BELIEVING SENTENCES

Philosophical Studies -     

Personality correlates of Holland's occupational types: A cross cultural study

Recent studies have investigated the personality traits of persons in Holland's six occupational categories. In the present study the generalizability of Holland's characterizations of adults within the occupational categories was investigated in a group of 402 Mexican-Americans. Occupational Scale scores on the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey were used to classify subjects into Holland's occupational types. Multiple discriminant analysis of groups' Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey scale scores resulted in significant overall groups differentiation and two significant discriminant functions for males but no significant results for females. The personality characteristics of the male groups provide strong support for the generalizability of Holland's characterizations to Mexican-American males.     

The informational and facilitative effects of an audience upon expression and the evaluation of humorous stimuli

A study was conducted to investigate the facilitative and informational effects of an audience upon a subject's expressive behavior (i.e., smiling and laughing) and his rating of cartoon stimuli. Forty-eight male and 48 female subjects were shown single frame cartoons accompanied by audience laughter and were asked to rate the cartoons for funniness and liking. Two aspects of the audience were varied: the appropriateness of the audience setting for the expression of laughter (the audience was identified as viewing the cartoons in a classroom or party condition) and the consistency of the audience's laughter (either consistently high for both good and poor quality cartoons, or varied, high for good cartoons and low for poor cartoons). The findings show that male subjects discriminated most between good and poor cartoons when the audience laughter was in an appropriate (party) setting and was varied with cartoon quality. They discriminated least (gave similar ratings to good and poor cartoons) to a party audience that expressed consistently high laughter. No convergence in rating of good and poor cartoons was found in the inappropriate classroom conditions. These results support the hypothesis that male subjects use the audience laughter as information about cartoon quality either averaging or discounting the audience laughter with the perceived quality of the cartoon. For female subjects, on the other hand, the party audience and consistently high laughter elevated observed expressions of mirth and elevated cartoon ratings. The fact that variables which increased expressive behavior also increased ratings is consistent with the two-part hypothesis that female subjects base their cartoon ratings on their feeling states, and that these feelings states reflect the pooled impact of the quality of the cartoons and the subject's expressive behavior. There was no overall difference in amount of audience influence for male and female subjects. Thus, male and female subjects differ in the way they are influenced by an audience rather than in how much they are influenced.     

Helping on the Highway: The Effects of Dependency and Sex1

A series of three naturalistic field experiments are reported which investigated the norm of social responsibility by examining the effects of dependency and sex on helping. Experiment I examined the effect of physical disability on the likelihood of passing motorists helping with a flat tire. Females were helped significantly more than males, but the dependency manipulation was only minimally effective. In Experiment II the same disability cues were used in a hitchhiking context. Again females were helped significantly more than males, but surprisingly the dependency cues significantly reduced the number of ride offers. Experiment III used hitchhiking as the behavior of interest, but this time the dependency cues involved a disabled vehicle. This dependency manipulation significantly increased help offers. In addition, females were again helped significantly more than males. In all three experiments, almost all help offers were made by males. Other variables that appeared to influence helping rates were the perceived cost of helping, the attractiveness of the solicitors, and whether they were seen as responsible for their state of dependency. The present field results complemented previous laboratory work on the Same variables.     

Tolerance for Inequity In Buyer-Seller Relationships1

Customers who purchased a household cleaning product from a door-to-door salesman were offered a monetary rebate after the sale. Customers accepted the rebate when it came from a company, but not when it came from the salesman. A second study replicated these findings and also showed that customers were reluctant to accept rebates that came from middlemen (suppliers). It seems likely that customers were more willing to accept money from the company than from other donors becausc they believed the company had higher income.     

A comparison of two methods of measuring conditioned taste aversions

Two methods of measuring conditioned taste aversions were compared. Following adaptation to a daily 10-min water drinking schedule, rats were made ill with an injection of cyclophosphamide after presentation of a novel-tasting fluid. Three days after this treatment, Ss were tested by (1) measuring the amount of the novel fluid consumed on the continuing 10-min access schedule or (2) measuring their preference between plain water and the novel fluid. When the drinking behavior of the conditioned animals was compared with that of appropriate controls, the preference method proved to be the more sensitive.