"Fair" allocations of salaries and taxes.

Undergraduate judges were asked to "fairly" allocate salaries to hypothetical faculty members on the basis of their merit ratings. Individual merit ratings, total budgets to be distributed, and distributions of merit ratings for the entire group were manipulated. In another set of studies, undergraduate judges were asked to "fairly" assign income taxes to hypothetical persons given their salaries, and individual salaries, amounts of revenue to generate, and distributions of salaries for the group were varied. Overall results are explained by a theory of relative equity that suggests that an equitable state is one in which the relative position of a stimulus (e.g., merit or salary) in the distribution of stimuli matches the relative position of the response (e.g., salary or tax) in the distribution of responses. The relative position of a stimulus or response is defined as its range-frequency value based on the range-frequency compromise. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The conscious control of thematic projection.

Conducted 2 experiments with undergraduate Ss (N = 118). In Session 1 of Exp I, one group was instructed to be honest in responding to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), while another group was instructed to fake high need for achievement. In Session 2, instructions for the 2 groups were reversed. Results indicate that Ss could successfully fake the possession of need for achievement. In Session 1 of Exp II, all Ss were instructed to respond honestly to the TAT. In Session 2, Ss were instructed either to be honest again or to inhibit projections revealing their personalities. Test-retest reliability was lower for Ss who had faked responses in the 2nd session than for Ss who had been honest. In neither experiment were judges able to identify Ss who were faking. The findings that Ss can consciously introduce false projections and inhibit true projections have implications for the theory of projection (i.e., persons unconsciously project unconscious traits) and for the use of projective techniques for personality assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative importance of prior and immediate events: A causal primacy effect.

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that prior causes in a chain of events are attributed greater relative importance than later, more immediate causes. In Exp I, 170 undergraduates judged the relative contributions to success or failure made by members of a team who initiated a problem-solution process vs team members who terminated it. In Exp II, 206 undergraduates rated the importance of prior and immediate causes of 4 life events. In both experiments, prior events in a causal chain were perceived to be more important than were immediate events. In addition, Exp II showed that this primacy effect was due to the causal rather than temporal sequencing of events and that it was limited to situations in which the events were of approximately equal relevance to the final outcome. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aggregating social behavior into person models: Perceiver-induced consistency.

Two experiments explored the role of perceivers (judges) in aggregating social behavior into impressions. In Exp 1, using 150 undergraduates, it was predicted and found that judges influence impressions not only because they disagree on how to interpret single acts but because they aggregate multiple acts in unique ways to arrive at idiosyncratic impressions. Using D. A. Kenny's (see record 1991-24173-001) general model of accuracy and consensus, it was found that judges perceived much greater consistency in the behavior of targets across situations when they were asked to aggregate the behavior than when they were not. Differential interpretation of single acts did not change as a function of aggregating behavior. This aggregation process was characterized as the construction of models of persons. In Exp 2 (with 65 undergraduates) the concept of person models was explored further, and it was argued that perceivers develop these models on the basis of what is viewed as the central concept of a target. For any given target, a limited number of models can be identified, and different perceivers develop different models. The particular model formed has implications for the perceiver's underlying memory representation and the perceived personality profile of the target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Support levels of undergraduate psychology departments in four-year colleges and universities.

Presents data on the budgetary and personnel support characteristics of undergraduate psychology departments, based on the questionnaire responses of 256 department chairmen. Items include staff-student ratio; dollar support per student; faculty salary budget; faculty-classroom contract hours per week; supply, equipment, and travel budgets; and percent of salary increase for 1972. The data establish a normative base for undergraduate departments which may be used to compare the adequacy of support levels of individual programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Survey on ethnic minority faculty recruitment and retention.

Summarizes responses from 209 graduate departments of psychology regarding hiring and retention of minority faculty and reasons why minority applicants may decline faculty positions. The results suggest that a more favorable atmosphere for employment of minority applicants is emerging; that a good record of research and teaching skills is a prerequisite for being hired; that for those hired, too much minority service and insufficient research activity are the most common perceived barriers to tenure; that the most common reasons given by minority applicants for rejecting an employment offer include higher salary, more preferred geographic location, and the presence of minority persons in the local community. Recommendations are provided for both minority applicants seeking faculty positions and for psychology departments wishing to attract minority applicants. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source credibility in social judgment: Bias, expertise, and the judge's point of view.

Tested mathematical models of source credibility in 5 experiments in which 121 undergraduate judges estimated the value of hypothetical used cars based on blue book values and/or estimates provided by sources who examined the cars. The sources varied in mechanical expertise and in bias; they were described as friends of the buyer or seller of the car or as neutral. Individuals judged the highest price the buyer should pay, the lowest price the seller should accept, and the "true" value ("fair" price) of the car. Data indicate that expertise amplifies the effect of the source's bias. This effect was predicted by a scale-adjustment model in which the source's bias shifts the scale value of the source's estimate. The weight of an estimate depended chiefly on the source's expertise. The weight of an estimate also depended configurally on the other estimates: Judges instructed to take the buyer's point of view gave greater weight to the lower estimate, whereas judges who identified with the seller placed a greater weight on the high estimate. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinction between places and paths in rats' spatial representations.

