Psychology, Social

Dynamic social impact theory (DSIT; Latane, 1996a; 1996b), a macro-level theory of social influence, predicts that discussion will lead to a self-organization of public opinion through decreasing minority sizes, increasing spatial similarity, and emerging correlations. The catastrophe theory of attitudes (CTA; Latane & Nowak, 1994), a micro-level theory, suggests that attitudes are a joint function of issue involvement and information favorability. This paper describes the predictions leading from these theories separately and as integrated and meta-analytically combines analyses of almost 500 students discussing social and political issues over a computer network with twenty previous studies testing aspects of CTA. The results of an original computer simulation are also described. Involving attitudes are extreme and change nonlinearly, and involvement mediates thought-, information-, and discussion-induced attitude polarization. Involvement also relates to persuasion and the self-organization of opinion. These studies show converging support for CTA and DSIT and suggest that combining these theories may increase our ability to track the evolution of attitudes from individual beliefs to cultural norms.

The purpose of the present study was to explore several questions about the relationship between well-being and social interaction in a sample of older adults. The primary question involved the relationship between three components of well-being--life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect--and quality and quantity of social interaction. It was found that social interaction variables correlated differently with affective and cognitive components of well-being, with quality of social interaction being associated with higher life satisfaction, and social quantity of interaction being associated with higher positive affect. These relationships were stronger for interactions with friends than for interactions with family members. Quality of social interaction with spouse was also related to well-being.

Social context effects on young children's sex-typing were examined in two studies. In Study 1 sex-typed toy choices of 139 children aged 4 to 8 were assessed first for a solitary-play context, and then for three social contexts distinguished as to friendship status of a specified play partner (represented by a photo): best friend, acquaintance, and an unfamiliar peer. For each context, children selected preferred toys from photographs of a neutral toy paired with either a same- or opposite-sex toy. Results indicated social context effects for girls but not boys, in that girls tended to display more sex-typed toy choices in the solitary and best-friend than in the acquaintance or unfamiliar peer contexts. In general, however, girls approached same-sex toys less than boys, while both sexes avoided opposite-sex toys to a similar extent. In Study 2 subjects were 68 children aged 4 to 7. They were asked to imitate videotaped masculine, feminine, and neutral actions of a hand puppet. For different children, the puppet was designated (by name and photo display) as either a best friend or acquaintance, and it engaged in the sex-typed activities with either gender-congruent or incongruent affect (happy for same-sex actions and sad for opposite-sex actions, or the reverse). Friendship status and gender-affect congruency effects which varied with age level were evident for several memory measures. Incongruency promoted accurate imitative matching for the acquaintance context in younger children, and for the best-friend context in older children. In addition, best-friends' feminine actions were imitated more accurately than their masculine or neutral actions. Subject age and sex also interacted with activity gender type and gender-affect congruency to influence peer affect recall, with poorer recall of feminine-activity affect by boys in the incongruent condition. While social context had little impact upon boys' reported affect, girls' enjoyment was lower for masculine activity imitation in the best-friend congruent-affect condition. Overall, the two studies demonstrate that young children's gendered behaviors show considerable sensitivity to social context factors, and indicate the important influence of affective factors in early sex-typing.

This dissertation involved two studies The first evaluated the hypothesis that the behavior problems which place children at risk for victimization by peers are likely to lead to victimization primarily when children are also at "social risk" for victimization. Social risk was defined as lacking supportive friends or as being rejected by the peer group. Subjects were 229 boys and girls in the third through seventh grades (M age = 11.2 years). Sociometric and peer nomination instruments were used to measure behavior problems, friendship variables, peer rejection, and victimization. As predicted, behavior problems (internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and physical weakness) related more strongly to victimization when children had few friends, had friends who were incapable of fulfilling a protective function (e.g., were physically weak), or were rejected by peers than when children had more friends, had friends capable of defending them, or were better liked by peers. Results support the theory that social risk conditions invite and permit abuse of vulnerable children. Study 2 was a one-year longitudinal investigation designed to evaluate whether the behavioral and social problems that characterize victimized children are antecedents of victimization, consequences of victimization, or both. To examine these issues, 173 children from Study 1 were assessed one year later on the same variables that were measured in Study 1. Results provide information about both the antecedents and the outcomes of victimization.

