Classroom behavior inventory: Factor verification

Sixty-nine second grade suburban children were rated by three teachers using a classroom behavior inventory. Factor analysis was performed to test the a priori structure of the instrument. The 18-item inventory was analyzed on three factors: Task-Oriented vs Distractibility, Extroversion vs Introversion, and Considerateness vs Hostility. The three factors loaded perfectly according to the a priori design. The need for further investigations concerning the reliability and a comparison of the rating scale with objective observations is indicated.     

The effect of physical appearance on the judgment of guilt,interpersonal attraction,and severity of recommended punishment in a simulated jury task

Both an opinion survey and an experimental study were conducted. The survey revealed that substantial majorities of those polled believed (a) that a defendant's character and previous history should influence jurors' decision (79%) and (b) that the defendant's physical appearance should not bias these decisions (93%). The hypothesis, derived from a reinforcement model of interpersonal attraction and previous research on physical appearance, was that attractive defendants would be more positively evaluated than unattractive ones despite the seeming irrelevance of appearance to judicial decisions. The results of a simulated jury task were that physically attractive defendants were evaluated with less certainty of guilt (p < .05), less severe recommended punishment (p < .005), and greater attraction (p < .005), than were unattractive defendants. The importance of independent affective and cognitive components of the attraction process were emphasized.     

Sometimes frequently means seldom: Context effects in the interpretation of quantitative expressions

Subjects supplied numerical definitions for five quantitative expressions embedded in two high-frequency contexts, one moderate-frequency context, two low-frequency contexts, and with no context specified. Mean definitions differed significantly across contexts and expressions with a Context-Expression interaction (p < .01). The variance in definition of an expression embedded in a context generally increased with the discrepancy between its no-context definition and the context event's estimated frequency (p < .05). Variance in the definitions of the sampled expressions gathered over diverse contexts increased with the expression's no-context definition (p < .05). Thus, the mean and variance of an expression's numerical definitions depended upon both the expression and its context.     

The layman's use of trait and behavioral information to predict behavior

This study investigated conditions that determine subjects' preferences for information about another person's traits versus his specific past behavior in order to predict his future behavior. The similarity-dissimilarity between the situation for which past behavior was available and the one to which predictions had to be made strongly influenced the choice of specific behavioral information versus more general trait information. As expected, behavioral information was preferred most when the situation to which behavior had to be predicted was highly similar to the one for which the past behavioral data were available. On the other hand, more general trait information was preferred in predicting to situations that were not directly similar to those for which past behavioral information was available. The effect of the temporal span covered by available information was also explored.     

The reduction of attack instigated aggression

Thirty subjects competed with an opponent in a reaction time task to avoid receiving shock. The opponent initially set only the highest possible intensity shock for the subjects. The opponent then adopted one of three strategies to reduce the intensity of shocks set by the subjects. In one condition the opponent set shock intensities which matched those set by the subject. In a second condition the opponent set shocks which were not contingent upon those set by the subject but which were identical to those set by the opponent who matched the subject's settings. The opponent in the third condition suddenly reduced the intensity of his settings and chose only the least intense possible shock for the subject. All three conditions resulted in reduced aggression. This decrement was greatest and most rapid among those subjects who were exposed to a precipitous decrease in the intensity of attack.     

Situation-specific variables as determinants of perceived environmental aesthetic quality and perceived crowdedness

It was hypothesized that relevant situation-specific variables may act along with objective physical conditions to determine environmental perception, and that the exclusive use of the physical level of an environmental stimulus to predict behavior may, therefore, be inadequate. A 2 × 4 between-subjects design was employed in which an attitudinally similar or dissimilar confederate interacted with a subject at one of four distances. As hypothesized, subjects who interacted with a similar confederate judged the environment to be of higher aesthetic quality, perceived themselves to be less crowded, and felt affectively more positive than subjects who interacted with a dissimilar other. The results were also interpreted as supporting the utility of the Byrne-Clore (1970) reinforcementaffect model of evaluative responses as a means of predicting environmental perception and the behavioral response to environmental stimuli.     

The effect of combined arousal states on attitude change

An experiment was devised in which subjects either were given a choice or were given no choice to listen to a counter-attitudinal communication. For half the subjects (Interrupt condition) the tape of the communication broke during the concluding sentence of the speech. The other half of the subjects (No Interrupt condition) heard the speech in its entirety. A recall measure indicated that subjects in the Interrupt condition recalled significantly more arguments made in the communication than subjects who heard the complete speech. This was interpreted as being a Zeigarnik effect caused by arousal created by the interruption. The choice manipulation should have created dissonance and motivated attitude change. Consistent with dissonance theory, measures of attitude change showed that greater attitude change toward the position of the speech occurred in the Choice condition than in the No Choice condition. In addition, an interaction in which significantly greater change occurred in the Choice-Interrupt condition than any of the other conditions was obtained. Since both the choice and interruption manipulations were hypothesized to be arousing, it was speculated that, in the Choice-Interrupt condition, the arousal created by the cognitive inconsistency and by the interrupted task may have combined to yield the increased attitude change. The conditions under which arousal states might combine were discussed.     

Informational cues and attributions based on role behavior

A recent experiment by Messick and Reeder (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1972, 18, 482–491) attempted to extend Jones, Davis, and Gergen's (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1961, 63, 302–310) classic finding that out-of-role behavior.is more informative for person perception than in-role behavior. It is argued, however, that this study confounded two variables, role performance and occupation. Evidence is presented that the occupation variable alone could have produced Messick and Reeder's results. Both variables seem to affect attributions. The importance of these findings for relating attribution theory and role theory is discussed.     

Size of defeat and liking for superior and similar ability competitors

Data are reported supporting the view that a competitor's pronounced superiority in ability can serve the positive function of reducing threat to self-esteem stemming from severe negative comparisons by rendering these comparisons irrelevant. Females of apparently comparable ability, compared their performances on a test said to measure cognitive fluency. A competitor's promotion to a higher level of ability (i.e., being designated as incomparably superior by an outside agent) caused an initially comparable competitor who decisively defeated the subject to be eliminated as a relevant comparison threat and to be liked more than a nonpromoted competitor who only marginally defeated the subject and hence remained comparable. A promoted competitor who marginally defeated the subject and a nonpromoted competitor who decisively defeated the subject were relatively disliked. Perceived ability and threat data together with observer control group findings indicated that this liking pattern was a function of differential comparison threat and not of the competitors' objective stimulus characteristics.     

Inducing ordinal and cardinal representations of the first five natural numbers

The prediction that the ordinal property of natural number symbols (using these symbols to represent the terms in an ordered progression) is more easily learned than the cardinal property of natural number symbols (using these symbols to represent the manyness of collections) was examined in this experiment. Preschoolers who evidenced no proficiency with either the ordinal or cardinal properties of natural number symbols were trained to acquire these properties via simple feedback. Both properties proved to be trainable. The most important findings were that the ordinal property was much easier to train than the cardinal property, ordinal training effects were more durable across a 1-week interval than cardinal training effects, and ordinal training appeared to transfer better than cardinal training.