The Imaginary Audience, Self-Consciousness, and Public Individuation in Adolescence

ABSTRACT In this study, we examined the construct of the imaginary audience (Elkind & Bowen, 1979), presumably a precipitant of adolescent egocentrism, as it relates to public individuation and self-consciousness. We hypothesized that the imaginary audience inhibits public individuation and represents a critical form of public self-consciousness. We also argued that the imaginary audience is a normal aspect of early adolescent development that diminishes in the context of secure parental relationships by late adolescence but remains salient if these relationships are insecure. These hypotheses were examined in a cross-sectional study of 850 adolescents in the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 12th grades. Support was generally found for the hypothesized relations. The validity and limitations of the imaginary audience and public individuation constructs are discussed, along with more general theoretical issues concerning adolescent self-consciousness.     

Parallel short forms of the family of origin scale: Evidence of their reliability and validity

Two parallel short forms of the Family of Origin Scale were developed from data provided by 69 women and 63 men who completed the full Family of Origin Scale along with a variety of measures of family-of-origin characteristics. Data on the reliability and validity of the short forms are provided and discussed. The results indicate that both short forms are strongly and significantly correlated with each other and with the full-scale version of the FOS and that they share its reliability and validity characteristics to a very high degree.     

The Enjoyment of Sexist Humor,Rape Attitudes,and Relationship Aggression in College Students

The current study tested Freud's (1905/1960)theory that sexist humor may be associated withhostility toward women and extended previous researchshowing a link between hostile humor and aggression.Colleges students (N = 399 — approximately 92%white, 5% African American, and 3% other minorities)rated 10 sexist jokes on their perceived funniness.Results showed that the enjoyment of sexist humor waspositively correlated with rape-related attitudes andbeliefs, the self-reported likelihood of forcing sex,and psychological, physical, and sexual aggression inmen. For women, the enjoyment of sexist humor was only positively correlated with Adversarial SexualBeliefs and Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence. Womenalso found the jokes to be less enjoyable, lessacceptable, and more offensive than the men, but they were not significantly less likely to tell thejokes.     

Strategies of rule discovery in an inference task

It has long been known that subjects in certain inference tasks will seek evidence which can confirm their present hypotheses, even in situations where disconfirmatory evidence could be more informative. We sought to alter this tendency in a series of experiments which employed a rule discovery task, the 2-4-6 problem first described by Wason. The first experiment instructionally modified subjects confirmatory tendencies. While a disconfirmatory strategy was easily induced, it did not lead to greater efficiency in discovering the rule. The second experiment introduced subjects to the possibility of disconfirmation only after they had developed a strongly held hypothesis through the use of confirmatory evidence. This manipulation also failed to alter the efficiency of rule discovery. In the third experiment, subjects were taught to use multiple hypotheses at each step, in the manner of Platt's “Strong Inference”. This operation actually worsened performance. Finally, in the fourth experiment, the structure of the problem was altered slightly by asking subjects to seek two interrelated rules. A dramatic increase in performance resulted, perhaps because information which in previous tasks was seen as merely erroneous could now be related to an alternative rule. The four studies have broad implications for the psychological study of inference processes in general, and for the study of scientific inference in particular.     

Programmed stuttering therapy for children: Comparison of four establishment programs

Four different establishment programs (programmed traditional, delayed auditory feedback, pause, and gradual increase in length and complexity of utterance) for improving the fluency of school-age children who stutter were compared. The programs were carried out by eight public school clinicians with 16 children (eight elementary and eight junior-senior high school) in their respective schools. All four programs produced important improvement in the speech fluency of the 16 children. All the children demonstrated transfer of fluency to extratraining settings. The delayed auditory feedback program required the least therapy hours, but it was difficult for the clinicians to operate correctly. The gradual increase in length and complexity of utterance programs produced the best overall results. The transfer and maintenance programs provided for additional generalization and permanency of fluency. Follow-up revealed that the children continued their increased level of fluency.     

Mouse killing in rats induced by lesions of the medial hypothalamus or medial accumbens: short-term preoperative exposure to a mouse does not suppress the killing

Rats were either exposed or not exposed to a mouse in their living cage for a 48-hr period. At the end of this time a bilateral lesion was made in the medial accumbens region or in the medial hypothalamus. When tested 2 days postoperatively, the killing frequency among rats that had been exposed to mice preoperatively was not significantly lower than that of rats that were not preoperatively exposed. The ineffectiveness of preoperative experience in suppressing the mouse killing induced by medial accumbens and medial hypothalamic lesions is similar to that found previously with dorsal-median raphe lesions and olfactory bulb lesions and is in contrast to the ease with which preoperative experience prevents mouse killing induced by septal lesions and serotonergic lesions induced by 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine.