Age and gender differences in solutions to hypothetical social problems

One hundred and twenty preschoolers and 77 kindergartners individually were administered a measure of social problem-solving. This measure consisted of five stories in which a protogonist sought to acquire an object from a same- or different-age or same- or different-sex target. Age differences in the numbers and types of strategies were few. However, kindergarteners showed greater flexibility in strategy sequencing. Prosocial strategies were more often directed to older targets; agonistic strategies were more often directed to younger targets. Girls suggested more prosocial strategies when girls sought an object from bay targets. Given the results it is suggested that flexibility is social problem-solving and attention to target characteristics should be included in future social problem solving training programs.     

Attitudinal qualities relating to the strength of the attitude-behavior relationship

A study was conducted to examine the relation between each of several attitudinal qualities and attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects' attitudes toward volunterring to participate in psychological research were assessed. The number of experiments in which each subject volunteered to participate was employed as the measure of behavior. Attitude-behavior consistency was significantly related to (1) the amount of direct experience upon which the subject's attitude was based (specifically, the number of experiments in which the subject had previously participated), (2) the degree of certainty with which the attitude was held, and (3) how well-defined the subject's attitude was, as measured by the width of his latitude of rejection. These three attitudinal qualities were significantly intercorrelated, suggesting that direct experience with an attitude object may produce an attitude that is both better defined and more confidently held than an attitude formed through more indirect means.     

Is dissonance phenomenologically aversive?

This study examined whether dissonance is, phenomenologically, an aversive state. Experimental subjects were induced to write counterattitudinal essays under a high-choice condition. One group of subjects was led to believe that a pill, which they had just taken in the context of a separate experiment, would cause them to feel pleasantly excited. A second group was led to believe that the pill would make them feel tense. A third group was given no information about the pill's potential side effects, while a fourth group expected to have no side effects at all. In this last condition, the results yielded the usual dissonance effect: subjects stated attitudes more congruent with the essay than did subjects in a survey control condition. When subjects were given an opportunity to attribute their arousal to an arousing, but nonaversive pill (i.e., the pleasant excitement condition), this effect was unchanged. In contrast, when subjects could attribute their arousal to an aversive pill (i.e., in the tensè and the no information conditions), this effect was virtually eliminated. These results are consistent with the notion that dissonance is an aversive state and that subjects will seize, when possible, an external attribution for this state.     

Locus of control,field dependence and the conditions arousing objective vs subjective self-awareness

Observations of persons engaged in quasievaluative situations revealed that the greater amounts of body movement characterized as tension reducing were exhibited by persons holding internal control as opposed to external control expectancies. Conceptualizing situations as varying in the degree to which they allow one to become task involved (subjective self-awareness) or self-conscious (objective self-awareness) it was hypothesized that the latter would be more disruptive to internals, the former to externals. Body movement exhibited during introspection and personal reminiscence supported this hypothesis though no support was found in another task involving the completion of moral dilemma stories. In the latter task field dependent subjects proved to be more affected by self-awareness conditions, writing more normative stories when cues for objective self-awareness were more prominent.     

The effects of increasing familiarity on infants' reactions to adult strangers

The influence of the presence and novelty of an adult stranger on the reactions of 12-mo-old infants was investigated. Subjects were placed near their mothers in a room containing a new toy and either the same, a different, or no adult stranger for 8 4-min trials. Results indicated that the Same-Adult Group spent more time near the adult, less time near and touching their mothers, and more time near and touching the toys than the Different-Adult Group. These trends emerged as the trials progressed, and evidenced the Same-Adult Group's growing familiarity with the adult. The No-Adult Group spent less time near or touching their mothers and more time near or touching the toys than the Different-Adult Group, but did not differ from the Same-Adult Group on these responses. The findings suggest that fearful or cautious reactions to adult strangers disappear rapidly as the adult becomes familiar and point to the value of studying the process whereby the infant becomes familiar with new people.     

Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application

The literature concerning the controversy between dissonance and selfperception theories is reviewed. It is proposed that the two theories be regarded not as “competing” formulations but as complementary ones and, furthermore, that each theory is applicable only to its own specialized domain. Self-perception theory, it is suggested, accurately characterizes attitude change phenomena in the context of attitude-congruent behavior and dissonance theory attitude change in the context of attitude-discrepant behavior. Attitude-congruent is defined as any position within an individual's latitude of acceptance; attitude-discrepant as any position in the latitude of rejection. An experimental test of these notions produced confirming evidence. Subjects who were given an opportunity to misattribute any potential dissonance arousal to an external stimulus did not change their attitudes, relative to low choice subjects, if they were committed to endorsing a position in their latitude of rejection. If the commitment concerned a position in the latitude of acceptance, however, these subjects did exhibit attitude change relative to low choice subjects.     

Further evidence for meaning change in impression formation

Hamilton and Zanna (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1974, 29, 649–654) demonstrated that the meaning of an attribute as rated on connotatively related scales changed as a function of context desirability. This finding was viewed as supporting a meaning change interpretation of context effects in impression formation. Kaplan (Memory and Cognition, 1975, 3, 375–380, Exp. 1) found that similar changes also occurred on scales unrelated in meaning to the test attribute and argued that changes on both kinds of scales were due to halo effects produced by the contexts. Controlling for possible scaling artifacts, the first experiment reported here showed that substantially greater changes occurred on related than on unrelated scales. Kaplan (1975, Exp. 2) also found that the magnitude of context-induced differences in judgments of trait likability was not increased by creating contexts denotatively related to the test attributes. Adding measures of connotative meaning, the second experiment in this paper showed that substantially greater context-induced changes did occur on related meaning scales and, in contrast to Kaplan, on trait likability for the denotatively related contexts. The results of each experiment are consistent with a meaning change position but would not be expected on the basis of the halo effects model.     

One answer to the demand for accountability: Selection utility as an investment decision

An examination of selection utility models demonstrates that they bear a considerable resemblance to capital budgeting models well established in the finance literature. Five applications of capital budgeting to selection utility are suggested and discussed. Capital budgeting concepts are recommended as a rich source of further practical and theoretical development of selection Utility models.     

Hemispheric differences in processing emotions and faces.

Visual field differences for the recognition of emotional expression were investigated using a tachistoscopic procedure. Cartoon line drawings of five adult male characters, each with five emotional expressions ranging from extremely positive to extremely negative, were used as stimuli. Single stimuli were presented unilaterally for 85 msec. Subjects (N = 20) were asked to compare this target face to a subsequent centrally presented face and to decide whether the emotional expressions of the two faces, or the character represented by the two faces, were the same or different. Significant left visual field (LVF) superiorities for both character and emotional expression recognition were found. Subsequent analyses demonstrated the independence of these effects. The LVF superiority for emotional judgments was related to the degree of affective expression, but that for character recognition was not. The results of this experiment are consistent with experimental and clinical literature which has indicated a right hemispheric superiority for face recognition and for processing emotional stimuli. The asymmetry for emotion recognition is interpreted as being an expression of the right hemisphere's synthetic and integrative characteristics, its holistic nature, and its use of imagic associations.     

Generality of persistence: The role of stimulus and response factors in persistence to punishment

Previous research has shown that intermittent punishment of a response increases its persistence to continuous punishment and that intermittent punishment training in one situation produces persistence to continuous punishment in other situations. Experiment 1 showed that as long as the instrumental response and punishing stimulus were held constant from intermittent to continuous punishment marked differences between these situations had no decremental effect on persistence. Experiment 2 showed that intermittent punishment training of one response resulted in substantial persistence to continuous punishment of a different and apparently incompatible response and that such response change had no more than a marginal effect on persistence. The results were seen as requiring some revision to the traditional conditioning-model interpretation of persistence to punishment.     

A dissociation of right and left hemispheric effects for recognizing emotional tone and verbal content

Emotionally intoned sentences (happy, sad, angry, and neutral voices) were dichotically paired with monotone sentences. A left ear advantage was found for recognizing emotional intonation, while a simultaneous right ear advantage was found for recognizing the verbal content of the sentences. The results indicate a right hemispheric superiority in recognizing emotional stimuli. These findings are most reasonably attributed to differential lateralization of emotional functions, rather than to subject strategy effects. No evidence was found to support a hypothesis that each hemisphere is involved in processing different types of emotion.     

