Spouses' attributions for helping: the effects of styles of help-seeking,self-serving bias,and sex

This paper examines the effects of (a) how clearly the desire for help is presented, (b) self-serving bias, and (c) sex differences on the source of the cause of helping happening (or not) that spouses attribute to a potential helper. In two studies, a total of 138 couples imagined situations in which a person wanted his or her spouse to do a chore. How clearly the desire for help was expressed, whether help was given, and whether it was the participant or the spouse who was expected to help were manipulated. The participants reported their attributions for the cause of helping (or not) to themselves and the spouse on visual analog scales. There was strong support for a proposed interaction between how clearly the desire for help was expressed and whether help was given in predicting spouses' attributions. No support was obtained for a predicted self-serving bias or for a suggestion that men make more self-enhancing attributions than women, the findings were instead congruent with a relationship-enhancing bias. The findings are discussed in terms of the context of housework.     

Capacity limitations and the detection of correlations: comment on Kareev (2000)

Y. Kareev (2000) argued that the limited capacity of working memory may be an adaptive advantage for the early detection of useful correlations. His analysis indeed suggests that the optimal sample size is close to G. A. Miller's (1956) "magical number 7 +/- 2." The authors point out logical and statistical limitations of Y. Kareev's (2000) analysis, including that it neglects that the adaptive value is not determined by the hit rate but by the posterior probability of hit and that only signal trials are considered. The authors' analysis demonstrates that when these limitations are corrected for, the alleged benefit for small samples does not occur, and larger samples imply considerable improvement in the detection of correlations.     

Odor-intensity interaction in binary and ternary mixtures

Eight subjects scaled the overall perceived odor intensity of binary and ternary mixtures of the odorous substances pyridine, acetone, and ethyl acrylate. The results concerning basic principles of additivity for binary mixtures comply with those of earlier studies. For the ternary mixtures, the degree of arithmetic additivity in odor intensity seemed lower when a third component was addedto a binary mixture than when the second component was added to-asmgle-udor, but this did not reach statistical significance. In general, the degree of arithmetic additivity inherent in the power function for single substanceswas found to be of the same size as the degree of additivity for binary as well as ternary mixtures. However, for binary mixtures, the additivity of the mixtures was found to approximatethat ofthe substancewith the lower exponent. In addition, the degree of additivity of the binary mixture was monotonically related to the average arithmetic additivity of the power functions for the two components.     

Cathectic orientation, goal setting and mood

Investigated the reliability and validity of a new verbal cathexis test, based on objectively scored achievement data. Criteria were based on interviews about goal orientations and mood ratings, performed three times a day for a week. Goals were scored analogously with the cathexis test, viz. in the three dimensions hetero-homo, active-passive, and positive-negative. Average mood scores and mood variabilities were estimated. The Oedipal and combined cathexis adjustment indices correlated with goal ratings. Moods correlated with cathectic balance indices. Strong correlations were found to exist between average moods and goal ratings in both active-passive and positive-negative dimensions, as well as sex differences in mood variability and Oedipal orientation as measured by the cathexis test.     

Underconfidence in sensory discrimination: The interaction between experimental setting and response strategies

In a recent issue of this journal, Baranski and Petrusic (1994) presented empirical data revealing overconfidence in sensory discrimination. In this paper, we propose an explanation of Baranski and Petrusic’s results, based on an idiosyncrasy in the experimental setting that misleads subjects who are using an unwarranted symmetry assumption. Experiment 1 showed that when this hypothesis is controlled for, a large underconfidence bias is obtained with Baranski and Petrusic’s procedure. The results of Experiment 2 confirmed that overconfidence is difficult to obtain in subject-controlled sensory discrimination tasks, even for a very low proportion of correct responses. The different results obtained in sensory and cognitive tasks suggest that one should not uncritically draw parallels between confidence in sensory and cognitive judgments.     

Maximum likelihood estimation of the polychoric correlation coefficient

The polychoric correlation is discussed as a generalization of the tetrachoric correlation coefficient to more than two classes. Two estimation methods are discussed: Maximum likelihood estimation, and what may be called two-step maximum likelihood estimation. For the latter method, the thresholds are estimated in the first step. For both methods, asymptotic covariance matrices for estimates are derived, and the methods are illustrated and compared with artificial and real data.This paper was read at the 1978 European Meeting on Psychometrics and Mathematical Psychology in Uppsala, Sweden, June 1978.Research reported in this paper has been supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation under project Structural Equation Models in the Social Sciences, project director Karl G. Jöreskog.     

Reliability conducive measures of coherence

A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule.     

Teachers’ implicit view of intelligence predict pupils’ self-perception as learners

Teachers regularly make judgements about their pupils’ intelligence while interacting with them in the classroom. The main aims of this paper are to analyse the structure of teachers’ judgements of their pupils’ intelligence, and to evaluate the influence that teachers have on pupils’ judgements of their own and their peers’ intelligence. Cross-cultural comparisons between English and Portuguese pupils are considered. In total 58 children 10- to 11-year-old and two teachers from London, UK and 47 children 5- to 6-year-old and two teachers from Lisbon, Portugal participated. The children completed aptitude tests and self-perception measures for general ability, reading and mathematical ability. The teachers ranked their pupils’ academic abilities from ‘best in the class’ to ‘weakest in the class’. Results show that teachers’ implicit conceptions of intelligence reflect a view of intelligence that is similar to what IQ tests measure. In addition the results support the notion that children’s verbal ability is more highly valued than mathematical ability. Moreover, the results also suggest that teachers have a considerable impact on their pupils’ self-perception as learners. Cultural differences are also discussed.