Sex Role and Attitudinal Correlates of Desired Family Size

A survey conducted in 1971 with college students as respondents tested the hypothesis that persons approving of a relatively equivalent pattern of sex roles desire to have smaller families than do persons approving of less equivalent sex roles. Though the hypothesis was confirmed for the number of children that Ss desired to procreate, approval of sex role equivalence appeared to be only one component of a more general pattern in which Ss who desired to procreate fewer children were nontraditional in their attitudes. Thus, to the extent that Ss approved of equivalent sex roles, favored Women's Liberation, opposed conservatism, favored liberalism, and considered themselves nonreligious, they tended to have smaller family size goals for biological parenthood. However, the role and attitudinal predictors related less strongly to the total number of children desired (i.e., the sum total of the number of children desired as a biological parent plus the number of adoptions desired).     

Fading procedures and conditional discrimination in children

A discrimination reversal task followed by a conditional discrimination problem was administered to children (age range 36 to 107 months). A fading procedure was used during the discrimination reversal training of some subjects and other subjects were trained by a traditional procedure. More subjects trained by the fading procedure performed without errors during training and more subjects in the traditional group solved the conditional discrimination problem.     

Computer simulation: A case of conflict

Herein is described an 18-month adventure involving the translation to computer-aided instruction (CAI) format of a traditional module that had been successfully used for years in an experimental psychology course. The primary focus of the paper is on the lessons learned during this transition. The major problems of translation that were encountered are discussed, as are unanticipated, often seemingly trivial, human-factors problems that were the most troublesome, and, consequently, the most educational.     

The influence of gender on occupational aspirations of kindergarten children

By updating and extending previous research on the effect of gender role socialization on occupational choices of children, this research found very sexstereotypical occupational preferences in a sample of 540 kindergarten children. The girls in the study selected occupations that averaged 87% female and the boys selected occupations averaging 84% male. The boys perceived a significantly wider range of vocational options than the girls. In a reversal condition, children were asked to pretend to be of the opposite sex. Most of the children selected occupations with sex ratios favoring their pretended sex; girls were slightly more stereotypic than boys. An unanticipated finding was the extremeness of reactions of the boys to the suggestion that they pretend to be girls. It is argued that current sex-role socialization fails to recognize the realities of the expanding participation of women in the paid labor force.     

Friendly or just polite? The effect of self-esteem on attributions

Studied the effect of a person's self-esteem on his inferences about another person's feelings toward him. Fifty-six mule and female college student subjects of high or low chronic self-esteem (median split; modified version of Janis and Field's ‘Feelings of Inadequacy Scale’) received either a negative or a positive evaluation of themselves. They were told that the evaluation had been written by another subject who had acted either under ‘sincere’ instructions, which allowed him to give his own opinion, or under ‘role-playing’ instructions, which assigned him to write either a positive or a negative evaluation. The subject's take was to decide under which instruction his evaluation had been written. It was predicted from a self-concistency logic that low self-esteem subjects would attribute negative evaluations to ‘sincere’ and positive evaluations to ‘role-playing’ instructions, while high self-esteem subjects would make the reverse attributions. A significant self-esteem × evaluation positivity interaction (p <.01) supported this prediction.     

Cross- vs. within-racial judgments of attractiveness

Subjects from two pairs of ethnic groups (Chinese and White in Experiment 1, Black and White in Experiment 2) judged the attractiveness of faces in yearbook pictures of persons that belonged to their own or to the other ethnic group. This was to see whether: (1) a given group would perceive more variation in the attractiveness of faces belonging to its own vs. the other ethnic group, as suggested by the cross-racial literature, for example, Malpass and Kravitz (1969), and (2) the two groups would use the same or different rules to define attractiveness. There were essentially no differences in perceived variation for cross- vs. within-racial judgments, but there were differences in the criteria used to define attractiveness. As expected, Black and White aesthetic criteria were more like one another than were Chinese and White criteria. Discussion centered around reconciling these findings with the recognition literature.     

Treatment of overweight children: The relationship between dependent measures and a clinically significant outcome

Behavioral treatments for overweight children have not fared well in achieving or maintaining clinically significant weight losses. The use of more appropriate dependent measures which also take height, sex, and age into consideration is suggested. A multiple-baseline analysis of the behavioral treatment of seven overweight children was conducted. Results support the contention that a more clinically significant outcome emerges when appropriate measures are used.     

The impact of sex,achievement domain,and conceptual orientation on causal attributions

Sex differences in achievement domain and achievement orientation were examined to better understand women's achievement. College students (84 women, 59 men) were asked to write brief accounts of a past success and a past failure and to provide causal attributions for each. More women recalled affiliative-process events, and proportionally more men recalled mastery-impact events. The relationship of topic domain and conceptual orientation to causal attributions was apparent only for accounts of failure. Topic domain and conceptual orientation interacted with sex to further influence stability attributions. When women conceptualized failure as a process, they emphasized attributions to effort and luck, while men accounted for the process failure by ability and task. When the failure was conceptualized in terms of final impact, the sex pattern of attributions was reversed.     

Attributional Bias in Counselors' Diagnoses: The Effect of Resources1

Three experiments were conducted to test a model of attributional bias in counseling diagnosis. The model predicted that (a) available helping resources influence diagnostic attributions and (b) this effect is mediated by the effect resources have on the diagnostician's perception of his or her helping role. In each experiment, undergraduates served as diagnosticians in a simulated referral agency. Referral resouces for half of the subjects were oriented toward dealing with personal problems; resources for the other half were oriented toward dealing with situational problems. In referring each client, subjects indicated whether they perceived the problem to lie with the client (a dispositional atrribution) or with his social environment (a situational attribution). As predicted, subjects with person-oriented resources were more likely to perceive clients' problems to be dispositional than were subjects with situation-oriented resources. Results of Experiment 3 indicated that this effect was mediated by the influences resources had on subjects' perception of their helping role.     

Effort toward comprehension: Elaboration or “aha”?

Auble and Franks (1978) found that a process termed “effort toward comprehension” was important in facilitating recall of sentences. Four experiments were conducted to further elucidate the nature of this process. Two hypotheses were considered: (1)Effort toward comprehension involves greater elaboration or deeper processing of the sentence; (2)effort toward comprehension can be viewed as an “aha” experience (i.e., a state of noncomprehension followed by comprehension of the sentence). Results indicated that recall was significantly greater for subjects in conditions producing “aha” reactions. No support was found for the elaboration interpretation of effort toward comprehension.