The Effects of Procedures, Social Accounts, and Benefits Level on Victims' Layoff Reactions

Three hundred and fifty-three layoff victims responded to questions describing their reactions to layoffs. Victims also described management layoff practices. Two measures of procedural fairness in layoff practices (decision-making characteristics and social accounts) and one measure of layoff outcomes (benefits level) were included. Only decision-making characteristics predicted exemployee willingness to recruit for a former employer and desire for regulation of layoffs. These results provide further evidence of the importance of procedural justice in organizational decision-making.     

A Social Learning Approach to Increasing Blood Donations1

A field experiment conducted in high schools throughout the country was aimed at increasing the number of high school students who donate blood. Special interventions that emphasized psychological or educational approaches to heightening motivation to donate, as well as a combined intervention, were compared with the usual approach taken at blood drives. Psychological interventions in which social learning principles (modeling, perceptions of social norms) played important roles either alone or in combination with an educational (informational) approach were more successful in stimulating blood donations than either an educational approach alone or the approaches traditionally followed by the participating local blood centers. The results demonstrated that use of social learning principles in designing interventions to strengthen socially relevant altruistic behavior could be valuable both practically and theoretically.     

The Predictors of Post-Sterilization Regret in Married Women1

We interviewed a sample of 317 married women prior to a tubal sterilization (195) or a husband's vasectomy (122) and then reinterviewed them yearly for 5 years. Using these women's responses to six questions about their feelings and desires following sterilization, we fitted a latent-variable model of post-sterilization regret to the data by means of a linear structural equation analysis. The results confirmed our view that post-sterilization regret was not a simple psychological state but rather was a complex process with different, causally linked manifestations. This process began with a renewed interest in having a baby, proceeded to the development of negative feeling about the three decisions that lead to sterilization, and concluded with a desire to reverse the surgery. This sequence was affected by the negative, post-sterilization effects of the sterilization and by the Occurrence of divorce. Next, we identified the pre-sterilization predictors of six regret variables from our model by means of a series of linear regression analyses. The major pre-sterilization predictors of the regret process included being relatively young, ambivalence about future childbearing, negative attitudes toward sterilization, dominance of the decision making by the woman's husband, and conflict with her husband during decision making. Finally, we divided the sample into quintiles on the basis of their scores on a Pre-Sterilization Predictor Scale and assessed the performance of our predictor variables as indicators of risk of regret by determining the level of negative feelings toward sterilization in each quintile. The results confirm the discriminatory power of our predictors. The overall findings indicate a number of psychological and marital issues, the exploration of which might help counselors provide anticipatory and preventative services to couples seeking sterilization.     

Teacher Gender and Nonverbal Behavior in the Teaching of Gender-Stereotyped Materials1

Twenty teachers each taught a male and a female student two different lessons. One of these lessons was in a stereotypically masculine domain (mechanics), the other in a stereotypically feminine domain (vocabulary). Judges viewed clips from the videotaped lessons and rated teachers' nonverbal behaviors. The students also rated their teachers on a variety of behavioral dimensions. The results showed that teachers exhibited more positive behavior toward the students for whose gender the material being taught was stereotypically appropriate. Similarly, teachers exhibited more negative behavior toward those students for whose gender the material being taught was considered stereotypically inappropriate. Additionally, teacher gender was shown to interact with the above-mentioned biased teaching behavior. Generally speaking, women teachers behaved in a less gender-biased way than did men teachers. It is suggested that these kinds of differential teaching behaviors may contribute to the differential performance of male and female students in traditionally gender-stereotyped academic domains.     

Does object modeling elicit imitative-like gestures from young infants?

One interpretation of the evidence for early imitative-like matching of facial gestures is that the acts are elicited by stimulus properties, rather than constructed by the infant. Verification of this possibility requires presentation of object models to determine whether infants reliably respond to them with movement-matching gestures. Two object models, one simulating tongue movements and the other mouth opening/closing, were presented to younger infants (median age = 5 weeks) and to older ones (median age = 12 weeks) under systematically varied movement conditions. Additionally, a live model presented tongue protrusion and mouth opening gestures to the same infants. Findings of two studies were similar. At neither age was there reliable elicitation of facial gestures by either object model, which suggests that most infants were not imitating the object movements or responding to them in a way that verifies elicitation of facial matches by object presentation. Live modeling of tongue extensions, however, did increase the incidence of partial tongue protrusions among infants at 5 weeks, which supports previous research.     

