Self-disclosure: an attributional perspective.

This experiment examined the effect of timing of an intimate disclosure and assignment of responsibility for the event disclosed on interpersonal attraction. Subjects were induced to interact with a confederate who in all cases revealed something quite personal about himself. The disclosure occurred either early or near the end of a 10-minute conversation. The confederate accepted responsibility for the event disclosed, did not mention responsibility, or assigned responsibility to external factors. Negative traits were assigned to the early disclosure, and he was liked significantly less than the late discloser. The results are explained in terms of differential attributions made to early and late disclosures. The results for the assignment of responsibility variable were surprising: The confederate who accepted responsibility for the event disclosed elicited more negative reactions than the confederate who blamed other factors or who did not mention responsibility. Some possible reasons for this unexpected finding are discussed.     

Depression and interpersonal attraction: the role of perceived similarity

We hypothesized that depressed individuals are generally viewed as dissimilar and that this perceived dissimilarity contributes to negative reactions to the depressed. In addition, we hypothesized that if perceived similarity affects liking of depressed individuals, then nondepressed subjects should prefer nondepressed targets, but depressed subjects should not share this preference. To test these hypotheses, depressed and nondepressed subjects received information about two targets, both either depressed or nondepressed, one attitudinally dissimilar and one attitudinally similar. They were then asked to fill out an attraction measure and an interest in meeting measure for each target. The results clearly supported the primary hypotheses, demonstrating that nondepressed subjects preferred nondepressed targets and perceived them as more similar than depressed targets, and that this preference for nondepressed targets is not shared by depressed subjects. Tests of supplementary hypotheses also confirmed that depressed subjects perceive their best friends as being more depressed and more dissimilar than do nondepressed subjects. The implications of these findings for the social world of the depressed were discussed.     

The impact of religion on men's blood pressure

Most clinical studies examining the relation between religion and blood pressure status have focused on church attendance, finding lower pressures among frequent attenders. The present study examines the effect on blood pressure status of a religious meaning variable, importance of religion, both by itself and together with frequency of church attendance. The relation between blood pressure, self-perceived importance of religion, and frequency of church attendance was examined among a rural sample of 407 white men free from hypertension or cardiovascular disease. The data confirmed an interaction between the effects of both religious variables on blood pressure status, with importance of religion having an even greater association with lower pressures than church attendance. Diastolic blood pressures of persons with high church attendance and high religious importance were significantly lower than those in the low attendance, low importance group. These differences persisted after adjusting the analyses for age, socioeconomic status, smoking, and weight-height ratio (Quetelet Index). The difference in mean diastolic pressures based on response to the religious importance variable alone was statistically and clinically significant, particularly among men aged 55 and over (6 mm) and among smokers (5 mm). These findings suggest that both religious attitudes and involvement may interact favorably in their effects on cardiovascular hemodynamics.     

A method of successive cumulations for the scaling of pair-comparison preference judgments

The present model treats the scaling of pair-comparison preference judgments among a unidimensional set of stimuli across a population of individuals. Given a setS ofn stimuli,S = {S ₁,S ₂, ,S _n }, the model yields a partially ordered metric on the interstimulus distances which may be used to construct an interval scale of values forS. Obtained also are a set of predictionsP = {P ₁,P ₂, ,P _n } whereP _i is the proportion of individuals in the population whose first choice among the elements ofS isS _i . A numerical illustration is offered and comparisons are drawn with Coombs' unfolding technique.This work was supported in part by Grant GB 2345 from the National Science Foundation. An earlier version of this paper was prepared while the author was a consultant to Proctor & Gamble Co. during the summer of 1964.Now with Proctor & Gamble Co.     

Evidence for processing of constituent singleand multiletter codes: Support for multilevel coding in word perception

This investigation assessed whether constituent codes are activated during word processing. In two experiments, a priming procedure was used to test whether printed word primes facilitate skilled readers’ identification of subsequently presented letter and letter bigram targets appearing in the primes (present condition), relative to the same targets not appearing in the primes (absent condition). Experiment 1 demonstrated the priming of single-letter targets and indicated that priming effects are facilitative and not inhibitory. In Experiment 2, high- and low-frequency bigram targets appearing in word primes were shown to have a processing advantage over bigram targets not appearing in word primes. Single-letter constituents in low-frequency bigrams also benefited from priming; however, single letters in high-frequency bigrams showed no such benefit. The results in general suggest that both single- and multiletter constituents are available during word processing, and hence support multicomponent models of word perception.     

Proneness to romantic jealousy and responses to jealousy in others

An experiment was conducted to assess the relationship between dispositional proneness to experience romantic jealousy and perceptions of jealousy in others On the basis of cognitive and motivational constructs, it was hypothesized that (1) Persons high in proneness to jealousy perceive healthy jealous couples as more in love than healthy nonjealous couples, (2) persons high in proneness to jealousy perceive unhealthy jealous couples as less in love than unhealthy nonjealous couples, and (3) persons low in proneness to jealousy perceive healthy jealous couples as less in love than healthy nonjealous couples The latter two hypotheses were supported Results were discussed with regard to the roles of beliefs about jealousy and threats to the perceiver in individuals reactions to jealousy in others