Patterns of cerebral organization

An analysis of the concurrent incidence of aphasia and spatial disorder in 270 patients with unilateral brain damage suggests that the two functions are statistically independent. These data can also be used to estimate the distribution of left, right, and bilateral representation of linguistic and spatial functions in the population. In right-handers, sex affects the pattern of cerebral asymmetries, while the familial history of sinistrality has a stronger effect on the pattern of cerebral asymmetries in left-handers. These findings suggest that complementary specialization exists only as a statistical norm: It is suggested that differences in complementary and noncomplementary specialization may underlie individual differences in cognitive skills.     

Derogation of an innocent victim as a function of authoritarianism and involvement

Two studies are reported in which observers witnessed a peer (learner) receiving electric shock and where they did or did not play a role in her suffering (Involved vs Noninvolved conditions). It was found in both studies that while High authoritarians were more likely than Low authoritarians to derogate the learner in Involved conditions, the reverse was true in Noninvolved conditions. These significant interactions (p < .03, p < .01) were interpreted in terms of Low authoritarians derogating in order to preserve their belief in a “just world” and High authoritarians derogating in order to avoid self-blame.     

Immediate memory span, recognition memory for subspan series of words, and serial position effects in recognition memory for supraspan series of verbal and nonverbal items in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia

Four Broca's aphasics, four Wernicke's aphasics, and four matched controls were investigated on three verbal and one visual short-term memory tasks. Experiment 1 considered memory span and subspan recognition memory for verbal items and Experiment 2 assessed serial position effects in supraspan verbal recognition memory. The Broca's aphasics demonstrated verbal memory deficits, which could not be attributed to linguistic disturbances, while the verbal memory deficiencies seen with the Wernicke's aphasics could be regarded as secondary to linguistic defects. In Experiment 3, where visual recognition memory was investigated, only the Broca's aphasics showed deficient performance. The wider context of deficient mnemonic performance in aphasia is discussed.     

Women's reactions to discrimination from members of the same or opposite sex

The effects upon women's self-evaluations of experiencing varying severity of failure in interpersonal competition against male vs. female opponents were explored. The results supported the hypothesis that self-esteem in women is more vulnerable to interpersonal rejection from men as opposed to other women. Specifically, subjects reported lower self-esteem when severe failure was due to the actions of alleged, male opponents rather than female ones. Also, severe failure elicited less favorable self-evaluations than mild failure only when the female subjects confronted male opponents. Finally, contrary to a defensive self-presentation hypothesis, subjects did not respond to discrimination from men by presenting themselves as being discrepant from the stereotype of women. Instead, subjects who interpreted their failure as reflecting prejudice on the part of men evaluated themselves more favorably on positive traits underlying the female stereotype.     

Sometimes frequently means seldom: Context effects in the interpretation of quantitative expressions

Subjects supplied numerical definitions for five quantitative expressions embedded in two high-frequency contexts, one moderate-frequency context, two low-frequency contexts, and with no context specified. Mean definitions differed significantly across contexts and expressions with a Context-Expression interaction (p < .01). The variance in definition of an expression embedded in a context generally increased with the discrepancy between its no-context definition and the context event's estimated frequency (p < .05). Variance in the definitions of the sampled expressions gathered over diverse contexts increased with the expression's no-context definition (p < .05). Thus, the mean and variance of an expression's numerical definitions depended upon both the expression and its context.     

Handedness and sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry

A study was designed to assess the contributions of the factors of sex and familial history to cerebral dominance, where cerebral dominance was inferred from laterality on a dichotic listening task. The 144 subjects were selected from a larger sample on the basis of handedness, sex, and familial history of sinistrality, and tested on a task involving the dichotic presentation of CV syllables. Analysis of the data indicated that in female subjects, the presence of familial sinistrality increased the likelihood that they present atypical left-ear superiorities, while in males the converse was the case. Moreover, there was a significant sex difference overall, such that males were more clearly lateralized than females. A review of other dichotic listening studies provided support for the reliability of this sex difference for dichotic tasks using verbal material. A review of the clinical literature indicated that the hypothesis of a sex difference is at least tenable and merits further investigation. However, the possibility that there is a sex difference in the cognitive strategy used in dichotic listening cannot be ruled out.