This study examined the validity of Hersey and Blanchard' s Situational Leadership Theory (SLT). The meta-analytic techniques of Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson were used to investigate two research questions: (1) Does the matching of leadership styles and follower maturity influence outcome measures? (2) Can any of the remaining variance be attributed to moderator variables? A literature search from January, 1968 to April, 1990 produced 26 acceptable studies with 52 separate effects. A correlation coefficient was reported for each study. In studies with multiple effects the correlation was computed from an aggregation of those effects. A mean and variance were tabulated, and corrections were made for sampling error and attenuation. The corrected mean was.0498 with a variance of.0076. This was not significant. The criterion for significance was that the mean must be more than two standard deviations greater than zero (Hunter, Schmidt, & Jackson, 1982, p.28). An analysis of residual variance justified a search for moderator effects. Length of study proved to be the only influential moderator (.4343 mean and 0.0 standard deviation) when the Vertiz, et al. outlier was removed. With the exception of increasing the length of treatment, no evidence was obtained to support the Situational Leadership Theory. Future research should include longer durations, and more designs should incorporate outcome measures. Finally, measurement precision needs to improve for both leadership and maturity.

Self-systems process self-relevant information, act as platforms for action, maintain well-being, and shape interpersonal relationships. To perform these functions, coherent self-structure of evaluatively consistent self-aspects is required. Coherence is experienced as self-certainty (self-concept clarity, confidence, constancy). The issue is addressed from a dynamical systems perspective that conceptualizes the self as a complex system of self-organizing interdependent cognitive/affective elements. Self-structure coherence (SSC) is hypothesized to produce self-certainty, self-esteem, self-stability; extreme, positive, and confident self-evaluations of traits, roles; abstract mental representations; and consistency in self-evaluation. SSC is operationalized by entropy , an index of organization vs. disorganization of self-view. Participants (N = 135) indicated the frequency (always to never) of Big Five traits deconstructed into levels (extremely to not at all; e.g., how often are you highly helpful?). Endorsement of frequent vs. infrequent levels indicates self-structure coherence whereas equiprobable endorsement indicates self-structure incoherence of self-view. Participants indicated their standing on, certainty about, and personal importance of traits and roles; completed Rosenberg's (1968) self-esteem/self-stability scale, behavior identification form, and unipolar Big Five inventory. Coherent SSCs had higher self-certainty, self-esteem, and self-stability; more extreme, positive trait and role self-evaluations; and more abstract action representations than fragmented SSCs. Dynamics of self and structural features were examined using the mouse paradigm that captures moment-to-moment self-evaluation of stream-of-thought. Self-attention modes are hypothesized to affect evaluative coherence in fragmented vs. coherent individuals. Considering action evokes inconsistent self-evaluation (repair, N = 22) while planning action evokes consistent self-evaluation (expression, N = 22) and thinking about the self may evoke either state (control; N = 10). Fragmented SSCs showed a relationship between SSC and volatility of positive/negative self-evaluation in repair but not express mode. There was no difference in volatility between express and repair but there was greater volatility in control mode. These findings suggest that (a) considering action activates uncertainty for those with fragmented vs. coherent self-structures and (b) thinking about social interaction forges evaluative consistency for fragmented and coherent individuals. Self-structure coherence may allow the self vs. others to guide one's actions, facilitate self-concept maintenance, improve self-regulatory processes, and increase understanding of self and others.

