Differential recall as a function of mood disorder in clinically depressed patients: Between- and within-subject differences.

In Study 1, 23 depressed outpatients (aged over 60 yrs); 23 controls matched to the depressed group on age, sex, education, and SES; and 23 undergraduates rated trigrams as liked or disliked and were asked to recall a portion of these after a study period. Results show that depressed Ss recalled more trigrams they had disliked than ones they had liked. Both control groups had the opposite pattern, but undergraduates recalled significantly more trigrams than did older Ss. In Study 2, 20 of the 23 depressed Ss from Study 1 were administered different trigram packets at the middle and end of therapy using the same procedure. Results show that the change from a depressed to a nondepressed state across therapy correlated with a change from the superiority of disliked trigrams in the recall to a superiority of liked trigrams. It is suggested that this simple differential-recall procedure can be used as a moderate measure of the continuum of depression and success in therapy. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Popularity, individual friendship selection, and specific peer interaction among children.

The social interaction of 94 4–5 yr old White preschoolers was observed and scored for the frequency of reinforcing, neutral, and punishing behavior. The peer target of that behavior was specified, and Ss were identified sociometrically as liked or disliked by peers. Consistent with past findings, an S's popularity in the peer group was associated with overall rates of receiving and dispensing reinforcing and neutral acts. The selection of a specific liked peer, however, was not related to that peer's overall social behavior but rather to the specific interaction between that peer and the S. In particular, the interaction between an S and a liked peer was characterized by high rates of reinforcing and neutral acts. Ss' interaction with disliked peers did not differ from that with peers who were neither liked nor disliked. The importance of distinguishing between general interaction patterns affecting sociometric status and specific interaction affecting friendship selection is discussed. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Telling lies.

Men and women (20 each) were videotaped while describing someone they liked, someone they disliked, someone they were ambivalent about, someone they were indifferent about, someone they liked as though they disliked him or her, and someone they disliked as though they liked him or her. Accuracy at detecting that some deception had occurred was far greater than accuracy at detecting the true underlying affect, and Ss who were good at detecting that deception was occurring were not particularly skilled at reading the speakers' underlying affects. However, Ss whose deception attempts were more easily detected by others also had their underlying affects read more easily. Speakers whose lies were seen more readily by men also had their lies seen more readily by women, and observers better able to see the underlying affects of women were better able to see the underlying affects of men. Skill at lying successfully was unrelated to skill at catching others in their lies. A histrionic strategy (hamming) was very effective in deceiving others, and this strategy was employed more by more Machiavellian Ss, who also tended to get caught less often in their lies. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancies, alcohol, and sexual arousal in women.

A total of 40 university female volunteers, all social drinkers aged 18–35 yrs, were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 expectancy conditions in which they were led to believe that the beverage they were administered contained either vodka and tonic or tonic only. For half the Ss in each expectancy condition, the beverage actually contained vodka; for the other half, tonic only. After their drinks, measures of vaginal pressure pulse obtained with a vaginal photoplethysmograph were recorded during a nonerotic control film and 2 erotic films depicting a heterosexual or a homosexual interaction. The 2 groups that received alcohol, regardless of whether they believed that their drinks contained alcohol, showed significantly reduced sexual arousal during both erotic films. No effects of expectancy or an interaction between alcohol and expectancy were obtained. Ss' subjective estimates of intoxication were significantly correlated with their self-report of sexual arousal during both erotic films. The differences between these results and previous findings using similar procedures with male social drinkers are discussed. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal adjustment and the free recall of materials with affectively positive or negative meaningfulness.

Conducted 2 experiments on the role of affective assessment in human verbal learning. In Exp I, 40 high school students grouped according to Tennessee Self-Concept Scale scores were given consonant-vowel-consonant trigrams as learnable items. Ss with high self-concepts learned the trigrams they liked more rapidly than disliked trigrams. Ss with low self-concepts reversed this customary pattern and learned disliked trigrams more rapidly than liked trigrams. In Exp II, 64 undergraduates who had completed the Barron Ego-Strength scale were given real words as learnable materials. Results showed that it was possible for the same S to learn certain words along a negative and other words along a positive reinforcement-value sequence. This depended upon whether the word meanings involved reflected a problem area or an area of competence for the Ss being studied. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social desirability and the description of others.

Ss were asked to use Leary's Interpersonal Check List (ICL) to describe people they liked, disliked, and knew well but neither liked nor disliked. Social Desirability Scale (SD) values had been obtained on each of the 12 items of the ICL in a previous study by Edwards (see 32: 464). The present list selections were evaluated in terms of this dimension. Liked people are characterized by items high in SD; disliking people correlates less, but in the predicted direction. A positive relationship also exists between a Ss own SD score and that he attributes to others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitization versus adaptation in preparation for emergencies: Prior experience with an emergency ration and its acceptability in a stimulated survival situation.

