The emotions of professional writers

In this study, 24 professional writers completed a short pencil-and-paper questionnaire on which they indicated how they felt before, at a pause, and after specific writing episodes. The intensity with which they experienced 20 emotions was assessed, as was the frequency with which these emotions were experienced when writing in general. Results indicated that the professionals experienced positive emotions significantly more often when writing in general than they experienced either negative-active or negative-passive emotions. Negative-passive emotions such as boredom, shame, and shyness were particularly rare and weak. During the actual writing process, positive emotions tended to intensify, whereas negative-passive and negative-active emotions resisted change. Sponsorship of writing had little impact on the quality of emotions experienced during the process. The professional poets, however, experienced negative-active emotions significantly more often when writing in general than did the prose writers.     

Questions of scientific responsibility: the Baltimore case

A number of cases of questionable behavior in science have been extensively reported in the media during the last two or three years. What standards are upheld by the scientific community affect the community internally, and also affect its relations with society at large, including Congress. Here I wish to address questions of scientific responsibility, using the Baltimore case as a concrete instance where they came up. The first part containing historical background is necessary to provide readers with documentation so that they can have some factual bases on which to evaluate respective positions and my conclusions that follow -- based on further but more succinctly summarized documentation. I have reproduced many quotes because I firmly believe people are entitled to be represented by their own wording. Conversely, I hold people accountable for their official positions. Some of these are reproduced in footnotes, and some longer ones are reproduced in appendices. I also do not ask to be trusted. By providing numerous references, I hope that readers who find my documentation insufficient can follow up by looking up these references.... The article is in six parts: Part I. Historical Background. This part gives mostly a historical background of the early phases of the Baltimore case. Part II. The First Issue of Responsibility. This part presents a discussion of certain scientific responsibilities based on that background, specifically: the responsibility of answering questions about one's work, and the responsibility whether to submit to authority. Part III. The NIH Investigations. This part summarizes the two NIH investigations. Part IV. The Dingell Subcommittee. This part deals with the responsibilities of a Congressional Committee vis-à-vis science. Part V. Further Issues of Responsibility. This part goes into an open ended discussion of many issues of responsibility facing scientists, vis-à-vis themselves and vis-à-vis society at large, including Congress. The list is long, and readers can look at the section and paragraph headings to get an idea of their content. Part VI. Personal Credibility, a Shift at the Grass Roots, and Baltimore's Persistence.     

Social Interactions of Obese and Nonobese Women

The stigma associated with obesity is likely to limit the opportunities obese women have to develop social skills. This hypothesis was tested by having obese (n = 15) and nonobese (n = 22) women converse on the telephone with college students who were unaware of the women's weights. Ratings made by judges who listened to the women's contributions to the conversations but who were unaware of their weights showed that obesity was negatively related to judgments about the women's likability, social skills, and physical attractiveness. The telephone partners of obese women rated the women and themselves more negatively than did the partners of nonobese women. Obese and nonobese women generally did not differ in their evaluations of their own and their telephone partners' behavior, and they also did not differ on a measure of social self-esteem. These findings suggest that there are real differences in the social behavior of obese and nonobese women and that these differences affect the impressions formed by those with whom they interact.     

Type of academic training and causal attributions for social problems

To provide evidence of the effects of academic training on causal attributions, university students in social science, commerce and engineering were compared at different points of their training in terms of their explanations of poverty and unemployment. Results of cross-sectional analyses showed no field differences in causal attributions at the beginning of the first academic year but significant differences at the end of the year, with social science students blaming the system more than commerce or engineering students. Longitudinal analysis showed that, within a six-month interval, the causal attributions of the students changed significantly as a function of their field of study. Differential employment prospects, while not accounting for the effects of academic training, were found to be related to attributional change. These results confirm the hypothesis that causal attributions are affected by socialization in a particular culture and that exposure to the culture of the social sciences reinforces a system-blame ideology. The implications of these findings for theories of the attribution process and theories of intergroup relations are discussed.     

A preventive,psychoeducational approach to increase perceived social support

Investigated the effects of a 13-week preventive, psychoeducational intervention program to improve perceived social support. Fifty-one, low-perceived support, community residents were randomly assigned to an intervention or wait-list control condition. Intervention subjects received training in social skills and cognitive reframing regarding the self and social relations. The intervention led to increased perceived social support from family, but not from friends. As hypothesized by social cognition models, increases in perceived support appeared to be mediated by changes in self-esteem and frequency of self-reinforcement. Further, such changes in cognition about the self were larger than the changes observed for perceived support, suggesting that it may be easier to change cognition about the self than perceptions of support.     

Studies in social influence: V. Minority influence and conversion behavior in a perceptual task

The effects of influence attempts by a majority and by a minority were examined on both a manifest response level and a latent perceptual level. Female subjects were exposed to a series of blue slides that were consistently labeled as green by a female confederate. The confederate was presented as a member of either a majority or a minority. On each trial, subjects were required to indicate the color of the slide presented and the color of the afterimage perceived on a white screen following removal of the slide. It was predicted that (a) the subject's judgment of the chromatic afterimage would be modified when the influence agent represented a minority, and (b) this modification will be more pronounced when the source of influence is absent than when it is present. The results supported the prediction in both the main study and its replication.     

Correlation for scores on Revised Test of Visual-Motor Integration and Copying Test in a South African sample

A statistically significant correlation of 0.618 was obtained between scores from 62 preschool children on the Revised Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration and the Copying Test. Merely 38% of Copying Test variance was associated with changes in Test of Visual-Motor Integration variance, so in practice these tests should not be substituted for one another.