Festinger's (1954) theory of social comparison holds that in the absence of objective standards, people use the attitudes or judgments of similar others to determine the correctness of their own positions. More recent studies have suggested, however, that people often prefer dissimilar comparison targets. A study was undertaken to examine the…

Observers are known to form inferences about an actor on the basis of the actor's behavior, regardless of the external forces contributing to that behavior. Two studies were conducted to determine whether this inferential error would also occur at the level of group activity. In the first study, 70 undergraduates read about a decision made by a…

Literature in mathematic problem-solving suggests that learners store information in memory which helps them solve stereotyped algebra word problems. Cluster analysis has been used as an exploratory tool to infer the types of problems which have common representations in memory. This study compares the results of a hierarchical cluster analysis of…

It is possible for any forensics organization or other body to center its activity upon public debates. Academic institutions have done so and will continue to do so on the basis that audience debates constitute an appropriate training for citizenship in a democracy and for participation in the economic world. The public debate before real…

Despite recent emphasis on the communicative function attributions may serve, little is actually known about the reactions of observers to individuals' causal statements regarding their own or others' behavioral outcomes. To rule out perceived accuracy as an alternative explanation of the effects of concordance of causal understanding on…

A metacritical judging model for contest oral interpretation that evaluates the performer's critical decisions is designed to meet three criteria: (1) it attempts to incorporate the advances of oral interpretation scholars outside the forensics community with the activity at forensics tournaments, (2) it recognizes that forensics competition is…

One of the most valuable skills in group decision making is the ability to make trustworthy judgments about group performance. It follows from the "inferential model" of social cognition (Pavitt, 1989; Pavitt & Hight, 1986), that there are three types of judgments relevant to the group context: (1) behavioral (what the group did);…

A pertinent problem in the area of moral development is whether most people can distinguish moral from conventional issues. Some research has shown children and adolescents consider moral (intrinsic) transgressions more serious than violations of convention. To expand this research by examining in detail the role of intrinsicality in moral…

Social theories (beliefs about relationships between variables in the social environment) are often used in making judgments, predictions, or decisions. Three experiments on the role of explanation processes in the development and use of social theories were conducted. The first experiment assessed the effects of explaining a hypothetical…

The hypothesis that high critical thinkers, who rely on plausibility estimates, would be more accurate in rejecting inappropriate inferences than low critical thinkers, who rely on direct matching, was investigated. The supposition that high critical thinkers would suffer more often from a failure to differentiate appropriate inferences from…

Individuals tend to hold on to initial impressions even after the data upon which they have formed the impression have been discredited. To partially replicate and extend a previous study (Ross et al., 1977) on belief perserverance, in which subjects were told they were to act as clinical psychologists attempting to understand and predict…

Female aging, compared to male aging, is associated with a greater decline in status and attractiveness. To investigate whether sex differences in the perception of aging function at both the cognitive and affective levels, 76 college students (38 male, 38 female), with a mean age of 22.8, viewed slides of a male and female adult. Subjects were…

In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published the Guidelines on Sexual Harassment, specifying that sexual harassment is a kind of sex discrimination under Title VII and is an unlawful employment practice. While the determination of the behaviors that constitute sexual harassment would enable employees to write more…

Research on self-concept has usually focused on neutral or positive personality characteristics. To determine if negative beliefs about the self have schematic properities, 55 college students, assigned to one of four groups (shy schematics, shy aschematics, independent schematics, independent aschematics), based on a prescreening self-rating on…

Institutional research, as an established profession, has not developed a professional code of ethics. Reasons for the lack of such a code are discussed, and an outline is presented of the three major areas of institutional research ethics: treatment of research participants, research practices, and socio-political dimensions. A simple procedure…