Punishing Individuals for Their Infirmities: Effects of Personal Responsibility, Just-World Beliefs, and In-Group/Out-Group Status

This research examined how derogation of cancer victims was moderated by (a) the perceived responsibility of the victim, (b) individual differences in just-world beliefs, and (c) whether the victim was an in-group versus out-group member. Participants formed an impression of an in-group or an out-group member who was known to have a terminal case of cancer. Half of the participants were informed that the target person was partially responsible for this medical condition, whereas the remaining participants were not given this information. Results showed that blaming judgments of high versus low responsibility targets were moderated by just-world beliefs, but this was only true when the person being judged was an out-group member. The implications of these results for research and theory on differential processing of in-group versus out-group members are discussed.     

Social-cognitive determinants of physical activity: the influence of social support, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and self-regulation among participants in a church-based health promotion study.

A social-cognitive model of physical activity was tested, using structural equation analysis of data from 999 adults (21% African American; 66% female; 38% inactive) recruited from 14 southwestern Virginia churches participating in the baseline phase of a health promotion study. Within the model, age, race, social support, self-efficacy, and self-regulation contributed to participants' physical activity levels, but outcome expectations did not. Of the social-cognitive variables, self-regulation exerted the strongest effect on physical activity. Independent of self-regulation, self-efficacy had little effect. Social support influenced physical activity as a direct precursor to self-efficacy and self-regulation. The model provided a good fit to the data and explained 46% of the variance in physical activity among the diverse group of adults.     

WOMEN AND BODY HAIR

This study examines college students' attitudes toward and perceptions of a woman with body hair as a function of respondent gender and feminist attitudes. Participants reacted to a video of a White woman either with or without visible leg and underarm hair. Results supported the hypothesis that a woman with body hair will be seen as less sexually and interpersonally attractive than the same woman without body hair. Specifically, the woman with body hair was viewed as less sociable, intelligent, happy, and positive, and as more aggressive, active, and strong. Attitudes toward feminism predicted attitudes about body hair in general, which in turn predicted reactions to the model with body hair. Despite the fact that women students had more positive attitudes about body hair and more feminist attitudes than their male counterparts, there were no gender differences in reactions to the model with body hair. Implications regarding this pervasive cultural norm are discussed.     

The relationship between daily events and mood: The mood measure may matter

Measures of daily mood have been used as immediate indicators of the effects of the psychosocial environment, the latter concept often measured by daily events. We examined the prediction of two measures of daily mood, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Nowlis Mood Adjective Checklist (MACL), by daily desirable and undesirable events and by day of the week. Unlike prior studies, the event assessment and type of subjects studied (community residents) were the same in both studies, allowing an attribution of differential associations between the two mood scales and either daily events or day of the week to the different mood measures. The mood measures had similar and expected associations with daily events, although the MACL scale generally had stronger associations with events. Surprisingly, the pattern of day of the week effects for positive, yet not negative, mood were different for the two mood measures. Consistent with the weekend's increase in desirable daily events, MACL positive affectincreased on weekends, relative to weekdays, whereas PANAS positive mooddecreased on weekends. Also, for both positive and negative affect scales, the MACL scales had stronger associations with day of week than the PANAS scales. These results suggest caution in the choice of mood measure to use in studies of daily events and pose questions about the meaning of these mood measures.This work was supported, in part, by grant MH39234 from NIMH. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Temporal clause comprehension in fluent and nonfluent aphasics

Ten fluent and ten nonfluent aphasics participated in this study. Their ability to comprehend before and after clauses which mirrored the order of occurrence and those which did not mirror the order of events was investigated. Results indicate that type of aphasia was not a significant variable related to comprehension but that sentence type was a significant variable. Aphasics' comprehendbefore clauses better thanafter clauses. Nonfluent aphasics were able to comprehend those temporal clauses that mirror the order of occurrence better than those that do not. Order of mention was not a significant factor related to comprehension in the fluent group.     

The development of the ability to assess recall performance

The ability of first and third graders to evaluate their recall performance was assessed. Third graders were more accurate in estimating the number of items they had recalled, although both groups showed considerable accuracy. The subjects' accuracy in assessing their recall after the fact was contrasted with indications that children are poor predictors of their recall performance.     

Target position and practice in the identification of letters in varying contexts: A word superiority effect

A forced-choice detection paradigm controlling for postperceptual inference was used to investigate letter identification in three-position displays. Letters from a predesignated set of four targets appeared singly, in strings of noise characters, in unpronounceable nonsense strings, and in words. Subjects knew which context would occur, but did not know which of the three display positions would contain the target. Correct detection data were collected at constant exposure duration over five testing sessions. Overall identification accuracy was higher in words than in all other contexts, the first word superiority effect to be found with targets specified in advance since Reicher’s (1969). This effect remained constant over sessions. An interaction between context type and target position showed enhanced accuracy for initial and terminal letters in words, but depressed accuracy at initial and terminal positions in other contexts. This was interpreted to mean that prior knowledge of context is used to alter the dynamics of perceptual analysis.     

Stepmothers and natural mothers: A study of maternal attitudes

The maternal attitudes of 15 natural mothers (M_d age 46) and 15 stepmothers (M_d age 47) were compared. The HerefordParent Attitude Survey was the instrument used to assess differences between the two populations on five scales measuring confidence, causation, acceptance, understanding, and trust. No significant differences were found between the two populations with the exception of the causation dimension (t=2.4840 p<.05), which indicated that stepmothers attribute the problem behavior of the child to genetic and environmental factors while natural mothers accept the influence of the maternal role in the child's problem behavior. It is the authors' opinion that the statistical similarities and differences found between the two samples is a reflection of the common problem they share, that of a child in treatment.     

Frequency of attack in shock-elicited aggression as a function of the performance of individual rats

Fighting rates between paired rats were investigated as a function of the probability of attack by a single animal. Animals from stable high-fighting and low-fighting frequency pairs were intermatched to detect individual high-fighting and low-fighting rats. Pairs of high-fighting animals then received saline or different chlorpromazine dosages during successive sessions. Finally, single high-fighting members of each pair also received the different drug dosages. The chief findings were that: (a) rats showing high fighting rates when matched against each other revealed low fighting rates when matched against one, but not the other member of a low-fighting pair; and (b) high-fighting rats decreased their fighting rates as their own or their opponent's chlorpromazine dosage increased. These results indicated that a low rate of fighting on the part of one rat results in a low fighting rate on the part of its opponent.