Forty Ss from introductory psychology classes participated in a study to determine whether or not the investigator's group Social Expectations Scale (SES) was a useful research instrument and to determine whether or not intelligence was a factor determining the fit of a particular cognitive model, the BSE, to the social expectations of Ss as measured by the SES.

This investigation was designed to determine relative effects of monetary reward and knowledge of results on complex-choice reaction time tasks. Subjects were twenty-five male and thirty-two female undergraduate students. Apparatus consisted of nine stimulus lights and eight response keys. Subjects were required to add the number of lights presented, subtract the sum from a constant, and press the correctly numbered response key. Reward subjects received twenty-five cents for responses faster than a predetermined criterion, and twenty-five cents was deducted for slower responses. Knowledge of results subjects were told their reaction times after each trial. Results indicated (1) no significant differences between any conditions, (2) a significant overall practice effect (.01 level), and (3) that males were significantly faster than females (.01 level).

Behavioral and cognitive skills training for increasing assertive behavior in college students were compared to an equally credible expectancy-control. One significant multivariate function successfully discriminated between the behavioral and control groups, and between the cognitive and control groups. This function was interpreted as showing enhanced behavioral/cognitive construction competencies in the behavioral and cognitive groups. A second function, though not significant, suggested that the cognitive training resulted in more aggressive behavior.

The proposed interaction between race and sex on achievement orientation has not been adequately demonstrated when cognitive measures are used. Therefore, the present study examined the effects of sex and race on attributions for achievement., Elementary level students made attributions to ability, effort, task-difficulty, or luck for 16 academic successes or failures described in a questionnaire. Girls made significantly (p < .001) fewer ability and significantly (p < .001) more effort attributions on success items than boys, regardless of their race. Six success items that had been sex-typed (3 girl, 3 boy) provided similar results. Sex-typing data indicated these subjects exhibited strong sex-role stereotypy. Results were discussed in terms of sex-typing of the individual and not the task.

The patient's failure to cooperate effectively in the patient/physician (patient and physician) interaction has been shown to be a problem of significant magnitude. In the present study, an attempt was made to identify specific, patient behaviors which might be related to physician judgment of a good patient and progress of treatment. A checklist of 37 behaviors was compiled. A series of 100 patients was observed during their interaction with physicians and occurrences of behaviors from the checklist were noted by an experimenter. Physicians also indicated whether the patient was considered to be a good patient and whether treatment was progressing as expected. For every third patient, physicians noted the occurrence of behaviors from the checklist. An association was found between some behaviors from the checklist and the physicians' judgment. There was also shown to be a difference in the ability of the experimenter and the physicians involved to detect these behaviors.

Research has demonstrated the efficacy of attitudinal-motivational counseling in conjunction with study skills training. However, it has not been clear whether group or individual counseling was most beneficial. This research attempted to evaluate the usefulness of peer counselors in group and individual counseling sessions. Using students voluntarily enrolled in a study skills program, it was demonstrated that all students improved in study habit scores. However, only individual-peer counseling was effective in changing academic attitudes (p < . 05), as compared to group-peer counseling, no-counseling, and no-treatment conditions. Grade-point-average change scores were not differentially effected by the treatment conditions.

Sixteen Nerodia rhombifera were used in each of two experiments investigating operant conditioning of the tongue flicker response. A yoked pair design was utilized throughout phases of baseline, continuous reinforcement, partial reinforcement, and extinction. During partial reinforcement, one-half of the experimental animals were reinforced FR-4 and the other half were reinforced continuously. Control subjects were treated as were their experimental partners, with the exception of noncontingent reinforcement. Statistical comparisons between means for groups during the CRF phase, partial reinforcement phase, and extinction phase were nonsignificant. However, because some snakes in the experimental groups appeared to show increases in response rate during CRF and FR conditions, the possibility exists that modification of task parameters will produce positive results in future research.

In a statistical comparison of orthogonal normalized varimax factor analytic solutions for the MMPI-168 including and excluding invalid protocols of psychiatric inpatients, at least one factor reflection was observed. Factors identified were Psychotic Distortion (Absence of Distress), Somaticism, Depression, Extroversion, Masculinity-Femininity, and Low Morale. Factors obtained, and representative clinical scales, were consistent with those obtained by others in investigations of both abbreviated and standard MMPI forms. Statistical comparison of factors identified by the two analyses indicated congruence. Possible sources of factor distortion were discussed.

The present study compares the performance of volunteers and nonvolunteers in a 10-hour integrated series of management simulation exercises. It was hypothesized that there would be no performance differences in these two groups. Subjects were business students. Dependent measures were global ratings of management level and potential, as well as a behavioral checklist score. The results partially support the hypothesis. Volunteers performed significantly better on the global measures but not on the behavioral checklist. Differences on global measures were attributed to demand characteristics, whereas the behavioral checklist was not susceptible to this artifact. This finding raises doubts as to the usefulness of global measures and the validity of research based on them. Studies designed to upgrade and validate the behavioral checklist are needed.

