Objective self-awareness as a nonaversive state: Effect of anticipating discrepancy reduction

The possibility that self-aware subjects in previous objective sell-awareness studies displayed heightened negative affect and avoidance reactions because they were made to focus on permanent negative discrepancies was investigated in the present research. Subjects were first induced to regard a negative real-ideal discrepancy as either permanent or reducible in size, and then were either made or not made objectively self-aware. As expected, those self-aware subjects who anticipated no reduction in discrepancy size were found to be more negative in mood and quicker to exit from the experimental room than were their counterparts in the other three conditions. It was concluded that self-focused attention only generates aversive reactions when it brings to awareness a negative real-ideal discrepancy which the individual feels cannot be altered.     

The relationship of moral maturity and ethical attitude1

Two issues related to Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes (SEA) were investigated. First, the adequacy of Hogan's theoretical characterizations of the two poles of the SEA was tested. The results supported his characterization of the ethics of conscience, but only partially supported his characterization of the ethics of responsibility. Our second focus was on Hogan's prediction that “moral maturity” should be curvilinearly related to the SEA. As predicted, when moral maturity was measured in Hogan's sense, subjects scoring in the middle of the SEA dimension showed higher levels of moral maturity than those at either the ethics of conscience end or the ethics of responsibility end. In contrast, moral maturity in Kohlberg's sense was linearly related to the SEA with the most mature individuals scoring at the ethics of conscience end of the dimension. The total pattern of results highlights the importance of conceptual clarity and conceptual pluralism in research on morality.     

Locus of causality and the use of information in the development of causal attributions1

Two studies were conducted to examine whether attributions made about events may be influenced by individual assumptions regarding causation that are age related. In Study 1, 96 subjects at three age levels (four and five years, eight and nine years, and college students) observed a target actor on videotape select an item from an unseen array, and four other actors either agree (high consensus) or disagree (low consensus) with the choice. Subjects were asked to decide why the actor liked the chosen object best—because of something about the actor (person attribution) or because of something about the item (entity attribution). The results showed that perceived locus of causality shifted from entity to person attributions with age. In addition, subjects at all ages were able to utilize the consensus information when they had no opportunity to form their own impressions about the items in the array. In Study 2, 126 subjects at four age levels (five and six years, seven and eight years, nine and ten years, and high school students) chose an item from among an array for themselves and responded to a person (self)/entity attribution question regarding the locus of their own choice. The entity to person shift with age was again found and was supported by additional measures. The results are discussed in terms of children's causal reasoning capacities and social environmental factors affecting developmental change in social judgments.     

Adolescent sexuality and love

Adolescent love in its approach to human sexuality emphasizes freedom, to the exclusion of responsibility. Less than twenty percent of the adolescent couples who engage in sexual relations use any type of contraception, and three-quarters of all pregnancies occur prior to marriage. Further, children born out of wedlock from such unions suffer frequently from social, economic, health, and educational handicaps. In addition, there are the problems of increasing abortions and venereal disease for the young parents, along with child abuse and a suicide rate among teenage mothers ten times that of the general population. Four possible ways to aid in the solution of these problems are suggested.The Rev. John A. Clippinger, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman of the Psychology Department of Baker University, is a minister of the United Church of Christ, a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and a certified clinical psychologist. He is the author of eighteen articles in books and periodicals in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, religion, and sexual research. He is also listed in theInternational Directory of Sex Research and Related Fields and is associate editor ofCorrective Psychiatry and Journal of Social Therapy.This paper was originally presented at the Fall Conference, 1977, of the Central Region of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and the 1978 national meeting in Chicago of the A.A.P.C.     

Effects of behavioral and medical models of consultation on teacher expectancies and instruction of a hypothetical child

Sixty first- and second-grade teachers were randomly assigned to one of four conditions representing variations in consultation where they were required to teach a hypothetical child to add. The first condition involved face-to-face behavioral consultation in which the consultant cued a teacher to verbalize antecedent and consequent conditions that might affect learning and prompted the teacher to specify the kinds of capabilities that the child would need in order to master the academic task targeted for instruction. In the second type of behavioral consultation, face-to-face consultation was augmented by a task analysis report specifying prerequisite skills. The third type, medical model consultation, involved face-to-face consultation focusing on temporally remote environmental circumstances accompanied by a traditional psychological report specifying that the child was of low ability. The control group was asked general questions about the school. Results suggested that behavioral consultation with task analysis was associated with significantly more teaching success than was control, medical model, and behavioral consultation without task analysis. Moreover, behavioral consultation without task analysis was better than medical model consultation. Implications for psychoeducational assessment are discussed within the context of teacher expectations and instruction.     

Response preference within the Rotter I-E Scale: perceived locus of control of self, average, and ideal others

The Rotter I-E scale was administered to college juniors in education under five different instructional sets. Subjects were asked to complete it (a) as they would ordinarily (self-perception), (b) as they believed an average person of the same sex would, (c) as an average person of the opposite sex would, (d) as an ideal person of the same sex would, and (e) as an ideal person of the opposite sex would. As hypothesized, subjects saw the ideal person of both sexes as significantly more internal than themselves, while they saw the average person of both sexes as more external than themselves. These results suggest the general desirability of being perceived as internally oriented.     

Differential indication of trimipramine - results of a controlled multiclinical study]

The antidepressants trimipramine and imipramine were compared within the framework of a multiclinical study performed under the conditions of a controlled clinical experiment. There has been found a time-different remission of affective und psychomotoric symptoms. The panthymoleptic action of trimipramine and other antidepressants is discussed with reference to these results. Trimipramine influences psychotic states, especially if in depression anxiety is combined with agitation, also in hypochondriac forms of depression.