Pursuing and distancing: the construct and its measurement

Although the concept of interpersonal pursuing and distancing has been introduced and used clinically, the lack of a reliable and valid measure has deterred its more formal investigation and relevance to personality theory. The Pursuing-Distancing (P-D) Scale, a 92-item measure of the behavioral expression of these characteristics, was developed. Evidence for internal consistency as well as internal support of construct validity is presented and discussed. An 80-item revised scale is available from the authors and is currently being evaluated in a variety of external validation settings.     

Rorschach content interpretation in post-traumatic stress disorders: a reply to Carr

In traumatized patients, Rorschach responses draw from a variety of sources, including the traumatic event itself, past and current experiences, and internal fantasy. As complex and highly condensed mental constructions, these responses often serve to reveal the meaning of the trauma in terms of the patient's prevailing personality conflicts. In many cases, this meaning may be hidden in the response's distortion of or elaboration on images drawn from the actual event.     

Updating Norman's "Adequate Taxonomy": intelligence and personality dimensions in natural language and in questionnaires

Research on the dimensions of personality represented in the English language has repeatedly led to the identification of five factors (Norman, 1963). An alternative classification of personality traits, based on analyses of standardized questionnaires, is provided by the NEO (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness) model (Costa & McCrae, 1980b). In this study we examined the correspondence between these two systems in order to evaluate their comprehensiveness as models of personality. A sample of 498 men and women, participants in a longitudinal study of aging, completed an instrument containing 80 adjective pairs, which included 40 pairs proposed by Goldberg to measure the five dimensions. Neuroticism and extraversion factors from these items showed substantial correlations with corresponding NEO Inventory scales; however, analyses that included psychometric measures of intelligence suggested that the fifth factor in the Norman structure should be reconceptualized as openness to experience. Convergent correlations above .50 with spouse ratings on the NEO Inventory that were made three years earlier confirmed these relations across time, instrument, and source of data. We discuss the relations among culture, conscientiousness, openness, and intelligence, and we conclude that mental ability is a separate factor, though related to openness to experience.     

Another look at sex stereotypes and social judgments: an analysis of the social perceiver's use of subjective probabilities

Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, and Hepburn (1980) assert that subjects fall prey to the base-rate fallacy when they make stereotype-related trait judgments. They found that subjects ignored their stereotypes when trait judgments were made in the presence of trait-related behavioral information. The present article reexamines those findings with respect to two issues: (a) the use of a normative criterion in comparison with subjects' judgments and (b) the level of analysis (group vs. individual) of subjects' judgments. We conducted a replication of the Locksley et al. (1980) Study 2, and the results were examined with respect to these two issues. We found no support for the base-rate fallacy. When a Bayesian normative criterion was constructed for each subject based on the subject's own stereotype judgments and was compared with assertiveness judgments made in the presence of individuating information, there was no evidence that subjects ignored or underused their stereotypes as the base-rate fallacy predicts.     

Evaluation of the BSRI masculine and feminine items using desirability and stereotype ratings

This study empirically tested Bem's (1974) assumption that the BSRI Masculinity and Femininity scales measure sex-typed standards of desirable behavior for men and women in American society. The adequacy of items in the two scales was evaluated by Bem's (1974) criteria using two types of desirability and stereotype ratings. Results obtained in all the experimental conditions except one involving Bem's desirability instructions and Bem's rating scale did not support the tested assumption. Implications of these results for revising the BSRI scales were discussed.     

Components of reward in social dilemmas

A social dilemma (Dawes, 1980) may be defined as a situation in which a collection of individuals is faced with a conflict between maximizing selfish interests and maximizing collective interests. The dilemma is based on the fact that if all choose to maximize selfish interests, all are worse off than if all choose to maximize collective interests. In a decomposed social dilemma (Pruitt, 1967), the outcomes are divided into two components: one component is based on one's own choice and the second component is based on the choices made by the others. Using 3-person decomposed games, two types of incentives were contrasted: a positive incentive (bonus) for cooperative choices and a negative incentive (penalty) for noncooperative choices. Two experiments were conducted using male college students. The results of both experiments showed that the positive incentive evoked a higher level of cooperation than the negative incentive. The results are discussed in terms of nonadditive utility components, Pruitt's motivational interpretation, and Kelley and Thibaut's (1978) theory of interdependence.     

Learned helplessness and judgments of control

One of the central hypotheses of learned helplessness theory is that exposure to noncontingency produces a reduced ability to perceive response-outcome relations (the postulated "cognitive deficit"). To test this hypothesis, subjects were exposed to a typical helplessness induction task and then asked to make judgments of the amount of control their responses exerted over a designated outcome (the onset of a light). Support for the postulated cognitive deficit would be found if subjects who experienced the induction underestimated the relation between their responses and outcomes. The results, however, demonstrated that induction subjects (n = 30) made higher and more accurate judgments of control than subjects in a no-treatment control group (n = 30). This finding clearly fails to support the postulated cognitive deficit and highlights the need for other direct tests of the basic hypotheses of helplessness theory.     

Distinguishing child diagnostic types with early memories

The present study attempts to correct design weaknesses in earlier studies which assessed the use of early memories (EMs) in identifying psychopathology in children. A new EM scoring system, the CEMSS, was developed to provide an objective, comprehensive analysis of the reported EMs. Subjects were 64 boys, SES IV and V, 8 through 12 years old from four diagnostic groups--Delinquent, Hyperactive, Somatic Complaints, and Schizoid. Overall, the CEMSS provided an effective means to distinguish the diagnostic groups, p less than or equal to .01. The results suggest that content variables best distinguished the type of presenting psychopathology, whereas an earlier study found that structural EM variables most reliably identified the degree of psychopathology.     

A developmental study of reactions to frustration among Scheduled Caste Indians

Administered the Indian adaptation of the Rosenzweig P-F Study to 144 Scheduled Caste (SC) adolescent and 158 young adult male Indians. The results show that SC adolescents scored significantly higher on ego-defensive (ED) and extragressive (EA) and lower on need-persistive (NP), introgressive (IA) and imgressive (MA) reactions as compared to the Non-Scheduled caste (Non-SC) adolescents while there was no significant difference on any reaction among SC and Non-SC young adults. SC adolescents scored higher on NP and lower on obstacle-dominance (OD) reaction as compared to the SC young adults. Non-SC young adults were higher on EA, ED, and OD and lower on IA and NP as compared to those of adolescents. The pattern of reactions was ED-EA-NP-IA-MA-OD among adolescents and ED-EA-IA-NP-MA-OD among young adults of both the castes.