Attitudes toward special loyalty oaths at the University of California.

In 1951 "… the attitudes and backgrounds of a number of persons who declined to sign one or both of two special oaths then required at the University of California… " were examined and compared "… with comparable data from a sample of persons, similar in other respects, who had signed both of these oaths." Similarities and differences between signers and nonsigners are indicated. F-Scale results indicated that "… the nonsigners were markedly less authoritarian than the signers." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some biographical determiners of participation in group discussion.

To identify biographical factors that would differentiate participants from nonparticipants in a community group discussion, both biographical and discussion data were collected from 324 members of seven groups. "The reliable predictors… were: Socioeconomic status… familiarity with the discussion area… and group affiliation… . A high or positive rating was associated with a tendency to participate in group discussion… . The two factors having the greatest number of significant associations with the remaining [ones] were education and leadership." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for names and faces: a characteristic of social intelligence?

"The Memory for Names and Faces picture subtest of the George Washington University Social Intelligence Test and a miniature social situation testing the association of spoken names with human subjects… were administered to 210 Ss… [under] three conditions of set and non-set… to evaluate the consequences of preparatory instructions upon the social recall task performances… . The relationships between the social recall tasks are small (about .30) but statistically significant… . Sex differences favoring females on both social recall tasks are highly significant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Colors and mood-tones.

"Neuropsychiatric patients… nursing assistants… and students… were presented with eight stimulus colors and a list of eleven moods and asked to pick a color to go with each of the moods… . For nine… mood-tones,… significant differences (were found)… socioeconomic differences appeared to be more important… than… either mental health… or… geographical… (differences)… . Certain colors were found to have about the same affective meaning for all groups. In other instances there were sharp group differences in the extent to which they associated a given color with a certain mood-tone." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of verbal reinforcement on the recall of early memories.

"Thirty-four college students were asked to recall events from their early childhood… . 16… were reinforced by E saying "uh-huh" for memories concerned with members of the S's family. Eighteen… were similarly reinforced for memories not concerned with the family. In both groups the reinforcing stimulus served to increase the proportion of memories in the reinforced category… . The results, indicating that personally relevant and emotionally charged materials are subject to manipulation by the use of a minimal reinforcement verbalization, were related to the testing of causal and dynamic hypotheses about personality within the psychotherapeutic interview." 15 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scaling procedures based on the method of paired comparisons.

Thurstone's Case III and Case V, and Guilford's Short-Cut approaches to scaling paired-comparison data were experimentally compared. The stimuli were 10 teacher-approved and 10 teacher-disapproved behavior categories presented in paired-comparison form to 4 groups of school children. Each group contained a sample of 80 Ss and represented a particular sex, experimental condition and an age-grade level in the range grades 6-12. The intercorrelation between the scale values obtained by the 3 methods were approximately unity for both sexes under both experimental conditions. "The results are interpreted as corroborative… . investigations demonstrating the power of less complicated… approaches to scaling… ." 33 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group cohesiveness, communication level, and conformity.

"The predictions that both communication level and conformity behavior within groups vary positively with the degree of group cohesiveness were clearly confirmed. Measures of the three variables under investigation were obtained, in a laboratory setting… . Data pertaining to the validity of a cohesiveness index, derived from the conceptual definition of cohesiveness, were also obtained… . the obtained results lend support to attempts to predict group behavior on the basis of… general behavior principles." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GE08L. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential perception of certain jobs and people by managers, clerks, and workers in industry.

"… describes the use of the semantic differential for the study of how certain jobs and certain people are perceived by various groups of industrial Ss… . Five jobs and 6 people were rated on 38 scales of corresponding semantic differentials by 156 Ss representing various groups in industry." Supervisors considered successful and unsuccessful by vice-presidents were both considered successful by subordinates. "… the most significant variable in the perception of jobs is the level of the job… . the managers make finer discriminations between jobs than do the workers… . The findings suggest that management ought to consider the tendency of workers to value their jobs more than management values them, in its communication to them." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive and negative faking on a forced-choice authoritarian scale.

"The effects of faking both favorably and unfavorably upon a forced-choice scale of authoritarianism… were studied… . There were large distribution changes resulting from a set to 'look bad' compared to the conventional set, but only small changes emerged from faking favorably. Furthermore, the scores obtained by the subjects under the faking conditions, especially with the negative set, were opposite in direction from the intentions of the testees and the expectations of the experimeters… . The utility of this nonpolitical derivative of the California F Scale was recommended for leadership research in industrial, as well as military, settings." 19 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired and symbolic affective value as determinants of size estimation in schizophrenic and normal subjects.

