Prejudice Against a Progay Man in an Everyday Situation: A Scenario Study1

A scenario study was performed to investigate whether people in the street would be less likely to respond positively to a stranger's request for a small favor if the stranger wore a T-shirt bearing a progay slogan. One hundred and eighteen female and 112 male participants were each presented with six scenarios, all of which asked them to imagine being approached by a person requesting change for a banknote. The dependent variable in the study was the participant's judgment, on a 7-point scale, of how likely he or she would be to help. Five of the scenarios were included as distractors. In the critical scenario, the requester was described as wearing a plain T-shirt or one with either a progay or a control slogan printed on it. The male participants in the progay condition showed a significantly lower level of help than those in either of the control groups. The antigay pattern, however, was not obtained in the responses of the female participants. The results are discussed with reference to other findings in the literature, and their implications for people's responses to progay persons in everyday life are considered.     

The Discrediting Effect in Eyewitness Testimony1

Loftus (1974) had subjects read summaries of criminal trials that contained the testimony of either credible or discredited prosecution eyewitnesses, and found no effect of discrediting an eyewitness. Instead, almost as many subjects voted guilty with a discredited eyewitness as with a credible eyewitness; this led Loftus to the conclusion that jurors tend to overbelieve eyewitness testimony. Loftus's conclusion was subsequently challenged by others who reported a strong discrediting effect. A series of three experiments using college students was conducted to explore the characteristics of trial summaries that might account for the discrepancy in results, such as inclusion of judicial instructions concerning proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or an eyewitness's reaffirmation of his testimony following discrediting. In all cases, a strong discrediting effect was found. Apparently the discrediting effect appears regardless of wide variation in content of trial summaries. The present data do not support the overbelief claim.     

Developmental amnesia

The concept of developmental amnesia is proposed to describe the impairment of normal memories during a person's school age life. One hundred psychotherapy patients were interviewed and the age of earliest memories ranged from 1–12 years, with a mode of 5 years. Memory was continuous for 53% of patients by 1st grade, while 18% reported life memory was still episodic at age 18 or later. Parental alcohol problems were associated with delay of continuous memories.     

On the special status of "ego threats".

This article comments on a recent article by Heatherton, Herman, and Polivy (1991) in which they suggest that ego threats are a prerequisite to affectively induced disinhibition of food intake in restrained eaters and current dieters. In contrast, the present review suggests that mood induction procedures that involve no apparent threat (e.g., viewing a frightening film) can also prompt disinhibition in restrained eaters. Thus, any mood induction procedure that does not directly physically threaten the S may disinhibit restrained eaters. It is concluded that recommendations to focus future research on ego threats are premature and may serve to obscure the mechanisms by which changes in affective state influence food intake in dieters.     

Consensus at zero acquaintance: replication, behavioral cues, and stability.

That observers tend to agree in their ratings of a target even if they have never interacted with that target has been called consensus at zero acquaintance. The basic finding that consensus is highest for judgments concerning a target's degree of extraversion (EV) and somewhat weaker for judgments of conscientiousness is replicated. Several potential observable cues that might be used by judges when rating targets are examined. The finding that ratings of physical attractiveness correlate with judgments of EV is replicated. In Study 1, rapid body movements and smiling were also found to correlate with EV judgments. The level of consensus declined when initially unacquainted Ss interacted one-on-one (Study 2), but did not decline--and even increased--when Ss interacted in a group (Study 3). Ss judged as extraverted at zero acquaintance were also seen as extraverted after interacting with others.     

Assessing attributions in marriage: the relationship attribution measure.

A brief, simple measure of different types of attributions for partner behavior was examined in 3 studies of married couples. Reliability was established by high internal consistency and test-retest correlations. Causal and responsibility attribution scores correlated with marital satisfaction, attributions for marital difficulties, and attributions for actual partner behaviors generated by spouses. Responsibility attributions were related to (a) reported anger in response to stimulus behaviors used in the measure and (b) the amount of anger displayed by wives during a problem-solving interaction with their partner. The extent to which husbands and wives whined during their discussion also correlated with their responsibility attributions. The results address several problems with existing assessments, and their implications for the measurement of attributions in marriage are discussed.     

Evidence for an error deadzone in compensatory tracking

Humans and monkeys show intermittent arm movements while tracking moving targets. This intermittency has been explained by postulating either a psychological refractory period after each movement and/or an error deadzone, an area surrounding the target within which movements are not initiated. We present a technique to detect and quantify the size of this deadzone, using a compensatory tracking paradigm that distinguishes it from a psychological refractory period. An artificial deadzone of variable size was added around a visual target displayed on a computer screen. While the subject was within this area, he received visual feedback that showed him to be directly on target. The presence of this artificial deadzone could affect tracking performance only if it exceeded the size of his intrinsic deadzone. Therefore, the size of artificial deadzone at which performance began to be affected revealed the size of the intrinsic deadzone. Measured at the subjects' eye, the deadzone was found to vary between 0.06 and 0.38 degrees, depending on the tracking task and viewing conditions; on the screen, this range was 1.3 mm to 3.3 mm. It increased with increasing speed of the target, with increasing viewing distance, and when the amplitude of the movement required was reduced. However, the deadzone size was not significantly correlated with the subjects' level of performance. We conclude that an intrinsic deadzone exists during compensatory tracking, and we suggest that its size is set by a cognitive process not simply related to the difficulty of the tracking task.     

Affect, personality, and social activity.

These studies examined relations between social activity and state and trait measures of Positive and Negative Affect. In Study 1 Ss completed scales relevant to 3-factor models of personality and a weekly mood and social activity questionnaire for 13 weeks. In Study 2 Ss completed measures of the 5-factor model of personality and a daily mood and social activity survey for 6-7 weeks. In within- and between-Ss analyses, socializing correlated significantly with state measures of Positive Affect and with trait measures of Extraversion/Positive Emotionality. These relations were relatively general across various types of positive affect and social events; however, specific types of social events also were differentially related to affect. In contrast, social activity had no consistent association with measures of Negative Affect or the other personality dimensions. The results support a temperamental view of Extraversion.     

Mood effects on attitude judgments: independent effects of mood before and after message elaboration.

This study investigated the independent effects of induced mood on the encoding of persuasive messages and on the assessment of attitude judgments. In Experiment 1, positive or negative mood was induced either before the encoding of a counterattitudinal message or before the assessment of attitude judgments. When mood was induced before message presentation, Ss in a bad mood were more persuaded by strong than by weak arguments, whereas Ss in a good mood were equally persuaded by strong and by weak arguments. When Ss encoded the message in a neutral mood, however, the advantage of strong over weak arguments was more pronounced when Ss were in a good rather than in a bad mood at the time of attitude assessment. In Experiment 2, Ss exposed to a counterattitudinal message composed of either strong or weak arguments formed either a global evaluation or a detailed representation of the message. Positive, negative, or neutral mood was then induced. Ss in a good mood were most likely and Ss in a negative mood least likely to base their reported attitudes on global evaluations.