Attitude accessibility following a self-perception process

Self-perception processes have been postulated to occur only to the extent that initial attitudes are weak. The present research asked whether the outcome of such a process is a strengthening of the attitude in question. Two experiments investigated the accessibility of attitudes from memory following self-inference from behavior. Experiment 1 examined the consequence for attitude accessibility of reviewing and considering previously performed religious behaviors that were recent and primarily unmanded versus distant in time and "manded" in nature. Experiment 2 involved the performance of a new behavior that was either required or freely chosen. In each case, control subjects either did not review prior behaviors or did not perform a new behavior. In both experiments, attitude accessibility, as measured by the latency of response to attitudinal inquiries, was enhanced by the consideration or performance of unmanded behavior, but not by manded behavior. The relevance of this finding to issues regarding attitude-behavior consistency and attitudinal persistence is discussed.     

Paradox,truth and logic part I: Paradox and truth

Conclusion The discussion of the semantics of inconsistent truth theories now comes to a pause. The preceding is of course but a sketch; many interesting questions remain to be answered. The second part of this essay, however, will not seek to answer them. Rather, I will turn to the discussion of the proof theory of truth theory: the local and global logic of truth.Under the first heading, I show how to replace the inductive construction of models with an appropriate infinitary proof theory, and relate this on the one hand to the so-called dependence approach to inductive truth theories (Davis, 1979; Yablo, 1982) and on the other to van Fraassen's fact semantics for relevance logic.Under the second heading, I offer formals systems which capture the inferences valid in all approximate models. Not surprisingly, these turn out to be relevant logics.With formalism in hand, I discuss finally the extent to which the gap and/or glut approach can in fact be said to solve the paradoxes; that is, to allow us to say that the very language we are speaking is of the sort described in our theory.     

Organization of needs in anorectic, bulimic, and obese college women

Central -peripheral organization of needs in women with eating disorders was investigated. Subjects included three clinical groups, totalling 50 female university students, identified as anorectic, bulimic and obese, and two nonclinical control groups, totalling 70 female students. The revised Picture Identification Test (PIT), which measures motivational aspects of Murray-based needs, was administered to all subjects. A new PIT measure, Cenper Index, showed significant differences in central-peripheral organization of needs between clinical and control groups, and among clinical eating disorder groups. The anorectic group differed most from groups on aggression and succorance needs; the bulimic group differed on abasement and defendance needs; and the obese group differed on dominance, exhibition, and gratitude needs.     

Problem-Solving Training as Prevention with College Students

Problem-solving processes play an important role within remedial and human effectiveness models of development. This article discusses the use of preventive problem-solving training with college students.     

Assertiveness and cognitive processing in interpersonal situations

This study examined social skills components that precede the delivery of a skilled overt interpersonal response. Using a cognitive-behavioral systems approach to assertiveness, a task analysis of how women receive and process information in interpersonal situations requiring an assertive response to men was performed. Forty women were assigned to high- or low-assertive groups based on their Rathus Assertiveness Schedule scores. In small group sessions, each woman viewed four videotaped problem situations requiring an assertive response to both pleasant and angry males. After viewing each scene, each woman completed three questionnaires: (a) receiving information, (b) processing-generation of alternatives and decision making, and (c) processing-generation of consequences. High- and low-assertive participants were found to differ in their evaluation of consequences, for response options, particularly how a male would likely to behave to them. High-assertive participants were judged to evaluate more correctly than low-assertive participants the likely behavior of males if response options were implemented. All participants generated more complex alternatives and more assertive responses to situations involving an angry male as compared to a pleasant male. No differences were found between groups in their ability to receive information accurately. Correlational results were supportive of a cognitive-behavioral systems approach of assertion, that is, the emission of a skilled response depends on a chain of preceding responses.Thanks are due to Vida Dyson and Lenard Jason for their comments on an early draft of this paper.     

Beliefs about and experiences with battering: Women and men in two populations

A questionnaire was developed to measure beliefs about and experiences with violence in the family. Two groups of persons in two different states who had attended conferences on battered women participated in this research. Of the 177 subjects (84% women, 16% men), none of the men had been battered, yet over one-third of the women had been; more older women reported having been adult battering victims than did younger women; the women had less formal education than the men; the women in the lower educational groups were more likely to have been battered and to report fear of becoming victims; and the social service workers reported little fear of battering.     

Perceived variability and symbol use: a common language-cognition interface in children and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Analysis of two chimpanzees' conversations with their teacher during a tool-use training task demonstrated that chimps use lexigrams, a humanly devised visual symbol system, selectively to encode perceived variability; that is, they generally used their symbols to differentiate alternative possibilities or to represent change or novelty in a situation. In contrast, they tended to leave unsaid what was unchanging, repetitive, or the unique possibility in a situation. Perceived variability influenced not only which symbols were selected but also utterance length: A single dimension of variability in a situation leads to single-lexigram utterances; multiple dimensions are associated with multi-lexigram utterances. This pattern of results indicates that the absence of formal grammatical structure in chimp language does not imply that utterances beyond one word in length are either rote strings or imitations. The chimps' tendency to mention the variable while leaving the constant or redundant unsaid is, moreover, strong support for the position that their use of a humanly devised symbol system is more than a series of conditioned responses.     

A process recording for evaluating group psychotherapy training methods

This paper discusses an exploratory investigation concerned with the long range questions: How does group psychotherapy help patients? and How can psychiatry residency programs best train residents to treat patients in therapeutic groups? Group psychotherapy has come to be accepted in its own right as a decisive contribution to the study of and relief of emotional disorders. As a component of comprehensive psychiatric services it is indispensable. However, while its clinical value has been demonstrated, its scientific validity has not. A Group Process Inventory has been developed by the author and has been utilized for the past two years by psychiatric residents in recording the process of their therapeutic groups in a teaching hospital mental hygiene clinic. The preliminary use of this recording as a clinical-teaching instrument has proven effective. This inventory is being revised to serve as a research instrument.     

Suicide and rurality in urban society

Recent findings suggest that suicide increases with rurality, but research on rural suicide leaves many questions unanswered. This study specifies problems of community organization as a reason for expecting a positive effect of rurality on the suicide rate. A multiple regression analysis of county data shows that rurality has a substantial positive effect and is, in fact, the best predictor of the suicide rate among several variables selected from the previous literature. Additional research is needed to test the interpretation that rurality contributes to an incomplete, fragmented form of community organization which influences the suicide rate by disrupting primary relationships.