Social
THE EFFECT OF MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOME MAGNITUDE ON JUDGEMENTS OF RESPONSIBILITY, BLAME, AND ANGER
Amanda Tsetsi, Dan Fehr, Sarah Gates, Dan Homeijer, Danielle Krocckel, Rob McNamara, Tricia Williams, Christine Gomes, David Peitraszewski, Patricia Ryan, Lindsay Steingari, & Mary Turner DePalma
Ithaca College
According to Weiner (1995), a cognitive process of assigning responsibility
takes place after some event occurs. Weiner contends that if both
personal causality and mutability are present, and, in the absence of any
mitigating circumstances, a judgement of responsibility will be rendered.
Weiner, however, hypothesizes that the presence of mitigating circumstances
may “soften, alleviate, or totally eliminate” a judgement of responsibility.
The current experiment was designed to empirically test Weiner’s hypotheses
concerning the effect of mitigating circumstances and outcome magnitude
on judgements of responsibility, blame, and anger. One hundred seventy
six undergraduates were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions in which
the presence of mitigating circumstances and outcome magnitude were manipulated.
Participants in each condition were presented with a scenario which manipulated
a classmate’s explanation for failure to turn in their portion of a group
project. Results indicated that the presence of mitigating circumstances
did significantly reduce ratings of responsibility, anger, blame, irritation,
fault and control. Ratings of sympathy increased in the presence
of mitigating circumstances. In addition, analyses indicated that
outcome magnitude was positively related to responsibility, anger, and
irritation. Outcome magnitude, however, did not influence blame as
initially hypothesized. These data provide substantial support for
Weiner’s cognitive process of assigning responsibility, but call for additional
examination of the outcome magnitude variable.
JUROR'S RESPONSE TO DELAYED REPORTING OF SEXUAL ABUSE
Kimberly A. Mooney, Stacy E. Berenson, Heather A. Clancy, Grant J. Keating, Gabrielle Perelmuter, Margaret A. Sills, Charrisse L. Truax, Richard Deleguardia, & Linda M. McBride
Ithaca College
Participants (41 male and 49 female undergraduates) were randomly assigned
to one of four conditions. In all cases, an 18-year-old woman accuses
her uncle of having sexually abused her eight years ago. Her memory
of the abuse was either previously repressed and only recently
recovered or not repressed but only recently reported. In all
conditions, the victim had been receiving therapy for depression.
In addition, her testimony varies in the degree of detail recalled. Students
read a five-page summary of the testimony offered and jury
instructions supposedly given during a criminal trial. After
reading the summary, participants responded to a 31-item questionnaire
asking for their verdict, the sentence they would recommend (if any), their
reactions to various elements of the transcript, and the factors that
influenced their decision. A 24-item post-experimental questionnaire
asked the respondents for background information and about their attitudes
toward related legal issues. Males were more likely to find the defendant
not guilty than females. In general, the victim was seen
as being more accurate and believable when her memories were not repressed
and when her testimony was more detailed.
PREDICTION OF ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING
Galen L. Baril, Melissa Lodato, & Rose Sebastinelli
University of Scranton
This research empirically tested the connection between four of Rest's
(1984) five moral processes: moral reasoning, motivation and character
and ethical decision making. Moral sensitivity, the fifth component,
was not included because of measurement problems. Surveys were administered
to 212 undergraduate and graduate business students at the University of
Scranton. Questionnaires were composed of a demographic section,
Trevino and Youngblood's (1990) in-basket dilemmas, (our measure of ethical
decision making), the short version of Rest's (1993) Defining Issues Test
(moral reasoning), an optimal weighing of 16 items from the Conscientiousness
sub-scale of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1991) (moral
character), and a modified version of Rokeach's Instrumental Values Inventory
(1973) that included "Moral" (moral motivation) and 18 other values to
be ranked ordered. Ethical decision making is significantly related
to all three predictors. A stepwise regression analysis also showed
that all three variables contribute uniquely in the prediction of ethical
decision making. In addition, ethical decision making is significantly
related to sex and the values of loving, obedience (negatively) and honest.
A stepwise regression analysis showed that all but sex and the value of
honesty and contribute uniquely. Findings suggested our new measures
of moral motivation and character have research potential, particularly
the modified version of Rokeach's Instrumental Values Inventory.
This instrument operationally defined an important component of Rest's
model (moral motivation), and two other facets of the inventory (the values
of loving and obedience) are significant and unique predictors of ethical
decision making. We are less satisfied with the NEO sub-scale. Only
after optimally weighting the items using regression coefficients is a
reasonable level of prediction obtained.
