Gender and the phonology of north American first names

This study elicited given and preferred first names from 222 females and 267 male respondents to investigate potential sex-associated features in the structural characteristics of names. Female given names were found to manifest significantly more sounds and syllables, more frequently vary the position of stressed syllable, and more often conclude in a vowel or sonorant sound than male names. In comparison with given names, both female and male preferred names moved in the direction of a potentially ideal structure consisting of a monosyllable that ends in a consonant. The rate of the shift was much less pronounced for female than for male preferred names.The authors would like to thank Bruce Boling for serving as reliability coder.     

Information Consistency and Perceptual Set: Overcoming the Mental Retardation “Schema”1

Two factors that were thought to promote or inhibit schema-based or stereotypic responding in impression formation were examined in two experiments. Subjects were asked to provide evaluations of artwork supposedly painted by either mentally retarded or nonretarded children. Based on previous research, it was assumed that subjects would expect relatively poor quality artwork from retarded children, which would he consistent with a negative schema that they maintain for this group. It was also predicted that this negative schema would result in cursory examinations and unfavorable evaluations of the retarded artists' artwork, but only when the evaluative conditions were conducive to schematic responding. Specifically, the schema effect was predicted to occur when the artwork was of poor quality and subjects were instructed to provide an overall evaluation of the painting rather than an assessment of its specific characteristics. No derogation was expected when these factors were not present. Results supported these hypotheses. Additional analyses indicated that subjects were conducting a cursory search of the target stimuli when conditions favored schema-based responding.     

Gender and sex role differences in the perception of social support

This study examined the relationships among support types (i.e., emotional, instrumental, and nonintimate social participation), gender, sex role orientation, and stress level among college undergraduates (N=253). Dependent variables included need, perceived availability, and satisfaction with support. Sex differences were found only in emotional support, with men reporting less need, perceived availability, and marginally less satisfaction than women. The only gender by sex role interaction was on need for emotional support. Traditional sex-typed men reported less need than traditional women, whereas there was no difference between androgynous men and women. While sex differences do exist for emotional support, the effects of sex role orientation on perceptions of social support appears to be somewhat circumscribed.     

Personality and context-related factors of helping and helping-related affect during early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic led to introduction of lockdown measures in many countries, while in Serbia the Government also introduced the curfew by which vulnerable groups of citizens were prohibited from leaving their homes at any time. In such a situation many citizens organized to voluntarily offer their help to those in isolation, which offered a unique opportunity to examine prosocial behavior in the natural setting of global crisis. This study examined the differences between non-helpers and helpers, as well as groups of helpers who provided their help to close or unknown others, in personality (prosocial tendencies, selfishness and communal narcissism) and context-related factors (situation specific empathy and fear) of prosocial behaviors. Additionally, the study also analyzed the helping-related affect among helpers, depending on the recipient of help and personality characteristics. Results revealed that groups of helpers with different recipients of help (close persons, unknown persons or both) were not different among each other, but they were different from non-helpers. Non-helpers were more selfish and had self-focused prosocial tendencies, and they showed less empathy towards people in isolation, compared to helper groups. However, the helping-related affect depended on the recipient of help and helper's personality traits. This study confirmed some previous findings and offered novel insights into factors related to helping in crises.     

Cooperative learning revisited

The endeavor to teach academic skills known as cooperative learningis of interest to behavioral educators due to its record of effectiveness, its use of behavioral procedures, and its relatively widespread adoption by regular educators. All forms of cooperative learning emphasize operations that encourage students to work together to achieve commonly held goals rather than competing with or ignoring the efforts of others. Despite the apparent soundness of the approach, the present commentary raises several issues. First, it states that some cooperative learning proponents fail to describe the behavioral processes underlying the approach. Second, it is pointed out that it is unclear whether cooperative learning is an independent or dependent variable. Given that cooperative learning applies group contingencies to academic behavior, the question is raised as to whether group contingencies do, in fact, produce desirable social interactions, and whether group contingencies are appropriate for academic behaviors. A concern is also raised as to whether the spontaneous peer tutoring generated by cooperative learning compares favorably with planned peer tutoring. Finally, it is claimed that the minor variations from academic group contingencies that cooperative learning proponents have introduced do not require identifying a new process.     

A.R. Luria's role in the development of soviet psychology

Summary A.R. Luria is one of the most outstanding Soviet psychologists. He played a great role in the development of Soviet psychology and in the formulation of psychological problems on the basis of dialectical materialism. Together with L.S. Vygotskij and A.N. Leont'ev, he put forward a theory of the socio-historical genesis of higher, specifically human, mental functions. Luria carried out numerous investigations into the ontogenetic and historical development of these functions, as well as their disturbance with local brain lesions. As the founder, in the Soviet Union, of the new discipline of neuropsychology, he made a very significant contribution to the study of the cerebral mechanisms of mental activity.Originally published in Voprosy Psichologii 28 (4), 106–115 (1978), and translated by E. Scheerer. The translator gratefully acknowledges the help of Eunice and Josef Broek and Sonia Argyle     

The construction and validation of a juror bias scale

A questionnaire was constructed to measure individual differences in pretrial bias among jurors. The final Likert scale, called the Juror Bias Scale (JBS), contains 17 items—8 that reflect pretrial expectancies that defendants, in general, commit the crimes with which they are charged and 9 that reflect the value attached to conviction and punishment. The scale is internally consistent and test-retest reliable. Scores are uncorrelated with social desirability, moderately correlated with I-E control and belief in a just world, and more highly correlated with authoritarianism. In one validation experiment, student jurors were exposed to three trial presentations in a laboratory setting. Overall, subjects classified as prosecution biased were more conviction prone and adopted a less stringent standard of reasonable doubt. In a second study, community jurors watched one of two videotaped mock trials in a courtroom. Prosecution-biased subjects asserted a higher probability that the defendent committed the crime and rendered a higher percentage of guilty verdicts than defense-biased subjects for one of the two trials. JBS scores were unrelated to all demographic variables, but were significantly correlated with political views. The potential uses and limitations of the JBS are discussed.