Father identification,achievement, and occupational behavior of rural youth: 10-year follow-up

Males from rural economically deprived school districts, who had previously been surveyed as high school seniors, again 1 year after graduation, and again 5 years after graduation, were surveyed a fourth and final time 10 years after high school graduation concerning their occupational status and aspirations, their marital status, their spouses' educational and occupational achievements, the importance of life roles, and their occupational and personal satisfactions. In the original study the participants had been divided into two groups, low-identification males (LIM) and high-identification males (HIM) based on independent evaluators' judgments of the adequacy of their fathers as identification models. Each group's responses to the survey were compared. The results indicate that there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups on the variables of optimism about the future, spouses' occupational achievements, role importance, occupational satisfaction, and personal satisfaction. There were statistically significant differences on the variables of occupational status, occupational aspirations, educational achievements, educational plans, marital status, and spouses' educational achievements. The results are discussed in the context of the three previous surveys. Over the 10-year period the occupational and educational achievements and aspirations have been significantly higher for the HIM group than for the LIM group. Equally consistent is the finding that over the 10-year period there has been no differences between the two groups in satisfaction with status.     

Necessary versus sufficient causal schemata: Attributions for achievement in difficult and easy tasks

Previous research on Kelley's schemata for multiple sufficient and multiple necessary causes has failed to examine the hypothesis that a schema influences both predictions of an event and attributions of its causes. This research examined the effects of the difficulty of a hypothetical exam on predictions of exam grades, and on attributions of ability and effort. Exam difficulty influenced both the pattern of judgments of grades and reported beliefs in multiple necessary versus multiple sufficient causes. Contrary to the predictions of the schema theory, exam difficulty had little influence on the pattern of attributions of ability and effort. Kelley's concept of a causal schema is reinterpreted in terms of current views of human judgment, and the possible implications of the data for the interpretations of a causal schema are examined. The results question the assumption that attributions are based on beliefs about how causes combine to determine an effect, and suggest further research on the relationship between predictions and attributions.     

Depression and the generation of complex hypotheses in the judgment of contingency

This experiment tests the hypothesis that relative to nondepressed college students, depressed college students will underestimate the potential amount of control they can exert over an environmental outcome when they must generate a complex hypothesis in order to exert control, but not when the complex hypothesis is generated for them. Following the method of Alloy and Abramson (1979b), depressed and nondepressed students' judgments of response-outcome contingency were assessed in either a ‘self-generated’ or an ‘experimenter-generated’ condition. In the ‘self-generated’ condition, subjects generated and tested potential hypotheses for controlling the outcome themselves. In the ‘experimenter-generated’ condition, the experimenter generated a small set of potential hypotheses to be tested by the subject. Relative to nondepressed students, depressed students were less likely to perform the correct controlling response, received fewer rewards, and judged that they exerted less control over the outcome in the ‘self-generated’ condition. These results fail to support the ‘associative’ deficit of the learned helplessness theory of depression, but are consistent with the ‘motivational’ deficit of helplessness theory.     

Growth functions for rapid remembering

Children between ages 9 and 13 were tested for recognizing and remembering words from 6- and 12-word lists. Opportunities for using deliberate mnemonics were severely restricted. Developmental functions showed different growth patterns for remembering the items in a short list than for remembering order, and different patterns for storing items from a long list than for retrieving them. However, none of these functions was parallel to the growth function of rapid word recognition. This absence of parallel growth contradicted a hypothesis that memory develops when item recognition develops. The data suggested, instead, that modest but reliable gains in rapid processes of storage and retrieval contribute to memory development during middle childhood.     

Dissociative effects of flooding on a multivariate assessment of fear reduction and on jump-up avoidance extinction

Two experiments examined the effectiveness of three different amounts of flooding on hastening extinction of a jump-up avoidance response and on reducing fear as assessed by the multivariate fear assessment techniques of D. P. Corriveau and N. F. Smith (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1978, 107, 145–158). In Experiment 1, a 40-min flooding treatment significantly hastened jump-up avoidance extinction, 10 min of flooding had a marginal effect, and 5 min had no effect. In Experiment 2, flooding treatments of 5, 10, and 40 min duration were all effective in reducing fear of the grid floor as indexed by seven of our nine dependent measures, including approach latency, safety test latency, and amount of time spent on the grids. Flooded subjects that were dumped onto the grid floor once at the start of the fear observation phase were found to show somewhat more fear reduction than were flooded subjects that were simply placed on the ledge at the outset of the fear observation phase and never dumped. These results, i.e., less flooding is required to reduce fear than to hasten avoidance extinction, are contrasted with those of previous experiments indicating that more flooding may be required to reduce fear than to hasten shuttlebox avoidance extinction. Such differences are discussed in the context of SSDR theory.     

Basic interests of men in 62 occupations

The 22 basic interest categories on the Strong Vocational Interest Blank for Men were used to classify the interests of men in 62 occupations. The number of basic items which differentiated the interests of men in the occupation from men-in-general was divided by the total number of basic items for each category. These percentages were then ranked in descending order so that the relative importance of different types of interests for various occupations could be easily determined. At least nine categories were required to describe adequately the interests of most occupational groups.     

Normative explanations of helping behavior: A critique,proposal, and empirical test

Criticisms of normative explanations of helping behavior are examined, and an explanation responsive to these criticisms is proposed. This explanation specifies conditions which affect the activation of personal norms and hence their influence on behavior. One hypothesis based on the explanation was tested: the impact of norms on behavior is a function of the tendency to deny or to ascribe responsibility to the self (AR). AR and personal norms toward donating bone marrow to a stranger were measured in a mailed questionnaire. Three months later, 132 women received mailed appeals to join a pool of potential donors from an unrelated source. As predicted, volunteering was a function of the AR × personal norm interaction (p < .0001). Personal norms had no impact on volunteering among those low on AR (deniers), but a substantial impact among those high on AR. Neither intentions to donate, attitudes toward transplants, nor various sociodemographic variables added to the variance in volunteering accounted for by the AR × personal norm interaction.     

Effects of list length and first-trial reward upon concurrent discrimination performance

Rhesus monkeys were given 2304 two-trial object discrimination problems that were presented as members of lists consisting of two, four, or eight problems. The problems within each list were presented concurrently, Trial 1 for all problems in the list being presented before initiation of Trial 2 for any problem. Each problem involved exposure of a single object on Trial 1, which was either rewarded or not rewarded, followed by presentation of the Trial 1 object along with a second object on Trial 2. Performance varied inversely with list length, and this effect became more prominent as a function of training. Performance after Trial 1 nonreward was substantially better than that after Trial 1 reward, and this effect became enhanced both with continued training and with increased list length. The findings were discussed in terms of Bessemer's short-term memory analysis of learning set.