Employee attitudes toward technological change in a medium sized insurance company.

How do office workers react to office automation? "Questionnaires about technological change and the installation of a new electronic computer were administered to all of the employees of a medium sized insurance company." The validity of the questionnaires was not discussed. "Most of the employees welcomed changes in their work… . They believe that machines are replacing workers in office situations but do not feel that they themselves will be replaced. They do not perceive that the introduction of the new technologies has had much effect on the amount of pay they get, their chances for promotion, or the amount of supervision they receive. But they do believe that the new technologies have changed the amount of work that they do and the degree to which there is variety in their work." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Employee attitudes and employee performance.

An examination is made of the empirical literature bearing upon the relationships between employee attitudes and employee performance. A discussion of methodological questions includes considerations of sampling, of criterion measures, and of general problems of analysis and design. Theoretical considerations include the employee's outside environment, and both union and company structures. Two conclusions are inferred from the literature reviewed: 1. Job satisfaction does not imply strong motivation for outstanding performance; and 2. "… productivity may be only peripherally related to many of the goals toward which the industrial worker is striving." 62 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychotherapists' attitudes toward suicide.

Assessed psychotherapists' attitudes toward a number of potential suicides and their attitudes toward the concept of rational suicide in general. 186 Ss received a case scenario in which a current client of a member or the general public was considering suicide because of a terminal illness, physical pain, psychological pain, or bankruptcy. Ss also completed the Suicide Semantic Differential Scale. Ss were differentially accepting of suicidal ideation, based on precipitating circumstances, and Ss would take different amounts of action to prevent a suicide depending on why the person had decided to commit suicide. Ss who had been in practice for 30+ yrs were more accepting of suicide and would take less action to prevent a suicide than less experienced Ss. 81% of the Ss believed in the idea of rational suicide. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of individual, group, and intergroup relations on attitudes toward a management development program.

Studied the impact of a management development program in a medium-sized bank that was designed to increase the number of competent and aggressive young managers available to the organization. In this situation after a period of 10 yr., the training program had developed into a subsystem of the organization. 263 employees completed an attitude and job satisfaction questionnaire. Attitudes toward the program were a function of seniority, organizational rank, pay satisfaction, and perception of own career prospects. The kinds of attitudes also depended heavily on status as an employee, trainee, or officer, and on sex. Behavioral explanations of the attitude effects are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changes in attitudes toward a low-rent housing project.

Opinions of residents in the neighborhood of a low-rental housing project were studied before construction of the project, after construction but before occupancy, and after occupancy. There was a consistent trend in the more favorable direction in attitudes toward the project, in regard to economic-centered fears, in regard to effect of the project on neighborhood attractiveness, and similar factors. Individuals who responded in the survey at two stages shifted in the same direction as the total samples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Third-world managers' attitudes toward pollution.

Examined pollution awareness and concern over pollution among 120 Indian managers from several industries. Pollution attitudes were measured by questionnaire responses to the open-ended question, "What is your firm's position in regard to pollution of the environment (in your own words)?" Responses were content analyzed and coded into 3 categories: (a) nonaware (51%), (b) aware-lacking concern (30%), and (c) aware-concerned (19%). Pollution attitudes displayed significant relationships with both individual and organizational variables. It is concluded that although pollution is becoming a serious problem in India, awareness and concern are lagging compared to the more developed countries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Faculty attitudes toward Congressional investigations.

Responses to seven open-ended questions concerning Congressional investigations of faculty members or colleges given by 57 (63%) of the liberal arts faculty at the U. of Maine are tabulated. In general, the respondents gave negative responses to question of the need for, or effects of, such investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Educators' attitudes toward working mothers.

In an exploratory study of educators' sex-role perceptions, 411 teachers, administrators, and pupil personnel workers were administered the Attitudes Toward Working Mothers Scale. Administrators and teachers were found to have significantly less positive attitudes toward working mothers than did pupil personnel workers. Within each of the groups, males had the least positive attitudes. Marital status, maternal employment history, and child-bearing status were unrelated to these attitudes. Replication on a second sample (330 Ss) produced similar findings. (58 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of attitudes toward technology.

Administered an 80-item questionnaire measuring attitudes toward mechanization to 45 undergraduate students in physical science, biological science, social science, and fine arts. Responses were factor analyzed using a varimax rotation. Factor scores were created for 6 of the resulting factors: Global Mechanism, Mechanical Curiosity, Preference for Hand-made Goods, Alienation, Spiritual Benefits of Technology, and Human Vitalism. These factor scores were then used as dependent variables in a multivariate comparison of the students in different major fields. Most of the between-group differences in attitude toward mechanization were reflected by differences in mechanical curiosity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

American attitudes toward intelligence tests.

If one asks a representative group of Americans over 18 about the use of intelligence tests in student selection for school or college or to aid in job promotion selection "he finds that many of them are against the use of intelligence tests. High school students in the U. S. are even more strongly opposed to the use of intelligence tests." Critical attitudes toward tests involve the following issues: Inaccessibility of test data. Invasion of privacy. Rigidity in use of test scores. Types of talent selected by tests. Fairness of tests to minority groups. Among the personal and social characteristics of the critics are: Some people are distinctly hostile to any self examination. People subscribing strongly to aristocratic or equalitarian viewpoints of society may oppose testing. People who have done poorly on tests may have wounded self-esteem leading to test opposition. The punishing effects tests may have had on an individual's life chances may lead to resentment against tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Public attitudes toward psychotherapist-client confidentiality.

