Psychological entitlement: interpersonal consequences and validation of a self-report measure

Nine studies were conducted with the goal of developing a self-report measure of psychological entitlement and assessing its interpersonal consequences. The Psychological Entitlement Scale (PES) was found to be reliable and valid (Study 1, 2), not associated with social desirability (Study 2), stable across time (Study 3), and correlated negatively with two of the Big Five factors: agreeableness and emotional stability (Study 4). The validity of the PES was confirmed in studies that assessed willingness to take candy designated for children (Study 5) and reported deservingness of pay in a hypothetical employment setting (Study 6). Finally, the PES was linked to important interpersonal consequences including competitive choices in a commons dilemma (Study 7), selfish approaches to romantic relationships (Study 8), and aggression following ego threat (Study 9). Psychological entitlement has a pervasive and largely unconstructive impact on social behavior.     

Degree of Detail of Eyewitness Testimony and Mock Juror Judgments1

The influence of the degree of detail of eyewitness testimony on two sides of a court case was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment subject-jurors read a civil court case involving an automobile-pedestrian accident. The plaintiff and the defendant presented conflicting eyewitness accounts. Judgments of the relative credibility of the eyewitnesses on each side and the percentage of negligence of the parties were influenced by the relative degree of detail of the eyewitness testimony on each side. In the second experiment subject-jurors read a criminal court case involving robbery and murder. The prosecution and defense presented conflicting eyewitness accounts. The degree of detail of the prosecution eyewitness testimony influenced judgments of guilt and judgments of the credibility of the eyewitnesses. An examination of the reasons for verdicts and credibility judgments revealed that some subjects inferred that an eyewitness who gave testimony with a greater degree of detail had a better memory for the trivial details and the culprit than an eyewitness who gave testimony with a lesser degree of detail. Implications of these results for the legal system are discussed.     

Research in the Psychological Laboratory: Truth or Triviality?

This article examines the truism that studies from psychological laboratories are low in external validity. Past rational and empirical explorations of this truism found little support for it. A broader empirical approach was taken for the study reported here; correspondence between lab and field was compared across a broad range of domains, including aggression, helping, leadership style, social loafing, self-efficacy, depression, and memory, among others. Correspondence between lab- and field-based effect sizes of conceptually similar independent and dependent variables was considerable. In brief, the psychological laboratory has generally produced psychological truths, rather than trivialities. These same data suggest that a companion truism about field studies in psychology—that they are generally low on internal validity—is also false.     

Failed back surgeries and minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI) profiles

MMPI profiles were evaluated for 105 prospective surgical patients who had previously undergone surgery or other procedures for treatment of back pain. Patients were classified into groups having undergone zero, one, two, three, or four or more previous surgeries. While all groups demonstrated a characteristicsomatogenic profile, none of the MMPI validity or clinical scales significantly differentiated the groups and there was no relationship between increased number of surgeries and MMPI scale characteristics. These results support the nonoptimistic prognostication of thesomatogenic MMPI profile for surgical intervention for back pain but show no clear relationship of MMPI profile characteristics to degree of experience of previously failed surgery.     

Duplex perception of cues for stop consonants: Evidence for a phonetic mode

When the (vocalic) formant transitions appropriate for the stops in a synthetic approximation to [spa] or [sta] are presented to one ear and the remainder of the acoustic pattern to the other, listeners report a duplex percept. One side of the duplexity is the same coherent syllable ([spa] or [sta]) that is perceived when the pattern is presented in its original, undivided form; the other is a nonspeech chirp that corresponds to what the transitions sound like in isolation. This phenomenon is here used to determine why, in the case of stops, silence is an important cue. The results show that the silence cue affects the formant transitions differently when, on the one side of the duplex percept, the transitions support the perception of stop consonants, and when, on the other, they are perceived as nonspeech chirps. This indicates that the effectiveness of the silence cue is owing to distinctively phonetic (as against generally auditory) processes.     

Perceived Symbols of Authority and Their Influence on Compliance1

There are many variables that influence compliance. With regard to individuals making requests of others, Bickman (1974) found that the apparel of the person making the request significantly influenced whether another person complied with the request. This study evaluates other factors such as sex, age, and altruism in compliance. Subjects were involved in a replication of Bickman's dime and parking meter study. Results showed that the dress of the perceived authority not only affected the number of subjects who complied but also the type of compliance, the type of noncompliance, and the latency between request and compliance. Also, older subjects complied significantly more often than younger subjects in the role authority condition.     

A Comparison of Two Group Contingencies on Teachers’ Use of Behavior-Specific Praise

The present study evaluated the effects of two reinforcement contingencies on teacher use of behavior-specific praise (BSP) in the classroom. An alternating treatments design was used to compare the implementation of both an independent and interdependent contingency to increase frequency of BSP delivery. Four general education elementary school teachers and their students participated. Teachers’ use of BSP and general praise, as well as, behavior-specific and general reprimands were evaluated. Data were also collected on students’ levels of academically engaged and disruptive behaviors. Both the independent and interdependent conditions resulted in higher frequencies of BSP and reduced the use of both general and behavior-specific reprimands. Student levels of academic engagement increased while disruption decreased across both contingencies. Results of the present study are discussed in terms of related literature and implications for applied practice.