Images of engineering and liberal arts majors

In an attempt to gain insight into social-psychological barriers that inhibit women from entering engineering, 110 male and 84 female undergraduate students completed a variant of the Semantic Differential questionnaire. Subjects evaluated either male or female liberal arts and engineering majors. While female engineering majors were judged similar to male engineers on work-related traits, they were evaluated as less attractive than their female liberal arts counterparts. In particular, the data revealed reciprocal negative social images held by male engineering students for female engineers and by female engineering students for male engineers.     

Attending to multiple sources of information: I. The integration of information in decision making

Information relevant to a decision is often available from several sources, such as different sensory modalities or different spatial locations. Processing or utilization of such information is often selective in that some sources seem to have more influence on a decision or response than others. Many different theoretical mechanisms have been proposed to account for such selective (i.e., attentional) aspects of human information processing. This paper considers theoretical mechanisms which operate to integrate separate sources of information in order to make a binary decision. In particular, these mechanisms are studied in simple visual and auditory detection tasks as well as a Bayesian decision problem. Data from these experiments reject the idea that one integrates the relevant information from several sources prior to making a decision. Rather, one seems to form separate decisions about the information from each source and then integrate these decisions in order to select a response.     

Children's beliefs about adoption: A developmental study

Attributions about adoption were examined in adopted and nonadopted children between the ages of 6 and 13 years. Results indicated that nonadopted children had a more negative view of adoption than their adopted age-mates, at least during the early to middle childhood years. By 10–11 years, however, no group difference was noted in adoption beliefs. In addition, with increasing age nonadopted children became less negative about adoption whereas adopted children became more negative about adoption. These results are discussed in the context of differential socialization for adopted and nonadopted children. Implications of adoption beliefs for children's adoption adjustment also are raised.     

Selective migration—Again

Wolff (1979) has recently reinterpreted the data of Lee (1951). The Lee data, according to Wolff, indicate that Black migration from the south to Philadelphia had been selective in an IQ-relevant manner. Thus, according to Wolff, north- south differences in mean IQ among Blacks are at least in part a consequence of selective migration. However, Wolff's deduction from Lee's data is shown to depend entirely upon an insupportable assumption about cumulative IQ deficit in southern Black children.     

Correlations between rats' spatial location and intracranial stimulation administration affects rate of acquisition and asymptotic level of time allocation preference in the open field

The present experiment explores the effects of the response (1-sec occupancy of a target area in an open field)-reinforcer (intracranial stimulation) contingency on time allocation in the open field in rats. The probability of reinforcement given response (X) and the probability of reinforcement given nonresponse (Y) were varied randomly across sessions within a subject. The 21 contingency treatments explored included all possible combinations of values (0, .1, .2, .3, .4, .5) of X and Y such that X ≥ Y. The results indicate that rate of acquisition and asymptotic level of time allocation preference to the target area are negatively related to the value of Y (for any given value of X). Variations in X (for any given value of Y) were less effective. Evaluation of proposed contingency metrics revealed that the Weber fraction (X − Y)/X most closely approximates performance, and that the value of the difference detection threshold derived from the Weber fraction is a constant.     

On the relationship of data to theory: A reply to Ronis and Greenwald

Ronis and Greenwald (Dissonance theory revised again: Comment on the paper by Fazio, Zanna, and Cooper. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 15, 1979, 62–69) question our integrative formulation of dissonance and self-perception processes. We argue that our formulation provides an explanation of both the full range of results in the literature and our own experimental data, while neither dissonance nor self-perception theory can singly explain the existing data.     

Prototypicality and personality: Effects on free recall and personality impressions

An experiment was performed to test the hypothesis that it is easier to process information about characters who fit well with and are, therefore, “prototypical” of shared beliefs about various personality types. Character prototypicality was manipulated in a free recall and personality impression paradigm through variations in the consistency of a character's identification with preexisting beliefs about two personality-type categories—extraversion and introversion. Subjects also were given information about each character that varied in degree of abstraction from traits to concrete behavior. As predicted, both the amount and nature of the information correctly recalled were significantly affected by the consistency of the character's identification with extraversion or with introversion. Character consistency also significantly affected the amount of material written in the personality impressions and the tendency to qualify the generality of the impressions. The results support a model in which incoming data about personality are coded, structured, elaborated, and remembered according to the quality of their match with preexisting beliefs about various personality types.     

A test of the Sophisticated Guessing Theory of word perception

Under difficult viewing conditions, a letter in a familiar word can be perceived more accurately than the same letter alone or in a string of unrelated letters. Sophisticated Guessing Theory asserts that perception is more accurate when a letter appears in a word because its identity is constrained by the identity of neighboring context letters. Experiment 1 tested the following prediction: A letter in a word should be perceived more accurately in strongly constraining word contexts than in weakly constraining word contexts. No such trend was found using a number of different measures of contextual constraint and perceptual accuracy. Experiment 2 verified that, with the same conditions used in Experiment 1 to test Sophisticated Guessing Theory, a strong perceptual advantage could be obtained for letters in words vs. letters alone or in unrelated-letter strings. Several alternative theories of word perception are discussed. The most attractive asserts that for words an additional higher-level perceptual code is formed that is more resistant to degradation than the code formed for letters.