities, financial provider responsibilities, interpersonal tendencies, instrumental tendencies, and passivity. Subject stereotypic expectations indicated that women in all subcategories are expected to be maternal and to be more assertive than passive. For the other role characteristics, women representing the different subcategories are expected to vary. The results were inconclusive about which aspects of the stereotypes are normative.Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association, 1987. This research was completed at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, as part of the author's doctoral dissertation.     

Antisocial Behavior and the Continuing "Tragedy of the Commons"

The influence of individuals' antisocial tendencies and risk perceptions on a simulated managerial decision are examined in the study. Subjects accepting and rejecting a hypothetical scenario were found to be significantly different in terms of aggression, lack of empathy, and degree of individualism. Situational influences were not significantly related to subjects' decision. Limitations and future research are discussed.     

Burnout in School Psychology

This study examined levels of bumout and relationships between burnout and selected personality characteristics and role expectations in a sample of school psychologists employed as practitioners in school settings. The results indicated that personality variables related significantly to burnout over and above demographic and work condition variables. Higher levels of burnout were associated with tendencies to be high in competitiveness and egocentricity and low in conscientiousness and extraversion. Professionals who reported higher levels of burnout indicated greater dissatisfaction with their professional roles, preferring to devote more time to consultation and counseling activities. The implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Perfectionism and Suicidal Preoccupation

ABSTRACT One hundred twenty-nine undergraduate students were assessed for suicidal preoccupation, using the Alabama Adolescent Health Survey (AAHS) and selected cards from the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). They were also administered the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) to assess perfectionistic tendencies. Objective scoring of the TAT was found to be highly reliable. Canonical correlational analyses were nonsignificant for a relationship between perfectionism and suicidal themes on the TAT. However, the more direct questions of the AAHS relating to suicide were significantly related to perfectionism. Results suggest that passive perfectionists who procrastinate out of fear of making mistakes are more likely to be preoccupied with suicide, unlike perfectionists whose strivings produce achievement. High personal standards and parental expectations do not appear related to suicidal preoccupations.     

The Protestant Work Ethic,Expectancy Violations,and Criminal Sentencing1

To test the hypothesis that endorsement of the Protestant work ethic would be related positively to sensitivity to criminal behavior that violated expectations, American college students (N = 159) read scenarios describing a crime committed by a typical or an atypical offender. After answering questions about the crime, they completed Mirels and Garrett's (1971) Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) scale. Extent of punishment was positively related to PWE for atypical criminal behavior. Yet, high PWEs also were more likely to perceive an affluent criminal as experiencing greater remorse for a blue‐collar crime than a white‐collar crime. We relate our results to perceptions of criminal behavior, information‐processing tendencies among individuals endorsing the PWE, and jury selection considerations.     

College student gender stereotypes: Expectations about the behavior of male subcategory members

Traditional research on gender stereotypes emphasized similarities among males in that all men were expected to exhibit stereotypic characteristics. Recent research described subcategories (family man, businessman, macho male) suggesting important differences among men. This study investigated college student expectations of similarities and differences among stereotypic male subcategories across five role characteristics: financial provider responsibilities, instrumental tendencies, assertiveness, familial responsibilities, and interpersonal tendencies. The white, middle-class students expected all men to take financial provider and familial responsibilities seriously, and to be assertive. As for differences, the family man and man in general were expected to be interpersonal, and the family man, businessman, and man in general were expected to be more instrumental than the macho male. Implications are discussed.     

Shameful secrets and shame-prone dispositions: How outcome expectations mediate the relation between shame and disclosure

Shame may be a deterrent to disclosing secrets to a counselor, and shame-proneness may be associated with generalized tendencies to avoid disclosure of distress. If so, the mechanism explaining these relations might be the expected outcomes about disclosure. College students in the United States (N?=?312) thought of a shameful secret of theirs, and they rated the degree of shame they felt about the secret, their willingness to disclose the secret to a potential counselor, and their expected support from a potential counselor (i.e. outcome expectation). Participants also completed dispositional measures of shame-proneness, generalized outcome expectations about disclosure, and disclosure tendencies. Mediation analyses revealed that participants’ experiences of shame regarding their secrets predicted lower anticipated support from the counselor which predicted lower willingness to disclose the secret. This effect largely replicated at the dispositional level, such that anticipated risks of disclosure mediated the relationship between shame-proneness and disclosure tendencies. These findings suggest that counselor efforts to promote healthy client disclosure could target the client’s outcome expectations about disclosure rather than the client’s degree of shame.     

