Low accuracy in judgments of others' psychological well-being as seen from a phenomenological perspective

The generally low degree of agreement between self-ratings on personality traits and ratings by others may be interpreted from the viewpoint that self-reports reflect people's experience of themselves but not necessarily their behaviors. A detailed analysis of self and other ratings on subjective well-being as a central dimension of human experience is consistent with this phenomenological view. Ratings of well-being were not significantly correlated with rated behaviors either in self-ratings or in ratings by others. Screening subjects in terms of avowed consistency and observability on a trait did not improve self-other agreement for well-being, nor did it replicate the individual trait effects reported by Kenrick and Stringfield (1980). Judgments by others were found to have poor interjudge reliability and to reflect biases associated with projection of own well-being and a halo effect organized around the subject's perceived friendliness or likability. It was demonstrated that pooling the judgments of several observers should not and does not lead to accurate prediction of the phenomenal personality, and that accuracy may generally depend on the level of self-disclosure.     

How do people influence in jury deliberation? a social psychological view

Research in small-group decision making suggests two means by which discussion shifts the responses of individual members—Nonmative influence and informational influence. The former is based on pressure to conform to the normative positions of group members, and the latter involves changes due to the informational content of persuasively or passively shared facts. Which influence mode is used depends on the group decision rule, whether the response is public or private, the perceived nature of the task, and the nature of the issue. Specifically, normative influence is likely to prevail in public judgments, under group cohesion sets, and with value-laden issues, while informational influence will emerge when responses are private, the group is oriented toward the immediate task, and the issue is intellective. Suggestions are made regarding strategy and tactics for anticipating, harnessing, and shaping the form of influence that will take place during deliberation.     

A causal model for causal priority

Recent attempts to fix the direction of causal priority without reference to the direction of temporal priority have begun with an analysis of the causal relation itself. I offer a method, based on causal modelling theory, designed to determine the direction of causal priority while remaining as agnostic as possible about the nature of the causal relation.     

EMDISP: A visual display system with digital and analogue sampling

EMDISP provides general-purpose assembly language routines that can be called from higher level languages to produce specific application programs for experiments involving visual displays, manual responses, and analogue sampling (e.g., eye movement recording). The display system assumes the use of fast-phosphor oscilloscopes driven by 12-bit digital-to-analogue converters (DACs) to produce point-by-point displays. Within these limitations, EMDISP offers a flexible and efficient method of generating displays, in which elements of a complex display are defined as separate “pictures” and are controlled independently. High-level control of digital and analogue sampling are provided, enabling interactions between the contents of the display and analogue and digital inputs.     

Carbon monoxide levels and rates of consumption after changing to low tar and nicotine cigarettes

Studies which have examined low tar and nicotine (LT/LN) cigarette smoking have failed, for the most part, to assess adequately the long-term effects of these cigarettes. Most studies have been short-term laboratory investigations of nicotine regulation. More practical strategies for changing to LT/LN cigarettes have largely been ignored. The present study examined long-term changes in smoking patterns following the gradual introduction of LT/LN cigarette smoking. Predicted increases in reported rates of consumption as well as carbon monoxide (CO) levels were not found for most smokers following changes to LT/LN cigarettes. Generally, smokers showed decreased rates of consumption, and a majority had lower CO levels at the end of treatment and during follow-up. Thus, LT/LN cigarette smoking would appear to be an alternative treatment goal for risk reduction in individuals who cannot stop smoking.     

Learned helplessness and “fear of success” in college women

Anagram performance in comparison and noncomparison situations of 90 high, medium, or low fear-of-success (FOS) women was examined after these subjects had experienced conditions within the traditional triadic learned helplessness design. Low FOS women in the comparison condition proved significantly more susceptible to learned helplessness effects than high FOS women on one dependent measure (number of incorrect anagrams), though not on the other (response latency). Results are discussed with reference to the FOS construct and to Zuckerman and Allison's (1976) scale, used in the present study. An argument is made for increased attention to personality variables within the learned helplessness paradigm.     

Aversive smoking therapies: A conditioning analysis of therapeutic effectiveness

Rapid smoking (RS) and a less aversive rapid-puffing (RP) treatment were compared on ability to enhance the impact of a behavioral-counseling (BC) procedure on psychophysiological, attitudinal and behavioral response to cigarettes. Data reveal that both aversive smoking treatments resulted in less smoking once treatment began, reduced smoking in post-treatment taste tests, and superior follow-up performance at 6 months and 1 yr. At 1 yr, RS S s achieved the highest number of days abstinent of any group. Regression analyses showed that Ss' confidence ratings of remaining abstinent were highly predictive of follow-up status, and that these ratings were related to number of cigarettes smoked during treatment and amount of smoking during post-treatment taste tests.     

Results of cerebral computer tomography in the diagnosis of tumors of the sella region

Computer tomography (CT) is an important aid to the diagnosis of sella tumours because it images the tumour directly and delineates it from the healthy tissues. The tumour type can be identified to a certain extent, but angiography is necessary to distinguish tumours from aneurysms. The study is based on 140 surgical and histological examinations, the results of which were compared wit those obtained by CT. Suprasellar inflammations could always be identified by CT. Although intrasellar tumours may be identifiable by CT if full use is made of the potential of the equipment, negative CT results do not necessarily mean that there is no tumour. The diagnostic validity of the method is restricted by the absence of "standards", against which the variable images of intrasellar structures can be judged, and the restricted resolution of CT.