Anger, Fear, or Sadness: Faculty Members' Emotional Reactions to Collective Pay Disadvantage

As part of a mail survey about their work experiences, university faculty members reported their specific emotional reactions to group inequities in faculty pay and benefits. The results indicate that sadness, fear, and anger are distinct emotional responses to a collective disadvantage. Group-based anger mediated the relationship between collective disadvantage and willingness to protest whereas group-based sadness mediated the relationship between collective disadvantage and organizational loyalty. Based on an integration of cognitive appraisal models of emotion with RD theory, four other predictors of intergroup emotions—(1) the legitimacy of the process that produced the deprivation, (2) whether another agent was responsible, (3) group efficacy, and (4) whether the situation would improve or become worse—were identified and tested. The measurement of specific emotional reactions to perceived collective disadvantage extends and refines RD approaches to collective action and organizational loyalty.     

Biochemical correlates of personality traits in normals: An exploratory study

This study attempted to identify biochemical systems associated with the personality dimensions of Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N), Psychoticism (P), Sensation Seeking (SS) and Impulsivity (Imp). The subjects were 43 normal volunteers who volunteered to take a battery of psychological tests and allow investigators to obtain samples of blood, urine and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) for biochemical assessment.Substantial positive correlations were found between CSF norepinephrine (NE), MHPG (the principal metabolite of NE), DBH (an enzyme involved in the production of NE) and plasma MHPG and DBH; all of these are regarded, in some part, as putative indicators of central noradrenergic activity. After partialling out the influences of age, height and weight, a number of significant relationships were found between psychological traits and biochemical variables. Extraversion correlated positively and introversion and neuroticism correlated negatively with CSF Ca. Neuroticism also correlated negatively with plasma MHPG. Ego Strength (inversely related to Neurotic Introversion), P and Disinhibitory SS correlated negatively with CSF cort. General SS correlated negatively with CSF NE and plasma DBH, and these correlations were significant in both males and females, as well as in the total group. The results are consistent with some biological models of personality, but suggest the need for modification in others.     

Word association and the acquisition of reading

Two studies relating reading ability to word association responses were carried out. The first involved early readers and matched control children from pre-first-grade classes. There were 29 early readers and 29 nonreading controls matched for age, sex, and IQ. The early readers were found to give significantly more paradigmatic, or same-form-class, responses than the controls. The second study related reading ability, mental age, and word association responses in developmentally delayed teen-agers and young adults, and pre-first-grade children who varied in reading ability. With partial correlation reading ability was found to be related to paradigmatic responding, while mental age was not significantly related. These results indicate that reading acquisition may change word association responses in children through a reorganizing process in the lexicon.The authors would like to thank the Halifax and Dartmouth School Boards for their cooperation. We would also like to thank Paul Cable of Special Education, and the principals and teachers: Beth Conrad, Karen Duerdan, Elaine Fram, Peter Montgomery, Wayne Serebrin, and Bill Schipilow. Their help was greatly appreciated. An earlier version of study 1 was presented at the American Psychological Association meeting in Los Angeles, August 1981.     

Effects of modeling on the use of nonsexist language among high school freshpersons and seniors

The present study examined how modeling, grade in school, gender, and attitudes toward women relate to sexist or nonsexist language usage in high school students. Eighty-four female and 60 male high school students, including 77% white, 20% African-American, and 3% “other” participants, completed three questionnaires. The Sexist Language Detector (SLD), a 24 item questionnaire, assessed the use of sexist and nonsexist language by requiring written solutions to ethical dilemmas. Instructions on the SLD included either sexist examples, nonsexist examples, or no example (control). The nonsexist examples condition served as the modeling intervention. Participants completed the shortened versions of J. T. Spence and R. L. Helmreich's Personal Attributes Questionnaire of 1978 and Attitudes toward Women Scale of 1972. Multiple regression analysis indicated main effects for gender, year in school, and condition on nonsexist language use. Participants with nonsexist instructions used significantly more nonsexist language than the other two groups. No significant difference was found among the three groups on the use of sexist language. Freshpersons were more likely to use nonsexist language than seniors. Females used more nonsexist language than males.     

Heuristic Reasoning and the Observer's View: The Influence of Example-Availability on ad-hoc Frequency Judgments in Sport

Drawing upon evidence from broader social psychology, and an illustrative study of frequency-estimation during a simple, sport-specific observe-and-recall task, this paper makes the case for the more thorough investigation of the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973 Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. 1973. Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5: 207–232. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) on practical state-of-play reasoning in largely observational sporting activities. It is argued that this evidence particularly substantiates a need for a more robust body of research in two primary domains: (a) the gatekeeping tasks pertinent (and usually preliminary) to an individual's sporting performance such as talent scouting, team selection, and substitution decisions, and (b) the business of officiating in high-tempo environments.     

Attributions of Blame in Sexual Assault to Perpetrators and Victims of Both Genders1

Previous research found that men attribute more blame to rape victims than do women; men also attribute less blame to perpetrators. In rape situations with a male perpetrator and a female victim, the roles of perpetrator and victim are confounded with gender category. To determine whether men are more lenient toward perpetrators or toward other males, the present study examined attributions of blame in scenarios that varied the gender category of both perpetrator and victim. Results showed that men's and women's attributions of blame to perpetrators were based on the role that was enacted, rather than gender per se: Men attributed less blame to perpetrators than did women, regardless of the perpetrator's gender category, indicating that men were more lenient toward perpetrators than were women. In addition, when the victim was female, the perpetrator was blamed more and the victim was blamed less than when the victim was male.     

The everyday production of knowledge: individual differences in epistemological understanding and juror‐reasoning skill

This study investigated the untested assumption that people's everyday reasoning reflects different understandings of the nature of knowledge and knowing. The epistemological stances of 180 prospective jurors were assessed with an interview that probed the nature and source of the discrepant knowledge claims of two historical accounts. The researchers derived global epistemological levels from these interviews. The jurors also heard trials and offered justifications for their verdict choices. The researchers assessed these justifications for whether subjects could use various reasoning skills successfully. Epistemological level, but not educational level, age, or gender, predicted juror‐reasoning skills and degree of certainty about verdict choice. Epistemological level, mediated by the juror‐reasoning skills, was a better predictor of general argument skill than certainty about verdict choice and the amount of evidence used in arguing for a verdict. The results indicate that epistemological understandings underlie specific juror‐reasoning skills and overall argument ability. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.