A factor analytic study of manifest anxiety: a transsituational, transtemporal investigation

In this study, we investigated the factorial structure of the Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS) among American, counseling graduate students (N = 227). The MAS was administered across transsituational and transtemporal conditions. The following four factors were yielded following orthogonal rotation: General Worries, Physiological Correlates of Anxiety, Distractibility, and Embarrassment. These four factors, however, explained less than one quarter of the common variance extracted. Following a comparison with previous factor analytic studies of the MAS, we discuss factors possibly contributing to the discrepant findings, with particular attention to the MAS's item content and psychometric properties and the nature of the population used.     

Do semantic memory deficiencies underlie learning disabled readers' encoding processes?

This study investigates the extent to which learning disabled readers' atypical encoding relates to their deficiencies in semantic memory. Inferences related to ability group performance were based on the assumption that encoding involves the matching of incoming information against a featural representation of that information in semantic memory. To this end, learning disabled and nondisabled readers in two age groups were compared on dichotic listening recall tasks that included orienting and nonorienting instructions. Orienting instructions directed children's attention toward semantic, phonemic, or structural word features. Dependent measures were lateralization, free recall, retrieval organization, and selective attention. The efficiency of allocating attentional resources was inferred from correlations between central and incidental recall. Primary results included the following: Disabled and nondisabled readers' ear asymmetry differences were dependent upon age, orienting instructions, and type of word list; disabled readers' recall and organization scores were lower than skilled readers'; however, both ability groups benefitted from orienting instructions compared to nonorienting instructions; during orienting instructions, disabled readers were less able than skilled readers to divide their attention between target and nontarget word features, especially during interhemispheric processing conditions; and the relative efficiency of allocating attentional resources differed qualitatively between the two ability groups. The results suggest that ability group variations reflect the structure of the memory trace in interaction with ear presentation and encoding processes. It is inferred that disabled readers' inferior memory traces reflect the quantity and internal coherence of information stored in semantic memory as well as the means by which such information is accessed.     

Attitude accessibility as a moderator of the attitude-perception and attitude-behavior relations: an investigation of the 1984 presidential election

It was hypothesized that the extent to which individuals' attitudes guide their subsequent perceptions of and behavior toward the attitude object is a function of the accessibility of those attitudes from memory. A field investigation concerning the 1984 presidential election was conducted as a test of these hypotheses. Attitudes toward each of the two candidates, Reagan and Mondale, and the accessibility of those attitudes, as indicated by the latency of response to the attitudinal inquiry, were measured for a large sample of townspeople months before the election. Judgments of the performance of the candidates during the televised debates served as the measure of subsequent perceptions, and voting served as the measure of subsequent behavior. As predicted, both the attitude-perception and the attitude-behavior relations were moderated by attitude accessibility. The implications of these findings for theoretical models of the processes by which attitudes guide behavior, along with their practical implications for survey research, are discussed.     

Adjustment to rape

This questionnaire study of rape victims' reactions, causal attributions for the rape, coping behaviors after the rape, and psychological adjustment to the rape were examined. As in previous research, high levels of behavioral and characterological self-blame for rape were found. Contrary to prior hypotheses, behavioral self-blame was not associated with good adjustment. Rather, both behavioral and characterological self-blame were associated with poor adjustment. Societal blame was the only causal attribution for rape that was unassociated with adjustment. Remaining at home and withdrawing from others were both associated with poor adjustment, and the use of stress reduction techniques was associated with good adjustment. The implications of the results for theories of victimization and for clinical interventions with rape victims are discussed.     

Peers' granting of control to women with different sex role identities: implications for depression

This investigation is one of a series of studies seeking to determine the degree of control given to women with different sex role identities. This study focused on the extent to which peers were willing to grant control to women with different sex role identities if working individually with each woman on various two-person tasks. The results indicated that women with different sex role identities were granted different amounts of control by their peers as a function of the type of two-person task under consideration. Women rated high on masculinity were granted greater control on enjoyable and creative tasks, whereas women rated low in masculinity were given more control on methodical and less enjoyable tasks. Women judged high in femininity were given control on tasks requiring interpersonal skills. These findings were discussed within the context of learned helplessness theory as a possible aid in understanding why more women than men become depressed.     