Developmental
CORRELATES OF SUCCESSFUL POST-DIVORCE PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS
Kristen Calore, Jamie DiBlassio, & Catherine Chambliss
Ursinus College
This study attempted to determine which shared activities contribute
to more successful parent-child relationships following divorce.
Two hundred and eleven undergraduate students attending a small liberal
arts college completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered
to three introductory Psychology courses, two in the fall semesters and
one in the spring semester. A median split was performed on the divorce
cases to distinguish between those with high quality and those with low
quality relationships with their parents. T-tests were performed
to compare these two groups in terms of involvement in 22 shared activities.
Eight activities distinguished the high quality relationships groups.
When relationships with mothers were explored separately, 3 additional
shared activities were predictive of the quality of the relationship.
A different group of 8 activities predicted the quality of relationship
with fathers.
THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VARIOUS SHARED ACTIVITIES AND THE QUALITY OF PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS
Jamie DiBlassio, Kristen Calore, & Catherine Chambliss
Ursinus College
The study attempted to determine the association between various shared
activities and the quality of parent-child relationships. Two hundred
and eleven undergraduate students attending a small liberal arts college
completed a questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered to
three introductory Psychology courses, two in the fall semesters and one
in the spring semester. A median split was performed on all of the
cases in order to distinguish between those with high quality and those
with low quality relationships with their parents. T-tests were performed
to compare these two groups in terms of involvement in 22 shared activities.
One activity with the mother and one activity with the father were not
significant out of the 22 total shared activities.
Cognitive
THE DEVELOPMENT OF POPOUT OF 2D CUES TO 3D STRUCTURE (Withdrawn)
Jennifer Gillis & Peter C. Gerhardstein
Binghamton University - State University of New York
Do two-dimensional drawings that contain pictorial (static) cues to depth, elicit rapid and effortless detection, the type of search that Treisman (1980) called parallel, or pop-out search? Enns and Rensink (1991) suggested that junctions (e.g., Y-junctions, arrow junctions, L-junctions) facilitate the organization of an object, such as surface orientation, into an assembly that is processed more rapidly than the junction itself. If this is true, then 2D drawings of 3D objects (e.g., a cube) should increase visual search speed because they contain junctions that are important for recovery of information about surface orientation.
This study was a developmental replication of Enns and Rensink (1991) using 4-to-9-year-old children as participants. In light of the previous research (Ruskin & Kaye, 1990; Enns & Cameron, 1987), it was hypothesized that children would execute visual search for the targeted item slower than adults would overall. Currently, the effects of the 3D and "square" manipulation in younger subjects are unknown.
The analysis of results showed that as distractor number increased,
the participants took longer to respond. Also, as the age of the participants
increased, response rate also increased. The two tasks (conditions) were
shown to be significantly different, indicating that the RT for the 3D
condition was significantly lower than for the "square" condition. As distractor
number increased, the increase in RT (decrease in performance) was more
prominent in younger participant groups. Task difficulty did not change
with age, thus, task performance did not increase with age. Lending support
to the hypothesis, the task by distractor pattern of adult performance
was significantly different from that of both younger. It appears that
the ability to process key features of an object's surface orientation
increases with age and that organization of junctions affect visual search.
PERSONALITY CORRELATES OF COMPUTATIONAL ESTIMATOIN SKILL
Laurie A. Wyckoff, Thomas P. Hogan, Bill Jones, Paul Krebbs, & Mark Fitzgerald
University of Scranton
Several researchers have suggested that personality variables are important determinants of the ability to provide reasonably accurate quantitative estimates, specifically that "good estimators" have a tolerance for error. The relationship between these two variables has yet to be explored with any systematic measurement of the tolerance-for error variable. The aim of the present study is to provide such a measurement.
Computational estimation skill was measured with a 20-item test employed in two previous studies. Each item consisted of one computational problem presented on an overhead projector for 10 seconds.
Tolerance for error was measured by the Openness scale on the NEO-Five Factor Inventory. The NEO-FFI also yielded scores for Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, the five scales together corresponding to the "big five" personality variables.
Information was also obtained regarding participants’ gender, major, last mathematics course completed, self-estimated math ability and Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores. Sixty-five undergraduate students participated.
Contrary to the hypothesis, there was no significant correlation between
the estimation scores and the Openness scale. There was a negative
correlation between estimation scores and the Agreeableness scale that
approached significance. None of the other NEO-FFI scales showed
significant correlations with the estimation test. The suggestion
in the literature that tolerance for error is critical for success in computational
estimation was not supported.
SELF-HELP FOR THE BLUES: EXPERTS RATE RESOURCES FOR MOOD DISORDERS
Laurie A. Wyckoff, Melyssa Pokrywa, Thomas P. Smith, and John C. Norcross
University of Scranton
Given the high prevalence of mood disorders and given the high frequency and documented effectiveness of bibliotherapy for depression, it is imperative to identify those self-help books to recommend to people struggling with depression on their own or with the assistance of psychotherapy. Accordingly, the objective of this study was to identify those self-help books and autobiographies that mental health experts rate favorably for the treatment of mood disorders.
