Evidence points to a pervasive tendency for persons to behave to maintain their existing cognitive structures. One strategy by which this self-verification is made more probable involves information processing. Through attention, encoding and retrieval, and the interpretation of events, persons process information so that self-confirmatory…

The concern of this paper is how people in organizations understand the dynamics of an organization's practices. The way that organizational culture influences advising systems is considered. The focus is on how people understand the function of academic advising and the influence of three concepts of culture (cognitive, symbolic, and…

Tested Cooper and Fazio's dissonance model. Subjects made arguments that were consistent or inconsistent with their attitudes and were provided feedback about consequences. Attitude-change effect only occurred when behaviors were both inconsistent and resulted in aversive consequences. Results suggest that cognitive inconsistency may be necessary…

In two experiments, affect-based and cognition-based attitudes toward a person were induced by varying sequence of affective and cognitive information presented to subjects while holding content constant. Results indicated affect-based attitudes were most effectively changed by affective persuasive appeals, whether these appeals were produced by…

The upper and lower 5% of 456 undergraduate students who completed the Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI) were subjected to a laboratory stress test. In support of the hypothesis, poor constructive thinkers reacted to the stress with a greater increase in negative thoughts and negative emotions, and exhibited a greater increase in blood…

Discussed are the principles of Gestalt psychology and the history and future of the movement. A comparison of Gestalt, Behaviorist, and Structuralist ideas is included. The study of perception, learning, memory, and thinking from the Gestaltist point of view is described. (KR)

This article explores whether it is possible to compare civilizations one with another; that is, whether one can construct some neutral and objective framework in terms of which we could establish in what respects one civilization might deserve to be ranked more highly than its competitors. The author states that, in addressing the idea of an…