Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Two studies conducted during campus blood drives assessed two techniques derived from a commitment and social support analysis that were designed to increase the rate of pledge fulfillment by volunteer donors. A reminder about donation addressed to the individual donor plus two other named donors (Three-Name Reminder) elicited greater pledge fulfillment than a reminder addressed to the individual alone (One-Name Reminder). Similarly, a reminder addressed to the individual that simply stated that two other people would donate at the same time (Group Reminder) also enhanced pledge fulfillment relative to the One-Name Reminder.

This study explored the relationship between help-seeking and sensitivity to covert and overt nonverbal cues of emotion. In a help-seeking context, covert cues (cues one is trying to hide) would often include signs of annoyance and inconvenience expressed by a potential helper, while overt cues (cues one is trying to convey) would include polite signs of compliance and willingness to give aid. It was hypothesized and found that individuals who seek help readily, compared to those who are more reluctant to ask for help, are relatively more sensitive to overt emotional cues than to covert emotional cues. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Brickman's (1975) laboratory finding that an equal distribution is preferred over a positively skewed distribution is found to also hold for Morawetz's (1977) real-world study of two Israeli moshavim. However, the hedonic calculus derived from adaptation level theory which seemed to explain Brickman's laboratory results is shown to be invalid for the real-world data. In particular, the generally assumed positive relation between individual satisfaction and income level did not hold for the Israeli community studied by Morawetz. The discrepancy between the two studies is interpreted as suggesting that the moral desirability of the general distribution may be a term in the utility functions of individuals in at least some social groups.

In a recent survey of New Yorkers, Miransky and Langer (1978) found that residents who believed that crime could be controlled made only minimal efforts to utilize door locks. Miransky and Langer argue that this failure to exert potential control represents a relinquishment of responsibility for crime prevention motivated by a fear of the psychological consequences of accepting responsibility for a potentially uncontrollable event. This article suggests the alternative interpretation that Miransky and Langer have confused perceptions of the controllability of crime and perceptions of the controllability of one's own probability of victimization. Results of this study suggest that perceptions of the controllability of one's own probability of victimization are strongly related to crime-prevention behavior. These results do not support the motivational theory of Miransky and Langer.

In order to determine when ethical ideology influences judgments of morality, individuals who endorsed an absolutist, exceptionist, subjectivist, or situationist ideology morally evaluated an actor linked, at varying levels of responsibility, to positive or negative outcomes. As predicted, absolutists judged the actor more harshly than exceptionists, but only when the described actor has foreseen or intended to produce a highly negative consequence.

Recent work suggests that group members' motivation for certain types of tasks declines as group size increases. Two experiments examined alternative explanations for this effect. The results of the first study disconfirmed the "me first" explanation, which holds that the effect occurs only when an individual performs in several different size groups. The second experiment supported the "hide-in—the crowd"explanation, which holds that member anonymity increases with group size for the tasks which have yielded the effect.

Signal detection theory enhances social psychological explanations of judgment processes, yet the field has not incorporated the gains available from application of the theory. The theory's basic separation of stimulus judgment into discrimination and decision processes is reviewed. Several examples are then offered which suggest how the theory can benefit social psychology.

When overlearned motor acts are mindfully considered while they are being performed, performance typically is severely disrupted. The present research questioned whether a similar debilitation results when mindful consideration is given to intellectual behavior that has been overlearned. Subjects discussed either an overlearned or novel issue and did so either immediately, after a short delay, or after a short delay where a suggestion was made to think about the issue during the delay. Thinking resulted in less articulate speech when addressing an overlearned but not a novel issue.

Inconsistent results have been obtained with respect to the congruence between perceived others' evaluations and the actual evaluations obtained from others when others have consisted of members of a peer group. In this study, 178 individuals described themselves as they believed significant others would describe them, and actual evaluations were obtained from one significant other for each of the 178 individuals. Under these conditions significant and consistent congruence was found for 53 personality traits between: (1) self-evaluations and perceived others' evaluations; (2) self-evaluations and actual evaluations obtained from one significant other; and (3) perceived others' evaluations and the actual evaluations by one significant other.

