SOCIAL VALIDATION AND TRAINING OF EMERGENCY FIRE SAFETY SKILLS FOR POTENTIAL INJURY PREVENTION AND LIFE SAVING

A multifaceted behavioral program designed to teach emergency fire escape procedures to children was evaluated in a multiple-baseline design. Five children were trained to respond correctly to nine home emergency fire situations under simulated conditions. The situations and responses focused upon in training were identified by a social validation procedure involving consultation with several safety agencies, including the direct input of firefighters. Training, carried out in simulated bedrooms at school, resulted in significant improvements in both overt behavior and self-report of fire safety skills. The gains were maintained at a post-check assessment 2 weeks after training had been terminated. The results are discussed in relation both to the importance of social validation of targets and outcomes and the implications for further research in assessing and developing emergency response skills.     

On the Piliavin & Piliavin Model of Helping Behavior: Costs Are in the Eye of the Beholder

Two field experiments tested the Piliavin and Piliavin cost-reward model of helping. The model predicts that the most helping should occur when the costs for helping are low and when the costs for not helping are high. The results of Experiment 1 provided partial support for this prediction, and the results of Experiment 2 were completely consistent with the model.     

Good News-Bad News: Affective and Interpersonal Effects1

News broadcasts conveying “good news” or “bad news” were played to subjects who subsequently made evaluative responses of anonymous others. The news broadcasts were shown to differentially elicit positive and negative affective responses and to affect subjects' evaluations of others. Additionally, reported affect was shown to be positively related to those interpersonal evaluations.     

Physical/verbal aggression: Sex differences in style1

Two studies exploring the use of physical/verbal aggression are reported, the first using women and the second using men as subjects. Both studies allowed subjects to choose between and control the intensity of two response modes: verbal aggression (insults) and physical aggression (electric shock). Aggressive style was investigated over two levels of arousal, sex of experimenter, and sex of provocateur-victim. Results indicated that women aggressed discriminatively in the verbal mode as a function of their arousal, while men were capable of aggressing discriminatively in both the verbal and physical modes. Men who had been disagreed with and punished by a female victim-provocateur in the presence of a male experimenter or by a male victim in the presence of a female experimenter demonstrated high levels of physical aggression compared to the other groups.     

The prediction of “shows” and “no-shows” to a crisis center

The relationship between measures of worker effectiveness in a therapeutic telephone intervention and whether a caller shows for a scheduled appointment can be used to assess the variables that contribute to "successful" telephone counseling. This study replicated the findings of a previous investigation in showing that the motivation of a caller in response to the question of a referral was positively correlated with "showing" for the appointment. Futher, the identification of a specific problem related negatively to the caller's response to the referral. However, the concreteness of the phone worker was not correlated with whither the scheduled appointment was kept by the caller.     

The helping process in couples

This study examined couples' informal helping interactions, that is, how partners helped each other with their psychological problems. Fifty-three couples participated in a communication sampling task in which they took each of two roles, discloser and helper (analogous to client and therapist). Audiotapes of the interactions were subsequently categorized according to helper response modes and rated on global measures of problem solving, understanding, and supportiveness. The most frequent helper response modes were question, advisement, and interpretation; reflection was infrequently used. There were no differences in helping communication associated with gender or sex-role self-concept. The important characteristic of the helpers' communication was not the type of response used, but the evaluative quality of the response. Helpers who were more satisfied with their relationships tended to be more understanding and supportive. Also, interactions rated as more understanding and supportive tended to be experienced as more helpful by the disclosers.