An analysis of situation and person components of jealousy

Previous studies on jealousy have focused on person factors or on situational factors, but none has compared their relative importance. Two studies are presented which analyze the contributions of persons, situations, and their interaction, with respect to jealous reactions. The first study examined intraperson variability in the intensity of jealous responses of 302 males and females when presented with four types of hypothetical jealousy situations (work, family, social, and sexual). The results of the first study supported a dispositional explanation of jealousy (i.e., substantial person and situational variance). In addition, a sizable interaction effect was revealed. Study 2 examined the nature of this interaction for sexual jealousy. Jealousy situations were broken down by distinguishing between the event, characteristics of the partner, and the relationship as separate components of the situation. Seventy-one female respondents indicated their perception of threat and their degree of upset when considering the same hypothetical jealousy-evoking events with three different partners. A substantial person component was found. In addition, responses to the jealousy-evoking events were found to vary as a function of which partner was being considered. The second study demonstrated that aspects of the relationship (i.e., relative involvement) were more important than personality characteristics of the partner in determining this intrasubject variability in the intensity of jealous rections.     

Whither the Epidemic? Psychoactive Drug-Use Career Patterns of College Students1

Reported nonmedical use and intentions for future use of eight groups of psychoactive drugs were conceptualized and arrayed to represent a person's usage career. Intentions closely predicted usage eight months later. Changes in careers were analyzed from data obtained in surveys of all students at a univeristy in 1968 and three follow-up surveys of the class of 1972. In 1968, the most common order of extent of use of the drug groups was: beer, hard liquor, tobacco, cannabis, depressants, amphetamines, hallucinogens, and narcotics. Students' starting, usage, and intent patterns for the drugs displayed hierarchical, Guttman-like, scalability in approximately this order. Intentions to progress to new drugs on the scale were strong in all classes in 1968. In the class of 1972, however, despite growing experience with the less common drugs as they went through college, intentions to return to more common drugs grew and intentions to progress to new ones decreased, relative to both themselves as freshmen and to equivalent level classes in 1968. The pattern of these changes suggests that it is hazardous to extrapolate from early usage and intent data in predicting the long-term course of usage.     

The Effects of Mandatory Time Limits in the Voting Booth on Liberal-conservative Voting Patterns

One hundred and forty college students, in either (a) 2-minute time-limit or (b) a no-time-limit condition, voted their conscience on actual pending legislation in their state in a test of hypothesis that such time limits in the voting booth created a stimulus overload situation. Such a situation was expected to result in dysfunctional adaptation responses, with unintended effects on voting patterns. Results indicated that subjects in the time stress condition voted significantly more conservatively on these issues. This conservative shift is interpreted as a function of overload, with serious political implications for urban planners, whose response to increasing population density often has been to increase the tempo by which citizens are processed through the cities'institutional and social services.     

“Generalized imitation” on a nonimitative task: Effects of modeling and task history

Two experiments investigated characteristic generalized imitation procedures on a nonimitative successive visual discrimination task. In Experiment I, no discriminative behavior was obtained though a number of procedures designed to enhance discrimination were employed. The introduction of a differential modeling procedure after nine or 10 sessions of nondifferential performance was ineffective in producing differential responding for three of four Ss. In the second experiment, the differential modeling procedure was introduced as an initial manipulation and was successful in establishing discriminative performance in all Ss. After several sessions of differential responding, the observation of a model performing nondifferentially was relatively ineffective in altering the pattern of responding. These results suggest (1) that modeling may be functional in altering a S's behavior depending on what point in the procedures the manipulation is introduced and (2) that certain procedural variables may define a functional response class characterized by the failure to develop discriminative responding.     

The Premack principle in human experimental and applied settings

Studies claiming support for the Premack Principle in human experimental and applied settings are reviewed in terms of the standard test conditions associated with the Principle and in terms of the Principle's conceptual constrains. Little definitive evidence was found to support the claim that a high probability response will reinforce a lower probability response, nor was the converse contention supported, that a low probability response will act as a punisher for a high probability response. More importantly, among the reports reviewed there was no evidence for the reversibility of the reinforcement relationship.     

The effect of pictorial detail and elaboration on children's retention.

In a visual memory task, two degrees of stimulus detail were compared to test Reese's hypothesis that stimulus detail would facilitate retention of paired associates for young children. Stimuli were presented in an elaborated or nonelaborated fashion so that the effect of detail on retention of both types of materials could be investigated. Four and 5 year-old children were included to assess a reported developmental trend that elaboration facilitates retention for older children but fails to do so for younger children. Both age groups performed equally well, and detail had no effect. Elaboration aided retention significantly. A second study, in which difficulty of the task was increased, yielded equivalent results. The constraints on performance by recall and recognition tasks were discussed.     

Effects of type of responding on memory/visual search: Responding just “yes” or just “no” can lead to inflexible performance

Interactions of stimulus consistency and type of responding were examined during perceptual learning. Subjects performed hybrid memory-visual search tasks over extended consistent and varied mapping practice. Response conditions required subjects to respond to both the presence and absence of a target, only when a target was present or only when a target was not present. After training, the subjects were transferred to a different response condition. The results indicate that: (1) performance on search tasks with stimuli that are variably mapped show no qualitative changes attributable to manipulation of response format; (2) improvement due to consistent mapping (CM) practice is attenuated in the no-only response condition; (3) yes-only CM training attenuates the subjects ability to transfer to no-only responding; and (4) yes/no CM training leads to the greatest improvement and transfer when compared with other responding conditions. The practice and transfer data support and extend previous research investigating effects of response set in memory/visual search and help to delineate factors that facilitate or inhibit reduction of load effects in memory and visual search.