Three interrelated studies were conducted. The first two studies involved mailing a questionnaire on self-help books to 4,000 and then 3,000 randomly selected members of the APA clinical and counseling divisions. This yielded a response rate of 25%. The third study encompassed a lengthy questionnaire mailed to 1,500 members of the same APA divisions seeking their ratings on the value of autobiographies concerning various problems. The response rate was 22%.
In all three studies, the responding psychologists rated self-help resources with which they were sufficiently familiar on the same five-point scale: +2 Extremely good;; +1 Moderately good; 0 Average; -1 Moderately bad; -2 Extremely bad.
Self-help books rated the most favorably were Feeling good by Burns,
Mind over mood by Padesky and Greenberger, The feeling good handbook by
Burns, Control your depression by Lewinsohn and colleagues, and You can
beat depression by Preston, Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders
by Beck, When living hurts by Yapko, A self-help guide to managing
depression by Baker, Coping with depression by Copeland, and When feeling
bad is good by McGrath. Their mean scores were 1.00 or higher, translating
into an average evaluation between moderately good and extremely good.
Seven autobiographies received mean ratings of 1.00 or higher; in descending
order these books were An unquiet mind by Jamison, Darkness visible by
Styron, Girl interrupted by Kaysen, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba by Lyden,
Undercurrents by Manning, A brilliant madness by Duke, and Leaves
from many seasons by Mowrer. As with self help books, no autobiographies
received negative ratings.
Neuroscience II
THE INFLUENCE OF SIMILARITY AND RECENCY OF STIMULI ON TASTE CONTRAST
Steven M. Specht, Florian K-J. M. Pankarter & Amelia M. Hutnick
Utica College of Syracuse University and Lebanon Valley College
Successive contrast effects have been reported for gustatory (Flaherty,
1996; Schifferstein, 1994; Schifferstein and Frijters, 1992; Specht, Reese,
Twining and Weist, 1995; Specht and Twining, 1999) olfactory (Berglund,
Berglund and Lindvall, 1978; Calaman and Specht, 1999; Hulshoff-Pol, et
al., 1998; Koster and de Wijk, 1992), tactile (Spechtand Schroeder, 1999)
and auditory (Marks, 1988) stimuli. We have previously reported that successive
negative contrast (SNC) can be elicited even after a one-week interstimulus
interval; suggesting that a memorial component is involved with such effects
(Specht, Emery, Smoyerand Seibert, 1994). Based upon these findings, it
appears that perception of a particular stimulus depends not only upon
the specific characteristics of the stimulus, but upon what is being experienced
in the immediate sensory environment and upon what stimuli have been experienced
in the recent past. The present experiment specifically investigated how
similarity of previously tasted stimuli and recency of previously tasted
stimuli influence subsequent ratings of target stimuli. Participants were
asked to taste and rate the “sweetness” of four solutions in various sequences.
The stimuli were various concentrations of sucrose solution or cherry-flavored
Kool-Aid and were arranged so that the influence of recency of a stimulus
and similarity
of a stimulus were in competition. The results suggest that subjects’
perceptions of a particular target stimulus may depend more upon similarity
of a stimulus tasted previously than upon recency of a previously tasted
stimulus. This is not to say that recency is irrelevant. It appears that
when similarity and recency of stimuli are in competition, similarity is
the more salient feature of the stimulus in terms of affecting subsequent
taste perception.
CHANGES IN EXPLORATORY BEHAVIOR AND AMBULATION FOLLOWING MEDIAL SEPTAL LESIONS IN RATS
Bloomsburg University
The effects of exploratory behavior and ambulation of rats with medial
septal lesions were studied by manipulating different lighting conditions
(white illumination, red illumination), deprivation conditions (satiation,
food deprivation), and odor conditions (no fox urine, fox urine) over a
29 test period day. Twenty-two male albino rats were assigned to
either the medial septal group or control group and all behavioral testing
was conducted in an Omnitech Digiscan animal activity monitoring system.
Rats with medial septal lesions demonstrated elevated exploratory behavior
and ambulation in the red illumination, food deprivation, and no fox urine
Condition compared to rats in the control group. In addition, rats
with medial septal lesions decreased their rearing behaviors and ambulation
when exposed to the fox urine, white illumination, and satiation Condition
compared to controls. The high rearing scores of the medial septal
group in this study revealed an exaggerated response to the Condition that
facilitated activity. The results also suggested that ambulation
scores for medial septal lesions in the Condition that inhibited activity
may be a result of an increased fear response in the presence of fox urine
and white
illumination conditions.
