Reliability and validity of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire

This study investigates the reliability and validity of the Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF). The SCSORF and religiosity measures (i.e., Age Universal Religious Orientation Survey, Religious Life Inventory, and the God Control measure from the Belief in Personal Control Scale) were administered to three samples. Results suggest that the SCSORF is both reliable and valid.     

Assessing motivational readiness and decision making for exercise.

Motivational and cognitive processes of behavior change with respect to the area of exercise adoption were investigated. A total of 778 men and women, recruited from four worksites, answered a 40-item questionnaire consisting of statements based on constructs from the trans-theoretical model of behavior change. Principal-components analysis identified two factors--one a 6-item component representing avoidance of exercise (Cons), the other a 10-item component representing positive perceptions of exercise (Pros). Analysis of variance showed that the Pros, Cons, and a Decisional Balance measure (Pros minus Cons) were significantly associated with stage of exercise adoption. Results are consistent with applications of the model to smoking cessation and other areas of behavior change. Distinctions between exercise adoption and behaviors such as smoking cessation, weight loss, and alcoholism are discussed.     

Bayesian networks as models of human judgement under uncertainty: The role of causal assumptions in belief updating

Zusammenfassung. Bei der Modellierung der Revision von Überzeugungsstärken wurde in der Vergangenheit die Bedeutung bestehender Annahmen über eine Wissensdomäne für die Evaluation neuer Information vernachlässigt. Im Gegensatz dazu wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit ein Ansatz auf der Basis Bayesscher Netze vorgeschlagen, der eine Einbeziehung subjektiver Annahmen über kausale Zusammenhänge von Ereignissen in einer Domäne erlaubt. Ziel dieser Untersuchung ist es zu überprüfen, ob Urteiler die kausale Rolle einer neuen Evidenz in ihr Revisionsurteil einbeziehen und inwieweit Bayessche Netze geeignet sind, die relevanten Determinanten der Einbeziehung zu beschreiben. Es werden Daten aus zwei Experimenten und Vergleiche mit den Vorhersagen eines Bayesschen Netzes vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, daß das verwendete Bayessche Netz die Urteile von Probanden nicht nur gut, sondern auch besser als zwei alternative Modelle vorhersagt. Mögliche Konsequenzen für die Bewertung der Rationalität menschlicher Urteilsprozesse werden diskutiert. Summary. In modeling processes that underlie the updating of degrees of belief, researchers have often neglected the role of subjects' assumptions concerning causal relationships between new information and contextual variables in a specific domain of reasoning. In contrast, this paper presents a modeling approach which, based on the theory of Bayesian networks, takes into account subjects' beliefs about specific causes and effects in the domain and specifies in which way these beliefs constrain the evaluation of new information. Data from two experiments are described. The experiments were designed to test whether subjects take into account causal relationships as described by a Bayesian network. The results show that the Bayesian network predicts subjects' updates quite precisely and more accurately than two other models. Implications for the appraisal of human rationality in judgement and decision making are discussed.     

Modern ego psychology

This paper reviews the history of ego psychology, describing problems in the theory that have perhaps contributed to subsequent theory development and theoretical splintering. The present status of ego psychology is then described, with a focus on broadly accepted general principles. A proposal/prediction is then made regarding efforts to integrate the main schools and splinter groups. It is argued that the ego's method of synthesizing aspects of experience will help integrate divergent metapsychological viewpoints.     

The effect of familiarity on the processing of fragmented figures

The processing of fragmented figures was investigated in a same-different reaction time task with pairs of intact and pairs of fragmented alphabet letters. The effect of fragmentation was significantly larger for pairs of letters rotated into an unfamiliar orientation than for pairs of normally oriented letters. Since this significant interaction was obtained for subjects emphasizing a structural mode of processing (Hock, 1973), it was concluded that familiarity had a direct effect on the structural/ organizational processing of the fragmented figures.     

Stimulus generalization in two associative learning processes

Recent studies involving nonlinear discrimination problems suggest that stimuli in human associative learning are represented configurally with narrow generalization, such that presentation of stimuli that are even slightly dissimilar to stored configurations weakly activate these configurations. The authors note that another well-known set of findings in human associative learning, cue-interaction phenomena, suggest relatively broad generalization. Three experiments show that current models of human associative learning, which try to model both nonlinear discrimination and cue interaction as the result of 1 process, fail because they cannot simultaneously account for narrow and broad generalization. Results suggest that human associative learning involves (a) an exemplar-based process with configural stimulus representation and narrow generalization and (b) an adaptive learning process characterized by broad generalization and cue interaction.