When a bystander becomes an accomplice: Situational determinants of reactions to dishonesty

In a series of experiments, undergraduates (N = 288) performed a task with a confederate who subsequently lied about his or her performance in order to obtain a cash bonus. The probability of bystanders' reporting the dishonesty and refusing to sign a document attesting to the confederate's score was differentially affected by situational factors and sex of the bystander, wrongdoer, and authority figure. Bystanders were most apt to report the misdeed when they were competing against rather than working either independently or cooperatively with the culprit, at least when the bonus was provided by a large corporation. In addition, females were more likely than males to report when the victim was another person rather than either a corporation or the bystander himself, and both sexes were more apt to report a female wrongdoer than a male one. Persons who initially reported the misdeed were less likely to become active accomplices than were those who failed to report it. Furthermore, less written verification of the falsehood occurred when (a) nonreporters were performing independently rather than either competing against or working cooperatively with the culprit for the bonus, and (b) a male was in an immediate position of authority.     

Memory search: When does semantic analysis occur?

This study was addressed to the determination of the stage at which semantic analysis occurs during a STM recognition task. A list of exemplars (memory set), drawn from 13 different categories, was presented at a rate of 11/2 sec/item, followed by a category name probe. Ss then indicated whether any of the exemplars in the memory set belonged to that category. List length was varied from 5 to 7, with each memory set containing items from either two or three categories. It was found that RT was independent of list length, but did increase by 60 msec as the number of categories represented in the list increased from two to three. From this, it was concluded that activation of a superordinate category representation occurred upon presentation of each memory-set item, and that the memory scan was done on these superordinate categories.     

CONGRUENCE OF WORK-RELATED NEEDS AND ABILITIES: TRANSITIONAL PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS AND NORMALS1

Work-related needs and abilities appear to be significant factors in the vocational adjustment of psychiatric patients. When vocationally oriented patients were compared to a carefully matched normal sample, the patients were found to have significantly less agreement between their work needs and their work abilities. Although no difference was found to exist between the work needs of the patients and the matched normals, the work-related abilities of the patients were distinctly lower than those of the normal population, implying that the appropriate focus of vocational rehabilitation counseling is the augmentation of patient assets. Persons most likely to have incongruity vocationally between their needs and abilities are male psychiatric patients, aged 24 to 36, who have less than a high school education.     

The use of self-efficacy scaling in training student clinicians: Implications for working with stutterers

A scaling technique developed by Bandura for determining an individual's personal performance expectations (self efficacy) was applied to student clinicians working with stutterers. The self-efficacy scores of clinicians conducting treatment increased significantly while the scores of clinicians without treatment experience showed no significant change. As the student clinicians gained clinical experience there appeared to be a corresponding reduction in fear and avoidance of the treatment situation. Clinician fear concerning stuttering treatment appeared to have little relation to performance in treatment as rated by supervisors. The results indicate that self-efficacy scaling may be used to indicate clinician avoidance of working with stuttering clients.     

The acquisition of mental verbs: A systematic investigation of the first reference to mental state

It is generally recognized that the ability to contemplate and communicate about the knowledge, beliefs, and goals of oneself and others is a benchmark of human cognition. Yet, little is known about the beginnings of this ability, in large measure because methods for accurately assessing very young children's ability have been unavailable. Here we present the results of using a method of convergent analyses of naturally occurring speech to assess the young child's ability to contemplate and communicate about mental state. The first study describes the frequency and function of verbs of mental reference such as think and know in the speech of one child from 2;4 to 4;0. The second examines shorter samples of speech collected from 30 two-year-olds over a 6 month period. Results from both studies suggest that the earliest uses of mental verbs are for conversational functions rather than for mental reference. First attempts at mental reference begin to appear in some children's speech in the second half of the third year. Since most of the children studied exhibited the linguistic knowledge necessary to make reference to mental states, we conclude that the absence of such reference earlier suggests that still younger children lack awareness of such states, or at the very least, an understanding of their appropriateness as topics of conversation.     

External Validity of Matching on Physical Attractiveness for Same and Opposite Sex Couples1

The external validity of the hypothesis that couples come to be matched on physical attractiveness was examined for same and opposite sex pairs of college students in a wide range of natural settings and types of relationships. Correlations between ratings of couples by observers revealed evidence of matching for male friends and for opposite sex friends, dating, and committed couples. No evidence was found for female friends. The implications of these findings for fear of social rejection and exchange explanations of the matching hypothesis and for the normal development of interpersonal relationships are discussed.     

Psychotherapy and the locus of control

Underlying various actions of both the therapist and the patient are expectations about the measure to which an individual's experiences are the product of powerful external forces or of the person's own actions and decisions. While most of our anthropological theories support the notion that a person's experience is subject to an external locus of control, neither that view nor the opposite emphasizing freedom and autonomy is adequate for the therapeutic enterprise. THere are elements of truth in both positions that ned to be incorporated in therapeutic expectations if the enterprise is to proceed in an orderly fashion.