Relationships
WIRED FOR MATE PREFERENCES: AN ANALYSIS OF INTERNET PERSONALS
Monmouth University
The study of mate selection has been widely researched using the theories
inherent in evolutionary psychology. Females should seek mates that
offer resources, and males should seek mates that offer reproductive fitness.
These tenets have been tested using personals advertisements from publication
sources, however the recent onslaught of Internet personals advertisements
had yet to be explored. Using archived data from 325 participants
from an Internet "matchmaking" system in the United States,
eight hypotheses concerning type of relationship sought, traits held
in esteem by both sexes, and traits sought and offered were tested in terms
of sex and age of the participant. In general, most of the data fit
into broad evolutionary theory. It was found that of the three traits
thought to be held in mutual esteem (kind, honest and affectionate), results
were opposite to what was expected. Both sexes were found more likely
not to stipulate these traits, with the exception of "honest," which was
equally
likely, as not, to be stipulated by females. While it was the
35-46 age group that was more likely to state which traits they seek, males
sought traits related to reproductive fitness and females sought traits
related to resource acquisition. It was also found that both sexes
were unlikely to state which traits they offer to a potential mate.
When they do make offers, it is more often related to resource acquisition.
THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVE AND PROMISCUITY FOR LONG- VS. SHORT-TERM ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
John Collado, Stephen Drapeau, Beth Gruben, Amy Navarra, & Ann Lynn
Ithaca College
Social psychological research has consistently found that physical attractiveness is a major determinant of romantic attraction for both men and women. However, the type of romantic relationship has rarely been specified. In this experimental study, we examined the effects of physical attractiveness, and sexual history on heterosexual men and women's ratings of how appealing a person would be for a long- vs. a short-term romantic relationship. One hundred thirty-nine female and 119 male undergraduates viewed mock Internet personal advertisements for an opposite sex target. These advertisements contained both a picture and a description of the target. Male and female participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (physical attractiveness of target: attractive vs. unattractive) x 2 (promiscuousness of target: sexually conservative history vs. sexually promiscuous history) between subjects design. After viewing the advertisement, participants completed a questionnaire about the target that asked, among other questions, both how appealing the target was for a long-term and a short-term romantic relationship.
The major results of the study indicated that the gender of the participant,
the physical attractiveness of the target, and the promiscuousness of the
target differentially affected how appealing the target was for a long-
vs. a short-term relationship. Physical attractiveness had the most
significant impact on the ratings of male rather than female participants,
and for short-, rather than long-term relationships.
Men preferred attractive to unattractive targets for both long- and short-term
relationships. Women considered attractive unattractive targets as
equally appealing for long-term relationships, but preferred attractive
targets for short-term relationships. Promiscuity of the target
had different effects for men and women and long- vs. short-term relationships.
Both men and women preferred targets with a conservative sexual history
for a long-term relationship. However, for a short-term relationship,
men preferred promiscuous targets, while women preferred conservative targets.
RELATIONSHIP OF FORGIVENESS TO SELF ESTEEM AND GENDER IN THE CONTEXT OF ROMANTIC PAETNERSHIPS
Bloomsburg University
Forgiveness has been defined as the act of pardoning or ceasing to feel resentment against another individual. This investigation dealt with the relationships between forgiveness,self-esteem, and investment in intimate relationships, within the unique context of theseromantic pairings. Participants (n=97) ranged in age from 18-69. Test packets included the Self-Worth Inventory (Robinson, 1990), the Forgiveness Survey (Mason, 1999), and Investment Scales which were developed by the researchers to measure a variety of facets in the realm of intimate partnerships. Results of this study demonstrated that while there were no significant gender differences, participant age increased as the view of forgiveness as a moral rule increased (r=0.207, p<.05) and as the view of forgiveness as a religious value increased (r=0.314, p<.01). A decline in age was negatively correlated with the view of forgiveness as reconciliation (r=-435, p<.01). As self-esteem increased, so did the view of forgiveness as a moral rule that must be obeyed (r=0.223, p<.05). Level of investment in current relationship was positively correlated with both self-esteem (r=0.401, p<.01) and self-concept (r=0.458,p<.01). As self-worth on the "self" subscale increased, investment increased in both current relationships (r=0.408, p<.01) and ideal relationships (r=0.25, p<.05). The likelihood that an individual will forgive another was not related to his or her level of investment in either a current love relationship or one that has ended. As investment in a current or an ideal romantic partnership increases, however, so does an individual's self-esteem and self-concept.
The results of this investigation demonstrate the complex interplay
of forgiveness and self-esteem within romantic partnerships as well as
the need for further research in this area.