MATERNAL ATTITUDES IN SCHIZOPHRENIA.

"This study was undertaken in order to see whether or not mothers of schizophrenic patients are characterized by certain parent-child attitudes which might be assumed to be of significance in the psychogenesis of schizophrenia… What seemed to emerge as characterizing the mothers of schizophrenics were attitudes of self-sacrificing martyrdom, of subtle (rather than frank) domination, and overprotectiveness." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arms control: Human control.

"If our control of the arms race is to be improved governmental policies must be modified; public and governmental attitudes must be altered drastically. The attitude of the populace of one country toward that of another can change dramatically in a few years: for example, our attitude toward the Chinese and Japanese since the Second World War… . It is time… to stop acting on the basis of unsupported assumptions about human nature, and to begin developing rules of conduct on a sound and scientifically valid basis. It is time we stopped reacting negatively to Soviet challenges, and began to assume a positive course toward world objectives that we can accept and support." We must concentrate on "practical goals and objectives that lend themselves to nonlethal contest and peaceful resolution." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some factors affecting the reduction of overt hostility.

2 assumptions were tested to explain observations that initial expressions of aggression may be followed by decline in such unfriendly attitudes. The "symbolic catharsis hypothesis" assumes the reduction of hostile attitudes due to vicarious (fantasy) expression of hostility; guilt theory assumes inhibition, rather than reduction, of hostile atitudes. Ss were fed information, supposedly opinions of each other, which encouraged unfriendly or friendly attitudes. Ss were then either allowed to associate to TAT cards or fed additional information so as to be made to feel guilty about unfriendly attitudes towards the other. Results were interpreted as supporting the guilt hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Political and child-rearing attitudes in Sweden.

"3 groups of questionnaire items were constructed to measure authoritarian political attitudes, authoritarian child-rearing attitudes, and authoritarian aspects of upbringing. 144 adults from a random sample in a Swedish town were interviewed. It was found that individuals who made strict demands as parents expected in turn that strict demands be made on them as citizens. Significant positive correlations were also found between authoritarianism of upbringing and authoritarianism of both political and child-rearing attitudes. These findings verified predictions which had been derived from 3 hypotheses concerning the nature of the relationship between roles of authority and roles of submission." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical psychologists' perceptions of persons with mental illness.

Clinical psychologists have an ethical responsibility to monitor the nature and appropriateness of their attitudes toward persons with mental illness. This article presents the results of a survey of randomly selected clinical psychologists who were asked to rate the effectiveness, understandability, safety, worthiness, desirability, and similarity (to the rater) of persons with moderate depression, borderline features, and schizophrenia. The results show that psychologists perceive these individuals differently with respect to these characteristics. The results also suggest that psychologists disidentify or distance themselves from persons with personality and psychotic conditions. Implications for quality improvement and stigma reduction in the field of professional psychology are discussed. (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)     

Color-blind racial attitudes and white racial identity attitudes in psychology trainees.

Is it really important to talk about race in therapy? Does discussion of societal racism have any place in the consulting room? The American Psychological Association's (2003) recent multicultural guidelines highlight the limitations of a racially "color-blind" perspective for clinical practice. This study explored the relationships between color-blind racial attitudes and White racial identity. In a sample of 177 White counseling and clinical psychology trainees, we found that higher levels of attitudes that minimized or distorted the existence of contemporary racism (i.e., color-blind attitudes) were positively related to attitudes associated with less integrated forms of racial identity. Conversely, the results indicated that greater awareness of racism was related to more integrated White racial identity statuses. Implications for assessment, treatment, training, and future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual variations in implicit evaluation.

In the present research, the authors examined contextual variations in automatic attitudes. Using 2 measures of automatic attitudes, the authors demonstrated that evaluative responses differ qualitatively as perceivers focus on different aspects of a target's social group membership (e.g., race or gender). Contextual variations in automatic attitudes were obtained when the manipulation involved overt categorization (Experiments 1-3) as well as more subtle contextual cues, such as category distinctiveness (Experiments 4-5). Furthermore, participants were shown to be unable to predict such contextual influences on automatic attitudes (Experiment 3). Taken together, these experiments support the idea of automatic attitudes being continuous, online constructions that are inherently flexible and contextually appropriate, despite being outside conscious control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Gravestone for McCarthyism.

