摘要:

Two field experiments investigate how information about aspects of the social environment affects willingness to help others who are similar or dissimilar. Subjects were pedestrians who found a lost packet of materials containing information about the opinions of the packet's loser and a survey report which claimed that the quality of life in the neighborhood had either improved or deteriorated. In the fiist study, the opinions were varied in order to create different degrees of opinion similarity between the loser and subject. Results showed that relatively slight differences between the loser's and subject's opinions made subjects unwilling to help (return the lost packet) when information about the social environment suggested a negative state of affairs, e.g., quality of life deteriorating. However, when information about the social environment suggested a positive state of affairs, subjects were willing to help, even if there was little similarity of opinion. In the second study, subjects learned that the loser of the packet agreed with their views on one opinion but disagreed on another. In this study, one of the two opinions concerned the same social issue as the one described in the survey report. Results demonstrated that subjects helped when there was agreement on the social issue that was also highlighted in survey reports of a negative state of affairs in the social environment and withheld help when there was disagreement on this issue. There were trends for the same result with information about a positive state of affairs in the social world.

ISSN:0021-9029    

DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00877.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1982

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Research by Spence and Helmreich and their colleagues suggests that competitiveness is self‐defeating in terms of achievement. It was presently hypothesized thatinterpersonally, competitiveness may produce greater attraction than uncompetitiveness. This study manipulated the perceived competitiveness of undergraduate men by varying their WOFO scores and confirmed that competitiveness is a valued interpersonal trait that can engender greater liking by both men and women. The implications of these findings for the paradoxical disadvantage of competitiveness in the area of achievement are discusse

ISSN:0021-9029    

DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00878.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1982

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Under federal and state laws, a defendant who has been charged with more than one offense can be tried for all the offenses in a single “joined” trial. It was predicted that the probabillty a defendant would be convicted would increase as a function of the number of joined offenses. Legal theories, research on memory, and social psychological models of information integration and attribution led to three hypotheses as to why this bias might occur: (1) confusion of evidence, (2) accumulation of evidence, and (3) inference of a criminal disposition. Subjects read and judged written trial summaries presented as joined or single trials. In Study 1, joinder resulted in higher rates of conviction and in confusion of evidence. In Study 2, the conviction results were replicated, and subjects judging joined trials also rated the evidence as more incriminating and made negative attributions about the defendant. These ratings were strongly related to judgments of guilt. A sequential judgment process was also found to affect jurors' judgme

ISSN:0021-9029    

DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00879.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1982

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

A study was conducted to assess the impact of the 1980 Carter‐Reagan debate on subsequent voting intentions. As predicted, perceptions of Reagan's debate performance significantly affected respondents' post‐debate intention to vote for him; perceptions of Carter's debate performance were not significantly related to post‐debate intentions regarding Carter. Additionally, it was found that while party identification had a predictable effect on debate perceptions (Republican respondents favoring Reagan; Democratic respondents favoring Carter), this effect did not prevent respondents from also making more “objective” assessments of the candidates' performance. Within the general context of viewing “their” candidate more favorably, respondents (1) perceived Carter as more honest in the debate, (2) perceived Reagan as stronger, and (3) perceived Reagan as performing better overall

ISSN:0021-9029    

DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00880.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1982

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study was designed to determine (a) what dimensions underlie emotional reactions to news events, (b) whether these dimensions are independent, (c) whether reactions to major news events are similar for different groups of people, and (d) whether a simple method could be developed for evaluating emotional reactions to news events. Subjects rated the similarity of their emotional reactions to 20 page‐one newspaper stories in a paired‐comparison task. The data were multidimensionally scaled using the KYST computer program. Two dimensions emerged that accounted for 89% of the judgment variance: pleasure/displeasure and degree of arousal. Interpretation of these dimensions was verified using a semantic differential task. The two dimensions were not independent. They were related by a U‐shaped function: News events farther from evaluative neutrality were judged more arousing. A second study with 40 news events and a different subject population replicated these findings. Subjects' ratings of news events on three scales (happy, important, and exciting) were sufficient to recover the KYST dimensions. The theoretical and practical implications of these. results are disc

ISSN:0021-9029    

DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00881.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1982

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

In a between‐subjects design, 46 male and 101 female Australian university students rated a target person described as male or female, overweight or average weight, and wearing glasses or not, on twelve 7‐point rating scales. As predicted, a negative stereotype of the overweight person and a complex one of the person with glasses were found. However, there was no significant effect of sex of target except on the ratings of masculine and feminine and no interaction of sex of target with either the glasses or obesity variables. Nor did sex of subject influence the ratings. The results suggest that, although stereotypes of obesity and glasses do exist, they may be as severe for men as for wo

ISSN:0021-9029    

DOI:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1982.tb00882.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1982

数据来源: WILEY