Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

This article explores observers' reactions to members of a group that contained a consistent minority and an otherwise unanimous majority. A questionnaire consisting of 5O scales selected to cover comprehensively the domain of attributes people use in judging others served to assess the perception of the minority and majority in the group. Five factors having to do with assertiveness, agreeableness, honesty, competence, and consistency were relevant to these judgments. Comparison of ratings of minorities and majorities on these factors revealed that minorities were perceived as more assertive, less agreeable, more honest, more competent, and more consistent than members of the majority. The breadth of these effects as well as their implication for the perception of minorities by members of a group and by outsiders is discussed.

Past work has shown that bystanders often fail to help a victim in an emergency, because responsibility for helping diffuses over all the bystanders there. In the present experiment, subjects were exposed to a simulated emergency (a choking fit) that occurred in the course of a structured group interaction. Subjects who had been designated as subordinate group members for the experimental task generally failed to come to the victim's aid, consistent with past findings. Subjects who had been designated as group leaders were quite likely to intervene in the emergency, however, even though responding to the emergency meant violating the experimental instructions and thus nullifying their leadership role. The implication is that a leadership role functions as a generalized responsibility cue; so group leaders do not undergo diffusion of responsibility as much as subordinate group members.

Recent research has provided considerable evidence that when facial appearance is the only information provided about a stimulus person, babyfaced adults are perceived to have more childlike qualities than mature-faced adults who are equal in perceived age and attractiveness. The present study utilized a simulated trial format to assess the impact of facial maturity on social perceptions in a more complex situation in which other meaningful information about the stimulus person was available. The fact that babyfaced adults are perceived to be more naive than those with mature features led to the prediction that a babyfaced defendant would be more often found guilty of an offense resulting from negligent actions than would a mature-faced defendant. The fact that babyfaced adults are perceived to be more honest than those with mature features yielded the prediction that babyfaced defendants would less often be perceived as guilty of charges involving intentional criminal behavior. Finally, when defendants were known to be guilty of a negligent crime, it was predicted that subjects would recommend less severe punishment for babyfaced defendants than for mature-faced ones. The pattern of results supported the predictions.

At each of two sessions a week apart, 101 college subjects produced open-ended lists of items in nine categories of self-knowledge and also completed scales that provided measures of self-esteem, private self-consciousness, public self-consciousness, and social anxiety. Analyses showed that subjects' productions of self-knowledge were invested with self-evaluation in two ways: (a) Positiveness of self-evaluation (self-esteem) was significantly correlated with numbers of affectively positive items produced (such as liked activities, good qualities, and names of friends), and (b) concern about evaluation of self by others (social anxiety) was associated significantly with both production of relatively few items of self-knowledge and repeated production of the same items on the two testing occasions. These findings suggest that self-esteem is a pervasive component of measured self-concept, even for measures that lack manifest esteem-related content.

The proposition that increased generalized drive interferes with complex task performance by enhancing a dominant response tendency (Zajonc, 1965) was tested in a nonreactive, real-life setting involving a natural and meaningful task. Batting performance (batting average and slugging percentage) of 59 major league baseball players was examined under four different motivational or drive conditions caused by being traded. A pattern of statistically significant performance changes in directions consistent with drive theory predictions (low drive-increased performance; high drive-decreased performance) emerged. The quality of the players and teams involved was unrelated to the magnitude of this effect, although a predicted interaction with player experience was borne out and supports a drive theory analysis. Several less viable interpretations of the data (e.g., statistical regression) are considered. Implications for sports psychology and applications to professional baseball are discussed.

Twenty-six male and 26 female undergraduates participated in four-person mixed-sex group discussions. After each of three discussions in which a consensus was required, each person in the group rated the other members on their degree of talkativeness, on the quality of their expressed ideas, and on the degree of their concern for other's feelings. Results showed that sex role orientation alone predicted task-orientation; individuals of both sexes who had high masculinity scores on the BSRI were perceived to have talked more and to have had good ideas. Gender and sex role orientation predicted warm socioemotional behavior: Females and individuals with high femininity scores were judged to have been more concerned about group members' feelings. The prediction that androgynous individuals would exhibit the greatest behavioral flexibility (perform both task and socioemotional behaviors) was marginally supported.

