Disentangling Type A behavior: The roles of ambition,insensitivity, and anxiety

This study identified stable components of Type A behavior as usually defined, and examined their relationships with more traditional psychological constructs. Overall scores on the most popular Type A measure (a version of the Jenkins Activity Survey) were moderately associated with ambition but largely unrelated to measures of adjustment. An item analysis yielded subcomponents of Drivenness and Involvement. Drivenness was unrelated to ambition, but was positively related to anxiety and negatively related to interpersonal perceptiveness. Involvement was positively related to ambition and to interpersonal competence. It is suggested that the Jenkins Activity Survey measures a heterogeneous mixture of constructive commitment and self-defeating responses that clouds its psychological interpretation.     

Automatic stimulus presentation for the proboscis extension reflex in diptera

An apparatus is described that automates the elicitation of the proboscis extension reflex (PER) in dipterans. The PER has been used as a measure of both classical conditioning and central excitation. Most studies of PER have employed manual stimulation, which adds inter- and intraexperimenter differences in technique as another source of variance. The advantages of this apparatus are (1) elimination of individual differences in manual techniques of experimenters as a possible source of error variance and (2) capability of stimulating several flies individually during a single session. An experiment is reported comparing the manual and automated methods.     

Black Students' Reactions to Feedback Conveyed by White and Black Teachers1

The present investigation examined some processes mediating self-fulfilling prophecies among black students. Specifically, we hypothesized that feedback conveyed by black and white teachers would differentially influence black students' perceptions of how the teacher viewed their success/failure, effort, ability, luck and task difficulty. In addition, we hypothesized that negative feedback would affect perceptions of evaluations differently than positive feedback. Ninety black undergraduates participated in an experiment in which a black or white teacher (confederate) expressed one of five evaluative feedback responses to a student's score on an analogies test. The results provided partial support for the first hypothesis: black female students perceived white teachers as assessing their performance less positively: that is, they perceived them to underestimate their ability and the difficulty of the task. Negative feedback also led students to believe the teacher held an unfavorable but inaccurate impression of their ability and effort, and that the teacher underestimated the difficulty of the task. These findings suggest that black students—black females in particular—may assume that white teachers hold less favorable assessments of them than black teachers and all students may be sensitive to negative evaluations.     

Personality and Daily Experience: The Promise and the Challenge

This special issue of the Journal of Personality is devoted to personality and daily experience. Through historical analysis of the daily event literature, empirical inquiry, and methodological and statistical commentary, the contributors to this issue convey both the possibilities and the problems of studying everyday life. These articles demonstrate how people's dispositions, goals, and commitments can influence daily emotional well-being and health, their inner experience, their reactions to events, and perhaps even which events they encounter. The introduction of personality to the study of daily experience holds the promise of enriching our studies of both.     

The desirability of control

The psychological construct of desirability of control was related to several theoretical statements (e.g., Kelley, 1971; White, 1959) and areas of current research (e.g., Glass & Singer, 1972; Deci, 1975) in psychology. A scale designed to measure individual differences in the general level of motivation to control the events in one's life was presented. The Desirability of Control Scale was found to have substantial internal consistency (.80) and test-retest reliability (.75), as well as discriminant validity from measures of locus of control (Rotter, 1966) and social desirability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). The results of an illusion of control study (cf. Langer, 1975) provided construct validation: only subjects high in the desire for control displayed a belief in personal control over chance outcomes. Construct validation was also provided from studies on learned helplessness and hypnosis. The practical, as well as theoretical, value of the instrument was discussed.This research was facilitated by National Science Foundation grant BNS78-08834 to Harris Cooper.     

Social facilitation

Video-recording procedures have been used in previous research as a motivational manipulation. The present study investigated the permanent recording of behavior as a manipulation of evaluation apprehension and its effects upon behavioral performance and upon autonomic arousal. Twenty-four subjects (12 males, 12 females) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions formed by completely crossing two levels of audience status (peer or authority) with two levels of behavioral record (non-permanent or permanent). Another 24 subjects were assigned to an external control group to the 2×2 design. Subjects' performance on a hidden-word task and their arousal level (as assessed by the Palmar Sweat Index) were measured. Analyses of variance results showed a significant performance (p<.05) and a significant arousal (p<.05) difference between the behavioral record conditions as predicted. The control group was also found to be significantly (p<.05) different from the experimental groups on the behavioral performance measure. The results were related to previous research findings and interpreted within the context of the evaluation apprehension notion presented within social facilitation research.The author would like to thank Angelia Mellors, Valerie K. Golish, and Judy Cohen for serving as experiments, and Susan L. Doman and Cheryl Primmer for scoring the PSI measures.     

The cheating and intention of a partner as determinants of evaluative decisions among juvenile offenders

Male juvenile offenders were asked to evaluate the work of an experimental partner (confederate) who completed a work task four times. The work partner cheated on two trials and did not cheat on two trials while working for a charity (one cheat and one noncheat trial) or for selfish gain (one cheat and one noncheat trial). It was found that subjects rated the work done on cheating trials lower than work done on noncheating trials. In addition, subjects shared less reward money on cheating trials relative to noncheating trials. However, the intentions of the confederate, defined as the reward recipient, failed to affect subjects' judgments. These results were described as supporting previous studies which have indicated that delinquents fail to take account of others' intentions when making moral judgments.     

Learning and generalization of piagetian tasks by mentally retarded students

70 mentally retarded students, successfully taught to conserve number and substance in the Piagetian sense, resisted attempts at extinction but were unable to generalize to other conservation tasks.     

A descriptive study of e-counsellor attitudes,ethics, and practice

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to examine questions related to the process, perceived outcomes, and ethics of therapists who provide counselling and therapy online. Method: An online survey was conducted (N=93) with identified e-counsellors with at least a Master's Degree. Questions included demographic information and Likert-type scales related to extent of practice, theoretical orientation, training and supervision, attitudes about appropriate practice, referral, legal and ethical issues, practice difficulties, and therapist satisfaction. Results: Overall, e-counsellors are satisfied with their practice and believe it is effective. They generally do not have formal training or supervision in online practice. Current e-counselling appears to be a part-time, supplemental practice with little overlap to FTF practice. There was little agreement among respondents on attitudes, practice, ethical issues, and knowledge of regulations related to e-counselling. Discussion: Lack of consensus about ethical obligations and practice suggest the need for formal training in e-counselling by professional programmes and international cooperation in formulating practice ethics. Areas for further research are discussed.