416 soldiers undergoing a 7-day simulated survival experience were issued 8 meat bars as part of the emergency ration. Rating of 5 methods of preparation, number of bars eaten, reports of being "made sick," and attitude toward future use were collected. "The Ss who had previously used the ration, regardless of whether they liked or disliked it, responded more favorably according to all four criteria when compared with those who had no experience with the ration. Even those who had tried the ration and disliked it responded as favorably as those who had not tried it. Fewer of those who had disliked the ration reported having been 'made sick' by the ration than those who had never tried it." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mediation of interpersonal expectancy effects: Counselor's tone of voice.

Investigated the role of tone of voice as a possible factor in the mediation of naturally occurring rather than experimentally produced interpersonal expectancy effects. 10 camp counselors (aged 18–22 yrs) talked about children at camp whom they believed to have high social ability (high social expectancy), high athletic ability (high athletic expectancy), low social ability (low social expectancy), and low athletic ability (low athletic expectancy) in tape-recorded interviews. The counselors themselves were rated by experts at the camp on 8 competence dimensions. 10 judges (5 male and 5 female undergraduates) rated the tone of voice (content-filtered recording) of these interviews. Judges rated the counselors' tone of voice as warmer and less hostile when talking about children for whom they had high expectations than when talking about children for whom they had low expectations. Nonverbal expectancy effects were also detected more accurately by male than female judges and when the counselors talked about social rather than athletic abilities. Counselors who displayed less competent and more ineffective attributes were more prone to biasing effects as reflected in tone of voice, whereas counselors who displayed more competent and more effective attributes generally did not show differential expectancy effects as reflected in their tone of voice. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought–behavior processes.

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship specificity of aggressogenic thought–behavior processes and to investigate the role of self-esteem in translating or inhibiting aggressogenic thought into aggression toward personally liked and disliked targets. Participants (186 Finnish boys and girls; 11–12 years old at Time 1) completed measures twice over a 1-year interval. We assessed children's attributions of hostility, relational goals, expectations of anger, and self-efficacy at Time 1 as well as aggression, at both time points, toward their previously identified liked and disliked peers. Our results mostly supported our hypothesis that cognitions guide behavior mainly within the relationship context. Moreover, high self-esteem potentiated cognition–behavior links toward children's own liked peer but inhibited the actualization of aggressogenic thought toward children's disliked peer. These findings highlight the importance of taking a Person × Situation approach when studying cognition–behavior processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Communicational significance of therapist proxemic cues.

Presented 72 pictures showing all possible combinations of therapist proxemic cues (distance, eye contact, trunk lean, body orientation, and accessibility of posture) to 60 male Ss representing 6 different client subgroups. Ss rated the pictures on a 5-point continuum scale for how much they thought the therapist liked or disliked them. Close distance, eye contact, trunk lean, and face-to-face body orientation were taken as significantly positive indicators. Accessibility had no significant effect on Ss' attitudes. No group effects were found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of sex role attitudes and similarity on men's rejection of male homosexuals.

Investigated 120 male undergraduates' reactions to homosexuals. Ss preselected on the basis of their profeminist, moderate, or antifeminist scores on the Attitude Toward Feminism Scale were assigned at random to 1 of 4 experimental conditions. Using a standard attraction paradigm design, Ss rated a bogus "partner," who was represented as either homosexual or heterosexual and as having attitudes either similar or dissimilar to theirs. Consistent with prediction, similar partners were liked more than dissimilar partners, and heterosexual partners were liked more than homosexuals. Homosexuals were seen as more dissimilar to the Ss in all conditions. Liberals were more accepting of homosexuals and dissimilar partners than were traditionals. Results are discussed in terms of the relationship between sex role attitudes and tolerance of dissimilarity. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of intelligence and task difficulty in the affective learning styles of children with high and low self-concepts.

Fifth-graders prerated both abstract and concrete nouns for likability, and paired-associate lists were constructed by pairing nouns (liked with liked and disliked with disliked). As predicted, the high self-concept (Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale) children learned their liked noun pairs more efficiently than their disliked pairs, while the low self-concept children reversed and learned their disliked noun pairs more readily. Further analysis revealed that these self-concept patterns were most pronounced for low-IQ (Lorge-Thorndike Intelligence Test) children. High-IQ children, who were superior to low-IQ children in overall learning, showed no preference for their affective evaluations in learning. Increasing task difficulty (e.g., by increasing work abstractness) resulted in a tendency to learn disliked items more readily than liked items. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing the structure of prejudicial attitudes: The case of attitudes toward homosexuals.

