Sex role as a mediator of achievement in task performance

Participants in a test of the influence of sex role on performance in a masculine task were 96 male and female undergraduates. Subject sex, norm (challenging or not challenging), and experimenter (male, female, or no experimenter present) were varied in a 2×2×3 design. When challenged, subjects worked more successfully in the presence of a female than before a male or with no experimenter present. Results support the hypothesis that the arousal of achieving tendencies may depend in part on the importance and conspicuousness of role cues. Implications for industrial performance and for future research are discussed.The authors would like to acknowledge the thoughtful assistance of Barbara Moely and Beverly Jafek, who commented on earlier drafts of this paper.All correspondence should be sent to Dr. Laurie Larwood, Claremont Men's College Claremont, California 91711. Portions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, August 1975.     

Quality of life: Criteria for behavioral adjustment(1)

New insights into potentially harmful consequences of modern technology have increased efforts to use the methods of the social, behavioral, and biological sciences in searching the psychosocial environment for aversive factors and in identifying high-risk individuals and groups. Examples are given from an ongoing project concerned with the impact of technology on workers, health and satisfaction, in particular problems concerned with adjustment to underload and overload associated with automation and mechanization in industry. Furthermore, the stress involved in urban commuting is illustrated with psychophysiological data. On the basis of results obtained in these and related studies it is argued that a moderately varied flow of stimuli and events, opportunities to engage in psychologically meaningful activities and to exercise personal control over external conditions, may be considered key components in the quality-of-life concept. Health risks associated with adjusting to demands characteristic of life in technologically advanced countries are discussed in this context.     

The effects of practice with one positive set in a memory scanning task can be completely transferred to a different positive set

Recognition tasks in which the items have been assigned to one and only to one response category throughout an experiment typically reveal that the functions relating reaction time and positive set size are negatively accelerated and have slopes which decrease significantly with practice. The present experiments were designed to determine whether this practice effect is specific to the individual items practiced or if it depends, at least partially, on relations built up among the positive set items. The results permit rejection of both alternatives. In the extreme case tested, it was found that, after prolonged practice with the same items composing nested positive sets, these items could be replaced with unpracticed ones without producingany significant change in the effect of set size, reaction times, or error levels. Absence of change in overall reaction times in combination with stability of slope values leads to the conclusion that not only do those practice effects which are related to the set-size effect transfer exceedingly well to unpracticed items, but practice effects on all other stages involved in item recognition also show almost total transfer to unpracticed items. It is concluded that, under the conditions of these experiments, the gain (through practice) in efficiency in processing the stimulus is independent of the stimulus.     

Anticipation of electric shock: A psychophysical study

Successive measures of emotional intensity were obtained by a two-step scaling procedure from 23 subjects anticipating an electric shock to be given at the end of a 45-min period. Half of Ss had a clock available, while the other half had to estimate apparent time. The emotional reaction was shown to increase exponentially as time before shock decreased. Heart rate also increased as time for shock was approaching, but the trend was not regular.     

A comparison of two psychological treatments for bulimia nervosa

Two standardized psychological treatments for bulimia nervosa were studied. A cognitive behavioural approach was compared with a form of short-term focal psychotherapy. Twenty-four patients who met strict diagnostic criteria for bulimia nervosa were randomly allocated to the two treatments. All the interviews were tape-recorded so that checks on their content could be made. Assessments took place at the beginning and end of treatment, and at 4-, 8- and 12-month follow-up. None of the patients dropped out of treatment or follow-up, but 1 patient from each treatment group had to be withdrawn on clinical grounds. Patients in both groups made substantial improvements which were well maintained over the 12-month treatment-free follow-up period. The cognitive behavioural approach was superior to short-term focal psychotherapy in terms of its effect on the patients' overall clinical state, their general psychopathology and social adjustment, and their assessment of their outcome.     

Career pathfinders: a qualitative study of career development

This paper examined the perceptions of career path and issues of MBA students in response to Lore's The Pathfinder, a comprehensive career-planning model. Using internet discussion boards, an interactive dialogue was mentioned by participants in response to the components of Lore's model. The sample consisted of 50 fully employed MBA students enrolled in a course on self-assessment and career planning. A total of 1,781 separate postings were made and analyzed, using inductive analysis derived from discussion threads based on Lore's categories: comments on Lore's Pathfinder model, living a life you love (what's the holdup, career fantasies, work and family issues, and career selection), how to get there from here (commitment and future from the present), and designing your future career. Findings indicated several interesting trends in the career planning of current MBA students, particularly the importance of self or self-reflective observations in real time as students who are also fully employed formulate career plans. Implications for psychologists and career counselors, career development models, and suggestions for research are presented.     

KAREN HORNEY: A PORTRAIT1

■ ¹ This address was given on October 23, 2005, at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, New York, celebrating the 120th anniversary of Karen Horney’s birth.     

Short-term effects of using verbal instructions and demonstration at the beginning of learning a complex skill in figure skating

This study examined whether providing verbal instructions plus demonstration and task repetition facilitates the early acquisition of a sport skill for which learners had a prior knowledge of the individual motor components. After one demonstration of the task by an expert, 18 novice skaters practiced a figure skating jump during a 15-min. period. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of 3 groups: a group provided with a verbal instruction that specified the subgoals of the task (Subgoals group), a group provided with a verbal instruction that used a metaphor (Metaphoric group), and a group not receiving any specific instruction during training (Control group). Subjects were filmed prior to and immediately following the practice session. Analysis indicated that the modifications of performance were related to the demonstration and the subsequent task repetitions only. Providing additional verbal instructions generated no effect. Therefore, guiding the learner toward a solution to the task problem by means of verbal instruction seems to be ineffective if done too early in the course of learning.     

Interhemispheric resource sharing: decreasing benefits with increasing processing efficiency

Visual matches are sometimes faster when stimuli are presented across visual hemifields, compared to within-field matching. Using a cued geometric figure matching task, we investigated the influence of computational complexity vs. processing efficiency on this bilateral distribution advantage (BDA). Computational complexity was manipulated by requiring different types of match decision (physical identity vs. category identity) and processing efficiency was varied by on-task training A pronounced BDA, initially present in both tasks, completely disappeared in the course of training for the less complex and decreased for the more complex task. Thus, the size of the BDA is determined by both, processing efficiency and task complexity.     

SUBJECTIVE INTOXICATION INDUCED BY NITROUS OXIDE IN VARIOUS CONCENTRATIONS

F rankenhaeuser , M. & J arpe , G. Subjective intoxication induced by nitrous oxide in various concentrations. Scand. J. Psychol ., 1962, 3 , 171–176.—Subjective intoxication at various dose-levels of nitrous oxide was investigated by the method of magnitude estimation. Estimates of intoxication were obtained from the intoxicated subjects themselves and from a group of observers. Both these sets of subjective scale values showed a pronounced and regular increase with increasing dose-levels of the drug. Objective performance changes followed the same general pattern, but were much less pronounced. It was concluded that subjective scaling methods are well suited for measurements of drug-induced changes in subjective variables.