An experiment tested the hypothesis that the degree to which an attitude is inferred from past behaviors toward an object is a determinant of attitude-behavior consistency. Subjects participated in a two-session experiment. During the first session, subjects' attitudes toward religion were assessed under one of two conditions. Control subjects' attitudes were measured before they completed a questionnaire wherein they indicated which of a list of behaviors pertaining to religion they had performed in the past. Self-Perception subjects completed the same two sets of items, but in the reverse order; thus, they were provided with an extensive opportunity to review and evaluate their past behaviors before indicating their attitudes toward religion. Approximately one month later, all subjects returned for the second session, during which three measures of their behaviors pertaining to religion since the first session were obtained. On two of the three measures, the predictive utility of religious attitudes was shown to be greater in the Self-Perception condition than in the Control condition.

Subjects' initial assessments of their persuasive ability persisted after the evidential value of apparent success or failure upon which these impressions were based was fully discredited. These results replicate previous impression-perseverance findings obtained by Ross, Lepper, and Hubbard (1975)and demonstrate that such findings generalize to tasks and discrediting procedures more typical of everyday life. Contrary to prediction, explicitly explaining initial performance did not enhance postdiscrediting perseverance; this finding is discussed in terms of the conditions that prompt spontaneous social explanations.

The influence of forewarning and accountability on strategies used to make memory-based interpersonal judgments was investigated. Subjects were asked to make judgments as to the suitability of a stimulus person for two occupations requiring either similar or dissimilar characteristics and the time required to make those judgments was measured. Overall, more time was required to make dissimilar as opposed to similar judgments. Forewarning and accountability increased median decision time for both similar and dissimilar judgments. The results are discussed in terms of the processes involved in making memory-based interpersonal judgments.

People judged as highly attractive are more typical in appearance than people who are judged as less attractive. They are liked better but are harder to recognize because they are more similar to each other. This constellation of results is consistent with current views about the nature of category structure.

This experiment was designed to test the idea that physically attractive (PA) persons are perceived as having two types of goodness-sex-relevant and sexirrelevant. Three hypotheses were tested to determine the validity of this notion. It was predicted that perceived masculinity increases with PA for males but not for females, that perceived femininity increases with PA for females but not for males, and that perceived social desirability increases with PA for both males and females. Subjects were asked to fill in the Bem Sex Role Inventory for males and females representing low, moderate, and high levels of PA. The obtained results supported all three experimental hypotheses.

The behavior of male subjects with an internal or external locus of control orientation was studied in an unstructured dyadic situation. When confronted with one another as unfamiliar persons, externals talked more than internals, and looked at one another more. These results were interpreted to mean that externals were more socially dependent than internals, and that their behavior represented an attempt to clarify an ambiguous social situation. The responses of dyad members were highly correlated, with the result that effects for the personality dimension were generally evident at the level of the dyad, rather than at the subjects-withindyad level.

The status or origin of group representatives and the opportunity to earn money (in addition to course credit) were manipulated in a simulation involving subjects who felt that they were negotiating a problem for their teams. Representatives who were originally group members (insiders) were much tougher bargainers than those who were assigned the representational function (outsiders). In contrast, it was also found that subjects' behavior and reactions were unaffected by the monetary incentives provided.

Triads composed of subjects who were previously unacquainted with one another played a coalition game under one of three conditions. In the Liking Only condition, liking among the triad members was manipulated so that some members liked each other more than others, but each member had the same resources in the coalition game. In the Resources Only, condition, the triad members had different resources, but liking was not manipulated. In the Liking and Resources condition, liking was manipulated so that there were differences in the triad members' liking for one another, and the members had different resources in the coalition game. Liking had a significant effect on coalition formation when there were no differences in resources (Liking Only), and resources had a significant effect when there were no differences in liking (Resources Only). But when there were differences in both liking and resources, the effect of liking was overwhelmed and only resources had a significant effect on coalition formation.

