The I-E scale,ideological bias,and political participation1

This study was undertaken to examine ambiguities in the ability of the I-E scale to predict complex social behavior. An analysis of the items in the I-E scale suggested that the scale might contain a conservative bias Further, it was suggested that responses to the items may be determined by the individual's political and social ideology, which in turn are influenced by the political and social norms to which he has been exposed The sample consisted of one parent and a college-aged child from 60 upper-middle-class families in which the parent was visible in the community for political and social participation, half the parents interviewed were liberal, and half conservative in their political views A number of measures of political and social participation were administered, along with a shortened version of the I-E scale The findings of the study supported the contention that the “internal” items on the I-E scale are more congenial to persons holding conservative political views than for those holding liberal views. Perceived internal causality, as measured by the I-E scale, was found to be nonsignificantly correlated with any of the measures of political participation for the parent sample, with five of the six correlations being in the opposite direction from that predicted by social learning theory The results of the study were discussed in terms of White's distinction between the “moralizer” and “reformer” approach to social problems The validity of the I-E scale as a measure of a stable personality trait was called into question, as was its usefulness in predicting complex social behavior     

The effects of amount of training per reversal on successive reversals of a color discrimination

Three groups of pigeons were trained on a red-green discrimination in which the stimuli were alternately presented in a multiple schedule of reinforcement. The discrimination was reversed 24 times. Groups were given 1, 2, or 4 hr of training on each discrimination. Increasing the length of training had two principal effects on reversal performance: it increased the rate of extinction of responding to one of the stimuli and increased the rate of reacquisition of responding to the other. The latter effect involved both an increase in reacquisition of responding to a positive stimulus within reversals and an increase in recovery of responding to the previous negative stimulus between reversals. Improvements in performance of each group over the series of reversals were qualitatively similar to the two effects of length of training on each discrimination, and were analogous to effects obtained in other studies involving overtraining and successive reversals of simultaneous discriminations.     

Persuasibility and the power of belief

Recent empirical and theoretical developments suggest that clients who genuinely believe in the effectiveness of counseling are likely to improve regardless of the validity of the counselor's approach. This improvement is based on a “psychological placebo effect” that arouses client expectations for improvement and provides clients with additional security and self-confidence to deal with life more effectively. These considerations are discussed in the context of placebo reactivity, client susceptibility to persuasion, and counselor expectations for client improvement.     

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN HONG KONG

With the rapid development of cross-cultural psychology, there is a need to provide international centres for research, which can become main focal points for cross-cultural research in specific geographic regions. The development of the Department of Psychology at the University of Hong Kong is being carried out with this broader context in view. In addition to offering excellent university facilities for psychological research, Hong Kong is also centrally located in relation to other Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia, none of which is more than 1500 miles from Hong Kong. The purpose of this paper is therefore to describe the departmental facilities for cross-cultural research in Hong Kong, departmental teaching, psychological research in Hong Kong, and finally the potential of Hong Kong as a natural laboratory for research in a multi-cultural, multilingual, traditional-modern context.