What does the general public expect of psychotherapists in terms of confidentiality and third-party access to information? A telephone survey was conducted to examine this issue. Generally, subjects believed that therapy information should not be revealed without authorization, but they nonetheless felt that confidentiality should be broken when a client reveals the occurrence of one of the following: murder (planned or confessed), suicide plans, child abuse, major theft, and treason/sabotage against the U.S. Subjects were concerned about unauthorized release of information to the courts, to a client's spouse, or to insurance companies, but felt that psychotherapists should be free to discuss clients with one another. As opposed to older subjects, younger subjects (aged 18-39) were against unauthorized disclosures to parents or the family doctor and believed that confidentiality should be maintained when a client reports illegal drug use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of a teen pregnancy prevention program on teens' attitudes toward sexuality: A latent trait modeling approach.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of program interventions in a school-based teen pregnancy program on hypothesized constructs underlying teens' attitudes toward sexuality. An important task related to this purpose was the validation of the constructs and their stability from pre- to postintervention measures. Data from 1,136 middle grade students were obtained from an earlier evaluation of an abstinence-based teen pregnancy prevention program (S. Weed, I. Ericksen, G. Grant, & A. Lewis, 2002). Latent trait structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the impact of the intervention program on changes in constructs of teens' attitudes toward sexuality. Gender was also taken into consideration. This investigation provides credible evidence that both 1st- and 2nd-order constructs related to measures of teens' attitudes toward risky sexual behavior are sufficiently stable and sensitive to detect program effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of a measure of negative attitudes toward masturbation.

Describes the development of a new, 30-item measure of negative attitudes toward masturbation and the relationships between negative attitudes toward masturbation, sex guilt, and frequency of masturbation in 96 male and 102 female undergraduates. 4 male and 4 female Es administered the Sex Guilt subscale of the Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory, a measure of sex experience by Brady and Levitt, and Abramson's measure of masturbation experience. Results provide validational evidence of the predictive usefulness of the measure. The item content, item analysis, factorial structure, and adequate split-half reliability (.75) attest to the psychometric soundness of the measure. Both guilt over sex and negative attitudes toward masturbation are suggested as 2 constructs with theoretical significance and usefulness in research in human sexuality as well as in treating some forms of sexual pathology. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correlates of managers' attitudes toward change.

Correlated a measure of a general readiness to accept change and a measure of attitudes toward change in a specific area (promotions policy) with age, education, managerial rank, frustration-contentment, level of self-confidence, and extraversion and neuroticism (Maudsley Personality Inventory) in 258 managers. Older managers were more conservative than the younger managers, and the confident were more radical than the unconfident. Stable introverts and emotional extraverts tended to support innovation, while emotional introverts and stable extraverts did not. The relation between readiness to accept change and managerial status, education, and contentment depended on the type of change and was not always linear. Results support the notion of a general readiness for change underlying attitudes toward change in a specific area. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' attitudes toward young deviant children.

Investigated the effect of written information about the behaviors (acting out or withdrawn), label condition (label or no label), therapy condition (psychotherapy or no psychotherapy), and sex (male or female) of hypothetical 2nd graders on elementary school teachers' expectations of the pupils' present and future school functioning. The pupils' behavior was the prepotent determinant of teachers' expectations for both the present and future ratings. Acting out behaviors were viewed more negatively than were withdrawn ones; the other pupil variables did not affect teacher expectations. Teachers' future ratings of the children were consistently more positive than were their present ratings. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Authoritarianism and attitudes toward high achievers.

In 2 studies 204 Ss completed scales measuring right-wing authoritarianism, general attitudes toward high achievers, global self-esteem, and items concerned with voting preference, causal attributions, personality characteristics, deservingness, responsibility, and affective reactions to the rise and fall of 3 political leaders. Study 1 distinguished between components of right-wing authoritarianism and showed that the nonaggressive rule-follower with high global self-esteem was more likely to favor the fall of high achievers. Study 2 showed that right-wing voting preference moderated relations between authoritarianism and Ss' affective reactions and that prediction of these variables was significantly enhanced when personality, attribution, and derservingness were added to the regression equation after controlling for the effects of age and gender, right-wing political preference, and authoritarianism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological androgyny and attitudes toward feminism.

Administered the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and Spence and Helm Attitudes toward Women Scale to 50 male and 50 female undergraduates. Only males with a preference for the feminine sex role differed from the other sex and level-of-androgyny groups, in that they exhibited traditional, conservative attitudes toward the rights and roles of women in contemporary society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Public attitudes toward mental health professions.

"The study reported here involves the application of opinion sampling methods to public attitudes toward mental health professions." The following titles were employed: doctor, physician, nurse, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psychologist, clinical psychologist, research psychologist, mental hospital attendant, social worker. The Semantic Differential was used. The sample of respondents was obtained from the Opinion Panel of the Institute of Communications Research; 207 of 239 panel members returned questionnaires on time. "A very high, positive, public attitude was found for the professions as a whole." Virtually no distinction is made between the concepts doctor and physician. "No distinction is made… among the concepts Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist, and Research Psychologist on the Semantic Differential… . There are large and significant differences between the concept Doctor and Physician and the cluster of concepts whose titles start with the morpheme 'Psych-.' " The mental hospital attendant is held in relatively high esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)