Altruism and aggression: the heritability of individual differences

Five questionnaires measuring altruistic and aggressive tendencies were completed by 573 adult twin pairs of both sexes from the University of London Institute of Psychiatry Volunteer Twin Register. The questionnaires measured altruism, empathy, nurturance, aggressiveness, and assertiveness. The intraclass correlations for the five scales, respectively, were .53, .54, .49, .40, and .52 for 296 monozygotic pairs, and .25, .20, .14, .04, and .20 for 179 same-sex dizygotic pairs, resulting in broad heritability estimates of 56%, 68%, 70%, 72%, and 64%. Additional analyses, using maximum-likelihood model-fitting, revealed approximately 50% of the variance on each scale to be associated with genetic effects, virtually 0% with the twins' common environment, and the remaining 50% with each twins' specific environment and/or error associated with the test. Correcting for the unreliability in the tests raised the maximum-likelihood heritabilities to approximately 60%. Age and sex differences were also found: altruism increased over the age span from 19 to 60, whereas aggressiveness decreased, and, at each age, women had higher scores than men on altruism and lower scores on aggressiveness.     

The fantasy-prone person: hypnosis, imagination, and creativity

The present study evaluated the so-called fantasy prone personality by selecting subjects who ranged along the continuum of fantasy proneness and then administering measures designed to assess hypnotic susceptibility (Harvard Group Scale, HGSHS:A; Shor & Orne, 1962), absorption (Tellegen Absorption Scale; Tellegen, 1976), vividness of mental imagery (QMI; Sheehan, 1967), response to waking suggestion (Creative Imagination Scale; Wilson & Barber, 1978), creativity (Barron Welsh Art Scale; Barron & Welsh, 1952), and social desirability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). Fantasy-prone (N = 23; upper 4% of college population), medium range (N = 22), and nonfantasy-prone persons (N = 17; lower 4% of population), were selected using the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (Wilson & Barber, 1981). Strong support was secured for J. R. Hilgard's construct of imaginative involvement and Wilson and Barber's contention that fantasy prone persons can be distinguished from others in terms of fantasy and related cognitive processes. Fantasizers were found to outscore subjects in both comparison groups on all of the measures of fantasy, imagination, and creativity, with social desirability used as a covariate. Low fantasy-prone subjects were no less creative or less responsive to hypnosis than their medium fantasy-prone counterparts.     

Twentieth-century attitudes toward masturbation

This article demonstrates the progress that medicine, psychiatry, religion, and anthropology have made toward a variant perspective, of masturbation. Researchers documented the suffering and damage caused by classically ingrained religious and medical distortions.The secret sin of Judeo-Christianity and the social disease of nineteenth-century medicine has paradoxially become the therapy for various forms of psychosexual dysfunction. Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations polarize opinions from rigorous orthodoxy to unconditional acceptance of this psychosexual behavior as a source of emotional homeostasis.Michael S. Patton, Ph.D., is an anthropologist concerned with sex research in society, history, and religion. He lives in Mansfield, OH 44903.     

Drug-behavior interaction history: modification of the effects of morphine on punished behavior.

Squirrel monkeys were trained to respond under a multiple fixed-interval, fixed-interval schedule in which the first response after 5 min terminated a visual stimulus in the presence of which electric shocks could occur. During one component of the schedule, correlated with one color of stimulus lights, every 30th response also produced electric shock; responding was suppressed during this component to approximately 10 to 12% of that occurring in the alternate component in which responding was not punished. In contrast to previous research, morphine (0.03 to 1.0 mg/kg) increased punished responding. Unpunished responding, however, was either not affected or decreased at doses of morphine that increased punished responding. Increases in rate of punished responding also occurred when the single-schedule punishment condition was studied alone in these animals. Subsequent experimentation, which systematically analyzed the development of the rate-enhancing effects of morphine on punished responding, involved the study of drug effects in additional monkeys trained initially under a single-schedule punishment condition. The effects of morphine on punished responding were studied before, after, and then during exposure to the multiple schedule that included a component in which responding was not punished. Increases in response rate with morphine did not occur until it was administered during exposure to the multiple schedule that included a component in which responding was not punished. As with the other monkeys, once the rate increases in punished responding occurred under the multiple schedule, these effects of morphine persisted, even when the multiple schedule was removed.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)