Approval versus achievement motives in seventh-grade girls

Eighty seventh graders played a computer-programmed two-choice probability game in one of four conditions: with reinforcement for choosing the more probable response, with reinforcement for choosing the less probable response, with a silent experimenter, or alone. Children receiving reinforcement for the less probable response experienced a conflict between approval and achievement since choices which increased approval in this condition decreased success in the task. Across all conditions, girls chose the more probable response significantly more often than boys, indicating that girls did not sacrifice achievement for the sake of approval. Finally, girls did not reduce their efforts to achieve when working alone even though there was no opportunity for social approval, and did not express lower success expectancies than the boys even though these were measured anonymously.The authors wish to extend their appreciation to the teachers at Emerson School, Oak Park, Illinois, and to Ms. Glada O. Vaughn, principal, and Ms. Sandra Northrup Nowak, assistant principal, for their cooperation in carrying out this research.     

Sex-role behavior and obedience to authority: A field study

Obedience by male and female subjects to male and female experimenters was investigated under various conditions of “perceived legitimacy.” The procedure involved an experimenter stopping a subject who was about to cross a street at a particular crosswalk, the subject was then instructed to cross at another designated location. The dependent variable was the level of obedience to these instructions. The four main factorial independent variables were the sex of the experimenter, the sex of the subject, and two conditions of “perceived legitimacy” (presence or absence of a “uniform,” presence or absence of an “explanation”). Significant results were obtained for the uniform and sex of subject main effects (more obedience with a uniform, more disobedience by females). Additional analyses indicated that “older” subjects disobeyed more often than “younger” ones, that “formally” dressed subjects disobeyed more often than “informally” dressed ones, and that ethnic minority group experimenters were disobeyed significantly more often than Caucasian experimenters. Significant interactions were also obtained, mainly due to the behavior of the younger men and the older women. Male and female experimenters were obeyed equally, in general. The results are discussed in relation to sex-role prejudice and discriminatory behavior.     

Hemispheric specialization for processing of visually presented verbal and spatial stimuli

Two “same-different” reaction time experiments, analogous in task demands made on the S, were designed to test laterality differences in. perception. Ten normal right-handed Ss performed a verbal task in which they decided whether or not two three-letter words belonged to the same conceptual class. Ten different Ss performed a spatial task in which they decided whether two 16-cell matrices with 3 blackened cells were identical. Reaction times were found to be sensitive to laterality differences in perception. Verbal stimuli were processed faster when presented in the right visual field, and thus projected directly to the left cerebral hemisphere; spatial stimuli were processed faster when presented in the left visual field, and thus projected directly to the right cerebral hemisphere. These results were analyzed in terms of implications regarding hemispheric asymmetries for processing of verbal and spatial material and the nature of interhemispheric transfer of information.     

Three steps to open science for qualitative research in psychology

Principles and applications of open science (also referred to as open research or open scholarship) in psychology have emerged in response to growing concerns about the replicability, transparency, reproducibility, and robustness of psychological research alongside global moves to open science in many fields. Our objective in this paper is to inform ways of collectively constructing open science practices and systems that are appropriate to, and get the best out of, the full range of qualitative and mixed-method approaches used in psychology. We achieve this by describing three areas of open research practice (contributorship, pre-registration, and open data) and explore how and why qualitative researchers might consider engaging with these in ways that are compatible with a qualitative research paradigm. We argue it is crucial that open research practices do not (even inadvertently) exclude qualitative research, and that qualitative researchers reflect on how we can meaningfully engage with open science in psychology.     

Aging and performance on an everyday-based visual search task

Research on aging and visual search often requires older people to search computer screens for target letters or numbers. The aim of this experiment was to investigate age-related differences using an everyday-based visual search task in a large participant sample (n=261) aged 20-88 years. Our results show that: (1) old-old adults have more difficulty with triple conjunction searches with one highly distinctive feature compared to young-old and younger adults; (2) age-related declines in conjunction searches emerge in middle age then progress throughout older age; (3) age-related declines are evident in feature searches on target absent trials, as older people seem to exhaustively and serially search the whole display to determine a target's absence. Together, these findings suggest that declines emerge in middle age then progress throughout older age in feature integration, guided search, perceptual grouping and/or spreading suppression processes. Discussed are implications for enhancing everyday functioning throughout adulthood.     

Audiovisual identity perception from naturally-varying stimuli is driven by visual information

Identity perception often takes place in multimodal settings, where perceivers have access to both visual (face) and auditory (voice) information. Despite this, identity perception is usually studied in unimodal contexts, where face and voice identity perception are modelled independently from one another. In this study, we asked whether and how much auditory and visual information contribute to audiovisual identity perception from naturally-varying stimuli. In a between-subjects design, participants completed an identity sorting task with either dynamic video-only, audio-only or dynamic audiovisual stimuli. In this task, participants were asked to sort multiple, naturally-varying stimuli from three different people by perceived identity. We found that identity perception was more accurate for video-only and audiovisual stimuli compared with audio-only stimuli. Interestingly, there was no difference in accuracy between video-only and audiovisual stimuli. Auditory information nonetheless played a role alongside visual information as audiovisual identity judgements per stimulus could be predicted from both auditory and visual identity judgements, respectively. While the relationship was stronger for visual information and audiovisual information, auditory information still uniquely explained a significant portion of the variance in audiovisual identity judgements. Our findings thus align with previous theoretical and empirical work that proposes that, compared with faces, voices are an important but relatively less salient and a weaker cue to identity perception. We expand on this work to show that, at least in the context of this study, having access to voices in addition to faces does not result in better identity perception accuracy.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Observed Adolescent Text-Based Sexting and Adjustment

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Despite strong concerns that sexting poses risks for adolescents’ well-being, previous research finds mixed results. Moreover, these studies...     

The Inter-Life project: researching the potential of art,design and virtual worlds as a vehicle for assisting young people with key life changes and transitions

ABSTRACT

Careers work in the twenty-first century faces a key challenge in terms of digital technologies: to evaluate their potential for careers work in challenging settings. Given the rapidity of developments, technologies require evaluation in research innovations and naturalistic settings. Virtual worlds offer potential for careers and guidance work, and the therapeutic domain. To illustrate this, we present examples in which young people explore their feelings and ideas, plans and difficulties, while preparing for film-making. During this they develop important life transition skills. We argue that the power of virtual worlds – to support emotional and cognitive engagement – could be utilised in practice settings. We conclude that they are serious candidates as digital tools in the careers and guidance domain.     

Attitudes towards psychotherapy manuals among clinicians treating eating disorders

Clinicians have relatively low uptake and implementation of evidence-based psychotherapies for the eating disorders, and this problem appears to be associated with low use of manualized approaches. This study examines clinicians' positive and negative attitudes to manuals, and possible beliefs and emotional factors that might drive those attitudes. The participants were 125 psychological therapists working with eating-disordered patients. Each completed standardised measures of attitudes to manuals and emotional states. A number of beliefs about the content of manuals were associated with both positive attitudes to the outcome of treatment and negative attitudes to their impact on the treatment process. In addition, a more positive mood was associated with more positive attitudes. Suggestions are made regarding how attitudes might be made more positive, in order to facilitate the use of evidence-based therapies for eating disorders.