Obedience as a function of experimenter competence

The purpose of this study was to investigate obedience to an E’s commands as a function of E competency. Based upon Orne’s (1962, 1969) discussion of the demand characteristics inherent in the typical aggression study, it was hypothesized that E incompetence would decrease S obedience. Competence was manipulated by: (1) presenting some Ss with a nervous and inexperienced E, and (2)“accidentally” killing the victim (a rat) midway through the experiment. Thirty-two undergraduate female Ss participated in the experiment—supposedly a study on the physiological effects of stress. Obedi6nce was operationalized as the difference, in simple reaction time, between trials on which Ss were told that their response might result in shock to the rat and trials on which they were told that their response might save the rat from shock. Significant differences in obedience were obtained between competent and incompetent E conditions, and a significant “kill” effect was found in the competent E conditidn. The results of this study suggested that the extreme acts of obedience observed in the laboratory (e.g., Milgram, 1963) occur only when E is perceived as competent. This finding imposes limits on the generalizability of laboratory studies of obedience.     

Individual differences in collinearity judgment as a function of angular position

Previous research indicates that perceived orientation and/or alignment of segments and points can vary as a function of the angular position of the stimulus elements. Several studies show that the variability of the responses is least and accuracy of judgment is greatest where segments and dots are aligned with a cardinal axis. Additionally, some report assimilation of judgments toward the nearest cardinal axis--that is, the segments (or dots) are seen as being closer to the horizontal or vertical than is true. The present research confirms that judgments of collinearity are least variable and most accurate when the segment being judged is aligned with a cardinal axis. However, we do not find any consistent tendency for cardinal axis assimilation. Plotting the collinearity error (delta) as a function of angular position (phi), we find a distinctive profile of oscillation for each subject. Furthermore, subjects who were evaluated in two sessions showed very similar profiles of delta oscillation from Day 1 to Day 2. Harmonic analysis indicated a wide-ranging pattern of significant components. The components at the 4th harmonic and below were more likely to be significant, but each subject showed differential loadings in terms of which of the components were significant, as well as in the sign and amplitude of significant components. These results may reflect idiosyncratic fixation tendencies, or individual differences in the design of neural mechanisms that encode the angular positions of stimuli.     

Self‐judgment and reputation monitoring as a function of the fundamental dimensions,temporal perspective,and culture

Social acceptance and the development of one's competencies and status are fundamental aspects of the human experience, but the former (communion) should take precedence over the latter (agency) in self‐judgment. Study 1 results indicated that (i) people across two cultures judged themselves as possessing higher communion than agency characteristics; (ii) communion self‐judgments were more consistent across temporal perspective; and (iii) level of self‐enhancement across cultures was similar for communion but different for agency. In Study 2, people across culture reported being more troubled and demonstrated a greater desire to repair their reputation when they imagined others perceived them as lacking in communion compared with agency. These findings support the idea that social life pressures people to view themselves as possessing communion traits and to ensure that others have this perception as well. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conformity as a function of task generalization and relative competence

Subject correctness and group agreement were varied for college subjects engaged in a light discrimination task. On another task, employing multiple-choice questions about Canada, the dependent variable of conformity was assessed to examine generalization of relative competence formed on the light discrimination task. It was seen that (1) relative competence was seen to mediate conformity for a specific task (Canadian Knowledge Inventory), but did not generalize across tasks (i.e. from the light discrimination task to the Canadian Knowledge Inventory); (2) with respect to the Canadian Knowledge Inventory, subjects who perceived themselves as more competent than the group did not conform as much as those who either perceived themselves as less competent than or as competent as the group; (3) the experimental manipulations did not affect conformity, further supporting the findings that perceived competence does not generalize across classes of tasks; (4) females conformed more than males: and (5) nonsuspicious subjects conformed more than suspicious subjects.     

Help-seeking and helping behavior in children as a function of psychosocial competence

Research on prosocial behavior has supported the belief that psychosocial competence characteristics enhance helping behavior. Tyler and others have hypothesized that helpseeking is also a constructive competence-related behavior. The present investigation was designed to assess whether the correlates of psychosocial competence differences found in more effective psychosocial functioning among primary school children in the U.S. would characterize children in India and be reflected in their help-seeking and helping behaviors. Twenty-eight pairs of 8 to 10-year-old children participated in this 3 × 2 factorial design study. High and low competence subjects were selected using scores on the Psychosocial Competence Incomplete Stories Test (PCIST) adapted for Indian children. Results show that constructiveness of helpseeking and helping were a function of psychosocial competence. This was also a three-way interaction effect of sex and psychosocial competence level of the helpseeker and of the helper on the level of constructiveness of help-seeking behavior. Tyler and colleagues had previously demonstrated that children from the U.S. who are more psychosocially competent (more self-efficacious, interpersonally trusting, and actively planful) function more effectively in their lives. The current results extend those findings by demonstrating that help-seeking and helping behavior are also a function of these psychosocial competence characteristics. They also indicate sex differences in the relationship of psychosocial competence to interpersonal interactions among these children in India. Psychosocial competence and developmental and cultural implications are noted.     

Evaluations of competence as a function of sex and marital status

A total of 160 female and male college students read a completed job application and an article written by the applicant. Both the job and the article were in nonsex-typed fields. The applicant was described as either female or male, and as either married, never married, widowed, or divorced. Subjects answered eight evaluate questions concerning the competence of the applicant and the merits of the article. Neither the sex nor the marital status of the applicant had a strong or consistent effect on the subjects' evaluations.     

Involvement in four future events as a function of temporal distance

Abstract.— A total of 91 Swedish high-school students, in four groups, estimated their degree of involvement in each of 4 potential future events, which were assumed to occur at 5 alternative points in time within the next 75 years. In addition, estimates were made of the relative importance of the events as well as of their subjective probability and influenceability. Factor analysis revealed two different time-involvement relations: (1) involvement decreasing slowly with increasing temporal distance for the two next decades. and then rapidly approaching zero, and (2) involvement decreasing rapidly for the nearest decades, and then slowly approaching an asymptotic value. Subjects representing the first trend gave consistently higher estimates of event probability. Relative involvement for the events was judged differently by subjects in natural-science and social-science lines of education.