Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology: Kent C. Berridge.

Cites Kent C. Berridge for the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology. Berridge is recognized for his role in developing the arsenal of behavioral methods available for a neurological analysis of behavior. His application of the oral-motor taste reactivity test to understanding the hedonic processes underlying palatability evaluations has given rise to a hypothesis of independent controls of aversive and ingestive response production. Beyond focusing attention on the behavioral categories within taste reactivity and grooming, he examined the rules governing how identifiable behavioral elements are strung together over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex versus sweet: Opposite effects of opioid drugs on the reward of sucrose and sexual pheromones.

Endogenous opioids mediate some reward processes involving both natural (food, sweet taste) and artificial (morphine, heroin) rewards. In contrast, sexual behavior (which is also reinforcing) is generally inhibited by opioids. To establish the role of endogenous opioids for a newly described natural reinforcer, namely male sexual pheromones for female mice, we checked the effects of systemic injections of the general opioid antagonist naloxone (1-10 mg/kg) and the agonist fentanyl (0.1- 0.5 mg/kg) in a number of behavioral tests. Naloxone affected neither the innate preference for male-soiled bedding (vs. female-soiled bedding) in 2-choice tests nor the induction of place conditioning using male pheromones as rewarding stimuli, although it effectively blocked the preference for consuming a sucrose solution. In contrast, fentanyl inhibited the preference for male chemosignals without altering sucrose preference. These results suggest that, in macrosmatic animals such as rodents, opioidergic inhibition of sexual behavior might be due, at least partially, to an impaired processing of pheromonal cues and that the hedonic value of sweet-tasting solutions and sexual pheromones are under different opioid modulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Angus Campbell (1910-1980).

Presents an obituary for Angus Campbell (1910-1980). Angus Campbell's career corresponds closely to the development of survey research, a development in which he played a major part for almost 40 years. Although he was trained as an experimental psychologist, early in his career Campbell moved toward social psychology and large-scale quantitiative research. The scope and methods of such research gave him the opportunity to pursue his major substantive interests in political behavior, race relations, and the subjective quality of life. Campbell's best known research may be his work on voting behavior, which dates from 1948. Campbell was also influential in establishing the Interuniversity Consortium for Political Research, a remarkable organization of universities that create and share an international computer-readable archive of social and political data. Many of Campbell's values can be readily inferred from the main themes of his research and writing--minorities, political participation, and the quality of life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: Julius Wishner (1921–1993).

Memorializes J. Wishner, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and a pioneer in experimental psychopathology. Wishner's approach to experimental psychopathology was exemplified by his work on psychological efficiency, which he defined as the ratio of focused to diffuse behavior displayed in a particular situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Managing others like you were managed: How prevention focus motivates copying interpersonal norms.

In 5 studies, we investigated the relation between regulatory focus and the tendency to copy a role model's managing behavior after one experiences this behavior as its recipient and later takes on the same managing role. Because enacting role-related behaviors fulfills interpersonal norms that fit prevention concerns, we predicted a stronger tendency to copy among individuals with a stronger prevention focus on duties and obligations (“oughts”) but not among those with a stronger promotion focus on aspirations and advancements (ideals). We also predicted that individuals with a stronger prevention focus would tend to copy a managing behavior regardless of their earlier hedonic experience with this behavior as its recipient. These predictions were first supported in 2 experimental studies, where a stronger prevention focus was measured as a chronic disposition (Study 1) and experimentally induced as a temporary state (Study 2). Further, we tested the mechanism underlying the relation between stronger prevention and stronger copying and found that concerns about the normativeness, but not the effectiveness, of a managing behavior motivated copying for individuals with a strong prevention focus (Studies 3 and 4). We generalized these experimental results to the field by surveying a sample of superior-subordinate dyads in real world organizations (Study 5). Across all studies, we found that individuals with a stronger prevention focus tend to copy more a role model's managing behavior—independent of their hedonic satisfaction with the behavior as its recipient and their perception of its effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Persistence of Preference for a Flavor Presented in Simultaneous Compound With Sucrose.

