Threatened retaliation from the victim as an inhibitor of physical aggression

Sixty male undergraduates participated in an experiment designed to investigate the effects of apparent probability of retaliation from the victim and level of prior anger arousal upon adult aggressive behavior. It was hypothesized that threatened retaliation would be highly effective in inhibiting subsequent aggression under conditions where subjects had not previously been angered by the victim, but would generally fail to inhibit such behavior under conditions where they had previously suffered strong provocation at the hands of this person. Support was obtained for both of these predictions. Findings were discussed in terms of their implications for the prevention and control of human violence in naturalistic social situations.     

Human, free-operant avoidance of “time out” from monetary reinforcement

To assess the aversive effects of withdrawing monetary reinforcement, human subjects were exposed to a free-operant avoidance procedure in which periods of no reinforcement occurred if the subject failed to respond, and each response postponed withdrawal of reinforcement. Avoidance behavior was developed either through specific instructions about the consequence of responding or through preliminary escape-avoidance training. In all cases, rates of response were found to be a positively accelerated function of decreases in the duration by which responding postponed reinforcement withdrawal. The findings with respect to the function relating avoidance behavior to the interval of postponement were viewed as similar to those obtained when shock is used as the aversive event in free-operant avoidance conditioning.     

The place of the human subject in the operant laboratory

Although laboratory study of human behavior seems an obvious vehicle for strengthening the scientific base of behavior analysis, the place of the human subject within the operant laboratory remains problematic. The prevailing research strategy has been to link principles developed with animals to human affairs, either through interpretation of naturally occurring human behaviors or through application of the principles to the solution of human problems. The paucity of laboratory research on human operant behavior derives from several misconceptions: the possibility that experimental demand characteristics and pre-experimental behavioral dispositions of human subjects contaminate the results; that ethical considerations place undue constraint on research topics and experimental designs; and that uncontrollable variation in subjects' histories and other relevant personal characteristics prevents observation of reliable functional relations. We argue that these problems do not pose insurmountable obstacles to the experimental analysis of human behavior; that adequate methods of control and analysis are available; and that operant techniques, by emphasizing experimentally imposed contingencies, are well suited for the laboratory study of human behavior.     

Talking about unemployment with school-leavers

Research is reported concerning the views of a variety of professionals as to appropriate ways of talking about unemployment with 16-year-old school-leavers. Preparation in schools for the possibility of unemployment is discussed, as well as issues for those in contact with young people without a job after they leave school. The ways in which professionals talk to young people about unemployment appear to vary substantially. The findings suggest that in adopting a particular approach a professional will be influenced by his beliefs about the labour economy, by his perceptions of young people's wants and needs, and by his own capacity to cope with the feelings involved in re-examining his role in relation to unemployed young people.     

Some problems in the study of differences in cognitive processes

To test whether groups differ in a particular ability, researchers often compare their performance on two tasks: an experimental task that is sensitive to the ability of interest and a control task that measures other influences on the experimental task. A group difference will be reflected in a differential deficit, a greater difference between groups in experimental task performance than in control task performance. Before concluding from such a result that the groups differ in the ability of interest, three methodological problems must be faced. First, a differential deficit may be an artifact of task differences in discriminating power. That is, the experimental task may be more sensitive than the control task to group differences in abilities other than the one of interest. Second, a differential deficit may be an artifact of group differences in familiarity with the stimuli or the task. Third, a group difference in one ability may be due to a difference in some other ability that is more, or less, general than the first. These problems affect research in a number of areas, including cognitive development, psychopathology, learning disabilities, and the theory of intelligence. We discuss some possible solutions to these problems.     

Caffeine ingestion,misattribution therapy,and speech anxiety

While theoretical analogs of misattribution therapy appeared promising (Nisbett & Schachter, 1966; Ross, Rodin, & Zimbardo, 1969), attempts with clinically relevant behaviors have not been so successful (Kellogg & Baron, 1975; Singerman, Borkovec, & Baron, 1976). Since the plausibility of the misattribution manipulation appears to be the central problem, the present study attempted to increase plausibility by manipulating familiarity with the setting and actual psychological arousal in a clinically relevant situation. Subjects only slightly fearful of giving speeches presented a speech in front of two observers. Familiarity was varied by having half of the subjects give a pretest speech, while arousal was manipulated by having half of the subjects ingest caffeine while the others ingested a placebo just prior to the test speech. The subjects' attributions were varied by giving them either arousal or irrelevant symptom instructions regarding the effects of the ingested drug. Direct suggestion rather than misattribution effects occurred: Those subjects receiving arousal symptoms reported more nervousness than subjects who had received irrelevant symptoms. The authors conclude that while the misattribution effect may have experimental validity, it is not effective with clinically relevant behavior.     

