Reducing stress by counterattitudinal advocacy

In one condition, subjects were made apprehensive by being threatened with shock and then were induced to publicly argue that they were not apprehensive about the situation. It was hypothesized that the subjects who were induced to advocate a position contrary to their feelings about the situation would experience dissonance. To reduce dissonance, these subjects were expected to redefine the situation as less threatening and thereby experience less apprehension regarding the situation than subjects in a control threat condition. Results of physiological measures and a postexperimental questionnaire supported the expectations. Implications of the study for psychotherapy were mentioned.     

The Tyranny of Numbers: Does Group Size Affect Petition Signing?

Conformity research proposes that an individual's tendency to conform increases linearly as a function of group size, reaches an early plateau, and remains stable thereafter, An experiment was performed to test the generality of this notion to a common group pressure situation: petition-signing. Results revealed no meaningful relationships whatever between the percent of subjects who signed and the number of previous signatures (0 through 8), the forcefulness of the solicitor's approach, and subject's sex. A female petitioner did receive more signatures than a male, however. Results were interpreted as supporting the validity of petitions as indicators of public sentiment.     

Observer reliability as a function of circumstances of assessment

THREE FACTORS CHARACTERISTIC OF EXPERIMENTAL SETTINGS WERE HYPOTHESIZED TO INFLATE ARTIFACTUALLY THE RELIABILITY OF OBSERVATIONAL RECORDINGS: (a) knowledge by observers of when and by whom their reliability is being assessed, (b) the absence of the experimenter or a monitor to prevent cheating, and (c) computation of reliability within- (versus between-) observer group. Three groups of four observers used a standard nine-category observational code for disruptive behavior in recording from videotapes of a classroom for 22 days. Analyses revealed considerable increases in average occurrence reliability as a function of the main effects of each of the experimental factors. The specific increases in reliability associated with each of the 12 combinations of the experimental factors are presented for each category of behavior. The possible role of observer-training procedures and behavioral definitions as determiners of nonartifactual reliability is discussed.     

BEHAVIORAL TECHNOLOGY FOR REDUCING OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURES TO STYRENE

We conducted a test of the usefulness of behavioral methods to control occupational health problems by reducing workers' exposures to toxic chemicals. Four plastics workers were trained in nine behaviors selected for potential to reduce their exposures to styrene, a common chemical with multiple toxic effects. Behavioral measures indicated that the workers quickly came to emit most of the behaviors. Measures of air samples indicated that large decreases in exposures to styrene accompanied the changes in behaviors for the three workers who had been selected because they most needed relief from their exposures and because they had opportunities to control their exposures by the ways they behaved.     

Learning and memory of field independent-dependent individuals

It has been proposed that field-independent and field-dependent learners differ more in the processes they use than in the effectiveness of their learning or retention. The present article discusses alternative explanations which emphasize developmental differences and differences in efficiency of performance between field-independent and field-dependent learners. Review of the concept learning literature and some new data suggested that the greater effectiveness of field-independent learners was related to memory efficiency and the ability to conduct combinatorial analysis. Research concerning short-term memory and free recall was also examined. High information load, greater interference potential, and less subjective organization were suggested as factors which contribute to the less efficient memory of field-dependent learners.     

Androgyny and traditional versus nontraditional major choice among college freshmen

The present study investigated the relationship of psychological androgyny to career choice among college freshmen. Women in home economics and engineering and men in engineering (N = 231) completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and rating scales of satisfaction with and certainty of college major and intended occupation. As a group, women in engineering scored in a more androgynous direction than did either men in engineering or women in home economics. Among sex-typed subjects, more women in engineering scored in a masculine sex-typed category than did women in home economics. Men and women in engineering did not differ on satisfaction and certainty ratings of major or career; however, feminine-typed women were significantly less satisfied with and tended to be less certain of their choice of major than other women in engineering.     

Evidence against integration of spatial maps in humans

A dynamic 3-D virtual environment was constructed for humans as an open-field analogue of Blaisdell and Cook's (2005) pigeon foraging task to determine if humans, like pigeons, were capable of integrating separate spatial maps. Participants used keyboard keys and a mouse to search for a hidden goal in a 4×4 grid of raised cups. During Phase 1 training, a goal was consistently located between two landmarks (Map 1: blue T and red L). During Phase 2 training, a goal was consistently located down and left of a single landmark (Map 2: blue T). Transfer trials were then conducted in which participants were required to make choices in the presence of the red L alone. Cup choices during transfer assessed participants’ strategies: association (from Map 1), generalization (from Map 2), or integration (combining Map 1 and 2). During transfer, cup choices increased to a location which suggested an integration strategy and was consistent with results obtained with pigeons. However, additional analyses of the human data suggested participants initially used a generalization strategy followed by a progressive shift in search behavior away from the red L. This shift in search behavior during transfer was responsible for the changes in cup choices across transfer trials and was confirmed by a control condition. These new analyses offer an alternative explanation to the spatial integration account proposed for pigeons.Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available for this article at     

Differential subjective and psychophysiological responses to socially and nonsocially generated emotional stimuli

Sociality may determine the subjective experience and physiological response to emotional stimuli. Film segments induced socially and nonsocially generated emotions. Comedy (social positive), bereavement (social negative), pizza scenes (nonsocial positive), and wounded bodies (nonsocial negative) elicited four distinct emotional patterns. Per subjective report, joy, sadness, appetite, and disgust were elicited by the targeted stimulus condition. The social/nonsocial dimension influenced which emotional valence(s) elicited a skin conductance response, a finding that could not be explained by differences in subjective arousal. Heart rate deceleration was more responsive to nonsocially generated emotions. Taken together, these findings suggest that sociality affects the physiological profile of responses to emotional valence.