The Role of Sympathy and Altruistic Personality Traits in Helping: A Reexamination

The purposes of this study were (a) to examine the role of social evaluative concerns in the self-report of sympathy and in the relation of sympathy to helping; and (b) to determine the role of "altruistic personality" traits and situationally induced vicarious emotional responses in the intention to help. Dispositional and situational self-reports of sympathy and other vicarious emotional reactions were obtained for persons who also were given the opportunity to assist a needy other. Moreover, dispositional measures of concern with social evaluation and an altruistic orientation were obtained, and a bogus pipeline manipulation was instituted for half the study participants. Both dispositional and situational self-reported sympathy were positively related to helping, as were other personality indices viewed as reflecting altruistic characteristics. The relations for the dispositional indices of sympathy were not due solely to social evaluative concerns or to other egoistic concerns. The effects on intended helping of dispositional sympathy, perspective taking, and the tendency to ascribe responsibility for others to the self appeared to be both direct and mediated by situational sympathetic responding. Finally, situational sadness did not mediate the effects of sympathetic responsiveness.     

THE USE OF BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT TO PRESCRIBE AND EVALUATE TREATMENTS FOR SEVERELY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN

Behavioral assessment procedures were used to prescribe and evaluate treatments of maladaptive behavior for 2 children with severe multiple handicaps. In Experiment 1, the results of an assessment of reinforcer preference were used in conjunction with a functional analysis of the conditions maintaining self-injurious behavior to prescribe a treatment for a child with severe disabilities. The treatment procedure involved the use of a pressure-sensitive microswitch to activate reinforcing stimuli during two solitary conditions, during which self-injurious behavior had occurred at high rates. The results were evaluated with a multiple baseline across settings design and indicated that self-injury decreased with concomitant increases in microswitch activation. Results were maintained at 6 weeks, 8 weeks, and 6 months. In Experiment 2, the results of behavioral assessments of reinforcer preference and self-injurious behavior were combined to develop a treatment for a second severely handicapped child, who exhibited high rates of self-injury in demand situations. This treatment was evaluated with a multiple baseline across tasks design and resulted in the elimination of self-injury for up to 15 months.     

Fallout From The Day After. The Impact of a TV Film on Attitudes Related to Nuclear War1

A household survey utilizing a quasi-experimental design was undertaken to assess the impact of the TV movie. The Day After, on a number of psychologically and politically important variables such as the salience of the issue of nuclear war and individuals' beliefs about the efficacy of their own political actions in helping to prevent such a war. Respondents were initially surveyed 2 weeks prior to the movie's airing and were resurveyed afterwards. Contrary to the impression conveyed by reports of a number of public opinion polls, which focussed on attitudes toward government policies, we found that The Day After and the surrounding controversy had a substantial impact on many dimensions including the salience of nuclear war, feelings of personal efficacy, affect related to the idea of a nuclear war, intentions to engage in anti-nuclear behavior, estimates of the probability that a nuclear war would occur, and beliefs about the likelihood and desirability of survival. Two general conclusions emerged. First, many of the effects occurred for the entire sample rather than only for those who watched the film, suggesting that the widely publicized controversy that surrounded the movie contributed to its impact. Second, reactions appeared to be depressive in nature. Compared to the pre-airing responses, the post-airing survey found more passive affective reactions to the idea of nuclear war, decreased estimates of the chances of survival, a decreased desire to survive, and a decreased sense of personal efficiacy. Nonetheless, respondents, especially those who watched The Day After, were more likely to intend to engage in antinuclear war activities after the film than before.     

Expectations,procedural justice,and alternative reactions to being deprived of a desired outcome

People often find that they do not have some positive outcome they once expected to obtain, while others around them have attained that outcome. Two experiments were conducted to assess how four possible responses to such a situation are affected by procedural justice (i.e., the fairness of the procedures by which the object was denied) and by one's expectations about obtaining the outcome in the future. The four possible responses examined were anger responses, achievement strivings, devaluation of the object (X), and self-deprecation. A repeated-measures analysis revealed that the dependent variables were differentially affected in Study 1, but less so in Study 2. Analyses further revealed effects of procedural justice, such that unfair procedures led to more anger, lower achievement strivings, greater devaluation of X, and (in Study 1 only) marginally less self-deprecation. Expectations had only a marginal affect on achievement strivings in Study 1, and an effect on self-deprecation in Study 2, with higher expectations leading to lower achievement strivings and less self-deprecation, respectively. Procedural justice and expectations interacted to affect subjects' derogation of the agent who deprived them (Study 1) and their devaluation of X (Study 2). Implications for future research and for theoretical development are discussed.     

Development of organization in recall: A stages-of-learning analysis

An experiment is reported in which the effects of taxonomic organization on 7-year-old and 11-year-old children's free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists were examined. The data were analyzed using a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivers estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. The results indicated that for the Grade 2 children providing a category label at the time of recall primarily enhanced storage whereas increasing the number of categories primarily enhanced retrieval. For Grade 6 children, on the other hand, the use of category labels to cue recall primarily enhanced retrieval, whereas increasing the number of categories affected both storage and retrieval in free recall, but only retrieval in cued recall. In addition, while older children were superior to younger children at both storing and retrieving information, age differences at retrieval were generally larger than those at storage.     

Do children use similar processes to read and spell words?

The use of spelling-sound information in both reading and spelling was evaluated by having children read and spell nonwords and five types of words that differed in terms of their regularity for reading and spelling. The subjects were grade 3 children who had been psychometrically defined as good readers and good spellers (“good”), good readers and poor spellers (“mixed”), or poor readers and poor spellers (“poor”). Results indicated that all children attempted to use spelling-sound correspondences in both reading and spelling, although children in both the mixed and the poor groups had weaker knowledge of these correspondences and were less systematic in their use of them. Furthermore, even though the children in the mixed group had been matched with children in the good group on reading comprehension, the number and type of errors made by the mixed subjects on both the reading and spelling tasks were more similar to those of the poor subjects than to those of the good subjects.     

Developmental changes in the attribution of dispositional features

It was hypothesized (1) that with age children would rely increasingly upon information about intention, rather than overt behavior, when attributing dispositional features to others; and (2) that, developmentally, “restricted” dispositional attributions (i.e., those that assume the operation of highly specific situation-response relationships) would precede “generalized” dispositional attributions (which assume the operation of a dispositional concept between broad classes of situations and responses). An experiment is reported that provides support for the first, though not the second, of these hypotheses.     

Adaptation and vulnerability in high-risk adolescents: An examination of environmental mediators

The relationship of characteristics of the social environment to the adaptation of adolescents from high-risk predisposing environments was examined. Specifically, the degree to which adolescents' perceptions of various dimensions of their family and school environment as well as sources of social support related to differential levels of personal well-being and academic adjustment was explored. Multiple regression analyses revealed differences in the salience of the dimensions of the social environment as a function of the particular sphere of functioning under consideration. Implications of the findings for developing a model for understanding the relative vulnerability of individuals at risk as well as of the design of preventive interventions are discussed.     

Correlates of Children's Usage of Videogames and Computers1

Fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students responded to a questionnaire concerning their experiences with electronic videogames and computers. Teacher ratings of academic achievement, personality characteristics, and behavior patterns were also obtained for each student. These data were used to examine a number of hypotheses concerning potential harmful or beneficial effects of electronic videogames on school-age children, and to provide preliminary evidence concerning the correlates of computer usage by school-age children. Videogame usage showed significant positive correlations with teacher ratings of impulsivity, significant negative correlations with ratings of academic achievement, and little relationship to rated sociability. Videogame use also proved positively related to other social activities and to microcomputer use.