The use of occlusion to resolve ambiguity in parallel projections

Previous research has shown that the three-dimensional structure of an object usually can be perceived when viewing a parallel projection of the object rotating in depth. Accurate judgments of direction of rotation, however, have been found only with polar projections. The present study demonstrated that accurate direction judgments can occur with parallel projections if occlusion is included in the displays. The stimuli were parallel projections of pentagonal texture elements on the surface of a rotating sphere. In one condition, the elements were occluded as they rounded the edge of an opaque sphere. In another condition, elements on the far surface of a transparent sphere were occluded by elements on the near surface. Accuracy of direction judgments was consistently high in the first condition and increased monotonically with element size in the second condition, from chance to over 80% correct. The relationship of these results to the general issue of perceptually combining structure in depth information from one source with relative distance information from another source is discussed.     

Managerial aspirations of high school seniors: A comparison of males and females

Empirical research in the past has indicated that young people are generally not oriented toward managerial careers and that females are less so than are males. However, the greater career orientation of today's students, recent changes in societal values, persistent attempts by women to obtain equality, and federal legislation expressly forbidding discrimination may have changed this situation by the late 1970s. A survey of 2112 high school seniors in the state of Alabama was conducted to investigate these issues. Results indicate that few high school seniors aspire to management careers and that sex continues to be a major discriminator. The “male managerial model” continues to be reinforced by the values and attitudes of society as reflected in its young people.     

Temperament and personality: origins and outcomes

This article reviews how a temperament approach emphasizing biological and developmental processes can integrate constructs from subdisciplines of psychology to further the study of personality. Basic measurement strategies and findings in the investigation of temperament in infancy and childhood are reviewed. These include linkage of temperament dimensions with basic affective-motivational and attentional systems, including positive affect/approach, fear, frustration/anger, and effortful control. Contributions of biological models that may support these processes are then reviewed. Research indicating how a temperament approach can lead researchers of social and personality development to investigate important person-environment interactions is also discussed. Lastly, adult research suggesting links between temperament dispositions and the Big Five personality factors is described.     

The Normative Resources of Kierkegaard's Subjectivity Principle

Kierkegaard's subjectivity principle is a critique of modern epistemology that remains normative. These norms result from analysis of subjectivity in terms of its reflexive and constitutional elements. Kierkegaard's epistemology is intrinsically theological and explicates human subjectivity in terms of Christian doctrinal concepts such as revelation, sin and atonement. Here the superiority of Christianity is located not in its propositions as such, but in a way of being that effectuates a certain propositional understanding of the world as it establishes the ground for human subjectivity.     

From individual to group impressions: Availability heuristics in stereotype formation

When subjects are presented with information about the attributes of individuals and are then asked to make judgments about the characteristics of the group composed of those individuals, the group impression may depend on the way in which data on individuals are organized in memory. Experiment 1 demonstrated that under conditions of low memory load (16 instances of person-trait pairings), subjects organize their perceptions of a group around the characteristics of its individual members, whereas under high memory load (64 instances of person-trait pairings), subjects organize trait information in an undifferentiated way around the group as a whole. Under low memory load, subjects distinguish between repeated occurrences of a trait in the same individual and comparable repeated occurrences of that trait in different individuals; under high memory load, subjects do not make such a differentiation. Subjects' judgments about the frequency of categories of traits were related to the ease of recall of category instances, as predicted by an availability heuristic. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that group members who are most available in memory will be disproportionately represented in the group impression. Specifically, the proportion of extreme individuals in a group was retro-spectively overestimated; this was true for both physical stimuli (height) and social stimuli (criminal acts).     

Risky choice: An examination of information acquisition behavior

The monitoring of information acquisition behavior, along with other process tracing measures such as response times, was used to examine how individuals process information about gambles into a decision. Subjects indicated preferences among specially constructed three-outcome gambles. The number of alternatives available was varied across the sets of gambles. A majority of the subjects processed information about the gambles in ways inconsistent with compensatory models of risky decision making, such as information integration (Anderson & Shanteau, 1970). Furthermore, the inconsistency between observed information acquisition behavior and such compensatory rules increased as the choice task became more complex. Alternative explanations of risky choice behavior are considered.     

Recovery of 3-D shape from binocular disparity and structure from motion

Four experiments were conducted to examine the integration of depth information from binocular stereopsis and structure from motion (SFM), using stereograms simulating transparent cylindrical objects. We found that the judged depth increased when either rotational or translational motion was added to a display, but the increase was greater for rotating (SFM) displays. Judged depth decreased as texture element density increased for static and translating stereo displays, but it stayed relatively constant for rotating displays. This result indicates that SFM may facilitate stereo processing by helping to resolve the stereo correspondence problem. Overall, the results from these experiments provide evidence for a cooperative relationship between. SFM and binocular disparity in the recovery of 3-D relationships from 2-D images. These findings indicate that the processing of depth information from SFM and binocular disparity is not strictly modular, and thus theories of combining visual information that assume strong modularity-or-independence cannot accurately characterize all instances of depth perception from multiple sources.     

Machiavellian managers: Do they perform better?

This study investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism and job performance, as measured by sales per square foot, gross margin percentage, and inventory turnover, among 60 retail store managers. Except for a significant relationship between male store managers' gross margin percentage no other relationships were observed between Machiavellianism and job performance. Several explanations for the absence of significant relationships were discussed.