Research as a family therapy intervention technique

The utilization of the research process as an intervention has recently been described in the family therapy literature. However, it is important to draw a distinction between research as intervention and research as a unique family therapy intervention technique. From a family systems perspective, research as an intervention technique may make therapy more palatable for some families. A case study is presented in which this technique created the context for change for a family involved in a chronic illness research project.The author would like to thank Dr. Wendy L. Watson for her participation as a member of the clinical team and Drs. Fabie Duhamel and Wendy L. Watson for their helpful critiques on earlier drafts of this paper.Supported by a grant from the Albert Foundation for Nursing Research.     

Social desirability in the bedroom: Role of approval motivation in sexual relationships

One-hundred and twelve unmarried participants completed a questionnaire that examined the relationship between gender and approval motivation (assessed by the Marlowe—Crowne Social Desirability Scale) and college students' stereotypes of and experiences with power in sexual encounters. Regardless of approval motivation, students described men as using power predominantly to have sex and women as using power predominantly to avoid having sex. However, interactions between need for approval and gender suggested that high-need-approval women might be having more experiences with sex and power in the bedroom than high-need-approval men. These results are discussed in light of Elkind's hypothesis that adolescent behavior conforms to an imaginary audience of peers and the Crowne-Marlowe model of approval motivation.An earlier version of this article was presented in the symposium Gender and Power Strategies: Contrasting Models and Applications, at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 24–28, 1981. The authors wish to express appreciation to J. W. McCormick for his assistance with data analysis and to E. Allgeier for her helpful comments on a previous draft.     

Monkey memory: same/different concept learning, serial probe acquisition, and probe delay effects

Three rhesus monkeys were trained and tested in a same/different task with six successive sets of 70 item pairs to an 88% accuracy on each set. Their poor initial transfer performance (55% correct) with novel stimuli improved dramatically to 85% correct following daily item changes in the training stimuli. They acquired a serial-probe-recognition (SPR) task with variable (1-6) item list lengths. This SPR acquisition, although gradual, was more rapid for the monkeys than for pigeons similarly trained. Testing with a fixed list length of four items at different delays between the last list item and the probe test item revealed changes in the serial-position function: a recency effect (last items remembered well) for 0-s delay, recency and primacy effects (first and last list items remembered well) for 1-, 2-, and 10-s delays, and only a primacy effect for the longest 30-s delay. These results are compared with similar ones from pigeons and are discussed in relation to theories of memory processing.     

Self-focused attention and reactions to conflicting standards

A fundamental postulate of self-awareness theory that has received considerable empirical support is that self-focused attention increases behavioral consistency with “standards of correctness.” This appears to be true whether the standards are internal (such as attitudes or values) or external (e.g., norms). There is some question, however, as to what happens in situations in which an important personal standard conflicts with a salient external standard. Research by E. Diener and T. K. Srull (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1979, 37, 413–423) has suggested that under such circumstances the social standard is likely to predominate. However, there is reason to believe that the standards employed in their study may not have been very salient nor very important to the subjects. In the present experiment, subjects with either conservative or liberal sexual attitudes were exposed to information suggesting a prevailing norm of sexual liberalism. They were then asked to respond to a number of sexual and nonsexual attitude measures while their attention was or was not self-directed by means of a mirror. Primary results indicated that self-awareness enhanced conformity to the social standard (as in Diener & Srull, 1979) for the conservative subjects; however, correlational analyses within the self-focused and non-self-focused conditions indicated that self-aware subjects did not “abandon” their personal standards when responding to the conformity pressure. Instead, their responses tended to be more in line with their previously expressed attitudes than did the responses of the non-self-focused group. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of self-awareness on reactions to potent, but conflicting behavioral standards.     

Effects of Undergoing Arbitrary Discrimination Upon Subsequent Attitudes Toward a Minority Group1

The purpose of the experiment was to test the hypothesis that having been both the object of prejudice and discrimination and the discriminator, a child will be less likely to hold prejudiced beliefs and exhibit discriminatory behavior toward a minority group. A 3rd-grade class was randomly divided into Orange and Green people. On Day I, Orange children were “superior” and Green children were “inferior”. On Day II, statuses were rcvcrsed. On Day III and again 2 weeks later, the experimental class was significantly more likely to desire a picnic with a group of Black children and held less-prejudiced beliefs when compared to the Control. The manipulation did not affect performance on Days I and II.     

Relation between verbal recall and visual recognition of the same stimuli in young children

Five-year-old children (N = 112) were shown drawings of common objects three times either as a naming-and-learning task or as a preference task (incidental learning). A verbal recall test followed by a class- and item-recognition test, scaled to reflect the accuracy of item recognition, were given either 2 min or two weeks after presentation. Intentional learning with naming led to better immediate recall than incidental learning, but the recognition and delayed recall scores were equal for the two learning conditions. The probability of verbal recall of object names was in each case uncorrelated with the accuracy of visual recognition of the same objects by the same Ss. The results are closely similar to those obtained with adult Ss by Bahrick and Boucher (1968).