Attribution of control and teenage pregnancy

In rural Appalachia in Tennessee, data on 13 female adolescents who had experienced a pregnancy (mean age=16 years, 7 months) were compared with those on 38 female adolescents who had not experienced a pregnancy (mean age-16 years, 4 months) to test the hypothesis that teenagers who experience a pregnancy have external attributions of control over their life events. The Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale for Children was administered to determine their beliefs about causes of events in their lives. All the girls were white and matched for socioeconomic status, housing, and cultural background. The mean attribution of control to external agents score stood at 14.5 for girls who had experienced a pregnancy compared with 12.7 for those who had not experienced a pregnancy, but the difference was not significant (p=.08).54% of the cases exhibited external attributional orientation compared with 16% of the controls (p.02). This finding concurred with that of earlier studies. The fact that not all the girls who had experienced a pregnancy had external attributional orientation suggested that it is not the only factor linked to adolescent pregnancy. Studies have not identified whether external attributional orientation is a causal factor or consequence of adolescent pregnancy. A 1980 study found that women who had shown more external locus of control scores during pregnancy and tended to castigate themselves had a high probability of postpartum depression. Another study indicated that rises in depression among adolescents were linked to prechange orientations toward external attributions of control. Practitioners should selectively pay attention to teenagers who have extreme attributional orientations since many teenagers carry their pregnancies to term and choose to rear their infants. These orientations appear to pose risks for the adolescent mother and her children.     

The positioning of rhetorical and non-rhetorical questions and the use of self-referencing in print advertising

This research examines the use of questions in advertising through a content analysis of magazine print ads. Three variables are examined: question type (rhetorical vs. non-rhetorical), position (pre-argument vs. post-argument) and self-referencing (present vs. absent). Results reveal that rhetorical (non-rhetorical) questions tend to be used after (before) the arguments to which they refer. Further, self-referencing tends to be used with rhetorical questions in the post-argument position. The findings are discussed illustrating how theoretically-based empirical research can be used to guide decisions in ad practice, and how the practice of advertising can provide support for testable ideas in the conduct of future research.     

Fixation-point offsets reduce the latency of saccades to acoustic targets

If an observer’s fixation point is extinguished just prior to the onset of a peripheral target, the latency to saccade to that target is reduced. We show that this "gap effect" is not specific to visual targets. Observers made saccades to a light flash or to a white-noise burst. A warning tone was presented on every trial to control for the possible warning effect of the fixation-point offset. For both target modalities, saccade latencies were significantly reduced when the fixation point was extinguished 200 msec prior to the target onset. Implications of this outcome for interpretations of the gap effect are considered. It is argued that the presence of a gap effect for tones, in conjunction with previous findings, is consistent with the hypothesis that the gap effect is produced by a facilitation of premotor processes in the superior colliculus.     

Parent and child causal attributions during clinical interviews

Attributions made by children and their parents for the cause of the child's clinical problem were monitored during assessment interviews. Results support previously observed differences obtained through questionnaires, with parents making more attributions than their children to characteristics of the child. This pattern was affected by variations in interview format. Parents and children differed in the locus of their attributions when interviewed individually, but these differences were not present when families were interviewed with both parents and children present. Implications for the methodology of attribution research with child-clinical populations are highlighted.     

The role of esteem and coping in response to a threat communication

Two experiments examined the relations among self-esteem, perceived competency to cope, and actual coping behaviors following a threat communication. Leventhal's “parallel response model” (in Advances in experimental social psychology, L. Berkowitz (Ed.), New York: Academic Press, 1970, Vol. 5) predicts that low-esteem subjects will show deficits in both competency and coping behaviors. Experiment 1 manipulated threat level of a tetanus communication. Low-esteem subjects showed coping deficits on measures of free associations, free recall, fatalism, and coping. Threat groups differed only on fear and danger measures. Experiment 2 manipulated the fear level of an antismoking film and used false feedback to alter perceived competency. Positive feedback increased perceived competency to quit smoking among low-esteem subjects only. Without feedback, low-esteem subjects reduced smoking less than high-esteem subjects; positive feedback reversed the pattern. The discussion argued that, consistent with Leventhal's model, the low-esteem coping deficit has two independent causes: (1) excessive concern with fear, and (2) inadequate perceived competency.     

