Practicing What We Preach? The Influence of a Societal Interest Value on Civic Engagement

Recently, much attention has focused on declining levels of civic engagement as a symptom of a wide range of social ills. Some claim that Americans' tendency to endorse individualistic beliefs to the exclusion of a collective or societal interest value accounts for declining levels of civic engagement. This study investigated whether a value commitment to benefit the collective, called societal interest, helps to explain civic engagement. Data from the 1990–1992 National Election Studies panel study were used to evaluate whether a societal interest value helps to explain participation in community affairs and efforts to solve collective problems. The findings support the hypothesis that societal interest influences the likelihood of engaging in behavior to benefit the collective. These findings support the view that human behavior is influenced by multiple motives (including a desire to benefit the collective). Expressions of commitment to societal interest are more than mere lip service to noble ideals; they have real consequences for behavior.     

Binocular Rivalry Disrupts Visual Priming

Many results implicate perceptual processing in repetition priming, but little is known of potential mechanisms for priming. A new method was used to help determine the processing stage at which priming occurs. Priming pictures were presented under dominance or suppression generated by binocular rivalry. Although low-level, sensory attributes can be processed under rivalry suppression, there is no evidence that repetition priming can be supported by such low-level processing. Priming was found only for stimuli that were processed sufficiently to be identified in the priming stage. The results demonstrate that repetition priming requires processing of stimulus attributes into relatively high-level representations.     

Memory Processing of a Serial List By Young Infants

Serial list learning is thought to be beyond the capabilities of infants before the end of their 1st year. In separate experiments with 3- and 6-month-olds, we studied infants' memory for a serial list using a modified serial probe recognition procedure that was originally developed for monkeys and a precuing procedure that was previously used with human adults. Infants were trained with a three-item list. One day later, they were precued with one list member and tested for recognition of another. When the precue specified valid order information, infants of both ages recognized the test item; when the precue specified invalid order information, infants of neither age did. These findings reveal that even very young infants can learn and remember the order of items on a serial list.     

Introduction to the self-management series: II

Journal of Behavioral Education -     

A developmental assessment of children's verbal strategies for social action resolution

The objectives of this study were (1) to devise a method to assess children's developing verbal strategies for action resolution as expressed in reflection on a naturalistic, real-life social experience and (2) to examine these strategies in relation to differences in age and reflective social understanding level. In the design of this study the two independent variables were grade (second and third versus fourth and fifth) and level of reflective social understanding (level 1 versus level 2 on a social understanding interview schedule). Four small activity groups (six subjects per group), homogeneous with respect to grade and reflective social understanding level, were composed from 24 girls with middle class backgrounds. Each of the four groups met for twelve consecutive school weaks, once a week, for 90 minutes in adult supervised after-school cooperative group activities (e.g., putting on a puppet show).A Social Action Resolution Strategies interview was administered to each subject individually at the end of the twelve-week program in order to assess the child's preferred verbally expressed choice of action for resolving common conflits which arose in the activity group experience. Interviews were coded according to four levels of social action resolution strategies (0–3). Results indicated that the developmental sequence of social perspective-taking levels can be considered to underlie the range of strategies used by children to settle social conflicts as well as social understanding levels. A clear relation among level of social action resolution strategies, level of reflective social understanding, and grade was found.     

Factors Influencing Gay Men's Attitudes,Subjective Norms,and Intentions With Respect to Performing Sexual Behaviors1

In a recent paper (Fishbein et al., 1992) gay men's attitudes and subjective norms were found to be accurate predictors of their intentions to perform a variety of sexual behaviors. In addition, the relative importance of norms as determinants of intention was found to be greater in Seattle (a city with a well organized gay community) than in Albany (a city in which the gay community is not well organized). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which the men's attitudes, subjective norms, and intentions were influenced by a number of situational and individual difference variables. Three hundred and fourteen self-identified gay or bisexual men from Seattle (134), Denver (78), and Albany (102) completed a questionnaire specifically designed for this study. As expected, type of partner and type of sexual activity significantly influenced attitudes, perceived norms, and intentions. In addition, these dependent variables were also influenced, in part, by city of residence, age, and perceived risk of HIV infection. The findings provide additional justification for developing different interventions for gay men in different cities, age, and perceived risk groups.