Rats exposed to a simultaneous compound of a flavor and sucrose subsequently exhibited a preference for the flavor over water. This preference persisted across repeated testing even though the flavor was presented in the absence of sucrose. The preference did, however, extinguish if the rats were hungry when trained or tested, or if they had been reexposed to sucrose between training and test. Though failing to extinguish the preference, presentation of the flavor outside the compound protected it from the effects of sucrose devaluation, indicating that these presentations extinguished the within-compound association between the flavor and sucrose. The authors conclude that the hedonic reaction elicited by sucrose imbues the flavor with the same hedonic properties, and these properties maintain the preference independently of the flavor-sucrose association. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Joseph Wolpe (1915–1997): Obituary.

Memorializes Joseph Wolpe, a pioneer in the development of behavior therapy. Wolpe's early lectures and papers, dating back to 1950, on what later became known as behavior therapy, were revolutionary and provoked the to-be-anticipated opposition. He translated the results of his doctoral research project on experimental neuroses in animals into practical clinical techniques for treating human neuroses. In particular, he perfected an original and effective method for treating human anxiety, systematic desensitization. Wolpe successfully demonstrated that aversive stimulation delivered to restricted animals can produce neurotic disturbances, even in the absence of conflict. He formulated a comprehensive theory of the conditioning of human fears. Wolpe successfully adapted the method of overcoming the intense fears of his experimental cats to the treatment of human fears and anxiety. Wolpe's successful research provided the basis for his theory of psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. He was insistent of the need for testability, especially of his own theories. His exposure treatment has been shaped into one of the most effective and practical of psychological treatment techniques. Wolpe received widespread praise, respect, and gratitude for his contributions to psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Treatment of "adolescent rebellion" by the reconstrual of stimuli.

Presents the thesis that a viable therapeutic procedure might involve discussion and behavior assignments designed to alter the extent to which a client feels he controls his environment. A case study is presented in which an adolescent was encouraged to construe his obedient behavior as an active and successful attempt on his part to control the behavior of his parents, rather than as a meek submission to their demands. Behavior assignments demonstrated that behavior which was in accord with his parents' requests did exert control over their privilege-granting behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989).

Konrad Lorenz was born November 7, 1903 and died at the age of 85 on February 27, 1989. Lorenz worked for a PhD in comparative anatomy in Vienna and maintained his interest in the behavior of animals. Together with Nikolaas Tinbergen, he become known as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of the biology of behavior. Unlike Tinbergen, Lorenz was not a field worker who studied animals under natural conditions. Instead, he preferred to take animals into his home where he could more readily observe their patterns of behavior that looked so appropriate in the world to which they had been adapted. With his training in comparative anatomy, Lorenz realized that activities could be treated like any structure or organ of the body. They had a regularity and consistency that related to obvious needs of the animal and that differed markedly from one species to the next. This insight was a crucial step in bringing the study of behavior into the Darwinian synthesis that was being forged in the 1930s. Throughout his lifetime, Lorenz fiercely contested what he regarded as the orthodoxies of American behaviorist psychology. Although he was emphatically associated with a theory of instinct, he did not deny the importance of learning. On the contrary, he gave great prominence to developmental processes like imprinting. The phenomenon of imprinting remains a focus of research interest, half a century after he first made it famous. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: James Earle Deese (1921–1999).

Memorializes James Earle Deese, a distinguished contributor to experimental psychology, psycholinguistics, and the study of ideas. Early efforts included his book The Psychology of Learning, published in 1952. By the end of the 1950s he was deeply immersed in the study of verbal behavior in humans. His later work dealt more with the history of ideas than with psychology as an experimental science. Deese's books and articles on the structure of associations and psycholinguistics are viewed as seminal, helping to move psychology from the era of verbal learning to the modern study of verbal behavior and an investigation of the structure among associations that words stimulate or imply. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pupillary responses in art appreciation: Effects of aesthetic emotions.

