Offers evidence that exposure to television violence can increase childrens' tolerance of real-life aggression. (MH)

Assesses television's potential to influence both prosocial and antisocial behavior in children and cites supportive investigative studies. (MH)

Discusses the effects of deliberate vagueness on source credibility, agreement and perceived vagueness. See CS 703 560 for availability. (MH)

A study of the relationship between pain-relieving drugs given to mothers during labor and delivery and neonatal behavior as assessed by the Brazelton Scales. Tested 44 infants on eight different days during their first month of life. (SDH)

Recent research by Herman, Polivy, and their colleagues has been concerned with the determinants of self-control and disinhibition in dieters. The present paper summarizes a number of studies in which the reactions of dieters and nondieters to a variety of disinhibitory factors (preloading, emotional arousal, intoxication) were investigated. The…

In order to explore the hypothesis that sex-linked biases in causal attributions, widely shared by female and male perceivers, may derive in part from the perceiver's naive sex-linked expectations regarding the potential impact of causal forces on women's and men's behavior, three experiments were carried out. The first experiment was conducted to…

Article attempted to investigate relationships between environmental factors and the prevalence or incidence of psychiatric disorders. (Author/RK)

Undergraduates, divided into three groups--high verbal-low spatial (HiV-LoS), intermediate, and a high spatial-low verbal group (HiS-LoV)-- ties test. For males at least, the groups differed significantly on certaintook Cattell's 16PF questionnaire and Thurston's Primary Mental Abili personality variables involving response to social stimuli.…

The use of self-monitoring and self-reported variability in cross-situational behavior to identify persons most likely to manifest covariation between their attitudes and behaviors was investigated. In the first session, subjects (N=102) completed Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale, assessed their religious attitudes and indicated the extent to which…

Self-efficacy theory maintains that self-efficacy expectancy, a belief about one's ability to perform a behavior successfully, is independent of outcome expectancy, a belief about the likelihood of the behavior leading to a specific outcome. To examine this hypothesis, subjects (N=95) read communications that differed in descriptions of the…

College students were instigated by a confederate and then interacted with that same person on a reaction time completion task. The confederate informed half of the treatment subjects of the response strategy he intended to adopt. The other half received an irrelevant message. Subjects in both message conditions then competed against the…

Instead of looking at the impact of specific third party actions or behaviors on negotiation outcomes, the authors studied the effects of anticipated intervention on the negotiation process. Third party power (ability to force an agreement on deadlocked negotiations or merely recommend one) and generalized reputation (favorable or unfavorable)…

This report examines the extent and nature of marihuana use in the U.S. It presents information on the social and psychological influences as well as the toxicological and pharmacological effects. It also analyzes effects on behavior and discusses theraputic aspects of the drug. (Author/HMV)

If we define irrationality as thought, emotion, or behavior that leads to self-defeating consequences or that significantly interferes with the survival and happiness of the organism, we find that literally hundreds of major irrationalities exist in all societies and in virtually all humans in those societies. These irrationalities persist despite…