A PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS ANALYSIS OF MALE AND FEMALE SEX TRAIT STEREOTYPES IN MALAYSIA

As part of a cross-cultural project, 100 Malaysian university students completed Gough and Heilbrun's (1965) Adjective Check List to assess existing stereotypes of males and females. After the construction of 100 item stereotypes for males and females the data were analyzed in terms of Murray's (1938) personality theory of psychological needs. Analysis revealed that the male “personality” reflected high needs in autonomy, aggression and exhibition, but low needs for deference and nurturance. By contrast, female needs were strong in succorance and abasement but weak in dominance. These results were contrasted with those of 21 other countries and findings discussed in terms of Malaysia's multi-racial composition and influence of traditional customs and religious beliefs.     

Mixed-modality psychophysical scaling: Sequential dependencies and other properties

J. C. Stevens and Marks’s (1980) method of magnitude matching and a derivative, category matching, are examined in two experiments. Category matching produces highly similar matching functions to those of magnitude matching. The two methods are both subject to significant sequential dependencies, which, however, should not affect exponents of matching functions. Such mixed-modality scaling methods are also useful for theory testing. In the present case, responses were assimilated to the immediately previous response (different modality stimulus) but contrasted with the stimulus (same modality) two trials back in the sequence. The dependency of the response-response dependency on Sn-S_n-k was independent of stimulus modality. However, the usual dependency of the coefficient of variation of ratios of successive responses on Sn-S_n-k was not found. These results support the class of theories in which assimilative response-response dependencies and contrastive response-stimulus dependencies arise from different mechanisms, and disconfirm those in which both effects arise in a linked fashion from a single mechanism.     

The great commandment: Some implications for emotional health

Pastoral Psychology -     

The counseling assignment problem

A disposition index, DI, which provides information about each possible placement to be considered in a personnel classification situation is discussed. The index is readily computed by machine methods and can be used by counselors required to make assignments. The use of the disposition index provides an adequate approximation to optimal solutions obtained by other methods.This report is based on work done under ARDC Project No. 7702, Task No. 17051, in support of the research and development program of the Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center, Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. Permission is granted for reproduction, translation, publication, use, and disposal in whole and in part by or for the United States Government.     

Type A behavior, achievement striving, and a dysfunctional self-evaluation system

We conducted two experiments to examine the relations among characteristics of how Type A individuals strive for achievement, including goal achievement, self-evaluation, and psychological distress. We evaluated these relations as subjects performed two sequential general information tests. Experiment 1 indicated that achievement striving associated with the Type A behavior pattern is characterized by a tendency to set personal goals in excess of performance and is associated with a low probability of achieving goals. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that the achievement strategy Type A individuals adopted was associated with low self-evaluation of their actual performance. Furthermore, a pre- and postexperiment self-report questionnaire of psychological state suggested that failure to achieve personal goals was related to increased psychological distress. The results of our study suggest that unrealistically high performance standards and failure to achieve personal goals may be a mechanism that triggers the negative psychological states and performance dissatisfaction associated with the Type A behavior pattern. Our study also supports theoretical conceptualizations that excessive achievement striving can act as a potential motivational mechanism but can also have potential pathogenic consequences through misregulation of achievement expectancy and evaluation.     

Eyewitness performance in different psychological types

A study of 112 subjects examined the performance on a complex memory task by various Jungian psychological types. Although differences did not emerge in terms of overall accuracy, they did emerge in terms of susceptibility to postevent information. Introverts and intuitives, alone and in combination, were found to be more prone to accept both misleading and consistent postevent information, rendering them more likely to be inaccurate in the first case and more likely to be accurate in the second case. A variety of explanations are considered.