ACQUISITION OF EXPRESSIVE SIGNING BY AUTISTIC CHILDREN: AN EVALUATION OF THE RELATIVE EFFECTS OF SIMULTANEOUS COMMUNICATION AND SIGN-ALONE TRAINING

Two methods of training autistic children to use manual signs were compared. Two children, one mute and one capable of some verbal imitation, were taught to use signs as expressive labels for pictures of objects. Using an alternating treatments design, speed of sign acquisition was compared across two training conditions in which signs were presented either accompanied by, or without, the corresponding verbal label. In both conditions, the training procedure incorporated reinforcement, modeling, prompting, fading, and stimulus rotation. The efficacy of training in both treatment conditions was demonstrated by the use of a multiple baseline control across signs, but no clear differences in acquisition speed across conditions were apparent. Posttests conducted to assess stimulus control of signing, and learning of verbal labels when these were present in training, showed that the behavior of the imitative, but not the mute, child was controlled by the verbal stimuli. The implications of the results both for understanding deficits characteristic of autistic children and for developing appropriate language training procedures are discussed.     

Judgements of compensation for misfortune: The role of expectation

In three questionnaire studies, we asked subjects how much compensation should be provided, by a third party, to an accident victim. We tested the hypothesis, derived from norm theory, that compensation would be greater when the injury was less to be expected, e.g. when the injury was caused by failure - as opposed to success - of a safety routine. To rule out the possibility that such expectation effects depended on subjects' anticipations of the reactions of the parties involved in the accident. the parties were said to be ignorant of factors that could affect these reactions. Effects of expectation were still found, even when subjects themselves judged the accident to be equally serious in all conditions. Information about what would have happened in the absence of the cause (e.g. if the routine had succeeded instead of failed) affected compensation. as predicted by norm theory, but expectation effects were found even when this information about counterfactuals was held constant, so norm theory cannot account for all the results. We suggest that subjects are applying simple heuristics unreflectively Subjects may also have attempted to fulfil an implicit social contract through their awards. The results cannot be explained through the hypothesis that compensation was optimal: the accident was the same, and it had no deterrent effect, so optimal compensation should be the same in all cases.     

European Management Selection Methods: A Comparison of Five Countries

There is some disagreement in the recent literature on how similar or different are the methods used to select employees in different European countries. The confusion comes about in part because different samples and questions have been used in different countries to investigate this issue, making comparison between countries very difficult. This study investigates managerial selection methods in three members of the European Community, Belgium, Germany and Italy, using the same questionnaire and sample characteristics previously used in Britain and France. This allows a direct comparison between the five countries. The samples comprised 250 companies randomly drawn from the top 1,000 in each country. Questionnaires sent to the companies asked a range of questions concerning the frequency of use of selection methods and attitudes towards their use. Results show major differences in frequency of use of different methods. Some of these differences are: British and German companies tend to use assessment centres much more often than other countries, while Germany and Italy are relatively infrequent users of psychological tests. Companies in the Flemish (Dutch speaking) part of Belgium are the most likely to use biodata, while their French speaking compatriots are similar to the French in their liking for graphology. Both Belgium and France make much less use of references than do Britain, Germany and Italy. Results suggest that harmonization of selection practice in Europe is a long way off. Habit, tradition and culture determine the choice of selection method much more than do the relative predictive validities of the techniques.     

Book reviews

Women as Teachers and Disciples in Traditional and New Religions. Elizabeth Puttick & Peter B. Clarke, eds., 1993 Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press 146 pp., £48.24 ISBN 0–7734–9346–8

Vrouwen in de wereldgodsdiensten. Teksten, tradities en recente on‐twikkelingen [Women in the World Religions: Texts, Traditions and Recent Developments]. Catherine Cornille, 1994 Rotterdam: Lemniscaat 183 pp., Belgian francs 570.00 ISBN 90–6069–933–5

Shadow of Spirit: Postmodernism and Religion. Philippa Berry & Andrew Wernick, eds., 1992 London: Routledge 274 pp., £35.00 hb and £12.99 pb ISBN 0–415–06638–7 and 06639–5

Political Islam, a special volume of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Charles Butterworth & I. William Zartman, eds., 1992 London: Sage 232 pp., US$17.00 £14.95 ISBN 0–8039–4687–2

The Sociology of Sacred Texts. Jon Davies & Isabel Wollaston, 1993 Sheffield: Sheffield University Press 195 pp., £35.00 ISBN 1–85075–404–7

A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation. Wade Clark Roof, 1993 New York: Harper Collins Publishers, Harper, San Francisco US$12.00 Aus$24.95 ISBN 006–066–9640

The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844–1912. Victorian Culture and the Limits of Dissent. Thomas A. Tweed, 1992 Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press xxiv + 242 pp., US$29.95(h/b) ISBN 025–336–0994

Visions of Reality: What Fundamentalist Schools Teach. Albert J. Menendez, 1993 Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books 152 pp., £12.50 ISBN 0–87975–802–3