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 Playing Videogames on Children's Aggressive and Other Behaviors1

Noting the pervasiveness of videogames in American culture, the authors set out to examine the effects that playing videogames has on children. Thirty-one children were matched on sex, randomly assigned to play either a violent (karate) videogame or a nonviolent (jungle vine swinging) videogame, and then observed during free play. The main results were that the children who had played the jungle swing videogame later played more with a jungle swing toy and that the children who played the violent videogame later showed more aggression. The authors interpreted the findings as an indication that young children who play videogames later tend to act similarly to how their videogame character acted.     

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.