A measure of supervisory quality.

A 50-item Supervisor's Problems Test was developed and tested in 3 companies against superior ratings of "good" and "poor" supervisors. Scores were also correlated with scores on verbal intelligence tests and on the F scales. "1. The test differentiates significantly between supervisors high in understanding of how to effectively supervise and those low in this understanding. 2… . [it] has a low relationship with verbal intelligence. 3… . [it] is substantially related to the democratic-authoritarian dimension of personality as measured by the F Scale." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antisemitism and the expression of fantasy aggression.

"In order to test a hypothesis derived from the scapegoat theory of prejudice [Dollard, et al, 1939], two groups… chosen on the basis of… high and… low scores on the Levinson Anti-Semitism Scale, [A-S] were subjected to an aggression arousing situation. Following aggression arousal a specially designed fantasy test was administered, which yielded measures of aggression expressed toward fantasy characters with Jewish or non-Jewish names. Control subjects, matched with Arousal group subjects on… A-S scores, took the fantasy test without prior aggression arousal. Aggression arousal produced significant differences in the fantasy aggression of High and Low A-S subjects… . [supporting] the hypothesis that persons high in anti-Semitism have a greater… tendency… to displace aggression selectively onto Jews." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4GD54W. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A search for correlates of intra-individual response variability.

"… evidence does not support… finding[s] that variability on free response tests is positively related to… Tolerance of Ambiguity… and is negatively related to… Gregariousness… . The problem is that if intra-individual variability is true variance it seems odd that we cannot find any correlates of it. It is… possible that variability scores, along with response set scores, are measuring aspects of personality that do not appear in self-report scores. The search for personality-measure correlates of variability should, perhaps, be directed toward other measures of style rather than content." 16 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The attribution of similarity: The influence of success and failure.

"One subject in… [a] pair was informed that he had earned high percentile scores on… [tasks], while the other subject was told he had earned low scores. Each subject then received a partially completed Allport-Vernon-Lindzey test booklet designed either to be identical with or systematically dissimilar to the one completed by the subject 6 or more weeks earlier… . he was to complete the booklet as he believed his colleague had. Degree of similarity attributed was defined as the absolute difference between own and attributed score on a… scale… . The results revealed that failure subjects attributed greater similarity to their colleagues than did successful subjects, particularly with respect to presumably dissimilar colleagues." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2GE19S. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ego disjunction and psychopathology.

"This study was designed to test the hypothesis that degree of ego disjunction is positively related to degree of psychopathology. A scale based upon the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule was devised to measure ego disjunction. College Students, Adolescents, Neurotics, Character Disorders, and Schizophrenics were tested and the following results were found… . a positive relationship between degree of ego disjunction and degree of psychopathology was demonstrated… . scores yielded three significantly different subgroups… . Schizophrenics alone;… Character Disorders, Neurotics and Adolescents;… [and] College Students alone." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationships between self-acceptance and sociometric choice.

"Lipsitt's… [see 34: 4134] Self-Concept and Ideal-Self scales and two Sociometric scales were given to fourth, sixth, and eighth grade subjects… Acceptance of others, acceptance by others, and acceptance by best friends were curvilinearly related to self-concept scores… . trends were not significantly different in different grades or sexes… . Acceptance by others was more strongly related to self-concept than was acceptance by best friends… . The sociometric measures were not significantly related to the discrepancy between ideal-self and self-concept scores suggesting that the discrepancy score obtained by subtraction may not be a valid measure of self-acceptance." From Psyc Abstracts 36:04:4FF72R. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Job satisfaction study of two small unorganized plants.

"The purpose of this study was to test the validity of the tear ballot on the premise that the higher the job satisfaction scores, the lower will be the job-related interpersonal communicative contacts between labor and management members. The number of job-problem sessions for a period of one year was thus utilized as the validation criterion based upon the hypothesis that the job-satisfied and happy worker has less job-related interview sessions than does the job-dissatisfied or unhappy worker; i.e., the frequence of such sessions should be inversely related with job satisfaction. Combining the data from both plants, [N's were 22 and 14] a Pearsonian coefficient of correlation of—.76 was found between job satisfaction scores and the number of job-related interview sessions." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Seniority and criterion measures of job proficiency.

"On the basis of an analysis of 47 studies involving measures of the job proficiency of 2,462 workers employed in 39 different occupations, the average correlation between seniority and job proficiency is .17 with a standard error of correlation of .02. The type of measure of job success influences the relation between seniority and job success… [and]… the influence of seniority increases with the skill level of the occupations sampled… with skilled occupation the influence appears to be large relative to the magnitude of validity coefficients commonly obtained and should be taken into account and controlled whenever possible." (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)     

Predictive validity of the interview.

This paper describes the use of the interview technique as a valid and reliable instrument for predicting job placement and vocational success. The interviews of 144 blind adults were objectively and quantitatively scored, making full use of all responses elicited by the S. The results indicated that job success and vocational placement are significantly related to a number of variables tapped by the interview, such as perception of blindness, learned ways of dealing with tension, interpersonal interaction, and employment potential. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal reinforcement in schizophrenia.