This experiment tested the hypothesis that people's social difficulties in an initial interaction are lowered by instructions to `find out as much as you can about the other person. " Sixty-four pairs of strangers interacted after one of them had been told to learn as much as possible about the other person or had not received information-seeking instructions. As predicted, directing subjects to seek inter-personal information reduced apprehension, insecurity, and awkwardness, not only for the subjects who received the instructions but also for their partners. The instructions also affected subjects' perceptions of their conversation partners. However, few obvious behavioral effects of the manipulation were obtained. The data suggest that the provision of an information-seeking script is sufficient to reduce social concerns, independent of its effects on social behavior or information exchange.

The present research was designed to determine whether the recall of attitudinally-relevant behavior bolsters a newly-formed attitude as evidenced by the persistence of attitudes and the selectivity of memory. Experimental subjects heard a persuasive message that changed their attitudes as compared with those of a survey control group. Half of the experimental subjects were then induced to recall autobiographical behavior relevant to the message (relevant recall condition); the other half were asked to recall behavior irrelevant to the message. Attitudes were assessed following this recall and at a second session, 2 weeks later. At the second session, a test of memory for the persuasive message and a counterattack (provided at the end of the initial session) was administered. Subjects in the relevant behavior recall condition remembered more information from the persuasive message and less from the counterattack than those recalling irrelevant behavior. The attitude persistence results were less conclusive. The selective memory results support the hypothesis that behavioral recall bolsters newly formed attitudes. However, such bolstering per se may not be sufficient to prevent attitude decay.

Two explanations for the effects of alcohol on prosocial behavior-that is, mood enhancement and cognitive impairment-suggest that restaurant diners should tip more when they have consumed alcohol than when they have not. However, previous attempts to find a relationship between percent tip and alcohol consumption have failed. This failure may be due to statistical problems associated with using percent tip as a measure of tipping. This article reports a study that uses as a dependent variable residuals from a regression of bill size on tip amount. The results of this study indicate that alcohol consumption is positively related to tipping.

Undergraduates read anecdotes that described four target persons. The descriptions manipulated targets' level of favorability on each of four evaluative dimensions. When information about a target's standing was provided on dimensions on which subjects' own positions were on the average middling, but not securely anchored in the external environment (common sense, likability), their subsequent perceptions of attitude similarity to the target increased monotonically as a function of the favorability of the initial information about the target. When initial information about the target was provided, instead, on dimensions on which subjects' own positions were securely anchored near the midpoint (educational attainment, annual income), they perceived greatest attitude similarity to that target closest to their own objective position and perceived least similarity to targets who occupied either a more or a less favorable position than self. These findings, and those of a separate questionnaire study, suggest that people do not uniformly attribute culturally desirable positions to themselves or see themselves as most similar to desirable others. Instead, they do so only on dimensions on which their own positions are not securely anchored in external reality.

Undergraduates read anecdotes that described four target persons. The descriptions manipulated targets' level of favorability on each of four evaluative dimensions. When information about a target's standing was provided on dimensions on which subjects' own positions were on the average middling, but not securely anchored in the external environment (common sense, likability), their subsequent perceptions of attitude similarity to the target increased monotonically as a function of the favorability of the initial information about the target. When initial information about the target was provided, instead, on dimensions on which subjects' own positions were securely anchored near the midpoint (educational attainment, annual income), they perceived greatest attitude similarity to that target closest to their own objective position and perceived least similarity to targets who occupied either a more or a less favorable position than self. These findings, and those of a separate questionnaire study, suggest that people do not uniformly attribute culturally desirable positions to themselves or see themselves as most similar to desirable others. Instead, they do so only on dimensions on which their own positions are not securely anchored in external reality.