Descriptions of obesity, cerebral palsy, and scoliosis were rank-ordered (from one to twenty) and rated on a five-point scale by 75 college students. The descriptions were of two types: with the appearance of an individual on five levels of severity of a disorder and with the appearance and level of functioning of an individual on five levels of severity of a disorder. The ranking data indicated males rank-ordered descriptions of obese individuals different from cerebral palsy (p < 0.01) and scoliosis (p < 0.05) . The ratings of the descriptions were analyzed in two studies with 2 x 2 x 2 x 5 ANOVA's. Three-way interactions of the level of severity, complexity of description, and type of disorder rated were discussed in terms of likeability of handicapped individuals .

Only circumscribed aspects of highway aggression have been investigated. The upsurge of abuse and violence transpiring between motorists necessitated a more definitive depiction of the actual events, participants, and relevant contextual features. A questionnaire administered to 120 motorists, aged 18 to 68, solicited a recountal of incidents occurring within 12 months and a description of their most recent encounter. Based on severity of experience, subjects were relegated to distal threat, direct threat, and nonvictim groups. Although most events involved unreported distal threats lasting less than three minutes, men and non-college graduates were more often directly threatened, while non-victims were predominantly women and college graduates. Perpetrators were primarily unknown Caucasian males who generally aggressed in populated areas during afternoon hours.

Lenney (1977) concluded that achievement gender differences were predicted by females' lower self confidence and expectancies in competitive situations, identifying three variables that mediated female self confidence in achievement situations, (1) task appropriateness. (2) social comparison, and (3) feedback. The present study manipulated all three mediating variables with 240 undergraduate 18-25 year old female subjects with the pursuit rotor task that requires tracking a moving (40 rpm's) white light with a hand-held stylus for 60 seconds. Response measurement was based upon time on target. Subjects were tested over five trials while setting goals for each trial. Females were randomly assigned to a male appropriate, female appropriate, or gender neutral task condition, a competition or alone condition, and to one of four feedback conditions (no feedback, feedback about own performance only, feedback about own performance that provided the perception that subject was performing better than an opponent and/or average on each trial, or feedback about own performance that provided the perception that subject was performing poorer than an opponent and/or average on each of the five trials). Results from the 2 (social comparison) X 3 (task appropriateness) X 4 (feedback) ANOVA were contradictory to previous findings (Corbin, 1981; Petruzzello & Corbin, …

After an intelligence test battery, the sixty right-handed subjects (30 males, 30 females) performed two visual field (VF) reaction time (RT) tasks requiring odd-even judgments concerning the whole numbers 1 through 8. Numbers were presented as words, a right VF left-hemisphere (LH) advantage task, or as bargraphs, a left, VF right-hemisphere (RH) advantage task, the height of the bargraphs indicating the number.

Recently, multi-source feedback has been a popular way of providing performance-related feedback to individuals in many organizations. Many who use multi-source feedback consider Rating Convergence, others seeing target individuals as they see themselves, to be a positive outcome of this process. However, the variables that account for Rating Convergence are not known. This study investigated whether the personality factor Extroversion and Behavioral Consistency, acting as a moderator variable, could account for Self-other Rating Convergence, particularly the Convergence between self and peer Ratings. The sample consisted of 235 mid-level managers from a variety of industries who were participants in individual career development workshops. Using structural equation modeling, the results indicated that a model consisting of a single Extroversion factor could account for the convergence of self-peer ratings. This finding calls into question the significance of Rating Convergence when using multi-source rating instruments that provide feedback on trait characteristics since it may be heavily influenced by a single personality factor rather than observers' comprehensive understanding of the ratee's performance.

The single task condition of the Urbanczyk and Kennelly (1991) study was conducted while recording a continuous electroencephalographic (EEG) record. Attention was allocated by instructed lateral head orienting and eye gaze either congruently or incongruently with lateralized cognitive tasks. Thirty university subjects retained a digit span or a spatial location span for a 20 second retention interval. EEG data were extracted from the 20 second retention intervals and interhemispheric coherence was calculated for homologous sites in the temporal, parietal and occipital regions of the brain. There was a main effect for group, with congruent orienting producing greater coherence values than incongruent orienting. This effect of attention on alpha coherence values was found in the low alpha (8-10 Hz) frequency band. This provides evidence that the lower alpha frequency band is reflective of manipulations of attention. The higher coherence measures for the congruent orienting group indicates that homologous regions of the two hemispheres are more coupled into a single system when lateralized attention activates the same hemisphere performing the cognitive task. In the higher alpha frequency band (11-13 Hz) group, sex, site and task interacted. This provides evidence that the higher alpha band is more affected by cognitive processing of the …

In the increasingly competitive world of retail banking, organizations are focusing their attention on customer service as a means of increasing customer loyalty and retention. With this goal of increasing customer retention, the link between the attitudes of the service provider (employee satisfaction), the customer interaction behaviors that those attitudes lead to (customer service quality), and the attitudes that those behaviors generate in the customer (customer satisfaction) has become an increasingly important area of investigation. The goal of this research is to analyze the relationships that exist between these three variables: employee satisfaction, customer service quality, and customer satisfaction in a mid-sized retail bank. Data from three separate surveys collected during the same time period in 137 branches of a regional bank are analyzed using multiple regression analysis to determine whether relationships and interactions exist at a banking center level. While results of the analyses did not show a significant relationship between the variables, issues relevant to this determination are discussed and conclusions drawn regarding the nature of these constructs.

