Ethical ideology, animal rights activism, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals

In two studies, we used the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) to investigate the relationship between individual differences in moral philosophy, involvement in the animal rights movement, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals. In the first, 600 animal rights activists attending a national demonstration and 266 nonactivist college students were given the EPQ. Analysis of the returns from 157 activists and 198 students indicated that the activists were more likely than the students to hold an "absolutist" moral orientation (high idealism, low relativism). In the second study, 169 students were given the EPQ with a scale designed to measure attitudes toward the treatment of animals. Multiple regression showed that gender and the EPQ dimension of idealism were related to attitudes toward animal use.     

MARITAL SATISFACTION AND DEPRESSION:

Abstract— A sample of 150 recently married couples provided data egarding marital satisfaction and depressive symptoms. Approximately 18 months later, 116 of these couples provided complete information on marital satisfaction and depression once again. The data were examined using three sets of causal models, which yielded converging results. For men, causal paths emerged from depression to marital satisfaction, whereas for women causal paths were from satisfaction to depression. The results are discussed in relation to the marital discord model of depression.     

Simulating naturalistic demands for speeded judgment

Responses to speeded judgment (e.g., “shoot/don’t shoot”) situations in naturalistic environments are influenced by many variables and psychological processes. We describe a custom-built simulator with head- and eye-tracking capabilities for basic and applied research on speeded decision making. The system allows the user to project life-sized, time-coded, videotaped, or computer-animated scenarios on a screen to collect reaction-time, shot-accuracy, and eye-movement data. An initial experiment is also reported to demonstrate the utility of the system for studying factors that affect speeded judgment under naturalistic situations.     

Androgyny,stress, and satisfaction: Dual- career and traditional relationships

Forty-one female and 61 male assistant professors, of whom 46% were involved in dual-career relationships, responded to a mail questionnaire that assessed (1) androgyny; (2) satisfaction at work, home, and in their personal life; (3) stress at work, home, and in their personal life. A 2×2×2 analysis of variance was conducted to evaluate the effects of relationship status, androgyny, and sex of subject. The results indicated that being androgynous was associated with increased work stress, but simultaneously increased personal satisfaction. A significant interaction between androgyny and relationship status demonstrated that androgynous dual-career persons reported highest personal satisfaction; androgynous nondual-career persons reported highest work satisfaction. Dualcareer status increased personal and work stress, as well as relationship satisfaction. The importance of considering each person's specific life situation when evaluating androgyny as a positive or negative attribute is discussed.     

Theme centered group psychotherapy with psychiatrically hospitalized preadolescent boys

This paper describes how a particular content can be ascribed to verbal group work with psychiatrically hospitalized children. This focus can then provide the basis for psychotherapeutic intervention in which resistance and transference are interpreted while underlying conflicts are uncovered and worked on. The theme of the group, health issues and sexuality, was derived from the children's expressed needs on the unit. The use of psychotherapy as a basis for subsequent education about these health issues is discussed. Also described is the way in which the verbal medium was used in conjunction with other unit procedures.     

Ocular motility and cognitive process

This study investigates the amount of ocular motility occuring in response to questions varying the kind of cognitive process required for answer. Fewer eye movements occur in response to questions designed to elicit visuo-spatial as compared to verbal-conceptual processes, a finding consistent with our earlier observation of more ‘stares’ occuring with the former than with the latter questions. The results are inconsistent with the traditional hypothesis that visual imagery involves an increase in scanning eye movements. The findings are interpreted in terms of a model postulating an interaction of the form of visual information processing and the type of cognitive activity subjects engage in.     

Necessary versus sufficient causal schemata for success and failure

197 subjects judged the perceived presence or absence of ability or effort, given information about task outcome (success or failure), the difficulty of the task (easy, intermediate, or difficult), and the state of the complementary cause (effort or ability). The data revealed that a multiple sufficient causal schema is used to explain common events. That is, the presence of ability or effort is perceived as enough to produce success at an easy task, while the absence of ability or effort is perceived as sufficient to result in failure at a difficult task. On the other hand, a multiple necessary schema tends to be employed to explain uncommon events. Success at a difficult task is believed to require both ability and effort, while failure at an easy task tends to be perceived as caused by low ability and low effort. In addition, there were disparities in the causal judgments for success and failure: failure outcomes are more likely to elicit a multiple sufficient schema. Further, in achievement-related contexts ability and effort are perceived as negatively covarying causal determinants of typical successes and failures. In addition to supporting hypotheses from attribution theory, the data shed further light upon the perceived determinants of success and failure, and demonstrate the influence of cognitive structures on achievement-related causal judgments.     

Visual recognition as a function of stimulus offset asynchrony and duration

The stimuli consisted of two complementary dot patterns that formed a bigram when they were flashed simultaneously; impairment of letter recognition developed when one of the patterns was briefly extended beyond the termination of the other (stimulus offset asynchrony). However, if the ratio of stimulus offset asynchrony to bigram duration remained constant, the probability of a correct recognition response also remained constant as duration varied over a 50- to 100-msec interval. When percent stimulus asynchrony increased, the impairment increased. An interaction between bigram letter position and each of bigram duration and percent stimulus asynchrony was observed with recognition accuracy greater in general for the letter in the left half of the field.     

On the development of more and less

More and less were analyzed into two meaning dimensions, “occurrence” (derived from children's early language) and “quantity,” which were hypothesized to be developmentally related to acts of addition and subtraction. Two experiments tested 2- and 3-yr-old's comprehension of these concepts when initially equal or unequal rows were added to, subtracted from or left static. Addition and subtraction had little effect on Ss′ comprehension of either term. Two-year-old Ss understood more when differences in the number of objects in the array were relatively large, suggesting “many” as an intermediate stage of meaning for more. Three-year-olds understood less first as “smaller in amount,” not as more as others have found. Less was acquired later than more, a difference possibly due to its relatively restricted meaning and use or to its converse perceptual and logical relation to more.