To further our understanding of the impact of social factors on women's vocal behavior, women's vocal reactions to different male friends were examined. Specifically, subjects listened to women talking to intimate and casual male friends on the telephone, made ratings about women's vocal qualities and psychological traits, and identified with whom they thought the women were speaking. Several baby-talk-related aspects of the women's speech were also assessed by two independent judges. Results revealed not only that subjects could identify women's conversation partners at better than chance levels but also that subjects perceived women as more approachable, sincere, submissive, and scatterbrained when talking to intimate than to casual friends. Women manifested more feminine and babyish paralinguistic vocal qualities when talking to intimate versus casual friends; however, no differences were found in the linguistic features of women's speech coded by judges. As well, no differences in perceptions of speakers were found in a second group of subjects who read transcripts of the women's conversations. The present findings suggest that paralinguistic rather than linguistic features or content of women's vocal reactions influence perceptions of them when they are conversing with different male friends. Possible social functions served by women's vocal reactions to intimate versus casual friends are discussed, and hypotheses are offered to explain impressions created by differences in women's vocal behavior.

This research examined how perceived honesty affects face memory. Photographs of college men and women were rated for honesty, and then selected exemplars of honest and dishonest faces were shown singly for study as targets. In the test phase, four types of four-face arrays were shown: (a) honest targets with honest distracters, (b) dishonest targets with honest distracters, (c) honest targets with dishonest distracters, and (c) dishonest targets with dishonest distracters. In addition, half of the four-face arrays involved four new faces (target absent). The primary effect of honesty in the target-present arrays was on confidence judgments, with subjects being more confident of their decisions about dishonest targets. In the target-absent arrays, there were more false alarms when honest-looking alternatives were present, contrary to what would be expected if a criminal stereotype was operating. A second experiment using only target-present arrays found better recognition and greater confidence associated with dishonest faces. An examination of additional ratings on this set of faces for typicality, attractiveness, and likability, revealed that overlapping features may be more responsible for these effects than the operation of a criminal stereotype.

Research was conducted to investigate the potential impact of mood checklist (MAACL) pretesting upon the Velten experimental mood induction procedure. Multivariate analyses (MANOVA and ANCOVA) of the three MAACL subscales (Depression, Anxiety, and Hostility) suggest that variance unique to Anxiety, and that shared between Anxiety and the other subscales, is affected by pretesting, including both a main effect and a pretesting X Velten interaction. In contrast, the Velten manipulation impacted only variance unique to Depression and variance shared between Depression and the other two subscales. Apart from their significance for mood induction research, these findings provide rare evidence for the discrimination validity of the MAAACL subscales. Implications of these findings are discussed along with methodological suggestions for future studies.

An extension of the motivational assumptions of the heuristic model and the elaboration likelihood model of attitude change to counter attitudinal advocacy was tested. In a series of studies on the role of social support in attitude change following counter attitudinal advocacy, Stroebe and Diehl (1981) demonstrated that social support reduced attitude change only under conditions favorable to the arousal of dissonance. Under low choice or minimal consequences, social support was associated with an increase in attitude change. The present article suggests an interpretation of these findings in terms of motivational influences on levels of processing: Subjects engage in the cognitive effort of self-justification only when motivated to do so because of responsibility for a negative act. In the absence of such responsibility, subjects use the behavior of others (i.e., social support) merely as a cue for their opinion judgment. This was tested in an experiment that manipulated attitude similarity between subject and confederate in addition to social support and severity of consequences. A three-factor interaction on attitude change was obtained that was consistent with the differential processing hypothesis. Whereas under severe consequences attitude change was in line with dissonance predictions, a pattern of change consistent with balance theory was observed under minimal consequences. Implications of these findings for dissonance and conformity research are discussed.

Previous research has indicated that a number of demographic factors, particularly ethnicity and socioeconomic status, are significantly related to children's use of television. Yet these factors are often not integrated into research relating television-viewing behavior to psychological and social variables of interest. In the present study of three samples of upper elementary school students, ethnicity was found to be a strong determinant of the amount of television viewed. Black children viewed nearly twice as much television as White children, independent of parents' level of education, which itself was inversely related to viewing frequency. No clear relationship was found between viewing frequency and sex, birth order, or number of siblings. Among White subjects, however, there were modest indications that children who live with one natural parent and one stepparent may watch more television than children from households with either two natural parents or one natural parent only. The correlations of individuals' viewing frequency over 1- and 2-year time periods, both among the total sampled and among selected demographic subgroups, were highly significant. Thus not only demographic differences in viewing frequency were found to be stable over time. For the individual child, viewing frequency was a stable behavioral trait, regardless of the fluctuations of the networks' offerings from year to year. Methodological implications of these results for research on television and other aspects of human behavior are discussed.