Rats were trained on a 3-dimensional, 4-arm radial maze. In Exp 1, Ss trained to climb to the single goal platform chose fewer novel routes to the goal than Ss trained to climb to the 4 spatially distinct platforms. In Exp 2, a reinforcement contingency was imposed, requiring a novel route choice on each trial to receive reinforcement. Learning to associate route choice with reinforcement outcome was much more difficult for Ss tested with the single goal than for Ss tested with the 4 distinct goals. In Exp 3, a partitioned central platform group learned the reinforcement contingency as quickly as the Ss given 4 spatially distinct platforms. In Exp 4, distinctive floor inserts did not affect performance relative to no inserts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood, self-efficacy, and performance standards: Lower moods induce higher standards for performance.

Examined the effects of induced mood on personal standards for performance and judgments of one's performance capabilities, or self-efficacy judgments. Three experiments involving 208 undergraduates were conducted. In Exp 1, standards and self-efficacy judgments were assessed on common social and academic tasks. In Exp 2, these variables were assessed on 2 novel tasks. In both experiments, negative mood induced higher standards for performance. Induced mood had no effect on perceived self-efficacy. Negative mood Ss thus held minimal standards for performance that significantly exceeded the levels of performance they judged they actually could attain. Exp 3 provided support for the hypothesis that negative mood raises standards by lowering evaluations of prospective outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of transport stress on the content of endotoxin in blood of slaughter pigs

The concept of a merit profile has been evolved at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, whereby not only research achievements but also teaching, administrative and clinical skills and experience are each given merit ratings to produce an individual profile. This approach is based on the notion that all of these fields of activity constitute integregal facets of a scat of higher learning in medicine, and that a candidate's relative merits in each of these areas should be seen not only in relation to the overall academic goals but also to practical, professional considerations. The merit profile is intended to be used in selection for appointments and promotion, and as a basis for the continued enhancement of individual competence, and salary review.     

Salience, feature perturbations and localization errors on targets and location standards.

Examined the concept of salience (ease of localization) in 4 experiments, using 43 undergraduates. A test of the relative salience of stimuli used in Exps 2–4 was conducted in Exp 1. Exp 2 showed that a designated target (an H or a column of Hs) was used as the standard against which the designated standard for localization (a line end) was judged when the former was more salient than the latter. Exp 3 showed that thin lines similar to those in Exp 2 were judged as shorter than they were, which suggests a mislocalization toward fixation. In Exp 4, when standards covered the entire display background, a single H (but not columns of Hs) was mislocalized toward fixation. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sagacious judgment via word association.

Based on K. E. Scheibe's (1979) concepts of the mask and the prediction mode of sagacity, 4 experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that awareness of subtle cues accounts for success on a judgment task that requires recognizing the implications of target persons' word associations. Preliminary studies with 7 undergraduates identified word associations but not facial expressions or reaction times as relevant to success on the task. Thus, it was hypothesized that successful judges would be more accurate than unsuccessful judges in assessing the diagnosticity of word association clues. 30 undergraduate social welfare majors participated in Exp I; Exp II was a replication of Exp I using 73 high school students. Both Exps I and II involved a video presentation. Exp III involved a pencil-and-paper version of the judgment task used in Exps I and II. Ss were 76 undergraduates. Exp IV tested the generalizability of the previous results across S groups. 12 American and 14 foreign-born undergraduates (e.g., Malaysian, Taiwanese, Colombian, and Nigerian) served as Ss. Overall findings show that the predicted relation emerged in all 4 studies, despite variations in the task and S groups (varying in age, nationality, and amount of psychology-related training). Results are generally consistent with expectations based on Scheibe's analysis of sagacity and provide a basis for research on the judgment task in terms of personality correlates of cue utilization, individual differences in depth of processing, and ability to draw pragmatic implications. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social support as an individual difference variable: Its stability, origins, and relational aspects.

Investigated the stability of social support indices, the relation between these indices and measures of parental bonding, and the relation between the indices and ratings of social behavior. In Exp I, 76 undergraduates responded to a social support questionnaire (SSQ) several times at 5- and 36-mo follow-ups. Exp II partially replicated Exp I with 251 Ss, and it investigated the relation between the SSQ and a parental bonding instrument. In Exp III, 160 Ss rated videotapes of persons with different levels of social support and scored them with regard to indices of personal effectiveness. The studies demonstrate that social support levels are stable over periods up to 3 yrs. They also showed that Ss high in social support reported having received more parental care (affection, interest, empathy) than did those low in social support. High social support Ss were judged by observers to be more competent leaders and problem solvers than were low-support Ss. Female Ss were judged to be more considerate and friendly than male Ss. Results suggest the value of conceptualizing social support as an individual difference variable as well as an environmental provision. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seeing versus imagining movement in depth.

