Attibution of attitudes to speakers and listeners under assigned-behavior conditions: Does behavior engulf the field?

A conceptual replication of the assigned-behavior conditions of previous research in attitude attribution was conducted. Participants made attitude attributions about themselves and also about others who had either given, listened to, or not been exposed to either a proattitudinal or counterattitudinal essay. The position adopted in the essay significantly affected the attitudes attributed to those assigned to deliver the essay. Essay position had an equally strong effect upon attitudes attributed to those who merely listened to the essay, however. Thus, the fact that the actor had delivered a particular assigned essay apparently did not in itself convey information to the observers about the actor's attitudes. Experimental results suggested that essay direction affects attitudes attitudes attributed to others in an assigned-behavior setting because observers use their own attitudes to infer the attitudes of others. Since observers' own attitudes change after exposure to different essays, they attribute different attitudes to others.     

Support and opposition to the Women's Liberation Movement: Some personality and parental correlates

This study examines eight hypotheses concerning personality and parental determinants of support and opposition to the Women's Liberation Movement. One hundred seventy-two male and female University sutdents who scored at the upper and lower quartiles of the Social Order Scale were administered the following tests: Personality Research Form, Pensacola Z, Rotter Locus of Control, and the Schaefer Parent Behavior Inventory. As predicted, opposers of both sexes score significantly higher on Authoritarianism, Harmavoidance, Social Recognition, and significantly lower on Understanding. Supporters of both sexes score higher on Autonomy. Fathers of opposers are perceived as significantly more Child Centered and Possessive, while fathers of supporters are higher on Inconsistency, Autonomy, and Hostile Detachment. These cognitive, motivational, and parental variables are interpreted in relation to the differing dispositions of each group toward the issues raised by the women's movement.     

Children's knowledge of the separation of variables concept

Children 8, 10, and 13 years of age were either given prior experience constructing seriations or matrices with two-dimensional stimuli, or no prior experience. Knowledge of the separation of variables concept was then assessed by examining children's use of controlled tests of a problem variable's effect (probe questions), and recognition of the inadequacy of confounded variable tests (negative counter-suggestion questions). Although many children either passed both questions or failed both questions, a significant number of children correctly used controlled variable tests, and yet failed to recognize the inadequacy of a confounded test. These results suggest that although a preliminary form of the separation of variables concept is characterized by use of controlled variable tests, subsequent refinement of the concept includes recognition of the inadequacy of confounded tests. Relative to seriation, prior experience constructing matrices facilitated recognition of a confounded test's inadequacy. Constructing matrices may have focused attention on the simultaneous variation of problem elements on multiple dimensions and thus facilitated recognition of the necessary role of both variation of stimuli on test dimensions and equality of stimuli on nontest dimensions, e.g., a controlled test.     

Commitment and satisfaction in romantic associations: A test of the investment model

Two experiments were designed to test the adequacy of the investment model of developing relationships in predicting satisfaction with and commitment to ongoing associations. According to the investment model, attraction to and satisfaction with a relationship is a function of a comparison of the relationship outcome value (both rewards and costs) to the individual's expectations, or comparison level. Commitment to a relationship is said to be a function not only of the relationship outcome value, but also the quality of the best available alternative and the magnitude of the individual's investment in the relationship. The intrinsic or extrinsic investment of resources serves to increase commitment by increasing the costs of leaving the relationship. Thus, increases in investment size, decreases in alternative value, and increases in relationship value should increase commitment to an ongoing relationship. In Experiment 1, a role-playing study, commitment to relationships increased with intrinsic and extrinsic investment size and decreased with the value of alternatives, but was not appreciably affected by relationship costs. Satisfaction/attraction significantly increased as relationship costs decreased. In Experiment 2, a survey of ongoing romantic associations, satisfaction/attraction was predicted by relationship reward value and relationship cost value. Commitment to relationships increased as relationship reward value and investment size increased and as alternative value and relationship cost value decreased, although the effects of cost value were weak.     

Responses to dissatisfaction in romantic involvements: A multidimensional scaling analysis

Two multidimensional scaling studies were conducted to develop a comprehensive, inductively derived typology of responses to dissatisfaction in romantic involvements. Study 1 examined the responses of an undergraduate population, and Study 2 explored the reactions of a more heterogeneous, adult sample. The studies revealed similar patterns of results. In both Study 1 and Study 2, four general categories of response to dissatisfaction were observed: (a) exit—ending or actively abusing the relationship; (b) voice—actively attempting to improve conditions; (c) loyalty—passively waiting for conditions to improve; and (d) neglect—passively allowing the relationship to deteriorate. Two dimensions were distinguished among the response categories—constructiveness/destructiveness and activity/passivity. Voice and loyalty were judged to be constructive behaviors, while exit and neglect were viewed as relatively more destructive. And exit and voice were seen as fairly active, while loyalty and neglect were judged to be more passive (this effect was stronger in Study 1 than in Study 2). These findings provide good support for the Rusbult, Zembrodt, and Gunn (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1982, 43, 1230–1242) model of responses to dissatifaction in romantic involvements.     

Practical skills and personality development

Declarers of above average, average, and below average Practical Skills on the ACT Student Profile Report were compared on the basis of OPI personality scale scores by means of multivariate analysis of covariance. Results indicated significant differences by level of Practical Skill and no significant interaction between sex and practical skill category. Distributional differences of above average, average, and below average practical skills by various vocational choices were investigated by X². The personality differences found were interpreted as developmental, according to Erikson's theory.     

