Why People Turn to Religion: A Motivational Analysis

The Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals and Motivational Sensitivities, a standardized psychological measure that assesses 15 fundamental desires, was administered to college students (n= 214) and to mental retardation service providers (n = 344), total N = 558, who rated themselves as “very,”“somewhat,” and “not” religious. How religious a person rated himself, call dereligiosity, was associated with high desire scores for honor and family, and with low desire scores for vengeanceand independence. The investigation provided evidence that the desire for dependence on God is unrelated to any desire for psychological weakness (submission to another person or political leader.)     

On the consequences of priming: Assimilation and contrast effects

Two experiments investigated the effects of priming (activation of a category by unobtrusive exposure to exemplars of that category) on subsequent judgments in an unrelated task. Subjects were primed with one of four levels of ferocity (size) in the course of a “color perception” experiment, and were later asked to judge the ferocity (size) of real (unambiguous) and unreal (ambiguous) animals. An interaction between ambiguity of judged stimuli (real vs unreal animals) and extremity of primed exemplars (moderate vs extreme levels of ferocity or size) was revealed. Assimilation effects (judgments consistent with the primed category) occurred only when moderate exemplars were primed and ambiguous stimuli judged. Contrast effects occurred when extreme exemplars were primed and ambiguous stimuli judged and, irrespective of extremity of the primed exemplar, when unambiguous stimuli were judged. The results are interpreted in terms of an integration of social judgment and social cognition perspectives.     

Social communication patterns of attention-deficit-disordered boys

This study was designed to compare the social communication patterns of attention-deficit-disordered (ADD) and normal boys. This was accomplished by employing a TV Talk Show social role-playing procedure in which the task required different strategies for the roles of host and guest. Groups of ADD and normal elementary-age boys were formed, and each boy was paired with a normal classmate. Measures of communication competence were coded from videotapes made of subject and partner social interactions while performing both roles. Results indicated that the ADD boys, in contrast to the control group, failed to modulate their social communication behaviors as task demands shifted. Additionally, the behavior of the ADD boys resulted in their normal partners' altering their response patterns in order to maintain the equilibrium in the dyadic interaction. These results suggest that the social behavior of ADD children is relatively independent of environmental requirements and may contribute to the inappropriate responding of others.     

Review

I argue in this paper that anyone who accepts the ontology of scientific realism can only accept a pragmatic theory of truth, i.e., a theory on which truth is what it is epistemically right to believe. But the combination of realism with such a theory of truth is a form of internal realism; therefore, a scientific realist should be an internal realist. The strategy of the paper is to argue that there is no adequate semantic or correspondence theory of truth compatible with a realist ontology, that a redundancy theory cannot account for the value of truth, and that the only kind of truth theory which can account for the value of truth, and is compatible with a realist ontology, is a pragmatic theory. The kind of truth theory I wish to defend is objective and naturalistic, and the ontology is realistic. My position is, therefore, one of objective, naturalistic realism.     

Detecting conjunctions of color and form in parallel

Researchers have proposed that graphical efficacy may be determined, in part, by the nature of the perceptual interactions that exist between attributes used to create graphical displays. One extreme type of interaction isintegrality, in which two or more physical dimensions are represented as a single psychological dimension in the observer. An alternative type of interaction isconfigurality, in which a global emergent dimension is availableto the observer in addition to the component attributes. Thirteen stimulus sets, each composed of attributes commonly used in the design of graphs, were submitted to the performance-based diagnostics of integrality and configurality. Analyses suggest a continuum of configurality among the present stimulus sets, with little evidence for integral graphical attributes. The configural pattern of results was more common when two identical dimensions were paired (homogeneous stimuli) than when two different dimensions were paired (heterogeneous stimuli). However, there was no evidence that pairs of dimensions belonging to a single object (object integration) were any more configural than dimensions belonging to different objects. Object integration was, however, consistently related to inefficient performance in tasks requiring the filtering of one of two component dimensions.     

The status of training in school psychology and trends toward the future

A nation-wide survey was conducted in 1979 to collect information on graduate training in school psychology, including areas of program emphasis and the structure of field training and supervision. Results indicated that the vast majority of programs remain committed to emphasizing the direct service triad of psychoeducational assessment, school consultation, and behavioral intervention, but that two indirect service areas—research and program planning and evaluation—are gaining in training emphasis. It was also found that a very high percentage of programs employ a comprehensive practicum and internship experence, that most placements are in the public schools, and that considerable time is allotted for supervision.     

Fantasy Proneness: Developmental Antecedents

ABSTRACT Wilson and Barber (1981) identified a “personality type” characterized by an extensive and deep involvement in fantasy that they termed “fantasy prone personalities” This study investigated the developmental antecedents of fantasy proneness as part of a larger research project designed to examine the construct validity of the fantasy prone personality Fantasy prone (n= 21, upper 4% of college population), medium range (n= 20) and nonfantasy prone persons (n= 18, lower 4% of college population) were selected with the Inventory of Childhood Memories and Imaginings (Wilson and Barber, 1981) Subjects completed quantitative pencil and paper measures of early life experiences and participated in individual semi structured interviews Strong support for the construct validity of fantasy proneness and confirmation of previous findings regarding the developmental antecedents of extensive adult fantasy involvement were secured While six fantasy prones reported being severely physically abused during childhood, abuse was not reported in other groups Fantasy prones also reported greater frequency and severity of physical punishment, greater use of fantasy to block the pain of punishment, more thoughts of revenge toward the person who punished them, greater loneliness, and a preference for punishing their own children less severely than did the comparison groups, suggesting compensatory and adaptive functions of fantasy involvements