Six undergraduate students participated in 2 experiments to determine whether the same mechanisms are activated during perception of real vs apparent motion. In Exp 1, Ss judged the quality of rigid motion between pairs of 3-dimensional drawings that differed by a rotation in depth. Rated quality of motion decreased with increasing angular disparity between the figures and with decreasing stimulus duration, regardless of whether the figures were vertical or oblique. In Exp 2, Ss participated in a mental rotation task using the same stimuli and angular disparities. Ss took longer to make decisions about obliquely aligned than vertically aligned stimuli. Results imply that perceived vs imagined movement through the same trajectory involves different processes. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time urgency among coronary-prone individuals.

Investigated differences in impatience among Type A and B individuals. In Exp I, 22 undergraduate females were required to signal the passage of 1 min while engaged in a reading task. Results indicate that Type A Ss perceived time as passing significantly more quickly than Type B Ss. In Exp II, the relative work rates (completion of inventories) were assessed for 112 undergraduate Type A and B Ss. Type As worked significantly more quickly than Bs. Both experiments lend support to the hypothesis that Type As are more impatient or time urgent than are Type Bs. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A different perspective on androgyny: Evaluations of masculine and feminine personality characteristics.

Hypothesized that androgynous Ss would be liked best and perceived as most adjusted (Exp I) and also be perceived to be as instrumental as masculine Ss and as expressive as feminine Ss (Exp II). 179 undergraduates served as Ss in Exp I and 160 undergraduates served in Exp II. Personal Attributes Questionnaires ostensibly filled out by others were the stimuli evaluated. These stimuli were constructed so that the stimulus persons (SPs) were classified as either androgynous, undifferentiated, masculine, or feminine. Male and female Ss evaluated the SPs on dimensions of likeability, adjustment, expressiveness, instrumentality, masculinity, and femininity. Results demonstrate that androgynous persons, regardless of gender, were liked best and perceived as most adjusted, whereas undifferentiated persons were liked least and perceived as least adjusted. Masculine and feminine persons, regardless of gender, were rated midway between androgynous and undifferentiated persons and generally were not evaluated differently on these dimensions. Evaluations of SPs on stereotypically gender-related dimensions revealed that androgynous persons were seen to be as highly instrumental as masculine persons and as highly expressive as feminine persons, but generally less masculine and feminine than sex-typed persons. Implications for self-fulfilling prophecies in social behavior are discussed. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inferred sex differences in status as a determinant of gender stereotypes about social influence.

In 3 experiments, 470 male and 425 female university students read a scenario describing a communicator's attempt to influence a recipient and then judged how much influence would occur. The scenarios in Exp I described a man trying to influence a woman or a woman trying to influence a man. For scenarios in which job titles were omitted, Ss believed that women held lower status jobs than men and that women were more likely to comply behaviorally with men than men were with women. For scenarios in which job titles were included, Ss' beliefs about compliance were based on job status rather than the sex of the stimulus persons. In Exp II, scenarios in which job titles were omitted described an influence attempt between same- or opposite-sex persons. Both the communicator's and the recipient's sex were found to contribute to the greater perceived compliance of women to men (vs men to women). In Exp III, this perceived sex difference in compliance occurred only when the communicator and recipient were employed by the same organization. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Referencing and bias in social interaction.

Examined the consequences of schematic referencing for social behavior. In Exp I, 23 female and 21 male undergraduates worked in pairs on a word association task. In the self-referencing condition, Ss were told that their partner would judge their personality; in the other-referencing condition, Ss were asked to judge their partner's personality. Results show biased recall of Ss' own behavior over another person's behavior in a dyadic interaction. Exp II employed an alternative, more realistic manipulation of self-referencing using situational cues. 16 pairs of undergraduate Ss performed the same word association task either in front of judges or by themselves. The biased recall effect was replicated. Moreover, corresponding biases in Ss' attributions about the quality of their performance were found. Results confirm that self-referencing cues can cause the sort of egocentric reactions that have been observed in previous studies in which members of an interaction remember more of their own contributions and attribute more responsibility for joint tasks to themselves. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Segmentation of behavior: Effects of actual deception and expected deception.

In Exp I, 6 undergraduate judges viewed videotapes of 59 sender-Ss who described someone they liked, someone they disliked, someone they dominated, and someone to whom they submitted. Each target person was either described truthfully, using concealment, or using deception. Results show that in the face, deceptive and concealed messages were associated with a smaller number of segments than truthful messages. In Exp II, 24 Ss were assigned the role of senders of deceptive and truthful messages, 84 Ss performed the segmentation (judging) task, and 98 Ss provided the perceived deception scores. Ss asked to segment the materials were either informed or uninformed that the messages were at times deceptive. Videotaping of the face and body was done in Exp II. Results show that deceptive messages elicited a greater number of segments in the body. Ss informed about deception generated a smaller number of segments; these observers may have been distracted and/or aroused by their need to distinguish lie- from truth-telling and may not have been able to identify all breakpoints in the messages. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)