The effect of career education on career maturity

According to Hoyt (1974), career education efforts are underway in almost one-third of all school districts in the United States. Indications are that this trend will continue. However, the question of the effects of career education programs remains essentially unanswered. This study was designed to assess the effects of a career education program on students' career maturity as measured by the Career Maturity Inventory (CMI). A pretest/ posttest design was used. The sample consisted of 480 sixth and eighth grade students, one-half of whom participated in a career education program (experimental), with the remaining one-half in a regular school program (control). The career education students consistently displayed higher posttest career maturity levels, four scores being significantly higher. Significant differences were found in occupational knowledge of sixth graders, occupational planning for both the sixth and eighth graders and in the attitude scale score for the eighth graders. It was concluded that the career education program had a positive effect in increasing students' levels of career maturity.     

Information availability,goodness of outcome,and attributions of causality

H. H. Kelley's (American Psychologist, 1973, 28, 107–128) framework for studying attribution processes is introduced as a means of accounting for characteristic asymmetries in success/failure attributions. It is argued that while success/failure asymmetries should occur in the presence of single-observation information, asymmetries should be eliminated when individuals are allowed to observe the covariation between their own actions and outcomes. Subjects participated in a 15-trial stock market simulation in which type of information (single-observation or covariation) and goodness of outcome (relative success or failure) were manipulated. The obtained results supported the experimental hypotheses. Given single-observation information, subjects were more likely to accept personal responsibility for good than for poor outcomes. However, subjects' attributions were not affected by goodness of outcome when they were provided with covariation information. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the current debate between motivational and information-processing explanations of asymmetries in success/failure attributions.     

Male-female differences in occupational attitudes within minority groups

Few studies have considered sex differences in occupational attutudes in minority group samples. Evidence of interracial differences in occupational attitudes, coupled with probably interracial differences in socialization processes, suggests that patterns of sex differences in occupational attitudes may not be invariant across races. Any such variations could contaminate interracial comparisons within sexes. The current study examined sex differences in occupational attitudes in two samples of poor minority group members. Differences regularly isolated in studies of whites were not evident. In both samples, rankings of preferences for work-related outcomes of males and females were remarkably similar.     

Unrealistic vocational choice: A research model

Multimethod factor scores were derived from measures of ACT aptitude, ACT nonacademic achievement and the Omnibus Personality Inventory. A sample of 89 subjects whose freshman major was engineering and whose junior year major consisted of a variety of nonengineering subjects represented subjects who had made an unrealistic vocational choice as freshmen. The junior year majors of these subjects were classified by Holland's theory of vocational choice and the relationship between the factor scores and Holland categories was shown by the technique of spatial configuration. These data were employed to illustrate how counseling practice could be integrated with vocational theory.     

Hemispheric specialization in learning disabled readers' recall as a function of age and level of processing

This study was designed to test the inadequacy of two theoretical accounts of learning disabled readers' memory deficiencies. Two age groups of learning disabled and nondisabled readers were compared on diotic and dichotic listening recall tasks for semantically organized, phonemically organized, and categorically unrelated word lists presented in either the left, right, or both ears. Dependent measures were free recall, serial recall, recall organization, and hierarchical organization. As expected, recall increases were a function of age, group, and level of word processing. However, the results clearly demonstrated that age and group recall differences were an interaction of both mode of presentation and level of processing. The recall differences between reading groups were attributed to word knowledge (superordinate categorization) rather than recall organization within cerebral hemispheres or differences in hemispheric capacity, per se.     

The relation of congruence,differentiation, and consistency to interest and aptitude scores in women with stable and unstable vocational choices

This study examined by canonical variate analysis the relation between congruence, differentiation, and consistency, and academic aptitude and vocational interests for 280 women with stable vocational choices over 4 years and 327 women with unstable vocational choices over 4 years. Findings offered support for the importance of congruence in stable women; differentiation and consistency operated similarly for women with stable and unstable choices.     

Use of orthographic structure and reading ability: What relationship?

Previous research has shown that good readers are superior to poor readers in their use of orthographic structure. The purpose of the present study was to assess the role of experience in determining these differences. Results showed that poor sixth-grade readers used orthographic structure to speed their matching judgments just as effectively as good sixth-grade readers. The apparent discrepancy in results between the present study and previous work is explained in terms of the “partial-information hypothesis” which states that the performance of good readers is superior to that of poor readers in situations which depend on the use of partial information. Support for this view was provided by the fact that good readers recognized significantly more items on a recognition test than did the poor readers.     

Increased conformity to a fellow deviant as a function of prior deviation

A subject was induced to publically report his opinions on a variety of issues. A group of confederates disagreed with the subject; one confederate agreed with him. Thus, the subject deviated from the majority of the group, but received social support from one other individual. Each subject was then paired with one individual from the previous group, and regardless of his pairing, was subjected to a constant amount of conformity pressure from the confederate on a new set of judgments. Deviant subjects conformed more to the confederate who had previously given them social support than they did to a previous majority member. This increased conformity was found in two studies, (1) females judging physical realities and, (2) males reporting their opinions on attitudinal issues. Ratings taken in the second study demonstrated that the deviant subject felt increased liking for and similarity to the confederate who initially provided him with social support, but comparisons between various experimental groups indicated conformity to a confederate was not completely predictable from the subject's liking for that confederate. Instead, conformity was greatest following an experience of deviation from the majority.