Efficient estimation of sensory thresholds

Laboratory computers permit detection and discrimination thresholds to be measured rapidly, efficiently, and accurately. In this paper, the general natures of psychometric functions and of thresholds are reviewed, and various methods for estimating sensory thresholds are summarized. The most efficient method, in principle, using maximum-likelihood threshold estimations, is examined in detail. Four techniques are discussed that minimize the reported problems found with the maximum-likelihood method. A package of FORTRAN subroutines, ML-TEST, which implements the maximum-likelihood method, is described. These subroutines are available on request from the author.     

The Effects of Belief Systems on the Job-Related Satisfaction of Managers and Subordinates

The research reported here examined the effect of personal belief systems of managers and their subordinates on their interrelationships as measured by several job-related satisfaction variables. Results from a sample of 175 manager-subordinate dyads demonstrate that the belief system construct may significantly affect job-related satisfaction as well as the quality and outcomes of manager-subordinate relationships. This research also suggests that socially oriented managers are positively associated with higher levels of subordinate satisfaction.     

Episodic effects on the visual comparison of letters in words

In two experiments, subjects compared the identity of either the first letters of displays or all the letters in displays. Words yielded faster decisions than did pseudowords (pronounceable items derived by changing a vowel in a word) only when entire displays were compared. In a training phase run before the comparison task, subjects had written down either the first letters or entire displays. Relative to items that had not appeared in the training phase, prior experience at writing entire displays facilitatedsame decisions about entire displays and interfered withdifferent decisions about entire displays. Prior experiences did not moderate the processing of first-letter identities. It was concluded that episodic effects arise from the interaction of higher order information underlying lexical encoding. Prelexical processing of letters is not sensitive to episodic effects.     

Personal warmth and psychological health at midlife

Personal warmth, arguably a strong trait in the makeup of psychological health, seems to fade in conceptual importance at midlife. In contrast, ideas of interiority and androgyny appear to gain conceptual importance at midlife. The present study sought to rebalance these foci by determining the predictive power of personal warmth for psychological health of men and women at age 50: first, by developing separate California Psychological Inventory (CPI) scales to assess personal warmth; next, by joining these warmth scales with the 20 standard CPI scales to predict psychological health. Without the personal warmth scale, the standard CPI scales do not significantly predict psychological health for men; for women, the standard scales do. For both genders, the personal warmth scales add significantly to the predictability of psychological health. The results point to an amendment of current theoretical formulations of interiority and androgyny to better understand optimal psychological development in men and women at midlife.     

Confidence in judgment

Experiments have shown that, generally, people are overconfident about the correctness of their answers to questions. Cognitive psychologists have attributed this to biases in the way people generate and handle evidence for and against their views. The overconfidence phenomenon and cognitive psychologists' accounts of its origins have recently given rise to three debates. Firstly, ecological psychologists have proposed that overconfidence is an artefact that has arisen because experimenters have used question material not representative of the natural environment. However, it now appears that some overconfidence remains even after this problem has been remedied. Secondly, it has been proposed that overconfidence is an artefactual regression effect that arises because judgments contain an inherently random component. However, those claiming this appear to use the term overconfidence to refer to a phenomenon quite different from the one that the cognitive psychologists set out to explain. Finally, a debate has arisen about the status of perceptual judgments. Some claim that these evince only underconfidence and must, therefore, depend on mechanisms fundamentally different from those subserving other types of judgment. Others have obtained overconfidence with perceptual judgments and argue that a unitary theory is more appropriate. At present, however, no single theory provides an adequate account of the many diverse factors that influence confidence in judgment.