The authors examined effects of aesthetic emotions in art appreciation. Subjects were presented three groups of slides of cubistic paintings that differed in their processing fluency. In an explicit classification procedure, subjects were asked to indicate by button press the moment when they recognized any depicted object in the painting. The time to recognize a depicted object was shortest for high processing fluency paintings, which were also rated higher in their preference. This is in accordance with the “hedonic fluency model” that predicts higher processing fluency being associated with positive aesthetic emotions in art appreciation (Reber, Schwartz, & Winkielman, 2004). In addition, higher processing fluency was associated with increased pupil dilations following the point of explicit classification. The finding of higher pupil dilation associated with easy-to-process stimuli is interpreted as reflecting aspects of aesthetic emotions that follow explicit classification of art stimuli as proposed in the “model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments” (Leder, Belke, Oeberst, & Augustin, 2004). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Delay of gratification, motivation for the prohibited gratification, and responses to temptation.

Yielding to temptation, in a situation in which attainment of achievement rewards is contingent upon deviant (cheating) behavior, was conceptualized to be a function of (a) the strength of the motivation to attain the prohibited gratification, and (b) the inability to delay immediate gratification. 6th-grade boys participated in an experimentally controlled "shooting gallery" game of skill in which attainment of achievement rewards (prizes) was contingent upon the child's falsifying his own scores. Motivation for the prohibited gratification was inferred from "n Achievement" scores: preference for immediate, smaller (ImR) or delayed, larger (DelR) rewards in choice situations was the index of the ability to delay gratification. Achievement motivation was related to the S's producing sufficiently deviant scores to obtain an achievement reward, and preference for DelR was related negatively to the amount of cheating and positively to the latency of cheating, i.e., the number of trials before the occurrence of the 1st deviation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

I want to be creative: Exploring the role of hedonic contingency theory in the positive mood-cognitive flexibility link.

Three studies explored the role of hedonic contingency theory as an explanation for the link between positive mood and cognitive flexibility. Study 1 examined the determinants of activity choice for participants in happy, sad, or neutral moods. Consistent with hedonic contingency theory, happy participants weighted potential for creativity as well as the pleasantness of the task more heavily in their preference ratings. In Study 2, participants were given either a neutral or mood-threatening item generation task to perform. Results illustrated that happy participants exhibited greater cognitive flexibility in all cases; when confronted with a potentially mood-threatening task, happy participants were able to creatively transform the task so as to maintain positive mood and interest. Finally, Study 3 manipulated participants' beliefs that moods could or could not be altered. Results replicated the standard positive mood-increased cognitive flexibility effect in the nonmood-freezing condition, but no effects of mood on creativity were found in the mood-freezing condition. These studies indicate that the hedonic contingency theory may be an important contributing mechanism behind the positive mood-cognitive flexibility link. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

B. F. Skinner and the Auditory Inkblot: The Rise and Fall of the Verbal Summator as a Projective Technique.

Behaviorist B. F. Skinner is not typically associated with the fields of personality assessment or projective testing. However, early in his career Skinner developed an instrument he named the verbal summator, which, at one point, he referred to as a device for "snaring out complexes," much like an auditory analogue of the Rorschach inkblots. Skinner's interest in the projective potential of his technique was relatively short lived, but whereas he used the verbal summator to generate experimental data for his theory of verbal behavior, several other clinicians and researchers exploited this potential and adapted the verbal summator technique for both research and applied purposes. The idea of an auditory inkblot struck many as a useful innovation, and the verbal summator spawned the tautophone test, the auditory apperception test, and the Azzageddi test, among others. This article traces the origin, development, and eventual demise of the verbal summator as an auditory projective technique. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived arousal, focus of attention, and avoidance behavior.

Attribution theory holds that perceived arousal may cause a person to draw an inference about his emotions and base his subsequent behavior on that inference. Recent research suggests, however, that this account does not entirely explain the influence of false arousal feedback on simultaneously occurring avoidance behavior. The following model, based on self-awareness theory, is proposed. Autonomic arousal feedback may cause heightened self-focus, followed by 1 of 2 possibilities: (a) If the person believes he can cope with his fear, he will redirect his attention to a behavior–goal comparison in order to match the one with the other. (b) If the person doubts his ability to match his behavior with the goal, such a comparison will be aversive and he will avoid focusing on it. These possibilities should lead to 2 different behavioral reactions as well: Doubtful Ss should avoid the aversive stimulus more quickly when presented with arousal feedback, but confident Ss should not. To test the model, a study was conducted in which 57 undergraduates who had self-rated moderate fear of nonpoisonous snakes and who also had indicated either confidence or doubt about their abilities to do the approach task approached a live boa constrictor in the presence of an accelerating or a constant heartbeat. Both behavioral and self-reported focus of attention results were consistent with the proposed attentional model. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decision field theory: A dynamic-cognitive approach to decision making in an uncertain environment.

