Reacting to reactance: An Interpersonal interpretation of the need for freedom

This study was designed to investigate the conditions under which the negative consequences of social influence attempts can be mitigated by freedom-affirming interventions. Eighty-eight high school girls received an influence message, presumably written by a co-worker, containing either a threat or a promise. In addition, subjects were or were not given a choice option as to mode of compliance, if they chose to comply with the message. In half the cases, the Interpersonal condition, subjects received their choice/no choice option from their co-worker; in the other half of the cases, the Noninterpersonal condition, subjects were assigned the choice/no choice option by a random event unknown to the influencing agent. As anticipated, in the Interpersonal as compared to the Noninterpersonal condition, (a) threats produced greater compliance when a choice was offered than when it was not, and (b) promises and threats were more equivalent in gaining compliance when a choice was offered than when it was not. These results, which suggest that in a social setting individuals' concerns about freedom are interpersonally motivated, are discussed in terms of their relation to and implications for reactance theory.     

Social facilitation in chickens: A different level of analysis

An assumption of the arousal (D × H) model of social facilitation effects is that in an otherwise constant stimulus situation the simple presence or absence of a conspecific has a quantitative influence on the D component, and that the habit hierarchy in the situation (H) is unaffected. However, certain evidence from avian subjects seemed inconsistent with the multiplicative effects predicted by the model, and experiments were conducted with the aim of resolving this discrepancy. In general, chickens were tested for consummatory responses in the company of companions, in isolation, or in the company of strangers. Clear findings emerged from these tests that showed that only the companion conditions were “facilitative”. Under the other test conditions there were qualitative (as opposed to merely quantitative) shifts in responses. Apparently, the different social test conditions evoked qualitatively different response hierarchies, and “facilitation” reflected this sort of shift rather than simple quantitative changes in arousal (D) across conditions. It was argued, therefore, that the appropriate level of analysis for facilitation effects for animals in a free response situation is not within the (D × H) envelope, but rather at the level of S (stimulus situation) in the S → (D × H) → R formulation. Implications for the analysis of social facilitation effects in humans were discussed.     

The Tyranny of Numbers: Does Group Size Affect Petition Signing?

Conformity research proposes that an individual's tendency to conform increases linearly as a function of group size, reaches an early plateau, and remains stable thereafter, An experiment was performed to test the generality of this notion to a common group pressure situation: petition-signing. Results revealed no meaningful relationships whatever between the percent of subjects who signed and the number of previous signatures (0 through 8), the forcefulness of the solicitor's approach, and subject's sex. A female petitioner did receive more signatures than a male, however. Results were interpreted as supporting the validity of petitions as indicators of public sentiment.     

The anomaly of anomaly

In order to determine whether mechanically generated sentences, often referred to in the literature as anomalous, are in fact anomalous, subjects in the present experiment were asked to do two different tasks: a paired-associates learning task involving anomalous sentences as responses, and a second task in which they were asked to interpret such sentences. These tasks were counterbalanced across different groups of subjects. Results of the interpretation task showed that a large proportion of subjects were able to give interpretations for anomalous sentences, while learning results indicated that anomalous sentences were more difficult to anticipate than natural sentencesonly when task order was Learn first, Interpret second. In the order Interpret-Learn, differences in ease of learning between anomalous and naturally occurring sentences did not appear. The results of this study demonstrate that anomalous sentences are interpretable, that a range of difficulty for such sentences can be established, that anomalous sentences are learned as easily as naturally occurring ones after interpretation, and that many of the interpretations given to such sentences are metaphoric in character. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of lexical organization.     

Differentiating psychiatrically disturbed children on the basis of a structured interview

A structured psychiatric interview designed for both clinical assessment and data collection was given to 50 pairs of well-matched pediatrie and psychiatric clinic children and their mothers. The two groups were shown to be dearly distinguished on the basis of numbers of symptoms. Behavior and school symptoms gave the sharpest distinction between the two groups. Neurotic and somatic symptoms were the poorest discriminators. The psychiatric children showed significantly more antisocial symptoms than their matched pediatrie peers. Age differences showed the expected trends with the widest divergence in the number of symptoms being in the oldest age group.This study was supported in part by NIMH Grant 05938.     

Orientation of stimuli and binocular disparity coding

An experiment is described which attempts to relate physiological work on disparity coding in the cat to a psychophysical situation using human subjects and Julesz stereograms composed of small line elements. It was found that depth perception occurred only if matching disparate lines in each stereogram shared a similar orientation. Depth began to deteriorate if an orientation difference exceeded 10° and it was extinguished at about 60°. The results are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that shape-sensitive disparity detectors of the kind found in the cat exist also in man.     

Victim and Observer Characteristics as Determinants of Responsibility Attributions to Victims of Rape1

Two field studies were conducted to investigate the influence of observer and victim characteristics on attributions of victim and assailant responsibility in a rape case. In the first study, male and female subjects completed a measure of rape myth acceptance and were presented with a rape account after which they were asked to attribute responsibility to victim and assailant. In the second study, a new sample was asked to attribute responsibility to victim and assailant on the basis of one of two rape accounts in which victim's pre-rape behavior was manipulated. Results showed that both rape myth acceptance and victims' pre-rape behavior influenced the degree of responsibility attributed to victims and assailants. No significant effects of subject gender were found. A more complex conceptualization is suggested of the link between observer and victim characteristics in social reactions to and evaluations of rape victims.     

The “Friendly visitor” program data: A reply to Denney

Conclusion In summary, Denney's failure to obtain the original results with her reanalyses can be attributed to the fact that she (a) scored some variables differently, (b) included an inappropriate subjects who was not entered into the original analyses, (c) excluded appropriate subjects who were used in the original analyses, (d) included an additional invalid dependent measure previously dicarded, and (e) may have used a different residualization algorithm. In view of these differences, it is not surprising that the multivariate and unvariate results that she obtained were different from those originally reported.We hope that now the procedural differences that account for the inconsistencies alleged by Denney are clear.     

Attributions of Blame and Responsibility in Relation to Distress and Health Behavior Change in People with AIDS and AIDS-related Complex1

There are conflicting views expressed in the literature about whether and under what conditions attributions of self-responsibility or self-blame for one's health affect such variables as distress, emotional adjustment, and adaptive coping. This study examined the impact of attributions of blame and responsibility for the cause and course of disease in 103 persons with the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS-related complex (ARC). Attributing the cause of disease to the self was significantly positively correlated with dysphoria (a combined measure of depression, anxiety, and negative mood) in persons with ADS, whereas possible improvement attributed to the self was significantly negatively correlated with dysphoria in the ARC group. Persons with AIDS who attributed more responsibility for improvement to themselves also made more health behavior changes. Conversely, in the ARC group, health behavior change was not associated with attributing possible improvement to the self. We found no relationship between self-blame and any of the distress or behavior measures. Our findings that the pattern of association between attribution of responsibility are different between persons with AIDS and ARC underscores the need to examine psychological processes within the context of particular health conditions. The results also suggest that attributing self-responsibility for improvement does not have the negative psychological effects of “blaming the victim” as does attributing responsibility for the cause of AIDS to the self.