When Enough Is Not Enough.

Looft (see record 1972-02727-001) presented an excellent examination of the "belief in much today and more tomorrow" of the "more-is-good philosophy" so common in our culture. He cited invidious comparisons based upon "moreness" and suggested a "radical change away from the psychology of more toward a psychology of enough." What Looft's presentation lacks is emphasis on the clearly quantitative-versus-qualitative dimension perhaps implicit in his discussion. "Enough" is still based upon "muchness" rather than "goodness." In place of a psychology of more, in short, is needed a psychology of better. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Counseling adults in transition: Linking practice with theory.

Reviews the book, Counseling adults in transition: Linking practice with theory by Nancy K. Schlossberg (1984). Rehabilitation psychologists can profit from this book because of its concise contents, its intensive examination of life's transitions, its gerontological perspectives, its insistent "linking" of otherwise linear thinking, and its pervasive implications for work with rehabilitation clients. This statement of the book's value for our field is given to start with, since its title might suggest that it is relevant only to rehabilitation counseling. Schlossberg ably discusses theories and practices of interest to rehabilitation psychologists and reviews research with pertinent heuristic possibilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comment on "The Use of Human Subjects in Psychological Research".

While Irwin Berg's report on "The Use of Human Subjects in Psychological Research" (Amer. Psychologist, 1954, 9, pp. 108-111) places a salutary emphasis upon the precautions experimental psychologists should take both to protect the subjects' welfare and to prevent the public's wrath, other precautions need to be borne in mind lest a fear of being classed with the Nazi "doctors of infamy" causes an unhealthy swing to the other extreme of inactivity in particular areas of research. In many areas where research is desperately needed, few fruitful investigations could be conducted if the subjects were to have the advance knowledge the Nuremberg principles seem to demand. These medically oriented principles in general require considerable revision before they can be applied directly to the realm of psychology. Another factor that must be recognized is that an experiment conducted solely with voluntary subjects may suffer thereby a delimitation often disregarded. A sample of voluntary subjects may not be truly representative of the universe under scrutiny. Volunteers may differ from nonvolunteers in ways germane to experimental assumptions, hypotheses, and conclusions. From these considerations three suggestions are provided. 1. The Nuremberg principles should be translated into psychological terms through an accumulation of illustrative incidents and a resultant formulation of additional principles to be included under Section 4.3 of Ethical Standards of Psychologists. 2. Remove possible harmful side effects of ethical research. And, 3. Experimenters who rely on the use of volunteers should consider the possible influence upon their findings of the voluntary nature of the subjects and, where necessary, should qualify their conclusions accordingly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encouragement, anxiety, and test performance.

"To determine the effect of encouragement on the individual test performance of Ss with varying amounts of anxiety, two anxiety scales were first administered to a sample of college students… three groups of Ss were selected and designated low-, medium-, and high-anxiety. To each S was individually administered the MacQuarrie Test for Mechanical Ability… . On the basis of scores on this test, each anxiety category was divided into two equated groups. Six weeks later the test was again individually administered to each S, this time encouraging comments being offered between subtests to one group in each category but not to the other. Two-tailed t tests revealed only one significant finding: the performance of the low-anxiety Ss displayed increased variability under encouragement." 23 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)