Chronic pain and “effective” family functioning: A re-examination of the McMaster Model of Family Functioning

This paper attempts to explore the relevance and applicability of the McMaster Model of Family Functioning. It is suggested that what is construed as effective family functioning by the McMaster Model may not be feasible and different standards are needed to determine optimal level of functioning in families with a chronically sick member.     

Detection of dissimulation with the new generation of objective personality measures

This study investigated the effectiveness of two recently developed measures of psychopathology—the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial (Inventory-II) (MCMI-II) in detecting dissimulation (i.e., faking good and faking bad). Both personality measures have developed special ‘validity scales’ to discern dissimulating responses. Ninety-one undergraduate students completed the two personality scales under one of three instructional sets: fake good, fake bad, and honest. In general, the results indicated that both scales were effective in distinguishing the groups from one another. The MCMI-II was better at detecting fake bad responding, while the BPI appeared to be more effective in detecting fake good responding. These differences in identifying fake good and fake bad response styles can be attributed to the method in which the scales were constructed.     

Biasing evaluations to appear unbiased: A self-presentational paradox

Subjects interviewed a confederate posing as a job applicant. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, half the subjects were insulted by the confederate at the end of the interview and half were not insulted. Half the subjects were observed by the experimenter during the final phase of the interview and evaluated the confederate publicly. The remaining subjects were unobserved during the interview and evaluated the confederate anonymously. As predicted, subjects who were publicly insulted were more favorable toward the confederate than were subjects who were privately insulted. Within the public/insult condition, subjects scoring high on Snyder's (1974, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526–537) self-monitoring scale were more favorable toward the confederate than were subjects scoring low on this scale. The positivity bias occurred only on highly subjective ratings, which are most prone to the appearance of bias. The results are discussed in terms of the subjects' desire to avoid the appearance of bias by biasing their evaluations.     

On knowing when to quit: Task failure, self-esteem, advice, and nonproductive persistence

Past research has found the performance of persons with high self-esteem to improve after failure, especially on tasks for which persistence correlates positively with performance. However, persistence may be nonproductive in some situations. Experiment 1 used a task for which persistence and performance were uncorrelated; subjects high in self-esteem persisted longer but performed worse than did those with low self-esteem, particularly after prior failure feedback. Experiment 2 tested whether differential sensitivity to advice about the efficacy of persistence mediates nonproductive persistence. High self-esteem subjects who received explicit advice against nonproductive persistence on a puzzle-solving task still tended to persist longer on unsolvable puzzles than did low self-esteem subjects. The implications of high self-esteem subjects' tendency to engage in nonproductive persistence are discussed.     

On the cognitive effects of learning computer programming

This paper critically examines current thinking about whether learning computer programming promotes the development of general higher mental functions. We show how the available evidence, and the underlying assumptions about the process of learning to program, fail to address this issue adequately. Our analysis is based on a developmental cognitive science perspective on learning to program, incorporating developmental and cognitive science considerations of the mental activities involved in programming. It highlights the importance for future research of investigating students' interactions with instructional and programming contexts, developmental transformations of their programming skills, and their background knowledge and reasoning abilities.     

Job demands,supports, and constraints as predictors of psychological strain among schoolteachers

The literature on occupational stress contains two relatively independent bodies of literature, one of which shows that stress results from high work demands and the other which indicates that stress is associated with low levels of autonomy/discretion. Recent work has also shown that social support moderates the relationship between environmental stress and psychological strain. This paper uses a model of stress which assumes that stress is a function of the balance of demands, supports, and job constraints. The model is tested on a homogeneous professional group of workers because a previous study had suggested that models of this kind are powerful enough to detect differences in psychological strain when unskilled groups are compared with managers, but not when managers are compared with managers. The empirical results of this study of teachers show very modest support for the model, but confirm that the percentage of variance accounted for by these sorts of measures is rather small.     

Visual masking,mental age,and retardation

Performance of retarded subjects under both forward and backward masking was less accurate than either an equivalent chronological age or equivalent mental age group of normals. It was suggested that the iconic memory impairment of retarded subjects in attributable in part to mental retardation and not simply to low mental age.     

A Three-Factor Experimental Analysis of Promises and Threats

A questionnaire study was conducted to examine the extent to which variations in the language of promises and threats differentially affect compliance as well as perceptions of the transmitters of these influence attempts. Subjects were asked to imagine that they had been assigned a partner for collaborative work on a project, for which the topic had not yet been decided. In an attempt to persuade them of the value of his topic, the partner (experimenter) sent subjects one of eight promises and threats, which varied along three dimensions: orientation to the consequences of compliance (reward or nonpunishment) vs. noncompliance (punishment or nonreward); transmitter versus recipient orientation of the statement's premise; and transmitter versus recipient orientation of the statement's conclusion. The results indicate that recipient-oriented premise statements and statements of contingent reward or nonpunishment are seen as both more attractive and more likely to gain compliance than those that have a transmitter-oriented premise or that express contingent punishment or nonreward. In addition, compliance was found to be strongly related to a transmitter's attractiveness, but to neither his perceived power nor his activity. The implications of these findings for future research and the resolution of a variety of conflicts were discussed.