The web of work for technical and managerial employees

This study examines aspects of the job and off-job lives of technical and managerial employees. A framework for studying parallel dimensions in these two life spheres is developed. Variables include alienation—powerlessness and meaninglessness—and activities—variety, control, social interaction, and purpose. Findings show strong interaction between alienation from work and that experienced from life off the job. Limited relationships between activity dimensions were found. Overall, results suggest that employees' feelings of alienation carry over strongly between the two life spheres but that only limited carry-over occurs between job activities and those away from work. Findings give no support to the compensatory view of relationships between employees' job and off-job lives.     

Effects of implementing (APA) ethical principles in collecting classroom data

The study examined the effects of providing six levels of research information to 270 classroom subjects on the data obtained from three different cognitive tasks. The effects of the three tasks on the subjects' academic self-concepts were also investigated. No significant differences were found among the six levels of information for each of the three tasks. On the logical task a significant linear relationship was found supporting previous research which indicates that the more information that is given to research subjects, the more negative the results. There were no significant differences on self-concept scores across the three tasks used. Overall, the implementation of ethical principles had little effect on data collected in classroom settings, indicating support for implementation. This data did indicate, however, that providing more information than required under the ethical principles can result in data bias on a specific task.     

Finite-state recall revealed by backward learning curves constructed from confidence ratings

Two experiments were carried out to show that the constancy of Type II d’ in recall is not an artifact, but is due to finite-state processes as suggested by Bernbach (1967). The following conclusions were reached: (1) The constancy of Type II d’ is not an artifact due to the inclusion of intralist intrusions in the class of incorrect responses; (2) backward learning curves constructed from confidence ratings gave clear evidence of all-or-none recall; (3) recall appeared to be all or none whether the subjects learned by rote or with a mnemonic; (4) the discriminability index derived from Luce’s (1959) choice theory did not exhibit constancy over trials, unlike Type II d’ and despite the fact that backward rating curves indicated all-or-none processes.     

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.