McCarthyism, as a salient political force, is dead. A rather ugly climate of opinion is its ghostly heir. Psychologists were deeply concerned about McCarthyism. The resolutions that were passed at regional and local meetings, and the comments in the American Psychologist and other professional journals about the values of free science and free education attest to that concern. Should psychologists forget about McCarthyism, now that it is dead? The author suggests that the project of explaining the degree of success that was attained by McCarthyism in the United States of America is worthy of the most sustained historical and psychological research. Whether dead or alive, McCarthyism should be subjected to the most relentless psychological probing, if only for reasons of elementary prudence. All scientists and all educators must desire to discover the causes of the unseemly thing, so that its survival or recurrence may be made impossible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forming implicit and explicit attitudes toward individuals: Social group association cues.

The authors explored how social group cues (e.g., obesity, physical attractiveness) strongly associated with valence affect the formation of attitudes toward individuals. Although explicit attitude formation has been examined in much past research (e.g., S. T. Fiske & S. L. Neuberg, 1990), in the current work, the authors considered how implicit as well as explicit attitudes toward individuals are influenced by these cues. On the basis of a systems of evaluation perspective (e.g., R. J. Rydell & A. R. McConnell, 2006; R. J. Rydell, A. R. McConnell, D. M. Mackie, & L. M. Strain, 2006), the authors anticipated and found that social group cues had a strong impact on implicit attitude formation in all cases and on explicit attitude formation when behavioral information about the target was ambiguous. These findings obtained for cues related to obesity (Experiments 1 and 4) and physical attractiveness (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, parallel findings were observed for race, and participants holding greater implicit racial prejudice against African Americans formed more negative implicit attitudes toward a novel African American target person than did participants with less implicit racial prejudice. Implications for research on attitudes, impression formation, and stigma are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding and Predicting Parental Decisions About Early Childhood Immunizations.

This research investigated the factors that influence decisions about immunizations. Women in the third trimester of pregnancy (N=195) rated their likelihood of immunizing their child; stated their reasons for and against immunizing; and rated their perceptions of the benefits and risks of immunization, feelings of responsibility, and anticipated regret if harm occurred. Immunization status was determined at follow-up. Stepwise regression analyses demonstrated that immunization decisions are strongly influenced by omission bias factors such as anticipated responsibility and regret variance (which explained more than 50% of variance). It is suggested that parents may benefit from antenatal decision aids that address omission bias and encourage them to assess benefits and risks of immunizations on the basis of scientific evidence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional Biases in Aggressive Children and Their Mothers.

To investigate if mothers and their aggressive children share the tendency to infer hostile motives from others' behavior in ambiguous social situations, 100 pairs of mothers and their clinic-referred or comparison children (50 boys and 50 girls) were asked to interpret hypothetical situations involving both overtly and relationally provocative scenarios. Results replicated previous findings of studies on social information processing of aggressive children and extended the findings to mothers of aggressive children. Findings were generally consistent with the hypothesis that mothers of aggressive children tend to view others' ambiguous actions as hostile, increasing the probability of responding with aggression and, in effect, modeling a hostile attributional bias for their children. Examinations of mothers' and their children's attributional and behavioral intentions suggested that mothers' and daughters' attributions and behavioral intentions were significantly correlated, whereas mothers' and sons' were not. Gender effects with regard to provocation type are also discussed. (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)     

A multiplant factor analysis of employees' attitudes toward their company.

Is an attitude questionnaire designed to measure a specific attitude unifactorial? If not, what is the nature of the factors? 735 mailed questionnaires, representing a 50% return, were analyzed. Although designed to measure one thing, attitude toward the company, it was found to contain a large general factor of general attitude or bias toward the company. 1 of the other 3 factors found was respect for personal rights; the 3rd was opportunity for self improvement. The factorial structure of employees' work attitudes may be more complex than previously thought. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Child rearing attitudes of mothers and fathers as reported by schizophrenic and normal patients.

To determine the significant aspects of family background as perceived by schizophrenics, Ss were asked to think back to the time when they were 13 or 14 and answer a questionnaire on child rearing practices as they were conceived to be reflected in the attitudes of their parents at that time. The responses of schizophrenics with good and poor premorbid backgrounds were compared with each other and to GMS patients. The results indicate that there was a significant and direct relationship between level of adjustment and degree of deviance in postulated parental attitudes. Parents, in general, are perceived to be dominating rather than overprotective or rejecting. Normals and schizophrenics differ significantly in describing familial attitudes, although all seem to perceive father as dominant, mother as over-protective. From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4JQ76G. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mathematics attitudes and mathematics outcomes of U.S. and Belarusian middle school students.

