Suspicion of ulterior motivation and the correspondence bias

Three studies examined the hypothesis that when perceivers learn of the existence of multiple, plausibly rival motives for an actor's behavior, they are less likely to fall prey to the correspondence bias than when they learn of the existence of situational factors that may have constrained the actor's behavior. In the first 2 studies, Ss who learned that an actor was instructed to behave as he did drew inferences that corresponded to his behavior. In contrast, Ss who were led to suspect that an actor's behavior may have been motivated by a desire to ingratiate (Study 1), or by a desire to avoid an unwanted job (Study 2), resisted the correspondence bias. The 3rd study demonstrated that these differences were not due to a general unwillingness on the part of suspicious perceivers to make dispositional inferences. The implications that these results have for understanding attribution theory are discussed.     

Correlates of age at first sexual intercourse in a national sample of young women

A subsample of 814 sexually experienced adolescent females from the 1979 U.S. National Survey of Young Women was analyzed to assess the correlates of age at 1st sexual intercourse. Multiple regression procedures were used to examine sets of variables sequentially. In the hierarchical regression model, the control variables (respondent's age, race, religion, and age at menarche), along with 3 independent variables (household income, ideal age at 1st marriage, and ideal age for 1st birth), predicted age at 1st intercourse. The control variables accounted for a major portion of the variance in the model. Of the controls, chronological age and age at menarche were highly significant across all models tested.     

Longitudinal changes in the contribution of genetic and environmental influences to symptoms of depression in older male twins

Genetically informative longitudinal data on self-reported symptoms of depression allow for an investigation of the causes of stability and change in depression symptoms throughout adult life. In this report, the authors investigated the relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences to symptoms of depression in 83 monozygotic and 84 dizygotic male twin pairs from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Twin Study. Participants first completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression (CES-D) scale in 1985-1986 and again during 1995-1997. Mean age of twins at baseline was 63 years, range 59 to 70. From cross-sectional genetic analyses we estimated the heritability of CES-D to be 25% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11%-39%) at baseline and 55% (95% CI, 40%-71%) at follow-up. Fitting longitudinal genetic models to the two-wave data, we found that stability of symptoms over the 10-year follow-up was due primarily to continuity of genetic influences.