关于性别刻板印象的初步调查

性别刻板印象是一种重要的社会刻板印象。我们在 3 80名大学生中作了性别刻板印象的初步调查 ,并考察了性别和性别角色对性别刻板印象的影响。结果发现中国大学生的性别刻板印象与传统的性别观念比较一致 ,认为男性更坚强能干 ,女性更被动顺从 ,且这一印象不因性别和性别角色而改变。但男女被试的性别刻板印象仍存在明显差异。不同性别角色被试之间的性别刻板印象也有差异。总体而言 ,性别对性别刻板印象的影响比性别角色对性别刻板印象的影响大。     

飞行学员自我妨碍倾向与竞技应对方式研究

以206名飞行学员为被试,采用问卷法对自我妨碍倾向与竞技状态下应对方式的关系进行研究。结果表明:(1)自我妨碍倾向与想象、努力付出等积极应对方式呈负相关关系,与情绪发泄、疏远、分散注意和放弃等消极应对方式呈正相关关系。(2)低自我妨碍倾向的飞行学员更多地使用想象、努力付出和逻辑分析等积极的应对方式;高自我妨碍倾向的飞行学员更多地使用情绪发泄、疏远、分散注意和放弃等消极的应对方式。     

Relationship of dysfunctional sport fandom with dislike for rivals in a sample of college students

The relationships among sport-fandom dysfunctionality (tendencies toward complaining and confrontation as assessed via the Dysfunctional Sport Fandom Scale) and items assessing team identification (assessed via the Sport Spectator Identification Scale) were examined with 87 college students (24 men, 63 women, M age=20.2 yr.). Although positive associations of dysfunction and identification were found, contrary to expectations, the relationship between dysfunction and dislike for rivals was not particularly strong.     

Category size and judgments of variability: The effects of seeing the trees in the forest1

Abstract: Competing predictions about the effects of category size on judgments of category variability were examined in two studies involving the presentation of exemplars of two artificial social groups. In contrast to predictions of some exemplar-based models, Experiment 1 demonstrated that a numerically smaller group was perceived to be more variable than a larger group on the standard deviation measure of frequency distribution estimates. The result was interpreted to be an effect of differential information load. Experiment 2 revealed that variability judgments were influenced by prior expectations about the central tendencies as well as by practice in retrieving information about category exemplars. When frequency distribution estimates were made subsequent to abstract tasks, expectations about the numerical majority reduced perceived variability, while this influence was mitigated when memory measures preceded the frequency estimates.     

The Effects of Goal Distance and Value in Escalation of Commitment

Escalation of commitment describes individuals’ tendencies to spend resources beyond the point of rationality in order to persist in a chosen course of action, and most believe that sunk cost is the primary cause. However, it has been noted that sunk costs are confounded with progress made toward a goal, and that sunk costs do not affect individuals’ tendencies to escalate as all economic information is ignored in pursuit of the goal. Thus, the apparent escalation tendency may be a consequence of goal proximity instead of sunk costs. In Experiment 1, I show that individuals’ tendencies to escalate reflect the goal-gradient effect after controlling for the sunk costs. Experiment 2 provides a psychological process model to explain why goal-gradient influences individuals’ tendencies to escalate commitment by demonstrating that as individuals progress toward their goal, they exaggerate the value difference between the object that they are pursuing and the object that they are not pursuing. This perceived value difference, in turn, influences individuals’ tendencies to commit escalation of commitment. Results suggest a new interpretation for escalation of commitment and new approaches to guiding people to avoid it.     

Motivated expectations of positive feedback in social interactions

People self-enhance in a variety of ways. For example, they generally expect to perform better than others, to be in control of events, and to have a brighter future. Might they also self-enhance by expecting to receive positive feedback in social interactions? Across five studies, we found that they did. People's desire for feedback correlated with how positive they expected it to be (Study 1), and their feedback expectations were more positive for themselves than for others (Study 2). People's positive feedback expectations also covaried with trait tendencies to self-enhance (i.e., self-esteem and narcissism; Study 3) and with a direct situational manipulation of self-enhancement motivation (Study 4). Finally, people expected to receive positive feedback but did not consistently expect to receive self-verifying feedback (Study 5). These findings are consistent with social expectations being driven in part by the self-enhancement motive.     

