Towards an empirical definition of courage

Receiving attribution of courage or bravery is important to most of us. Three possible modes of attribution are outlined, two of which are taken to be naive (i.e., attributing bravery if one is afraid oneself or identifying bravery with fearlessness), only one is taken as sophisticated i.e., bravery as a result of approach by a fearful person. Inferences about the use of these modes are made on the basis of correlational patterns in the data of adolescent subjects who watched snake-handling by a filmed actor/actress. Subjects rated themselves for hypothetical fear (if they had had to handle the snake): in addition they rated the handler on fear or bravery. Results suggested an increasing use of the sophisticated mode of attribution with increasing age. Clear use of the sophisticated mode however was not demonstrated in the case of attributing to female actresses. Possible interpretations of this sex of attributee effect are taken up in the Discussion.     

Nonverbal concomitants of enacted emotional intensity and positivity: Visual and vocal behavior1

This study focused on how emotional expressions are implied through visual and vocal behaviors. The roles of proportion gaze, glance duration, and vocal loudness in expressing emotional positivity and intensity were examined. Emotional positivity, emotional intensity, and target of the communication were manipulated in a mixed design. Forty-eight female subjects performed a liking or an anger message to a man and to a camera with strong and weak intensity. Videotaped responses were analyzed. Strong emotional intensity conditions evoked more direct gaze regardless of the message positivity or the target of the emotional expression. Longer glances and louder speech were associated with only intense negative emotional expression regardless of the target of the expression. The proportion gaze data support the view that eye contact serves as an intensifier of affective expression. Methodological considerations and questions about generalizability are discussed.     

The Effects of Victimization on Reactions to Other Victims1

A study was conducted to investigate the conditions under which the experience of victimization alters one's responses to other victims. Subjects were led to believe they either had been fairly paid for their work on a task (nonvictims) or had been underpaid (victims). Half the subjects believed that the treatment they had received was based upon personal information they had revealed about themselves (responsible subjects), while the others believed their treatment had nothing to do with them personally (not responsible subjects). All subjects were given an opportunity to evaluate, judge similarity to, and pay a second victim who was believed to be either “responsible” or “nor responsiile” for his plight. The results generally supported the experimental hypotheses. The impact the experience of victimization had on an individual's responses to another victim depended upon the individual's perception of his own state. The directionality of such altered responses was determined by the individual's perception of the other's state.     

Stimulus generalization following extra-dimensional training in educationally subnormal (severely) children.

The use of discrimination learning paradigms in the study of attentional transfer is discussed. The technique of go/no-go discrimination learning followed by stimulus generalization testing is contrasted with the more familiar simultaneous learning paradigm followed by a shift in the relevant cues. In the former paradigm the effect of training a discrimination on one dimension on the slope of the stimulus generalization gradient on an independent gradient dimension (extra-dimensional training) is assessed. A steepening of the gradient relative to appropriate control procedures is taken as evidence of positive attentional transfer. The relevance of the technique to the detailed study of attentional transfer in educationally subnormal (severely) (ESN(S)) children is considered. In Expt. I nine ESN(S) children were trained in a go/no-go discrimination involving stimuli differing in orientation, and were generalization tested on a dimension that was orthogonal, namely hue. Of the six subjects who learnt the discrimination five showed clear decremental gradients on the hue dimension. In contrast a Pseudo-Discrimination group (PD) of eight subjects matched to those in the TD group showed no gradients. These subjects were not trained in the orientation discrimination, but were reinforced for responding on 50 per cent of each of the S+ and S- stimulus presentations. They thus received equal exposure to, but no differential training on, the orientation dimension. An S+ only group of four subjects who received no exposure to the orientation stimuli showed no gradients when stimulus generalization testing on the hue continuum was carried out. The result is discussed in terms of transfer deriving from stimulus control by relational aspects of the stimuli; in terms of control by constant irrelevant stimuli; and in terms of the study of stimulus control in ESN(S) children. In Expt. II the influence of the codability of the colours on the location of the peak of the stimulus generalization gradients in the TD group is investigated.     

Explicit and Implicit Persuasive Communications over Time To Initiate and Maintain Behavior Change: New Perspective Utilizing a Real-life Dental Hygiene Situation1,2

Reacting to the failure of most persuasive communications to maintain behavior changes once they are established, in the context of junior high school dental hygiene programs, the present investigation explores the effects of behavioral measurement itself (as an unplanned treatment effect) in maintaining a specific behavior once it is established. Using a modified time-series extension of a basic pretest-treatment-posttest design with a variety of treatment conditions and a novel behavior measure as the dependent variable, it was established that the process of measuring behavior itself was possibly as effective as treatment conditions. All conditions effected behavior changes and maintained them for a 10-week period.     

Effects of a prosocial televised example on children's helping

The possibility that regularly broadcast entertainment television programs can facilitate prosocial behavior in children was investigated. Thirty first-grade children, 15 boys and 15 girls, were individually exposed to one of three half-hour television programs: a program from the Lassie series which included a dramatic example of a boy helping a dog, a program from the Lassie series devoid of such an example, or a program from the family situation comedy series, the Brady Bunch. The effects of the programming were assessed by presenting each child with a situation that required him to choose between continuing to play a game for self-gain and helping puppies in distress. Children exposed to the Lassie program with the helping scene helped for significantly more time than those exposed to either of the other programs.     

Hostility and sex guilt: Perceptions of self and others as a function of gender and sex-role orientation

Males and females indicated their perceptions of sex and hostility guilt for themselves and for typical males or typical females. Males were found to be less guilty than females. Both sexes perceived the typical female to be more guilty than the typical male, and both underestimated the actual level of female guilt. Subjects were also classified according to sex-role orientation. Masculine sex-typed people were less guilty than feminine sex-typed individuals, with androgynous groups falling between these two. Also, sex-consistent subjects and androgynous females perceived themselves as similar to others of their gender, while androgynous males perceived themselves as being similar to both males and females. Sex-reversed subjects evidenced conflict and inaccuracies in their perceptions of self versus others. Implications for future research are presented.The author wishes to thank Shari Sparling for her assistance in collecting and scoring the data for this study.     

Sex vs. status in sex-associated stereotypes

The trait content of sex stereotypes can be created by social role status alone, without reference to sex. In contemporary culture sex and role status are confounded: Authority roles are played by men; women occupy subordinate positions. TV commercials encode the unequal status as tacit assumptions in brief scenarios. Videotaped reenactments of three such commercials served as stimuli. One reenactment of each duplicated the original network versions. In a second reenactment of the same commercials, the male and female actors switched roles. Subjects (n=128 men and women) viewed the commercials and made personality attributions to each character on five sex-stereotypic dimensions, e.g., “dominant—submissive.” Stereotypic trait patterns commonly attributed to sex were determined more by the actor's implicit role status in the portrayed relationship than by the actor's sex. Showing women in high-status roles with the social support of coparticipants may be a means of breaking the stereotypes.