"The common clinical observation of impaired 'reality contact' in schizophrenia implies a deficit in the intensity or direction of responsiveness to social cues… specifically those involved in verbal interactions… . [Therefore] it may be predicted that the reinforcing function of listener reactions (i.e., verbal reinforcement) will be negligible for them as compared with nonschizophrenic control Ss… . The… results [of this experiment] confirm the hypothesis… ." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between real similarity and assumed similarity with favorability controlled.

"The present study tests the hypothesis that subjects who share a number of characteristics in common with a stimulus person tend to assume greater similarity to him in common with him. Special attention is given to controlling the influence of favorability on the measurements of assumed similarity… . The data almost completely fail to support the hypothesis that… [assumed similarity] varies with… [real similarity] when the favorability component is controlled… . the data suggest that, when the stimulus object is relatively socially acceptable and has characteristics with which all S's are relatively familiar… [assumed similarity] is determined primarily by the favorability response set… and is almost uninfluenced by… [real similarity]." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality dynamics and accident proneness in an industrial setting.

"Two groups of Ss… [17 men with a total of 47 accidents over 2 years, and 17 accident-free men] were [compared] by means of a sentence completion test… . the high accident Ss, in comparison with the non-accident Ss, were significantly lower on the socially desirable personality dispositions of optimism, trust, and sociocentricity. In general, there were no statistically significant differences… on several negative personality dispositions, but there was a slight indication of positive association between high accident proneness and high scores on a cluster composed of the socially undesirable personality dispositions of egocentricity, anxiety, and resentment. There was highly significant association between high accident proneness and projective responses indicative of a negative attitude toward employment." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The achievement motive, goal setting, and probability preferences.

"This study deals with the effect of individual differences in strength of achievement motive on… goal setting… [and] preferences for imaginary bets equated for expected monetary value but differing in probability of winning… . Measures of n Achievement were obtained by content analysis of responses to the French Test of Insight. Persons with high n Achievement scores were assumed to have relatively stronger motives to approach success and those with low n Achievement scores relatively stronger motives to avoid failure… . The results are consistent with the theory concerning motivational determinants of risk taking behavior and constitute evidence of the… effects of individual differences in… achievement motive… in games of chance as well as… skill." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

SVIB as a predictor of job satisfaction.

A study was made of 185 graduates of professional curricula to test the hypothesis that job satisfaction in a certain occupation is related to congruent or appropriate interests in that occupation. Occupations represented were medicine, law, dentistry, mechanical engineering, accounting, and journalism. Ss were contacted by mail and asked to fill out 3 job satisfaction blanks and the SVIB. 12th grade SVIB scores were also available for each S. Only 1 of 56 relationships between interests and job satisfaction scores was significantly different from 0. The lack of relationships was true for both earlier and current testing of interests and for all 3 job satisfaction blanks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of hypnotically induced anxiety on the Manifest Anxiety Scale and the Barron Ego-Strength Scale.

A measure of hypnotically-induced anxiety was correlated with scores on Taylor's Manifest Anxiety Scale and Barron's Ego-Strength Scale. A positive relationship was elicited between degree of experienced anxiety and the Taylor scale; a negative relationship between anxiety and Barron's scale. "These results suggest that the MAS is a valid indicator of clinical anxiety… [and] that the… [Barron scale] is genuinely measuring ego-strength or some similar trait associated with psychopathological conditions." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The retest consistency of Army Alpha after thirty years.

A sample of 127 males who had originally taken Army Alpha, Form 6, as freshmen in 1919 were retested on the same form in 1950. Retest coefficients ranged from .30 to .69 for the eight subtests; total score retest coefficient was .77. These coefficients are compared with corrected odd-even coefficients based on the 1919 scores. "… since the range of talent in a college population largely composed of graduates is surely restricted and since… [a previous study]… suggests that the thirty-year age increment did affect individuals differentially… . If a conclusion is warranted, it would seem to be that personnel decisions posited upon the long-term consistency of results obtained from our better intellective tests are reasonably well-founded." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of aversive stimuli on reaction time in schizophrenia.

"… the experiment was to assess the motivational role of aversive stimuli in modifying the performance of normal and… schizophrenic… males… [on] a visual reaction time task… . During… [one] series Ss responded under… experimental conditions… [part of which] involved the use of intense noise as an aversive stimulus. None of the experimental conditions appreciably altered the performance of normal Ss. However, schizophrenic Ss performing under… [conditions involving noise] displayed greater improvement than control Ss." 22 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are medical specialist interest scales applicable to Negroes?

"Interest scores of 60 Negro seniors from Harvard University Medical College are contrasted with the scores of [a sample of] 150 white seniors… the differences between the two racial groups are small, taking everything into account… .There is no warrant for assuming that the medical specialist interest scales are not applicable to Negroes." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)