Correlations were obtained between level of aspiration, gambling, and projective test variables. Achievement oriented behaviors in the level of aspiration task and in the gambling task were related to each other, and both were related to the adequacy of response to sexual stimuli in projective testing. Reprints from Herbert M. Lefcourt, Department…

Tested college students for conformity when conditions contributing to conformity were absent. Found that social pressures (responding in public, being surveyed by fellow group members) are necessary to produce conformity. (RL)

The effect of externally-mediated goal setting on intrinsic motivation was examined using a laboratory assembly task. College male subjects (N=80) were randomly assigned in a factorial design including two conditions of goal setting (assigned vs. no goals) and two conditions of initial task interest (interesting vs. boring task). The results show…

Certain characteristics of a Taylor (1965) competitive reaction time task contribute to a lack of awareness of contingencies that exist between two aggressors. The opponent's contingent response to the subject's specific shock setting may be obscured by the reaction time competition, thus concealing the matching contingency. Nine separate steps…

In this study, 48 third-grade children learned a successive, two-choice discrimination under one of three conditions: (1) immediate reinforcement (IM), (2) 10-second empty delay (ED), and (3) 10-second delay with the discriminative stimuli in view of S (FD). The performances of groups IM and FD were only marginally different, and were both…

Affect arousing and energizing properties of positive and negative reinforcing stimuli were investigated. Subjects received positive evaluations (PE), similar attitudes (SA), dissimilar attitudes (DA) or negative evaluations (NE) presented on slides. Pre- and post-slide semantic differentials were filled out by each subject. All subjects then…

Study data indicated that a combination of awareness and reinforcement was more effective in increasing the emission of target statements than either variable alone. (Author)