The survival of a cooperative tradition in the intergroup discontinuity context

Interindividual-intergroup discontinuity is the tendency, in mixed-motive situations, for groups to interact more competitively, or less cooperatively, than individuals, even though mutual competition yields worse results that mutual cooperation. The present laboratory experiment attempted to assess whether the discontinuity effect could be reduced by the establishment of an intergroup cooperative tradition. Cooperation between intact pairs of groups was induced by placing in each group confederates who successfully convinced their fellow group members of the long-term advantage of trust and cooperation. On subsequent blocks of trails, the confederate was replaced by an actual subject, and then each of the original subjects was replaced so as to simulate generational turnover. By the time all initial members were replaced, their level of cooperation had eroded to the level of groups never experiencing mutual cooperation. The results are discussed in the context of other means of reducing discontinuity. This research was supported by National Science Foundation grants (BNS-9007414 and SBR-9408760) to John Schopler and Chester A. Insko.     

Contributions of Family Relationship Factors to the Identity Formation Process

This study tested the proposition that family relationship variables would be related in predictable ways to ego identity status. The authors administered measures of parental attachment, psychological separation, and ego identity status to 174 students from a large northeastern state university. The results indicated that women who experience greater parental attitudinal dependence and attachment and a modest degree of conflictual independence from mother tend to evidence more identity foreclosure and identity achievement and less diffusion. In addition, women who experience some degree of attachment to mother and attitudinal independence from mother are most likely to avoid diffusion, foreclosure, and moratorium. Men who experience parental attitudinal independence are likely to be in the diffusion or moratorium statuses and not in the identity-achieved and foreclosure statuses.     

A retrospective survey of community based utilization of Tay Sachs screening in Eight New Jersey counties

The purpose of this study was to determine the rate of utilization of Tay Sachs disease screening by the Ashkenazi Jewish population. Pregnant women who were referred to one of three genetic centers in New Jersey for amniocentesis unrelated to Tay Sachs screening were the study population. 4490 charts were reviewed retrospectively to determine the at risk population for Tay Sachs disease (Ashkenazi Jews) and whether or not patients and their spouses had elected Tay Sachs screening prior to referral. A group of 25 patients who did not elect screening were questioned as to their specific reason for declining Tay Sachs screening. Overall community utilization was 90%. Of the couples who did not elect screening, 64% felt that their risk to have an affected child was too small, 16% could not recall Tay Sachs screening being offered to them, 8% felt that screening was inconvenient. Tay Sachs screening as a voluntary preventive health care program has a high utilization rate in our study group.     

Automation for clinicians in the field: The validity of a performance support system

The Mental Retardation-Expert (MR-E) is an electronic performance support system for clinicians who work with mentally retarded persons who have behavioral disorders. It provides treatment planning assistance when needed. This study compares MR-E’s advice with that offered by human experts. It assesses the impact of the system on clinicians from various areas. The results support MR-E’s validity and its ability to help clinicians function as experts. They high-light potential benefits for psychologists in using performance support systems.     

Persuasive Appeals and the Reduction of Skin Cancer Risk: The Roles of Appearance Concern, Perceived Benefits of a Tan, and Efficacy Information

This experiment compared the effectiveness of appearance-based messages focusing on the benefits of tanning and the efficacy of preventive measures on students' intentions to protect themselves against sun-induced skin damage. Subjects who were high or low on a dispositional measure of appearance concern responded to 1 of 4 essays providing either high or low benefits information, and high or low efficacy information. Overall, subjects low in appearance concern expressed greater intentions to take precautionary measures than did those high in appearance concern. Additionally, the low benefits of tanning message produced greater intentions to take precautions than did the high benefits message. The benefits results suggest 1 mechanism through which sun protection behaviors may be encouraged.     

Exploitation of pointing as a referential gesture in young children, but not adolescent chimpanzees

The ability of adolescent chimpanzees and 2- and 3-year-old children to use pointing gestures to locate hidden surprises was examined in two experiments. The results revealed that although young 2-year-old children appeared to have no difficulty extracting referential information from a pointing gesture (independent of gaze or distance cues) and spontaneously using it to search in specific locations, adolescent chimpanzees appeared to rely on cueconfiguration and distance-based rules. Thus, although these chimpanzees were trained to respond appropriately to the pointing gestures of a human by searching in a particular location, this ability did not easily generalize to situations in which the distance between the pointing hand and the location were more distal. Furthermore, even those chimpanzees that were able to generalize in this fashion appeared to use distance-based cues, not ones based on an appreciation of the internal attentional focus or mental referent of the experimenter as indicated by his pointing gesture.     

Trust-suspicion and gender differences in interpersonal functioning

Responses on self-report questionnaires (Study 1) and in a dyadic game (Study 2) were observed to investigate relationships of trust-suspicion (T-S), locus of control (I-E), and situational contingencies to styles of interpersonal functioning. Generalized T-S predicted cooperative/competitive interactional choices among the male college student samples (p ? .01). However, T-S predicted females' interpersonal behaviors only when they were in a reactive, defensive position. T-S did not relate to actual behaviors when females were allowed to select/initiate cooperative or competitive exchanges. Situational rules (p ? .025) and I-E (p ? .01) predicted all subjects' behaviors when in a choice, but not defensive, position.     

Men and women at work: Similarities and differences in work values within occupational groupings

This paper presents national survey data regarding the work-related values of male and female labor force participants. Evidence is also presented concerning the relationship of family responsibilities to the work values of women. The empirical analysis derives in part from the recent work of Kaufman and Fetters (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1980, 17, 251–262), the quality of work literature, and the literature on women and work. The hypotheses include expected work-value differences between men and women within occupational categories and the expected relationships between the presence of children in the home and the value attached to various aspects of work. Five job dimensions are considered: intrinsic, extrinsic, resource adequacy, convenience, and relations with co-workers. The only male-female value difference that appears to be enduring concerns the convenience aspects of work. Data indicate that the presence of children in the home, whether of preschool age, school age, or a combination of the two, tends to be negatively related to most work values of women. It is concluded that working women with children experience reduced work involvement.     

Sex-role orientation and athletic administration

The Bem Sex Role Inventory was administered to 157 women and 163 men in athletic administration. The majority of male (89.5% to 94.1%) and female (85.7% to 91.0%) athletic directors (ADs) was either androgynous or masculine. The findings show that ADs display a higher level of androgyny than do business executives, and suggest that ADs may possess a greater degree of behavioral flexibility. The data indicate that differences in sex-role behaviors of female and male ADs do not justify the discrepant number of men in AD positions. The results also indicate that both female and male ADs have a stronger masculine than feminine perception of themselves, regardless of the competitive level (division) of their program.     

A right-ear advantage for dichotic listening in bilingual children

A dichotic listening task was administered to two groups of right-handed Hispanic children enrolled in bilingual education classes. The younger group's mean age was 9:6, the older group's was 13:6. Two dichotic tapes were used, one in English, one in Spanish, consisting of 60 pairs of words per tape. The words were comparable across languages in terms of frequency, grammatical function, and phonetic composition. The results showed clear and equal right-ear advantages for both groups of subjects and for both languages. As expected, older children scored higher than younger ones, and performance on Spanish was better than on English. Neither of these effects interacted with the ear advantage, however. Ear difference scores did not correlate with proficiency in the second language (as measured by performance on the English tape), but there was a significant correlation (r = .58) between the degree of asymmetry in the two languages. These findings indicate that the left hemisphere is primarily (and equally) involved in processing both languages of bilinguals, and that this pattern appears to remain stable in development.