Parent-Offspring and Sibling Adoption Analyses of Parental Ratings of Temperament in Infancy and Childhood

A first step toward understanding the etiology of personality is to investigate the relative impact of genetic and environmental factors using twin and adoption designs. Twin studies of infants and young children indicate substantial genetic influence for parental ratings of temperament in the preschool years. Adoption studies, however, have not previously been reported during the early years of life. We present parent-offspring comparisons for temperament (emotionality, activity, sociability, and impulsivity) for adopted and nonadopted children yearly from 1 to 7 years of age and their biological, adoptive, and nonadoptive parents. Also presented are correlations for adoptive and nonadoptive siblings when each child was 1, 2, 3, and 4 years of age. In contrast with twin results, little evidence is found for genetic influence. The average correlation between biological parents and their adopted-away children for data averaged over the 7 years is only .03. Similarly, the average parent-offspring correlation in nonadoptive families (.08) is no greater than in adoptive families (.12). Results for nonadoptive and adoptive siblings also indicate little genetic influence. The difference between the twin and adoption results may be due to environmental effects or to nonadditive genetic variance.     

A multidimensional analysis of internal health locus of control beliefs: separating the wheat from the chaff?

The current study examined the hypotheses that internal health locus of control comprises multiple dimensions and that these dimensions are differentially associated with physical health status. As expected, using covariance structure modeling of data derived from 181 medical outpatients, internal health locus of control was found to be multidimensional. Predicted dimensions included recognition that illness prevention is contingent on successful execution of potential health actions, recognition that illness management is contingent on successful execution of potential health actions, and self-mastery over health outcomes (i.e., the perceived capacity to achieve desired health outcomes). A 4th dimension (i.e., self-blame for negative health outcomes) also emerged. Moreover, as predicted, only perceptions of self-mastery were independently associated with indexes of physical health and well-being.     

Social relationships, personality, and anxiety during a major stressful event

Although it is commonly believed that social relationships buffer the effects of stress on mental health, these apparent buffering effects may be spurious reflections of personality or prior mental health. This possibility was investigated in a prospective study of a medical school entrance examination. Five weeks before the examination, Ss (N = 56) rated their personality (extraversion and neuroticism) and social relationships (number of social contacts and perceived support). They then rated their anxiety for 35 days surrounding the examination. Controlling for personality and prior anxiety, social contacts buffered against increases in anxiety, whereas perceived support did not. Further analyses revealed that discretionary social contacts were beneficial whereas obligatory contacts were not.     

Confusing one person with another: what errors reveal about the elementary forms of social relations

Seven studies investigated the cognitive structure of social relationships exhibited in the patterns of substitutions that occur when people confuse a person with another. The studies investigated natural errors in which people called a familiar person by the wrong name, misremembered with whom they had interacted, or mistakenly directed an action at an inappropriate person. These studies tested the relational-models theory of A. P. Fiske (1990b, 1991) that people use 4 basic models for social relationships. All 7 studies provide support for the theory; Ss tend to confuse people with whom they interact in the same basic relationship mode. In addition, Ss confuse people of the same gender. Other factors (age, race, role term, similarity of names) generally have smaller, less reliable effects, indicating that the 4 elementary modes of relationships are among the most salient schemata in everyday social cognition.     

Couples in marital distress: a study of personality factors as measured by the MMPI-2

This study examines the relationship between Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) measured personality characteristics and marital distress and provides empirical validation for using the MMPI-2 with a marital therapy population. Studied were 150 couples in marital therapy and 841 normal couples who participated in the MMPI-2 restandardization study. The MMPI-2, a biographical form, a partner rating form, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) were administered to all couples. The marital counseling group resembled previous marital counseling samples studied with the MMPI and scored significantly higher than the normative sample on several MMPI-2 scales. Relationships between the DAS and MMPI-2 clinical and content scale scores are reported. The Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) clinical scale and Family Problems (FAM) content scale were the most powerful group discriminators and strongest correlates of the DAS; their use as indices of marital distress is tested. The meaning of Pd as an index in assessing personality factors in marital distress is explored.