Structured personality test item characteristics and validity

Using the structured personality test item as the unit of analysis, the purpose of this research was to evaluate the relationship between validity and a variety of other test item parameters. Of particular interest was the relationship of test item criterion validity to negative keying and to negative wording. By drawing a distinction between negative keying and negative wording it was demonstrated that the use of balanced scales to control acquiescence need not result in a reduction in item criterion validity. Whereas the use of negative wording has in the past reduced validity, data demonstrated that positively worded, negatively keyed items did not. In addition, results indicated that clear, moderately short, relevant test items tended to be the most empirically valid.     

Relationships among attitudes toward children,women's liberation,and personality characteristics

Replication and extension of a 1973 article, Who Wants the Children?, were undertaken. Attitudes toward child rearing, one's own remembered childhood experiences, views of women's liberation, and personality characteristics were assessed for 76 college students and 63 community residents. Some of the earlier findings were replicated: individuals with highly positive attitudes toward child rearing considered it a more creative and socially valuable activity and anti-liberation women expressed greater personal interest in child rearing than pro-liberation women. The failure to replicate other results suggests that attitudes have changed, with attitudes of the sexes converging. The inclusion of a sample of community subjects here clearly points to the need to employ a representative sample when studying attitudes of far-reaching social significance. Analysis of personality differences between pro- and anti-liberation women revealed some differences but also pointed to contradictions in literature.     

Causal and Moral Responsibility of Victims of Rape and Robbery

Four experimental studies of attribution in a criminal situation used a 2⁴ ANOVA design with three common independent variables, namely, type of crime, time of crime, and victim's prior experience of crime, all three manipulated through a passage describing an incident of crime involving a male criminal and a female victim, and one common dependent measure which was length of imprisonment recommended for the criminal. The fourth independent variable was subject's sex in the first two experiments and instructionally manipulated female subject's involvement (objective or identifying female subject) in the last two experiments. The second dependent measure was fault attributed to the victim in the first and third experiments and perceived likelihood of crime in the second and fourth experiments. The subjects were undergraduate students of the University of Bombay, 15 per cell in each experiment. Female subjects were more punitive toward the criminal than male subjects, especially in the case of rape, and the rapist received a longer sentence than the robber, especially from female subjects. Identifying female subjects tended to recommend a longer sentence than objective female subjects. Female subjects attributed less fault to the victim and perceived greater likelihood of crime than male subjects and identifying female subjects attributed somewhat less fault to the victim than did objective female subjects. The robbery victim was attributed more fault than the rape victim. Whereas previous experience of similar victimization increased attributed victim's fault, a late hour enhanced both attributed victim's fault and perceived likelihood of crime. These findings are discussed with respect to a theoretical distinction between causal and moral responsibility as represented by the likellhood and fault measures, respectively.     

Time urgency and the Type A behavior pattern: Implications for time investment and psychological entrapment

Type A's have been described as more time urgent than Type B's, and research indicates that they underestimate the passage of fixed time intervals. The present study examined the implications of these differences in time perception for decisions where time is a resource that can be invested. Type A's and B's were given an initial stake of $4 and provided the opportunity to invest some or all of that amount for the chance to win an additional $2. Investment occurred as a function of time, with subjects believing they would win the additional $2 if a counter reached a randomly determined number. Each unit increment on the counter also resulted in the loss of 1¢ from the initial stake, thus as the counter progressed, goal attainment became more certain, but expenses also increased. Subjects could stop the counter at any time and keep the remainder of their initial stake or continue to invest until the initial stake was depleted (the counter was programmed to never hit the “jackpot”). Half of the subjects could monitor the counter directly, while the other half could not and had to rely on their subjective time estimates. Results indicated that when objective time passage cues were present, Type A's and B's did not differ in their investment decisions. When subjects had to estimate time passage, however, Type A's invested far more than Type B's. These results indicate that under appropriate conditions, Type A's are more susceptible than Type B's to psychological entrapment.     