The study reported here tests the effects of accountability and shared responsibility on cognitive effort. Fifty undergraduate students performed a multiattribute judgment task, and math models of their judgments were constructed. As expected, judges who shared responsibility for the judgment task and were not held accountable for their judgments used less complex judgment strategies than judges working alone. This replicates the social loafing effect found by Weldon and Gargano (1985) in an earlier study of cognitive effort. Results also showed that social loafing was reduced under conditions of individual accountability. Multiple judges who expected to justify their judgments worked as hard as individual judges on one measure of cognitive effort.

Message recipients' recall of attitude-relevant beliefs and experiences was expected to affect message processing such that high-retrieval recipients base their opinions relatively more on an analysis of message validity, whereas recipients who could recall few beliefs and experiences base their opinions on noncontent features such as source cues. Indeed, high-retrieval recipients were unaffected by the likability of the message source, they demonstrated relatively good recall of the message position and arguments, and cognitive response data indicated that persuasion was enhanced by positive rather than negative reactions to message content. In contrast, low-retrieval recipients were more persuaded by likable and by expert sources than unlikable and nonexpert ones. Further, these recipients showed relatively poor recall of the message position and arguments, and cognitive response data suggested that persuasion was enhanced by positive rather than negative reactions to the communicator.

The attitude-attribution paradigm requires people to read an essay that opposes or favors some issue under conditions in which the author is said to have had choice or no choice regarding the selection of the essay stance. The no-choice conditions are considered critical for revealing the dispositional bias; in these conditions, the extent to which the readers attribute attitudes to the author in line with the essay direction is taken as an index of people's tendencies to be dispositionally biased. We hypothesized that this paradigm overestimates the dispositional bias by leading attributers to believe that their task is to glean attitude information from the essay in spite of the author's lack of choice. Attributions from 192 subjects were obtained using the traditional or a modified version of the attitude-attribution paradigm. One important feature of the modified version was a statement to attributers that some of the information that they were to receive might be irrelevant to the judgments that they would be asked to make. A three-way interaction emerged indicating that the modified version had no effect in the choice conditions but significantly attenuated the dispositional bias in the no-choice conditions. We argued that the dispositional bias, although genuine, is overestimated by the traditional attitude-attribution paradigm.

This experiment investigated the circumstances that lead to embarrassment. Two theories of embarrassment were tested, one based on social interaction, the other based on self-esteem. The predictions of these two theories were compared in a situation in which the theories make contrasting predictions, namely, one in which esteem-threatening feedback is delivered to a person under the guise of a pleasant but transparent pretext. Subjects (N= 90) reported feelings of embarrassment and of self-esteem that were most consistent with the interaction theory. The implications of these findings for other theories of social anxiety are discussed.

The study of initial attraction has given insufficient attention to the influence of nonverbal expressiveness. This study examined the relative effects of expressive nonverbal skills and physical attractiveness on impressions made in initial encounters. Physical attractiveness is of known importance in the initial stages of a relationship; yet dynamic nonverbal cues of emotion may also have a significant impact. Fifty-four undergraduates were administered standard measures of nonverbal expressiveness, self-monitoring, and extroversion, and they were surreptitiously videotaped while entering a laboratory and meeting new people. Subjects were rated by separate groups of observers on scales of likability and physical attractiveness. The results indicated that emotionally expressive, extroverted, and physically attractive subjects were evaluated more favorably in these initial encounters than were subjects scoring low on these dimensions. The relationships between expressivity/extroversion and initial likability were independent of the effects of physical attractiveness. These results suggest that conceptions of overall attractiveness need to move beyond the physical qualities to include dynamic, emotional aspects.