Psychological research on videotex

Videotex is considered to be a powerful, but simple to use, computer network available for use in homes, offices, and schools. Information in the form of text and color graphics can be requested and displayed on the user’s television set. While retrieval of information is the first service provided on videotex, many other services, including electronic mail, electronic shopping, and electronic funds transfer, will be developed. However, in order to achieve the popularity predicted for videotex, a number of human factors and social problems must be solved. Research concerning some of these problems, and the role psychologists can play in their solution, is described.     

Constant errors donot occur in the matched reproduction of angles

MacRae and Loh (1981) reported that when observers attempt to match angles, whether simultaneously or successively, and regardless of whether the angles have the same orientation or not, acute angles generally are set too large and obtuse angles, too small. Without presenting data, they argued indirectly that starting-position effects in their adjustment procedure could not have accounted for the errors. In four experiments, we have demonstrated that effects similar to MacRae and Loh’s do occur when their starting positions are used and that no such effects occur when psychophysical methods that minimize or eradicate starting position effects are used.     

Arousal seeking as a moderator of life stress

This study investigated the relationship between life stress and measures of anxiety, depression, and hostility as a function of subjects' arousal-seeking status. Results indicated significant relationships between negative life change and measures of both anxiety and hostility. These relationships, however, held only for subjects who were low on the arousal-seeking dimension. The results suggest that arousal-seeking status may serve as a moderator variable in determining the relationship between life stress and other variables.     

Long-term retention of a visually cued poison-based aversion in monkeys.

Retention of a poison-based aversion after a 3-yr. period by 8 vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops) was found. The color of the visual cue appeared to effect the retention of the aversion.     

Fact and fantasy: the roles of accuracy and variability in confusing imaginations with perceptual experiences

In Experiment 1, pictures were presented to subjects two, five, or eight times, and subjects were asked to imagine each pciture two, five, or eight times. Subsequently, subjects estimated the number of times each picture had been presented. Their estimates of the frequency of these external events were influenced by imagination trials; this effect was greater for good imagers than for poor imagers. Experiment 2 involved a similar design in which subjects were asked either to imagine the same referent for a word or to imagine a different referent for a word on successive imagination trials. Consistency (same referent) did not increase the influence of imaginations on immediate judgments of external frequency. Thus, the results of Experiment 1 were attributed to the greater accuracy (as opposed to greater consistency) of good imagers' internal generations of the stimuli. Furthermore, variation (imagining different referents), like greater accuracy, increased the effects of imagination trials on immediate but not on delayed judgments of frequency. Possible mechanisms underlying these effects are discussed. In general, the two studies show that qualitative characteristics of completely covert generations influence their impact on estimates of the frequency of external events.     

Durkheim Revisited: “Why Do Women Kill Themselves?”

Durkheim divided suicide into four social types; egoistic, anomic, fatalistic, and altruistic assigning the first two to modern, western society while relegating the last two to pre-industrial social orders. However, contemporary studies of female suicidal behavior and depression show that such women exhibit personality characteristics of low self-esteem, passivity, dependence and living vicariously for others which correspond to the behavioral indices of impersonalism, submissiveness, passivity, and obedience that produce the lack of individuation characteristic of Durkheim's altruistic/fatalistic suicide categories. On this basis, the author suggests that altruistic/fatalistic suicide may even in the modern world be relevant to the explanation of female suicidal behavior, a hypothesis which, if true, would support the contention that "men and women inhibit different social worlds."