Decision field theory provides for a mathematical foundation leading to a dynamic, stochastic theory of decision behavior in an uncertain environment. This theory is used to explain (1) violations of stochastic dominance, (2) violations of strong stochastic transitivity, (3) violations of independence between alternatives, (4) serial position effects on preference, (5) speed–accuracy trade-off effects in decision making, (6) the inverse relation between choice probability and decision time, (7) changes in the direction of preference under time pressure, (8) slower decision times for avoidance as compared with approach conflicts, and (9) preference reversals between choice and selling price measures of preference. The proposed theory is compared with 4 other theories of decision making under uncertainty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

William Nathan Schoenfeld (1915–1996): Obituary.

Memorializes William Nathan Schoenfeld, who significantly extended knowledge in the area of experimental analysis of behavior through his his analytical and critical approach to the analysis of behavior. Schoenfeld was instrumental in the founding of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. He was selected to serve as chair of the Study Section in Experimental Psychology, Division of Research Grants and was also elected president of the Pavlovian Society of North America, the Eastern Psychological Association, and Division 25 (Experimental Analysis of Behavior) of the American Psychological Association. Schoenfeld may be best known, however, as an innovative figure who introduced the use of nonverbal organisms as laboratory material for students' introductory psychology class, and the classic textbook to accompany the course, Principles of Psychology: A Systematic Text in the Science of Behavior, that he coauthored with F. S. Keller. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Joachim Friedrich Wohlwill (1928–1987).

Joachim (Jack) F. Wohlwill was a well known developmental psychologist who spent some time at Clark University as director of its graduate program in developmental psychology. Jack's concern with the environment became manifest in 1963 when he accepted an invitation to spend the year as a Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Jack's contributions to the study of environment and behavior are extensive, varied, and creative. With Irwin Airman and others, he edited books covering the environment in relation to children, elderly people, culture, the social sciences, and transportation behavior, as well as the impact of the natural environment on behavior. Jack's concern for developmental psychology remained as a potent force. In 1979, while still at Pennsylvania State, he became Professor of Human Development in the Programs on Individual and Family Studies and Man-Environment Relations. Related to his interests in developmental and environmental psychology was Jack's long-standing interest in the psychology of the arts and in the work of Daniel Berlyne on exploration, curiosity, and affective arousal, along with their roles in both the creation of and response to artistic stimuli. This interest in the psychology of the arts brought him back in formal contact with Clark University's Heinz Werner Institute for Developmental Analysis in 1986. Here he helped initiate a conference on "Development and the Arts," in which he was scheduled to present his work on "Effects of Media on the Creativity of Children's Art." Sadly for all, Jack died on July 10, 1987, in State College, just 10 weeks prior to the Clark conference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Saul B. Sells (1913–1988).

Saul Sells was born in New York City on January 13, 1913. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1933, after studying philosophy and psychology, and three years later earned a PhD degree from Columbia University. His dissertation work, supervised by Robert S. Woodworth, was on the atmosphere effect in syllogistic reasoning, an often-cited study. While a student at Columbia, he also worked closely with Edward L. Thorndike. Throughout his career, Saul stressed the significance of organism-environment interactions in understanding and predicting behavior; he also emphasized the need to study behavior in its natural setting. He devoted himself to bridging science and practice in psychology through three major and interrelated research domains. In addition to his 22 books and over 400 articles, Saul's breadth of professional interest and influence is reflected in his numerous awards and organizational affiliations (he was a fellow in 10 different APA divisions). He served on many editorial boards, but special dedication went into his founding efforts and over 20 years as Managing Editor for Multivariate Behavioral Research. On February 4, 1988, at age 75, Saul died of a heart attack while preparing to attend an early morning meeting on another new project. His work was his life and hobby, and he devoted himself to it fully. He and Helen had no children. A brother was his only surviving family member. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)