Vocal congruence in mother-infant play

Turn-taking is the fundamental temporal structure of adult dialogue. This structure defines two types of joint silence: intrapersonal pause (silence bounded by the vocalizations of a single speaker) and switching pause (silence bounded by the vocalizations of different speakers). Switching pauses mark the boundaries of the turn exchange. In adult conversation the mean durations of both types of pause are characteristically matched between partners. This matching, termed vocal congruence, occurs developmentally earlier in the case of switching pauses. We hypothesized and confirmed that mothers and infants match switching pauses but not intrapersonal pauses at 4 months, even though the infants' vocalizations are prelinguistic. Second, since there are known affective correlates of vocal congruence in adult conversation, we hypothesized a similar affective correlate for mother-infant vocal congruence. We found, for the intrapersonal pause only, that the degree of matching within a dyad correlated with infant affective engagement. We conclude, from switching pause congruence, that a turntaking dialogic structure is being regulated in the mother-infant pair at 4 months in the same way as seen in adult conversation. Thus, both the temporal structure of adult dialogue and its affective correlate are prelinguistic.Supported in part by NIMH grant No. 41675.     

Long-term memory for pictures under conditions of thematically related foils

Memory for pictures was investigated under conditions of difficult foil discriminability and lengthy retention intervals. The foils preserved the theme of the studied stimulus, but differed in the number and quality of nonessential physical details. In each experiment, subjects viewed colored photographs, black-and-white photographs, elaborated line drawings, and unelaborated line drawings, followed by an old/new (Experiment 1) or a four-alternative forced-choice (Experiment 2) test given either immediately, 1 day, 1 week, or 4 weeks following study; Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 but with a 12-week delay. For the old/new procedure, performance was best on colored photographs, with performance differences among the four stimulus types still significant after 4 weeks. For the forced-choice test, performance on colored photographs and unelaborated line drawings was best, with performance differences among stimulus types also still significant after 4 weeks. A confusion analysis indicated that errors were based on physical similarity, even after 12 weeks. These results refute the hypothesis that the memorial representations for pictorial variations converge to a common, thematic code after lengthy delays; instead, non-thematic, analogue information is encoded and preserved for lengthy time periods.     

Modelling courage: The role of dissent in fostering independence

While dissent has been construed in terms of social support and informational influence, this paper hypothesizes that exposure to dissenting minority views, even when they are wrong, stimulates resistance to conformity and increased adherence to one's own views. In this study, individuals in groups of four judged the colour of a series of blue stimuli and were exposed to one individual who consistently judged the stimuli to be ‘green: inconsistently judged them to be 'green' or expressed no dissent. In a subsequent setting, when judging a series of red slides; subjects were exposed to a majority who repeatedly judged them as 'orange’. Exposure to dissent, whether it was consistent or inconsistent, substantially reduced the level of conformity. In fact, exposure to the consistent dissent led to almost complete independence.     

Intensity and number of alternatives in hue identification: Piéron’s law and choice reaction time

Two experiments investigated the effects of intensity and the number of response alternatives in hue identification. Three questions were addressed. First, what is the relationship between these effects? If intensity and number of alternatives affect different processes in series, these factors would have additive effects on reaction time (RT). Other models predict a multiplicative interaction. These models assume that when a stimulus is presented, evidence accrues over time for each response alternative, and that when the evidence for a particular alternative exceeds its criterion, the response is made. A natural auxiliary assumption is that intensity affects the rate of evidence accrual, while the number of alternatives affects the criterion. The second question addressed is, how does choice RT change as a function of intensity? Piéron used a power function to describe the effect of intensity on simple RT. This paper considers three candidates for intensity’s effect on choice RT: the power, logistic, and Michaelis functions. Each candidate function was tested in an additive model and a multiplicative model. The best account was given by the power function in an additive model. The last question is, does each process produce an output that can be classified as correct or incorrect? Schweickert (1985) proposed that factors that selectively influenced such processes would have additive effects on log percent correct. Instead, an interaction was found. Perhaps the assumption that the process affected by intensity produces a single output is wrong.