The effects of recency and story content on children's moral judgments

Sixteen stories were read to children at ages 4, 7, and 11 years and to college freshmen (n = 24 per age level) to investigate the effects of recency and specific story content on the development of moral reasoning. The stories consisted of either positive or negative intention and either positive or negative consequence in one of four situations: rule breaking, property damage, property damage with peer interaction, or injury to a person. At each age level, half of the subjects heard the stories with the intention first and the consequence second, and half heard them in the reverse order. Analyses confirmed that in general younger children judged on consequence, whereas older children utilized intention, and that on stories containing intentional injury to a person, the younger child took intention into account. Recency effects were evidenced for both the 4- and 7-year-olds. In the 4-year-old group, however, the recency effects failed to override the salience of negative consequence in contexts of positive intention and negative consequence. This suggests that preschool children may respond primarily to the negative aspect of the story, whether intention or consequence.     

Causal attribution and dispositional inference: Evidence of inconsistent judgments

Two experiments examined whether individuals who ascribe the disparity in the performances of two actors to situational constraints adequately adjust their dispositional inferences to reflect their own perceptions of causality. Using the quiz-game format of L. D. Ross, T. M. Amabile, and J. L. Steinmetz (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 485–494), the effects of the subjects' awareness of the role-determined, self-presentation advantage of the questioner on their dispositional inferences concerning the quiz-game participants are noted. It is hypothesized that subjects who indicated full awareness of the determining force of the situation would nevertheless draw more favorable dispositional inferences about the questioner than about the contestant. The prediction is confirmed. Although the situationally aware subjects rate the questioner and contestant more similarly than do the other subjects, they still rate the questioner higher in knowledge, memory, and education. The results of Experiment 2 indicate that increasing the salience of the subjects' assessment of the situational advantage of the questioner does not eliminate the disparity. It is proposed that the fudamental attribution error represents more a failure to adjust trait inferences for causal attributions than a misperception of causality. Implications concerning the relationship between knowledge of causality and social judgment and the utility of the distinction between “perceived causality” and “higher order causal inferences” are discussed.     

The Ramsay Family in Virginia Woolf''s To the Lighthouse: A Study of Arrest at Stage Three of Family Development as Delineated in Solomon''s "A Developmental, Conceptual Premise for Family Therapy"

The five stages of family development and their phase-specific tasks as delineated by Michael A. Solomon in an article that appeared in this journal (1973) are given dramatic representation by Virginia Woolf in her novel To the Lighthouse (1927). The novel begins with the Ramsay family system arrested at the third stage of development; and it is only after the death of Mrs. Ramsay that the remaining family members begin to attend to the phase-specific tasks of stages four and five, and family development commences.     

Resource theory and power in families: life cycle considerations

We begin our discussion by outlining the usefulness of "resource theory" as a theoretical framework for the study of family power. This framework is then used to analyze changes in the balance of power between elderly parents and their middle-age children. With respect to intergenerational power relationships, we argue that the autonomy of elderly parents has increased, but their power and influence over adult children has decreased. This trend is likely to continue in coming decades. Resource theory is then utilized to analyze changes in marital power relationships as couples age. Most studies of power relationships between elderly spouses have an important limitation--they tend to reflect yesterday's definitions of male and female roles. Recent changes in these roles may significantly alter the social meanings of aging for both men and women in coming years.     

Selecting people randomly

This article considers what justification can be found for selecting randomly and in what circumstances it applies, including that of selecting patients to be treated by a scarce medical procedure. The author demonstrates that balancing the merits of fairness, common good, equal rights, and equal chance as they apply in various situations frequently leads to the conclusion that random selection may not be the most appropriate mode of selection. Broome acknowledges that, in the end, we may be forced to conclude that the only merit of random selection is the political one of guarding against partiality and oppression.