The 2010 National HIV/AIDS Strategy outlined three important goals for managing the current HIV pandemic in the U.S.: (1) reduce the number of people who become infected with HIV; (2) improve access to health care and health-related outcomes for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLH/A); and (3) reduce HIV-related health disparities. Each of these goals tacitly depends upon reducing HIV-related stigma, and this study examined how HIV+ individuals evaluate coping efforts to overcome stigma’s impact on quality of life (QOL). a structural regression model was developed to instantiate the reappraisal process described by Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional theory of stress and coping, and this model indicated that maladaptive coping fully mediated the relationship between dispositional forgiveness and perceived stigma, which supports the prediction that coping efficacy is related to stress reduction. Additionally, maladaptive coping fully mediated the relationship between dispositional forgiveness and QOL, supporting the contention that forgiveness is a critical aspect to the evaluative process that influences how PLH/A cope with stigma. Lastly, the model showed that when PLH/A engaged in maladaptive coping to mitigate stress-related stigma, these individuals experienced increased stigmatization and reported significantly lower levels of health-related QOL. in contrast, PLH/A that reported higher levels of dispositional forgiveness …

Flashbulb memories are highly vivid and long-lasting memories for events that are emotionally significant and personally important. These memories are held in very high confidence in accuracy over an extended period. In particular, individuals believe that they can remember the personal details surrounding the event such as where they were and what they were doing at the time the event occurred. Evidence from research, however, indicates that this may not be the case. The study of flashbulb memories has typically been confined to negative events such as September 11, 2001. In the current study, we employ the methods of Talarico and Rubin (2003) to investigate flashbulb memory formation to a positive event. The event is the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which resonated as a highly positive event for many Americans evidenced by the thousands of people flooding the streets of Washington, D.C. and New York City to celebrate. We examined various memory properties over a one-year period, including vividness, rehearsal, belief in accuracy, and consistency. Results confirm the formation of flashbulb memories to the assassination event, but results did not support many of the proposed hypotheses. Some differences were found for different testing groups (i.e., immediate versus one week …

The current case involves a female rape victim. Research has shown the level of victim blaming can be elevated if the victim is a lesbian woman compared to a heterosexual woman. Mock jurors’ responses to personality trait questionnaires (e.g., Belief in a Just World, Attitudes Toward Women, Attitudes Toward Lesbians) and amount of contact they have with homosexual people were employed as predictors of how they would decide victim blaming and perpetrator guilt. Personality trait findings were not good predictors; however, greater contact with homosexuals did decrease negative attitudes toward lesbian victims. Limitations and implications for future research are addressed.

The purpose of the present study was to assess if combining the two frameworks would account for more variance in PTSS than could be accounted for using the frameworks separately. An online community sample from Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (N = 437), who reported experiencing a prior traumatic event, completed measures that reflected the constructs of narrative centrality, negative affectivity, and death concerns, along with a measure of PTSS. PTSS was regressed on the latent variables of death concerns, narrative centrality, and negative affectivity, along with the latent variable interactions between narrative centrality*death concerns and narrative centrality*negative affectivity. Death concerns was not be predictive of PTSS, whereas narrative centrality and negative affectivity were found to uniquely and interactively account for 77% of the variance in PTSS. Death concerns was found to be a separate construct from negative affectivity. The implications of these findings for the two frameworks are discussed along with future directions. By considering aspects of narrative centrality and negative affectivity, substantial portions of PTSS can be accounted for.

Marijuana is the second most commonly used substance in the US. A growing literature suggests that socially anxious individuals use marijuana to manage their symptoms in social situations, which may explain why they are also more likely to experience problems. Unfortunately, the majority of the literature is based on research conducted with adult samples or the co-occurrence of diagnoses in adolescent samples. The proposed study sought to test the link between social anxiety (SA) and proxies for ‘real-time' marijuana use behaviors (i.e., use willingness) as well as use-related problems among adolescents. Participants were 69 adolescents (15-17; 55% female) recruited from the community reporting any lifetime marijuana use. Participants were randomly assigned to a novel social rejection or neutral laboratory task and completed measures of SA, marijuana use frequency, and related problems. Consistent with adult findings, main effects of SA and experimental condition on marijuana use willingness were expected to be qualified by an interaction in which the greatest marijuana use willingness would occur among high SA youth post-rejection (H1), SA would be positively related to marijuana use problems (H2), and among adolescents in the rejection condition, marijuana use willingness would be positively correlated with use problems (H3). Only H2 was …