The effects of perceived parental rearing style on the development of Type A pattern

The aetiological antecedents of the Type A pattern have not been studied widely. In the present study the effects of parental rearing practices on the development of Type A pattern were evaluated. Perceived parental rearing style was assessed by the EMBU and Type A pattern by the JAS. Subjects were drawn from a random sample of residents (older than 21 years) of a Dutch community. Results suggested that a significant amount of variance of Type A behaviour can be accounted for by perceived parental characteristics, especially rejection and lack of emotional warmth. It is suggested that lack of emotional warmth and negative evaluation of children by their parents may lead to an internalized maladaptive cognitive set in the children which may be a developmental antecedent for eliciting the competitiveness, achievement striving, and sense of time urgency characteristic of Type A adults.     

Reasons for employee sabotage in the workplace

Unionized workers at a factory were asked to rate a variety of reasons which would justify the use of sabotage in an organization, as well as the justifiability of four general methods of sabotage (slowdowns, destructiveness, dishonesty, and causing chaos). Results showed that as compared to those who didn't accept a wide variety of reasons for sabotage, those who accepted a variety of reasons would more readily justify all forms of sabotage except dishonesty. The data is discussed in terms of the reasons for the lack of justification that dishonesty receives, as well as future directions for the study of sabotage.     

Unanswered questions in assessment center research

This study compared the predictive validity of two types of overall assessment center ratings (clinical and mechanical) and two types of performance ratings (supervisor and subordinate). Data were gathered on approximately 50 law enforcement agency managers over a four-year time span. Results indicated that clinical predictions were not significantly better than mechanical ones and that prior performance ratings were better predictors of future performance ratings than were assessment centers. Further, dimension ratings within the assessment center were found to be unrelated to ratings of the same dimensions on the job four years later, supporting the notion of subtle criterion contamination (Klimoski & Strickland, 1977) and raising questions about the central assumptions underlying the assessment center approach.     

Testing the limits of the phonetic mnemonic system

Three experiments tested the efficacy of the phonetic mnemonic system under varying conditions of application. The first study attempted unsuccessfully to replicate and extend the work of Morris and Greer (1984), who had shown training in the phonetic mnemonic method to facilitate memorization of a serial list of two-digit numbers. In the present study, subjects trained in the phonetic mnemonic method failed to learn lists of two-, four-, and six-digit numbers better than control subjects. The second experiment partially replicated the first, the differences being that training in the phonetic mnemonic method was strengthened, and time allotted for number recall was extended. Under these circumstances the phonetic mnemonic group recalled the two-, four-, and six-digit numbers significantly better than the control groups, a finding conforming with Morris and Greer's (1984) results. The third experiment partially replicated the second, everything being the same except that, in this case, subjects constructed their own key words representing each number, instead of these words being supplied by the experimenter. Under these conditions, subjects trained in the phonetic mnemonic method recalled significantly fewer numbers than control subjects.     

Perceptual organization of acoustic stimuli by budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus): II. Vocal signals

Operant conditioning and multidimensional scaling procedures were used to study auditory perception of complex sounds in the budgerigar. In a same-different discrimination task, budgerigars learned to discriminate among natural vocal signals. Multidimensional scaling procedures were used to arrange these complex acoustic stimuli in a two-dimensional space reflecting perceptual organization. Results show that budgerigars group vocal stimuli according to functional and acoustical categories. Studies with only contact calls show that birds also make within-category discriminations. The acoustic cues in contact calls most salient to budgerigars appear to be quite complex. There is a suggestion that the sex of the signaler may also be encoded in these calls. The results from budgerigars were compared with the results from humans tested on some of the same sets of complex sounds.     

The biparental care system of the California mouse, Peromyscus californicus

Most knowledge of parent-offspring relations in mammals is derived from studies of mother-infant interactions. Male parental care has been less well studied. We explored maternal and paternal behavior of the California mouse, Peromyscus californicus. Six pairs of parents and their young were videotaped continuously for 12 hours/day, on alternate days from Days 1 to 31 postpartum. Males exhibit all parental activities and to the same extent as displayed by mothers, except lactation. Male parental behavior begins on the day of birth. Mothers and fathers spend substantial and equivalent amounts of time in the nest and in physical contact with pups throughout lactation. Males devote more time than females to licking pups, although females engage in more pup anogenital licking. Mothers nurse for at least 4 weeks, and fathers and mothers both build nests and carry young. The biparental care system of Peromyscus californicus affords an opportunity to develop a broader, more complete view of parent-offspring relations.     

Psychosocial risk factors, natural immunity, and cancer progression: Implications for intervention

One of the more important and emerging fields in which psychologists collaborate with other disciplines is psychoimmunology. Centuries of clinical anecdote and decades of psychosomatic hypotheses have gained credibility in the eyes of the medical establishment—and many patients—by the systematic investigation of mechanisms potentially explaining how events intrapsychic and interpersonal could affect physical disease processes. The central nervous system is connected with the immune system by both neuronal and endocrinological pathways. The immune system has been found to mediate the organism’s response to aberrations of its own normal functions, as well as to invading organisms from without. AIDS, arthritis, asthma, lupus, and herpes are some of the illnesses in which research is demonstrating important relationships among psychosocial and immunological factors and disease course. In this article, we first discuss the immunological apparatus in order to provide a base for subsequent discussions of the effects of stress on immune function. Then we discuss malignant diseases and current evidence that disease course is related to both psychosocial stressors and immune function. We next discuss a model of these interactions, and finally we talk about interventions incorporating psychosocial factors aimed at influencing immune status and, thus, disease course.     

New wave or second stage? Attitudes of college women toward feminism

The attitudes of female subjects toward gender roles, gender inequality, and the women's movement were measured using a 24-item attitudinal inventory. Subjects tended to hold nontraditional but only moderately feminist attitudes toward gender roles. They were, however, highly aware of gender inequality and supportive of the women's movement, although they were also reluctant to identify themselves as feminists. T tests revealed that subjects most supportive of feminism were advanced students (juniors and seniors) and students who had personally experienced discrimination. But when personal experience of sex discrimination was controlled for, the strength of the relationships between class level and gender role attitudes, and between class level and support for the women's movement, diminished. Students who had personally experienced sex discrimination are less traditional and more feminist in their gender role attitudes, and show stronger support for the women's movement, regardless of their class level, than students who have not had such experiences. These findings are interpreted and their implications for the future of the women's movement are discussed.     

Further observational data on the behavioral and social world of institutions for the aged

This study is an extension of previous observational work on the social ecology of dependence and independence in the institutionalized elderly. Observations of everyday, naturally occurring interactions between elderly residents of two different long-term institutions and their social partners were extended such that, aside from the identification of type of behavior, the dyadic form and continuity of each behavior was specified. The following were among the major results: (a) Previously found interaction patterns between elderly residents and their social partners, replicated in both a nursing home and a home for the chronically ill, supported the notion of discrepant social ecologies for dependent versus independent behaviors of residents: (b) specification of each behavioral act as to its dyadic form underscored the fact that the interactions were controlled largely by social partners and not by the elderly residents; (c) coding continuity or discontinuity of behavior suggested that independent behaviors were maintained by chaining; and (d) elderly residents in the home for the chronically ill evinced, as expected, more dependence-related behaviors.