Relationships between perceptions of organizational size and the organizational choice process

Expectancy theory concepts were used to predict (a) the attractiveness of, (b) the amount of effort directed toward entering, and (c) the eventual choice of a job in relatively big and small work organizations. It was found, among a group of graduating seniors from a technical college, that antecedent perceptions regarding organizational size (expectancy, valence, instrumentality) were significantly related to the relative attractiveness of different-sized organizations and the number of job interviews taken with relatively big and small companies. In addition, economically tied extrinsic outcomes were seen as more readily attainable in big organizations, whereas certain intrinsic outcomes were perceived to be more easily obtained in small organizations.     

Social cues, cognitive style, error magnitude, and male performance on the Felt Figure Replacement Technique.

A series of studies was undertaken to determine possible factors contributing to low predictive utility for Felt Figure Replacement Technique (FFRT) scores from normal, adult males. It was first postulated that normal adult males, compared to normal adult females, are less sensitive to social cues present in the FFRT task. Twenty-six undergraduate males and the same number of undergraduate females were asked to replace both a) department store manikins, thought to be less abstract, and then b) felt figures. While task differences were obtained, these were not dependent on gender, nor did any overall gender differences occur for three types of replacement error. The second study involved 31 college males and 33 college females replacing both felt figures and a male and female confederate. It was assumed that differential attention to social cues would be more visible in this comparison. The general results were identical to the first study.     

Incentives and Seat Belts: Changing a Resistant Behavior Through Extrinsic Motivation

Because previously-attempted methods of increasing automobile seat belt usage have proven to be either ineffective or unworkable, a series of field experiments was carried out to test a technique of behavior influence utilizing a modest, positive incentive. In three separate studies, seat belt use of 4,745 drivers was observed as they drove out of a parking lot, after receiving one of several safety reminder leaflets. Some versions of the leaflet offered a gift certificate to a certain proportion of drivers who wore seat belts; other versions offered no incentive. The results showed that an incentive, regardless of the probability of payoff, raised belt use from about 15% to nearly 40%. Implications for future research and applications are discussed.     

Transfer of compounds and components in the discriminative learning of retardates

The discriminative learning and transfer of compound and component problems were assessed in retarded subjects at two levels of intelligence. It was found that brighter subjects (MA = 10 years) found the component problems relatively easier than the compound problems to a greater extent than did the less developed subjects (MA = 5 years). The learning of compound solutions was shown to transfer positively to other compound problems and negatively to component problems. Component solutions were found to transfer positively to other component solutions and negatively to compound solutions. These dimensional transfer effects were interpreted to mean that both compound and component solutions were mediated and conceptual in nature. The developmental differences in relative usages of compound and component aspects of stimuli were viewed as the result of differences in direction of attention rather than of differences in complexity of processing.     

The order of continuous,partial and nonreward trials and resistance to extinction

In the first experiment rats were given either 16 or 48 nonrewarded or continuously rewarded trials prior to 24 continuously or partially rewarded trials, followed by extinction. Increased resistance to extinction was found for increasing numbers of nonrewarded trials when they were followed by partial reward, but not when followed by continuous reward. Similarly, more continuously rewarded trials followed by partial reward tended to increase resistance to extinction. Because of the theoretical importance of the effect of continuous reward followed by partial, a second experiment was performed where the range of the number of continuously rewarded trials was extended to 0, 48, and 96. Contrary to many theoretical predictions, resistance to extinction increased as a function of increasing amounts of continuous reward.     

The effect of sex differences on sociometric data generated by a roster-rating scale instrument

Sociometric data generated by roster-rating scale instruments are being used for assessment and evaluation purposes. Little information exists, however, on the influence of peer gender on this particular type of sociometric data. In a sample of 441 male and 455 female fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children, this study found same-sex ratings to be significantly higher than opposite-sex ratings. Opposite-sex ratings, while significantly lower, were slightly correlated with the higher same-sex ratings. Differing methods for interpreting roster-rating scale data are discussed in light of the above results.The author is Assistant Professor at the School of Social Welfare, State University of New York at Albany currently on leave at the Baerwald School of Social Work, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. This project was completed under the auspices of the Interpersonal Skill Training and Research Project of the School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin.     

Psychopathy and structure of primary mental abilities

The Comprehensive Ability Battery (CAB) was used to assess 18 primary mental abilities in 53 white, male prison inmates for whom highly reliable ratings of psychopathy were available. None of the correlations between ratings of psychopathy and scores on the CAB tests was significant, and the overall pattern or structure of abilities was the same for inmates with low and high ratings of psychopathy. The possibility is raised that the personality characteristics of psychopaths make them appear to be brighter and more creative than they actually are. Compared with norms for male high school students, the inmates as a group generally performed well, falling near the 50th percentile on 11 of the tests. The inmates performed significantly better than the normative sample on tests of verbal ability, esthetic judgment, aiming, and representational drawing, and significantly worse on tests of ideational fluency, spontaneous flexibility, and word fluency.This research was supported by Grant MT-4511 from the Medical Research Council of Canada.     

Selective attention in the speeded classification and comparison of multidimensional stimuli

Selective attention was studied when subjects were required to make either speeded classifications of single stimuli or comparisons of pairs of multidimensional stimuli. Experiment 1 established that subjects were able to attend selectively to form when the irrelevant dimension of size or shading varied in a speeded-classification (card-sorting) task. Experiment 2 confirmed this finding in a discrete-trials task. However, subjects werenot able to filter out irrelevant dimensional disparity in a comparably designed simultaneous-comparison (i.e., “same”-“different”) task. Mean “same” reaction time increased monotonically with increases in disparity between the two stimuli on the irrelevant dimension. Experiment 3 also revealed a monotonie increase in “same” RT as a function of irrelevant disparity in a successive-comparison task. These results were discussed in terms of a normalization model proposed by Dixon and Just (1978) in which it is assumed that a subject equates the two stimuli on the irrelevant dimension before deciding that they are the same along the relevant dimension. It was concluded that: (1) although subjects can efficiently filter out irrelevant disparity in a speeded-classification task, interference due to irrelevant disparity is obtained in the comparison tasks, (2) a common process such as normalization does not necessarily underlie performance in the speeded-classification and comparison tasks, (3) the ability to attend selectively to a stimulus dimension may be task determined as well as stimulus determined, and (4) contrary to the Dixon and Just proposal, normalization of irrelevant disparity occurs in a comparison task, even when the relevant dimension is represented as a separate encoding feature.