Two multivariate studies examined the applicability of the theory of planned behavior in gauging students' attitudes toward mathematics, as well as the predictive power of mathematics attitudes in explaining students' grades in mathematics. Middle-school students from the United States (N = 382) and Belarus (N = 339) participated. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the viability of the theory for both samples. The analyses revealed that between 25% and 32% of the variance in mathematics grades could be explained by the theory of planned behavior components. In fact, 17% of the variation in test grades could be explained by the theory of planned behavior over and above the effects of mathematics ability test scores. Mean score differences between countries were small (ds = .15 to .27), with Belarusian students scoring more highly on attitudes and control but less highly on subjective norms and intentions. The article concludes with discussion of potential interventions and the need to expand results to different age groups and achievement domains, as well as the need for longitudinal and cross-cultural research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the malleability of automatic attitudes: Combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked individuals.

Two experiments examined whether exposure to pictures of admired and disliked exemplars can reduce automatic preference for White over Black Americans and younger over older people. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to either admired Black and disliked White individuals, disliked Black and admired White individuals, or nonracial exemplars. Immediately after exemplar exposure and 24 hr later, they completed an Implicit Association Test that assessed automatic racial attitudes and 2 explicit attitude measures. Results revealed that exposure to admired Black and disliked White exemplars significantly weakened automatic pro-White attitudes for 24 hr beyond the treatment but did not affect explicit racial attitudes. Experiment 2 provided a replication using automatic age-related attitudes. Together, these studies provide a strategy that attempts to change the social context and, through it, to reduce automatic prejudice and preference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward professional clinical psychology.

"The immediate task confronting clinical psychology is to obtain recognition for its competence. The important thing for clinical psychologists to keep in mind is that we must determine now whether we shall serve a prime or an ancillary role… . If we vigorously and realistically pursue recognition for our competence, our role will be a prime one. Competence, therefore, is our concern, and it is associated with professional status. Many tests of professionalism confront us. The past 2 decades have produced a fantastic increase in the numbers of clinical psychologists who provide psychotherapy and psychodiagnosis in both institutional and private settings." Postdoctoral training institutes, preventive procedures, and brief treatment techniques are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual-motor compatibility and homonegativity: Approaching and avoiding words associated with homosexuality.

Two studies explored conceptual-motor compatibility effects underlying attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women. In Study 1, we tested if attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women would influence whether or not participants chose to engage in, and how quickly they engaged in, approach or avoidance motor movements. Participants responded to homosexual and heterosexual words on a computer screen by choosing to push (avoidance movement) or pull (approach movement) a computer mouse. Findings indicated that participants who were high in prejudice chose to make more prejudice-compatible motor responses than did participants who were low in prejudice. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to a prejudice-compatible or prejudice-incompatible motor movements condition. Results indicated that highly prejudiced participants were faster to complete prejudice-compatible motor movements than were low prejudice participants. Implications for implicit attitudes and measuring prejudice toward gay men and lesbian women are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Altemeyer replies.

Replies to commentary by J. J. Ray (see record 2007-08928-001) regarding the current author's book, Enemies of freedom: Understanding right wing authoritarianism (see record 1988-98419-000). The foremost of Ray's six criticisms is that "insofar as (I have) studied anything at all, (I have) probably studied some form of conservatism." The constructs of "right-wing authoritarianism" and "conservatism" can be defined as one wishes, and one can declare that they are the same thing. I prefer to draw several conceptual distinctions however, perhaps because one brand of "conservatism", especially visible in the United States, resents government authority. Next, Professor Ray quite correctly points out that my explanation of the development of personal authoritarianism ignored genetic possibilities. The twins-studies have caught me completely flat-footed, with my back turned, though I would find evidence for a DNA-based explanation of authoritarianism quite exciting. As for attitudes toward authorities, I suspect they do wobble some during adolescence. However, neither of the two adult studies Professor Ray cites shows "a general attitude toward authority does not exist." If anything, they suggest it does. Professor Ray says the consistency of the RWA Scale only occurs because my item selection procedures have created a distortion of the real world, a world of my own "from which the most disturbing outside information has been rigorously excluded." In fact, the covariation among items mentioning different kinds of authorities goes back to the Berkeley F Scale. Finally, Professor Ray concludes that I am studying some nonpolitical form of conservatism, because the RWA Scale gives "virtually no prediction of right-wing political preference." Data is presented to dispute this allegation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)