The stability of individual differences in behavior across experimental conflict situations

Four experimental conflict situations having theoretical implications have been reported upon with some frequency. The purpose of this study was to compare individual differences on a common measure, response latency, in order to determine the stability of behavior across these four conflict situations using a comparable latency measure. The results of this study do indicate that behavior in experimental conflict studies shows a stability of performance by individual subjects. There are also group mean differences between the four procedures that reflect situational contribution to conflict behavior.     

Locus of control,perceived responsibility for prior fate,and helping behavior

One-hundred-and-sixty adolescents participated in two studies designed to investigate the relationship between $\text{I}\text{E}$ and helping behavior as mediated by the perceived cause of another's need. In the first study, Ss were given the opportunity to help, either “indirectly” or “directly,” a supervisor who had been over- or underpaid in a prior similar task. Internals helped more in the “direct” help than the “indirect” help conditions but their helping behavior and their perceptions of their supervisors were not consistent. The perceptions of the externals were relatively consistent with their greater help of the “overpaid” supervisor. In study 2, the Ss were given additional information to increase the possibility of their making causal attributions as a function of the supervisor's prior fate. Once again, the external subjects' helping behavior reflected their perception of their supervisor's merit. The internal subjects exhibited relatively little helping behavior regardless of their supervisors' prior fate or perceived competence.     

Value and uncertainty as weighting factors in impression formation

An experiment was conducted to compare mathematical models describing how people combine information to form an impression of another person. Subjects rated how much they would like stimulus persons described by one or two adjectives. Subjects also reported their level of uncertainty about each evaluation. Models using the uncertainty measures to predict integration weights were no more successful than the equal weight averaging model. There was no evidence that extreme adjectives were given high weight. Information integration was best described by a model in which the more negative adjective in a pair is given more weight than the other adjective.     

Irrelevant incentive learning revisited: Associating flavors and exteroceptive cues with positive incentives

In “irrelevant incentive learning” information stored about an incentive when it is not desired is used later when the incentive is desired. In “habit learning” responses learned under one motive state continue to be made under a new motive state even though they produce goal events that are not appropriate to that motive state. Experiment 1 showed that both types of learning occur simultaneously whether flavor or texture cues are used and whether or not position is also a relevant cue. Thus, contrary to previous suggestions, irrelevant incentive learning is not limited to interoceptive cues, nor is habit learning limited to exteroceptive cues. In both Experiments 1 and 2 it was also shown that motivation affects what is learned as well as affecting current performance. This contrasts with views of motivation as solely a determinant of performance.     

Young children's attention to global magnitude: evidence from classification tasks

Young children often compare objects holistically and not in terms of separate dimensions such as size and color. One holistic relation that often governs young children's object comparisons is overall similarity. Two experiments were conducted to examine the possibility that a holistic magnitude relation might also govern children's object comparisons. Objects varying on two dimensions of magnitude-size and saturation--were classified by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. The results indicated that the younger children were sensitive to global magnitude as well as overall similarity. They grouped together large and saturated objects or small and desaturated objects more often than they did large and desaturated (or small and saturated) objects and thus appear to have been classifying by combined magnitude across both dimensions. This new finding that young children classify by a global relation of magnitude refines the understanding of perceptual development and provides information about the structure of perception. Young children's use of global magnitudes in classification also fits well with recent findings about children's acquisitions of dimension words.     

Contiguity and contingency in the acquisition and maintenance of an operant

Three experiments compared the effects of nondifferential and differential reinforcement of response location on a circular dimension. Rats were required to operate a vertical joystick to produce food. When food was delivered immediately after responses, but independent of response location, the spatial concentration of responding was low and no progressive changes were observed. Traditional and percentile schedules of differential reinforcement for response location produced highly reliable acquisition of spatially concentrated responding. Once concentrated responding had been established, nondifferential reinforcement was sufficient to maintain it in some subjects. Since only the differential reinforcement schedules established a contingency with respect to response location, it was concluded that this relationship was necessary for acquisition, but that response-reinforcer contiguity may be sufficient for maintenance. This conclusion is consistent with the view that operant conditioning is a contiguity-based process, but that contingencies are required to produce reliable contiguity between reinforcers and particular responses.     

Procedures for synthesizing ratio judgements

Requirements which seem reasonable for functions synthesizing judgements (quantities or their ratios), in particular separability, associativity or bisymmetry, cancellativity, consensus, reciprocal or homogeneity properties are investigated and all functions satisfying them are determined.