Two studies assessed the structure of attitudes toward homosexuals. In Study 1, Ss completed measures of stereotypes, symbolic beliefs, and affective associates as well as attitudes toward homosexuals. They also completed the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) scale. The results reveal that (1) stereotypes did not provide a complete representation of attitudes, (2) RWA was negatively correlated with attitudes toward homosexuals, (3) the relative importance of the predictor variables differed for high and low RWA Ss, and (4) the 3 predictors accounted for more variance in the attitudes of low RWA than of high RWA Ss. Study 2 also included measures of past experiences and perceived value dissimilarity. Results revealed that past experiences significantly added to the prediction of attitudes only for high RWA Ss and that much of the RWA–attitude relation was accounted for by the consideration of symbolic beliefs and perceived value dissimilarity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Arousal as a necessary condition for attitude change following induced compliance.

In a 2?×?3 design, 63 university students were induced to write counterattitudinal essays under either high- or low-choice conditions. All Ss were led to believe that a pill, which they had just taken in the context of a separate experiment, was a placebo. In reality, Ss were given a pill that contained either 30 mg of phenobarbital (tranquilizer condition), 5 mg of amphetamine (amphetamine condition), or milk powder (placebo condition). In this last condition, the results yielded the usual dissonance effect: High choice produced more attitude change in the direction of the essay than low choice. When Ss were given a tranquilizer, this effect was virtually eliminated; when Ss were given amphetamine, attitude change increased under high choice and was exhibited for the 1st time under low choice. These results are consistent with the notion that attitude change is in the service of reducing arousal and with the idea that arousal from other sources can be misattributed to attitude-discrepant behavior. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of expectancy manipulation in systematic desensitization.

Manipulated expectancy, relaxation, and hierarchy content in a 2 * 2 design with 2 additional control groups. Ss were 76 spider-phobic undergraduates. It was hypothesized that a major portion of therapeutic change following desensitization could be accounted for by the Ss' responses to positive feedback inherent in the paradigm. Ss saw either photographs of spiders or blank slides that they believed to be tachistoscopically-presented pictures of spiders. One-half of the Ss believed their progress through the hierarchy to be contingent on autonomic responses; the others believed rate of progress to be random. Findings did not support the hypothesis that expectancy is the only factor in desensitization, but they did clarify the role of expectancy vis-a-vis the counterconditioning elements typically discussed in the literature. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How liked and disliked foods affect time perception.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence on time perception of pictures showing liked or disliked foods in comparison with a neutral picture. Healthy adults performed a temporal bisection task in which they had to categorize the presentation duration of pictures (neutral, liked, and disliked foods) as more similar to a short (400 ms) or to a long (1,600 ms) standard duration. The data revealed that the presentation duration of food pictures was underestimated compared with the presentation duration of the neutral picture, and that this underestimation was more marked for the disliked than for the liked food pictures. These results are consistent with the idea that this time underestimation arises from an attentional-bias mechanism. The food pictures, and particularly those depicting disliked food items, distracted attention away from the processing of time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expectancy and pharmacological effects of alcohol on human cognitive and motor performance: The compensation for alcohol effect.

42 male undergraduate social drinkers were led to expect either alcohol or tonic. After actually consuming no alcohol, a low dosage, or a moderate dosage, they performed various cognitive and motor tasks. A questionnaire assessed Ss' responses to the expectancy manipulation and either preceded or followed task administration. A 2?×?3?×?2 MANOVA resulted in a significant Expectancy?×?Dosage interaction for cognitive tasks (letter cancellation, digit span, Raven Progressive Matrices). Ss apparently compensated for alcohol-induced deterioration on these tasks when they were aware they had consumed alcohol. No consistent effects were found for motor tasks (finger tapping, stylus monitoring, standing steadiness, and walking steadiness). (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol and cognitive set on sexual arousal to deviant stimuli.

48 undergraduate male social drinkers were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 expectancy set conditions in which they were led to believe that the beverage they were administered contained alcohol or no alcohol. For half of the Ss in each expectancy condition, the beverage was an alcoholic malt liquor; the others drank a nonalcoholic malt beverage. After their drinks, changes in penile tumescence (PT) in response to normal and deviant tape recordings and to self-generated fantasy were measured physiologically by a mercury-in-rubber strain gauge. The cognitive set (expectancy) significantly increased PT in response to the various erotic recordings. Alcohol did not significantly influence levels of sexual arousal. Ss who believed they had consumed an alcoholic beverage evidenced significantly more arousal to the forcible rape recording and to the sadistic stimuli than Ss who believed that they had consumed a nonalcoholic beverage, regardless of the actual contents of the beverage. The cognitive set, as well as the alcohol, significantly influenced heart rate, skin temperature, and subjective reports of sexual arousal. Self-report measures of sexual arousal were positively correlated with PT. Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory scores were not significantly correlated with PT, although the Sex Guilt subscore was negatively correlated with the subjective measure of sexual arousal for the heterosexual intercourse and forcible rape tapes. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)