Conflict and integration in career decision schemes

This study investigates three aspects of the way high school seniors (166 males, 187 females) construe occupational alternatives: intensity (how strongly are career considerations related), conflict (how much conflict is involved in these relations), and evaluative accord (to what extent are one's stated preferences in agreement with the positivity with which occupations are rated on considerations). Using a variant of G. Kelly's (New York: Norton, 1955) grid methodology, students rated 10 career alternatives on 10 career considerations. The results indicate that the three variables are significantly interrelated.     

Further evidence on androgyny and interpersonal flexibility

The component scales from which Bem's index of psychological androgyny is derived are better thought of as measures of dominance and nurturance, rather than “masculinity” and “femininity.” When the Bem scales were administered to 202 male and female college students, along with eight scales that form an interpersonal circumplex, it was once again found that stereotyped, near-stereotyped, and androgynous classifications on the Bem index generalized to sex-role stereotype classifications on other dimensions of interpersonal behavior, as well. Moreover, the Bem index was found to be based on the best available combination of orthogonal interpersonal scales for measuring sex-role stereotypy. In this recent sample of college students, the hypothesis that Bem's index of androgyny reflects the more general construct of interpersonal flexibility was confirmed for both male and female subjects. The recognition that Bem's index of androgyny is specific to the interpersonal domain should encourage others to develop androgyny indices in other domains such as temperatment, interests, and cognitive styles.     

Sociodramatic play: Social class effects in integrated preschool classrooms

In previous studies, social class differences in children's sociodramatic play were studied in socially homogeneous, segregated schools. However, social class differences in play behavior were attributed to the abilities or interests of the children rather than to the situation in which they were observed. In the present study, sociodramatic play was observed in middle and lower class children attending the same preschool classrooms. In accord with previous studies, middle class children engaged in a higher level of play than did lower class children. Analyses of individual play components indicated that although middle class children verbalized more frequently, the quality of the language used by the two groups did not differ. Age differences were also significant. With age, play roles became more socially coordinated, the duration of play episodes increased and language became more complex. But social class groups did not differ on these measures. The implications of these results for the developmental lag hypothesis, other explanations of social class differences and classroom strategies are discussed.     

Backward conditioning as an extinction procedure

In two conditioned suppression experiments, rats received Pavlovian forward defense conditioning in which tonal conditioned stimuli (CSs) terminated with the onset of scrambled grid shock unconditioned stimuli (USs). After this experience, the rats then received a Pavlovian backward conditioning procedure in which the same USs now terminated with the onset of the same CSs. Although the two experiments differed greatly in terms of CS and US parameters, number of forward and backward pairings, and in terms of the general techniques used to establish and measure the Pavlovian conditioned response (CR), the results of both experiments agreed in showing that backward conditioning can indeed weaken a CR based on forward pairings. The results also show that, under some conditions, the backward procedure can be at least as effective in weakening an established CR as the traditional CS-alone extinction procedure; but, under other conditions, the backward procedure is less effective and leads to more spontaneous recovery than the CS-alone procedure.     

Evidence for a three-factor theory of emotions

Two studies provided evidence that three independent and bipolar dimensions, pleasure-displeasure, degree of arousal, and dominance-submissiveness, are both necessary and sufficient to adequately define emotional states. In one study with 200 subjects, 42 verbal-report emotion scales were explored in regression analyses as functions of the three dimensions plus a measure of acquiescence bias. Multiple correlation coefficients showed that almost all of the reliable variance in the 42 scales had been accounted for. The specific definitions provided by these equations were replicated in a second study that employed 300 subjects' ratings of 151 emotion-denoting terms on semantic differential-type scales.     

The effects of value confrontation and reinforcement counseling on the career planning attitudes and behavior of adolescent males

An experiment was conducted to compare the relative effectiveness of a value confrontation procedure and a procedure based on verbal operant conditioning in enhancing career development attitudes and increasing the frequency of information-seeking behavior in rural adolescent males. Ninety subjects were identified as internally controlled or externally controlled based on their locus of control scores and then randomly assigned to one of the two experimental treatment groups or a control group. The value confrontation procedure involved developing an awareness of self-dissatisfaction about one's career planning and relating this self-dissatisfaction to the importance one gave to the values logical and responsible. These values had been identified empirically in this study as having a relationship to career planning. The reinforcement counseling treatment involved the interpretation of individual career maturity data followed by the verbal operant conditioning of responses indicative of career maturity. Post tests administered 7 weeks after the treatments showed that the value confrontation procedure resulted in significantly greater frequency of information seeking for internally controlled subjects when compared to the reinforcement counseling and control procedures. No treatment was significant in increasing the maturity level of career development attitudes.     

Stimulus control of defensive burying in the rat

Rats shocked once through a wire-wrapped stationary prod mounted on the wall of a test chamber incorporated the bedding material covering the chamber floor into a defensive reaction. When tested 1 min later, they approached the prod and buried it. Evidence was provided by three separate studies of this burying response that rats had learned about the association of both the position and brightness of the prod with shock after this single conditioning trial. In Experiment 1, the amount of burying decreased if either the position or brightness of the prod had been changed prior to the test. In Experiments 2 and 3, rats were shocked through one of two prods (white or black) mounted on opposite walls of the test chamber. When the positions of the prods were unchanged for the test, almost every subject buried the prod through which it had been shocked, even when the conditioning-test interval was 24 hr; whereas, each rat directed substantial amounts of bedding material at both prods when the positions of the two prods were reversed. Thus, discriminated “avoidance” learning can be rapid, reliable, and enduring when shock is administered “by” a clearly defined stimulus object, i.e., when cue and consequence are spatially contiguous.     

Neither public nor private religion: the Russian Orthodox Church in the public sphere of contemporary Russia

Cross-country comparative studies of religion (e.g. the Religion Monitor) do not cover some important issues regarding the religious situation in Russia. The problem of contemporary Russian religiosity is beyond individual religiosity or religiosity as a spiritual phenomenon. In Russia—one of the countries which experienced Communism as a period of enforced secularization, there are very few people who have had any religious socialization or who have the experience of belonging to the Christian Church or to any religion. The main point of this article is that what is happening with religion in post-Soviet Russia cannot be adequately explained by the concept of ‘public religion’ and the dichotomy of public vs. private religion, due to the practices of private religion manifesting at a very low level among the Russian population, despite the fact that a large number of Russians consider themselves to be Orthodox Christians. However, the representation of the Church in the public sphere has little to do with what concerns Russians who are in some way involved in parishes. As an alternative tool we propose to describe the religiosity of Russians through the methods of network analysis. Results of a content analysis of contemporary Russian and Soviet media, survey data of the Russian population, and data obtained in a network analysis of parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church are used for substantiating this conclusion.