"The present experiment investigated the size estimations… of pictures imbued with two kinds of affective meaning by schizophrenics with good premorbid adjustments… with poor premorbid adjustments, and normals. Positive and negative affective meanings were built into two pictures by means of a prior task involving differential reinforcement. In addition, size estimates were made of pictures depicting a mother scolding a boy and feeding a boy. The good premorbid schizophrenics… significantly overestimated the sizes of both the pictures associated with 'wrong' and the Scolding picture… . The results are interpreted in terms of a high degree of anxiety or affective responsivity in the Goods and the predominance of avoidance and withdrawal mechanisms in the Poor." 19 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex, ethnicity, and play preferences of preschool children.

"Preschool children of Oriental… and Caucasian… background were observed, using a time-sampling technique; and their choices of play companions were analyzed. Children in both ethnic groups were found to prefer play companions of their own sex, this tendency being more pronounced in boys than in girls." Ss tended to play with dolls resembling their own race. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4FF83M. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of four types of data on diagnostic conceptualization in psychological testing.

"… judges were called upon to specify certain behaviors, characteristics and interests of a subject (a) on the basis of biographical facts alone and then (b) on the basis of either observation of roleplaying situations, interpretation of a Rorschach protocol, or study of a battery of objective and projective tests… . The judges… did not differ significantly in over-all accuracy regardless of the type of information on which their judgments were based… [and] roleplaying situations, and… the subject's Rorschach protocol… [permitted of] no greater accuracy… than had been achieved by study of biographical facts alone." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coercive power and forces affecting conformity.

"In a laboratory experiment… Ss worked on a card sorting task under a supervisor who created various conditions of coercive power… . It was hypothesized that the supervisor's inductions would set up punishment forces and opposing resisting forces both of which would determine S's conformity… . It is concluded that punishment forces and resistance forces are independent determinants of conformity to coercive power." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Controlled association scores and engineering success.

"Six different scores from a controlled association test [were] studied, using a… sample of [687] experienced engineers… . The test asks Ss to write, in a limited time, as many synonyms as they can to eight common words. None of the six scores… appears to be related to job placement, but the five… based on the number of common responses given seem to be related to job success… most of the validity coefficients… are well below… 20… . Although not spectacularly high, such a… coefficient… is promising in comparison with over 50 other variables… studied in ETS research on engineering graduate placement tests." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical and counseling psychology: Some perspectives.

Both fields have similar historical roots and sources of impetus, both apply clinical methods, and both exhibit "a trend toward the relative devaluation of diagnosis." Each is "plagued by the proliferation of subspecialities"; both have been criticized recently for utilizing psychological testing; both suffer from a somewhat anemic and provincial technology. An investigation is described involving 12 major content categories in the attempt "to provide coverage for the total domain of the surface personality… ." Builders of personality tests have shown a common aversion for certain aspects of personality. "The optimal training of the counseling psychologist and of the clinical psychologist… is neither efficient nor optimal training for psychotherapy… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A note on the training of clinical and counseling psychologists.

"In June of 1958, letters were sent to the department chairmen of the 24 institutions approved by the APA Education and Training Board to train PhD psychologists in both the clinical and counseling specialties… . One-third of the 24 institutions are known to differentiate definitely in course requirements between the two specialties, while only one-eight are known to differentiate definitely in the preliminary examinations used for the two specialties… . Only three of the institutions definitely differentiate between the specialties in terms of both course requirements and preliminary examinations… . it seems obvious that little differentiation is being made between the two specialties in our major training institutions even though these institutions are approved to train for each of the specialties." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interfering and facilitating effects of test anxiety.

Performance on a conceptual task (embedded figures) varying in difficulty was related to levels of anxiety and intelligence. "The results… were interpreted as supporting the thesis that the effect of anxiety on performance, whether facilitating or interfering, is mediated primarily by defensive reactions to the anxiety… . [and] that the differential effects of anxiety upon performance may vary systematically depending upon both intelligence level and type of task and instructions." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dogmatism and anxiety in relation to problem solving: An extension of Rokeach's results.

"This study involved a replication and extension of some of Rokeach's work on the relation of Dogmatism (D) and Anxiety (A) to performance in a problem solving task… . Consistent with previous results, Ss with very high D scores performed more poorly on the… problem… and a significant positive relation… was found between D scores and A scores… . A scores were unrelated to performance on [this]… task." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4HK12F. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Desirable attributes of work: Four levels of management describe their job environments.

"Four management levels… were asked to describe the extent to which 24 desirable conditions of work characterized their… job environments… . All… levels… in general reported a high incidence of desired conditions of work… . Decision Making and Implementation, was the area where desirable conditions… were reported to be least prevalent." Top echelons reported greater richness of job environments. Staff specialist indicated the least desirable conditions. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4LH56R. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A general device versus more specific devices for selecting car salesmen.

2 trial forms of a salesman selection instrument each containing 145 biographical, personality, interest and attitude items were item analyzed to develop both a general and 6 specific (types of car sold) keys. A third form used items surviving the item analysis. "It was concluded that the more elaborate procedure of developing specific keys… did not result in any significant improvement in validity compared with… a single key for car salesmen in general." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)