Blatant Stereotype Threat and Women's Math Performance: Self-Handicapping as a Strategic Means to Cope with Obtrusive Negative Performance Expectations

Research on the effect of stereotype threat has consistently shown that a reduction of stereotype threat due to decreased salience of negative stereotypic expectations in testing situations results in a performance boost. This article reports on an experiment (n = 75 high school students) designed to test the impact of increased salience of negative stereotypic expectations on math performance. As expected, female participants in the condition of heightened salience of negative stereotypic expectations underperformed in comparison to their control group counterparts. Moreover, it was found that the effect of blatant stereotype threat resulted in increased self-handicapping tendencies in women, which in turn led to significantly impaired math performance.     

The theory of uncertainty orientation: a mathematical reformulation

In this paper, we present a mathematical formulation derived from the theory of uncertainty orientation (In R.M. Sorrehtino, & E.T. Higgins (Eds.), the handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behaviour, Vol. 1 (pp. 379-403). New York: The Guilford press; The uncertain mind: Individual differences in facing the unknown. London: Erlbaum (UK), Taylor & Francis). This formulation integrates affective and informational influences on thought and action. It is a model of self-regulation where the need to maintain clarity and the need to attain clarity are considered as two independent informational tendencies. These informational tendencies are influenced by the degree of self-relevance and the amount of perceived situational uncertainty. In addition, they are multiplicative with affective approach and avoidance tendencies, leading to accentuation or inhibition of behaviors expressed in action. It is further demonstrated that when the nondominant action tendency is instigated, secondary sources of motivation are expressed. This model not only accounts for past data, but also permits exploration using computer simulation. In addition, many new and testable hypotheses, including those related to affect and dynamical decision theory, are generated.     

Losing to Terrorism: An American Work in Progress

Abstract: The evolution of the U.S. war on terrorism is on a path that poses a substantial probability of losing to it, although not necessarily of a victory by its declared targets. That conclusion follows from the definition presented of terrorism and thus central questions about the merits of responses justified by an objective of reducing it. Likely American responses to 9/11 are suggested by a review of well‐known policy‐making tendencies from past scholarship and experience, tendencies well‐established prior to 9/11 and by no means unique to the Bush II presidency. The expectations those tendencies suggest have been born out by what the United States has done and not done. Well‐established criteria and their implied rules of practice for security enhancing great‐power statecraft are presented, and the chosen U.S. program of action is found to be counter‐productive in their light.     

Reward Expectations: The Influence of Race, Gender and Type of Job

Previous research on pay expectations has focused on gender differences and the reasons for those differences. In this study three types of reward expectations were measured. Pay expectations (starting salary and peak salary) were assessed, as well as another reward expectation, ease of promotion. The influences of gender, race, and type of job on reward expectations were investigated. The results indicated that Caucasians have higher peak pay expectations than African Americans for all job types. Interactions were discovered between race and type of job for starting salary, and between gender and type of job for ease of promotion.     

The effects of private self-consciousness and perspective taking on satisfaction in close relationships

We extended the scope of recent studies in which self-awareness and perspective taking have been used as predictors of social competence or adjustment: We analyzed their influence on the satisfaction experienced in monogamous, heterosexual relationships. Members of 131 couples answered questions concerning themselves and their relationships. We predicted that individual differences in private self-consciousness would be positively related to relationship satisfaction because of the greater self-disclosure resulting from that heightened self-attention. Second, we predicted that individual differences in perspective taking would foster relationship satisfaction, independent of any influence of self-disclosure. Both expectations were confirmed. Scores on the private self-consciousness scale were predictive of reported self-disclosure, and self-disclosure was predictive of satisfaction in the relationship. Furthermore, once the influence of self-disclosure was removed, no effect of self-consciousness on satisfaction remained. In contrast, after disclosure was controlled, perspective-taking scores were significantly related to satisfaction and were in fact unrelated to disclosure at all. These findings indicate that two personality characteristics having to do with habitual attention to behavioral tendencies, to emotions, and to motivations significantly enhance the quality of close heterosexual relationships in different ways. Results are discussed in terms of current theory in the related fields.