A comparison of two measures of egocentrism

This study examined the relationship between two prominent measures of egocentrism, Enright's Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES) and Elkind's Imaginary Audience Scale (IAS), in a sample of 458 adolescents, between 10 and 15 years old. Both correlational and factor analyses indicated that the two measures assess distinctly different phenomena. As predicted, IAS scores were correlated with self-reported levels of shyness, nervousness, and social skills. These results provide partial evidence for the validity of the IAS as a measure of self-consciousness, though not necessarily egocentrism per se. The validity of the AES was not examined.     

Remembering Your Parents: Reflections on the Retrospective Method

In the present paper, I critique the use of the retrospective method when it is used as a proxy for actual longitudinal data on personality development. Studies on the constructive nature of memory cast strong doubts about the meaning of retrospective data. There are good reasons, both theoretical and empirical, to distrust the accuracy of such recall concerning parenting, whether recalled by parents, children, or siblings. Instead of using the method as a shortcut to developmental data, studies examining individual differences in accuracy and distortion and the factors that moderate them may inform us of the various meanings of retrospective data.     

Effects of Computer Privacy on Help-Seeking1

Subjects (N= 28) performing a complex disjunctive concept-formation task on a microcomputer were given the opportunity to seek help following failure to correctly identify concepts. The proportion of those seeking help was significantly greater when the source of help was the computer itself (86%) rather than another person (36%). Consistent with past research, those who did not ask for help gave reasons other than the potential negative social consequences of doing so. Self-report data and a systematic test for the presence of experimenter-induced demand ruled out several possible sources of confounding. The results have implications for designers of time-sharing and networked computer systems.     

Disarmament Decisions as Social Dilemmas1

The individual deciding on a nuclear weapons production policy is faced with a dilemma in which a choice must be made to support one of several conflicting defense policies. In order to investigate the social-psychological variables that are related to armament policy decision making, a telephone survey was conducted in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. Adult subjects (N= 110) responded to questions concerned with cognitive, attitudinal, and emotional responses to nuclear arms. Participants were also asked to choose a weapons production policy for the United States under conditions of continued and decreased Soviet nuclear arms production. Results indicated that respondents decisions about nuclear weapons production were related to their support for deterrence, the availability of their nuclear-related images, their emotional response to nuclear war, their attributions of responsibility for the prevention of nuclear war, and their political party affiliation. Distinctions between antinuclear decision-makers and pronuclear decision-makers are discussed.     

Neuroticism, extraversion, and related traits in adult twins reared apart and reared together

The relative importance of genetic and environmental factors for neuroticism, extraversion, impulsivity, and monotony avoidance were estimated in a sample of 99 monozygotic and 229 dizygotic pairs of twins reared apart (TRA) and a matched sample of 160 monozygotic and 212 dizygotic pairs of twins reared together (TRT). The average age was 58.6 (SD = 13.6); 72% of the twins were 50 or older. Model-fitting analyses verified the importance of genetic factors for all four measures; from 23% to 45% of the total variation was attributable to genetic sources. There was considerable evidence that these factors were operating in a nonadditive manner for extraversion and impulsivity. Shared environment accounted for less than 10% of the variance; some evidence for selective placement was found for neuroticism.     

Conceptions of states and traits: dimensional attributes with ideals as prototypes

Traits and states are concepts that people use to both describe and understand themselves and others. We show that people view these concepts as prototype-based categories that have a graded internal structure and fuzzy boundaries and identify a set of attributes that define the prototypical cores of two categories: traits and states. Prototypical traits are stable, long-lasting, and internally caused. Prototypical states are temporary, brief, and caused by external circumstances. These prototypes are not defined by averages, as the family-resemblance principle would suggest, but by ideal (or extreme) attribute values. Like other ideal-based categories, traits and states serve particular goals. Trait concepts permit people to predict the present from the past; state concepts identify those behaviors that can be controlled by manipulating the situation. These two complementary schemas are part of the extensive theory of psychological causality that is implicit in language. Abstract social concepts differ from object categories in their category standards, the nature of their attributes, and the interrelations among those attributes.     

The development of locomotor coordination: longitudinal change and invariance

Developmental sequence, relative timing, center of gravity, and phase-plane analyses were used to study a minimum of 15 years of longitudinal, filmed data on the development of hopping in 7 children. The developmental sequences revealed common, qualitative changes in the movement of the children, although each child progressed through the changes at his/her own rate. The timing analyses showed that, in the advanced hop, the tightest limb relationships were found within the hopping leg, then between contralateral limbs of the same girdle, and then between legs and arms. Relative-timing calculations revealed (a) intralimb, timing invariances that were present in first attempts to perform the skill at age 3 and remained for 15 years across all developmental levels; (b) emergent, interlimb timings that gradually became invariant; and (c) intra- and interlimb timing showing gradual development over the 15 years. One invariant, the time between landing and deepest knee flexion, is also invariant in the walk and the run (Shapiro, Zernicke, Gregor, & Diestel, 1981). Phase plane analyses indicated that the timing of peak and zero velocities may be the coordinative constant accounting for a relative timing invariance between the two legs. Position of the body's center of gravity may explain the invariant relative time between landing and deepest knee flexion, or the explanation could lie in the "equation of constraint" regulating joint equilibrium points. The data suggest that modeling the developing hop as the evolving interaction of four vibratory systems would be promising.     

A "change-of-standard" perspective on the relations among context, judgment, and memory

We conducted three studies that tested a "change-of-standard" perspective on the relations among context, judgment, and recall. Each study consisted of two or three sessions held a few days apart. All subjects read about the sentencing decisions of one or two target trial judges and of six nontarget trial judges who consistently gave either higher or lower sentences than the target judge(s). Each study varied both the standard that was available when subjects initially judged the sentencing decisions of a target judge and the standard available when subjects subsequently recalled those decisions. To accomplish this, we varied the context of judgment, the timing of judgment, and the overall category norm for trial judges' sentencing decisions that was available at recall. We found that although subjects had been exposed to the same target information and had initially judged it in the same way, their recall of the information was different depending on whether and how a change-of-standard had occurred between judgment and recall. Unique predictions of the change-of-standard perspective were confirmed that could not be accounted for in terms of other types of context effects on judgment and memory.     

Specific forms of facial EMG response index emotions during an interview: from Darwin to the continuous flow hypothesis affect-laden information processing

Previous research has demonstrated that mild negative emotional imagery and unpleasant sensory stimuli lead to greater electromyographic activity over the brow muscle region than mild positive imagery and stimuli, even in the absence of significant changes in visceral and general facial EMG activity. Previous research has not addressed whether electromyographic responses over the brow region are a sensitive and specific index of emotions, however, since a multiplicity of events lead to changes in brow activity. In this research, facial electromyographic and audiovisual recordings were obtained while individuals were interviewed about themselves. Afterwards, individuals were asked to describe what they had been thinking of during specific segments of the interview marked by distinctive electromyographic responses over the brow region in the context of ongoing but stable levels of activity elsewhere in the face. The results are interpreted in terms of a continuous flow hypothesis of affect-laden information processing.