Sources of organizational power for women: Overcoming structural obstacles

The ability of women (and men) to achieve success within organizational settings depends on their understanding structural and behavioral dimensions of power. However, the increased emphasis on educating women in the behavioral methods (e.g., assertiveness, aspirations, politics) of acquiring power invariably minimizes or omits the potential contribution of structural considerations. In their journey toward power acquisition, women must recognize and utilize the wide array of structural paths available to them. An analysis is undertaken of the main structural (organizational) sources of power — centrality, coping with uncertainty, and control over resources — with emphasis on their ramifications for women.The research cited in this article includes empirically based studies as well as observations, assertions, or admonitions that have not received extensive empirical validation. Nonetheless, the latter personal experiences and observations of these authorities may be valid.Management Analysis Company     

Age differences in the temporal locus of memory organization in children's recall

Age differences in when (i.e., at input or output) children organize information for recall were investigated in terms of a model specifying that information organized at input is more resistant to forgetting over time than information not organized at input. In Experiment 1, recall of items from categorically related and unrelated lists was assessed either immediately or after a 4-min delay. For 9-year-olds, the effect of delay was comparable for the related and unrelated lists, indicative of spontaneous organization at time of output. In contrast, 13-year-olds showed a significantly smaller delay effect with related than with unrelated lists, indicative of spontaneous organization at time of input. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that, for 9-year-olds, high levels of clustering in and of themselves do not eliminate effects of delayed testing characteristic of output organization, and that when 9-year-olds are biased to organize information at input, delay effects are reduced only when measures are taken to ensure that all the category labels are retrieved.     

The debilitating effect of exposure to noncontingent escape: A test of the learned helplessness model

Two studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that exposure to non-contingent escape leads to performance deficits similar to those observed when subjects are exposed to noncontingent aversive outcomes from which there is no escape, and that causal attributions mediate these deficits. Previous attempts to produce “appetitive helplessness” (deficits resulting from exposure to noncontingent positive events) have been plagued by subjects' tendency to believe that they are responsible for positive events. In Experiment 1, 40 subjects were exposed to contingent or noncontingent noise escape trials. As predicted by the learned helplessness model, subjects who received inescapable noise performed less well on a subsequent anagram task than subjects exposed to escapable noise. Similarly, subjects who escaped from the noise owing to the benevolence of a powerful other rather than because of their own efforts, showed performance deficits paralleling those of the inescapable noise subjects. In Experiment 2, subjects who escaped an aversive tone through no effort of their own showed subsequent performance deficits, but globality of their self-reported attributions did not predict subsequent anagram performance. The results of these studies provide support for the hypothesis that uncontrollability, independent of the valence of a particular outcome, is responsible for helplessness deficits, but do not support the mediational role of attributions, at least in the laboratory.     

Therapeutic effectiveness of differentially targeted humorous remarks in group psychotherapy

Video records of five different sessions of a single therapy group were scored for the occurrence of laughing, smiling, and talking. Successive five-minute intervals were also scored for therapeutic level through ratings derived from the Hill Interaction Matrix. Humorous remarks were categorized according to humor target: self, other in group, and generalized other. Results indicated that the vast majority of humorous remarks were directed at some specific target, and that over 50% of these remarks were negative in tone. Results also revealed that remarks targeted at others in the group tended to decrease therapeutic effectiveness whereas remarks targeted at individuals or institutions not presently in the group were found to increase therapeutic effectiveness. Selftargeted remarks were found to produce inconsistent effects. These findings are discussed in terms of their significance for a more general analysis of group humor as well as in terms of their more specific implications for therapeutic interventions.