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.     

Increased conformity to a fellow deviant as a function of prior deviation

A subject was induced to publically report his opinions on a variety of issues. A group of confederates disagreed with the subject; one confederate agreed with him. Thus, the subject deviated from the majority of the group, but received social support from one other individual. Each subject was then paired with one individual from the previous group, and regardless of his pairing, was subjected to a constant amount of conformity pressure from the confederate on a new set of judgments. Deviant subjects conformed more to the confederate who had previously given them social support than they did to a previous majority member. This increased conformity was found in two studies, (1) females judging physical realities and, (2) males reporting their opinions on attitudinal issues. Ratings taken in the second study demonstrated that the deviant subject felt increased liking for and similarity to the confederate who initially provided him with social support, but comparisons between various experimental groups indicated conformity to a confederate was not completely predictable from the subject's liking for that confederate. Instead, conformity was greatest following an experience of deviation from the majority.     

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.     

Components of verbal learning in children: Analysis by selective reminding

Free recall verbal learning by 5- and 8-year-old children was analyzed by selectively reminding them only of items not recalled on the preceding trial (instead of continuing to present the entire list before each recall trial) to show learning by retrieval from long-term storage without presentation. Concurrent analysis of long-term storage, consistent and random retrieval from long-term storage, and recall from short-term storage indicates that, while 5-year-olds showed slower acquisition than 8-year-olds, lower recall by 5-year-olds also was due to less effective retrieval from longterm storage. Repeated retrieval, without any further presentation after an item has been recalled just once, indicates that lower recall by 9-year-old children than by adults also reflects retrieval difficulty, since these children showed storage and retention of almost as many items as adults by eventual spontaneous retrieval without further presentation.     

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.     

Children's component selection with varying degrees of training

With the component selection measure developed by Hale and Morgan (1973), children's use of selective attention was assessed at six levels of learning, ranging from undertraining to overtraining, and this function was examined at each of ages 4, 8, and 12. It was found that, as the children learned the task, they maintained a relatively wide focus of attention, acquiring information about both features of the stimuli, color and shape. Thus, contrary to the model under investigation, the children did not exercise a high degree of selectivity as they approached mastery of the task; nor did overtraining produce the expected “broadening” of attention, as the children acquired little stimulus information beyond the point at which criterion had been reached. The data were interpreted to be more consistent with a model that assumes the bulk of stimulus learning to occur prior to task mastery.     

A developmental study of recognition of pictures and nouns

Children at four age levels (4, 6, 8, and 10 years) were given continuous recognition tasks using concrete noun, abstract noun, and pictorial stimuli in a 4 × 3 factorial design. Pictures were recognized significantly better than concrete and abstract nouns at the 4- and 6-year age levels and significantly better than abstract nouns at the 8- and 10-year age levels. This supported Paivio's contention that pictures are easier to remember than words because of a greater possibility of dual encoding, while Rohwer's contention that there is a shift in recognition memory development received no support. There were no significant differences between recognition of concrete and abstract nouns at any age level, which opposed the findings from adult studies and suggested that Paivio's theoretical orientation would have to be extended in order to account for developmental data. Recognition for both concrete and abstract nouns was found to be linear and increasing significantly with age, but no age trends for picture recognition were found.     

Instrumental and contingent saccharin licking in rats: Response deprivation and reinforcement

Instrumental licking of .4% saccharin solution was increased by the contingent opportunity to lick a less-preferred saccharin solution when the contingency schedule deprived the subject of the contingent response, but not otherwise. Schedules that imposed comparable amounts of response deprivation produced comparable increases in instrumental responding. The results support the hypothesis that instrumental responding will increase if and only if the contingency schedule deprives the subject of the contingent response. They also support the implication that the predicted increase will occur even if the contingent response has a lower operant level than the instrumental response.     

The importance of subject control in reinforcing brain stimulation

A comparison between the reinforcement strength of self-administered and externally imposed brain stimulation was undertaken. Rats performed on a chain schedule in order to receive brain stimulation, either selfadministered or imposed, during the second component of the chain. Response rates during the first component of the chain schedule indicated that self-stimulation was more reinforcing than imposed stimulation. In addition, contrast, both positive and negative, seemed to be present. It was concluded that reinforcement strength may be enhanced when the subject controls the presentation of reinforcement.