Although the frustration-aggression hypothesis has focused typically on aggressive behavior, the primary purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the effect of frustration on observation of either aggressive or nonaggressive models when an individual can choose which model to observe. A total of 103 second- and third-grade males participated in a factorial experiment manipulating frustration and modeling cues. The results disclosed that an aggressive model elicited more imitative aggression than simultaneously presented aggressive and cooperative models (multiple models). Both of these conditions, in turn, produced more aggression than a cooperative-model condition or a no-model condition. Within the multiple-models condition, which is characteristic of many naturalistic settings, frustration produced greater observation of the aggressive model, greater recall of aggressive acts, and stronger attacks against another person. These data were interpreted in terms of an expanded frustration-aggression hypothesis: In social situations in which observers have a choice of heterogeneous models to observe, prior frustration increases the probability that an individual will observe, remember, and hence perform more acts of violence.

A systems analysis of groups implies that strengthening the social bonds among group members should increase their spatial cohesion, that is, moving to avoid an invasion of the group's space. Male and female subjects (N = 48) received false information that a female confederate had very similar or dissimilar opinions. Afterward, subjects walking down a hallway with the confederate had to respond to a potential invasion of the dyad. Male subjects showed more protection of the group space in similar than in dissimilar conditions, but females showed uniformly high spatial cohesion. These results are interpreted as supporting the systems analysis.

A 148-item random sample of self-disclosure topics was drawn from the 671-item pool of Taylor and Altman (Note 1) and presented to male and female university students in the U. S. and Australia for ratings of intimacy of content. For S of 13 content categories the same item was regarded as more intimate in opposite-sex than in same-sex conversation. Most items were rated less intimate than in the Taylor and Altman study-evidence that contemporary male students report themselves as more open and disclosing than male students did a decade ago. Sex differences were few, but Austrplians rated items in 7 categories less intimate than Americans did.

In this study 75 college men used the Bem Sex Role Inventory to describe either themselves or a typical, ideal, or women's ideal man, and 30 college women described either a typical or ideal man. 7he only effect for the masculine items was that men saw themselves as relatively low on masculinity. For the feminine items the male's ratings were relatively high on femininity, with the exception of the typical male. While women described the ideal male as higher on femininity than the typical male, both of the women's ratings were relatively low on femininity. The results suggests that male role strain comes not from a failure to be expressive, but from a failure to be instrumental.

Gergen has argued that American social psychological theorizing has had little impact outside the discipline because it has failed to challenge cultural assumptions. According to Gergen, this shortcoming could be remedied if theory construction were detached from data collection and hypothesis testing. An examination of Gergen's analysis reveals numerous misconceptions and inconsistencies. It is argued that social psychological theorizing could best advance by maintaining and extending its empirical foundation.

In the initial argument for generative theory an antiempiricist gauntlet was thrown in the hope that a confrontation with fundamental assumptions in social psychology might ensue. Yet, the Shaeffer, Francis, and Ruback critique fails to confront the central arguments raised by the initial paper. Its avoidance of the critical issues suggests that the long standing empiricist assumptions currently function in social psychology as talismans. So long as these assumptions remain unexamined they fend against the rising specter of doubt.

Orientations are defined as behaviors involved in the process of self-definition where the environment is scanned in search of personal points of reference and available sources of self-reinforcement. The method requires the subject to take (or have someone else take) a set of 12 photographs which describe "who you are." Juvenile delinquents were found to reveal lower institutional orientation (home and school) and aesthetic orientation but greater peer orientation than a control group.

Qube, a new form of interactive cable TV, was used to test hypotheses about social influence derived from social impact theory (Latané, 1973, 1981). Results showed that audience responses were affected as predicted by the number of persons advocating a position. However, predicted effects for the immediacy of the influence sources (close-ups versus distant shots) were not found. The potential and limitation of interactive television as a medium for fundamental research are discussed.