Cross-cultural empirical data show that stepchildren receive lower levels of parental investment than their genetic counterparts. Beyond economic deprivation, stepchildren are abused, neglected, and murdered at the hands of stepparents at significantly higher rates than their genetic counterparts (the Cinderella Effect). This study was focused on emotional capital as a resource for purposes of parental investment. Using the tools of dynamical systems, this study investigated the affective components of the differential levels of parental investment in genetic and step-children in light of predictions derived from evolutionary and personality/synchronization based psychological mechanisms. This was accomplished by defining and comparing the valence and nature of step- and genetic parents' feelings toward genetic and step-children and by tracking the mental dynamics engaged in by such parents as they considered their genetic and step-children under varying commonplace circumstances. As predicted, positive affective parental investment was found to be allocated preferentially in favor of genetic children and parents were found to have consistently more positive, more parental, and less volatile feelings about their genetic children than about their stepchildren. Genetic parents were more attentive to environmental cues at an affective level and tended to resolve situational ambiguity in favor of adopting a positive affective stance, while stepparents were more prone to experience affective shifts between evaluative frames and to express negative affectivity in the face of social uncertainty. The data also revealed that both genetic and step-parents were more likely to express positive feelings for children to whom they felt similar, which similarity provided a basis for personal synchronization. Theoretically grounded in both the evolutionary perspective and personality-based theory, this study employed the methodology and tools of dynamical systems to extract structure from the dynamics inherent in parental evaluation and the expression of affect.

A basic difference between the perspectives of actors and observers is the amount of information each has to make attributional inferences. Jones and Nisbett (1972) suggested these informational differences lead to an inverse relationship between trait and situational attributions, such that better-known others receive more situational attributions while lesser-known others receive more trait attributions. While this difference has traditionally been accounted for as a function of individuals' perceptions of cross-situational variability in the actor's behavior, recent research has suggested that this explanation is inaccurate. Unfortunately, alternative explanations for the self-other differences in attributional tendencies have yet to be offered. It was hypothesized here that these differences might be better explained as a function of the specific traits people attribute to themselves versus those that are attributed to others. To that end, the first study in this paper examined different attributions offered for oneself versus one's acquaintance as a function of the social desirability of the Big Five personality traits (i.e., Extraversion/Introversion, Agreeable/Disagreeable, Conscientious/Not Conscientious, Emotionally Stable/Neurotic, Intelligent/Unintelligent). While it was expected that results would reflect self-enhancement tendencies on the subjects' part; i.e., subjects would make more positive trait attributions (Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Intelligence) to themselves than to their acquaintances and more negative trait attributions (Introversion, Disagreeableness, Not Conscientious, Neuroticism, Unintelligence) to their acquaintances than to themselves, findings suggested that whether subjects chose to self-enhance was based, at least in part, on the trait in question. The most counterintuitive of these findings being that subjects labeled themselves as being more Introverted than their acquaintances. While self-enhancement explanations are traditionally described as a function of a motivational drive to protect one's self-esteem, such reasoning could not be applied to findings reported in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 offered the alternative explanation that attributional differences on the part of oneself and one's observers are based on the amount of information available to themselves versus their outside observers.

This study assessed whether dynamical properties of attitudes can be used to predict attitude change. In social psychology, attitudes have been defined as dispositions that are stable over time but also as mental states that are malleable in response to external influences. To solve this paradox, I proposed that attitudes should be conceptualized as fixed-point attractors for momentary evaluations that fluctuate over time. In dynamical systems, an attractor corresponds to a stable equilibrium toward which a system evolves. This conceptualization allows us to distinguish attitudes that are rather stable in a short time frame from momentary evaluations that fluctuate over time due to noise and external influence. To investigate this conceptualization, I utilized the mouse paradigm (Vallacher & Nowak, 1994) to assess momentary evaluation. A procedure developed by Johnson & Nowak (2002) was adopted to calculate an instability index and to identify the number of attractors in participants' mouse-generated trajectories of momentary evaluation. As attitude topics, I employed behaviors that are considered either acceptable or unacceptable by the majority of society. The majority viewpoint (i.e., normative attitude) for each behavior was assumed to function as a stable fixed-point attractor. The results supported this claim. Participants' attitudes tended to shift toward the normative behavior-specific attractor over time. When the initial attitudes were congruent with the norm, moreover, participants with multiple attractors showed greater attitude change than did those with a single attractor. A system with a single attractor can be stabilized only at that attractor whereas a system with multiple attractors can be stabilized at more than one equilibrium. Further research is recommended to determine whether the number of attractors is meaningfully related to other attitude properties (e.g., complexity or ambiguity). Future research is also recommended to refine the attractor methodology introduced in this study and to assess its generality.

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, this research was conducted in order to replicate and extend Egan and Perry's (2001) work linking four components of gender identity to adjustment; second, this research was intended to extend knowledge of the relation between gender identity and affiliational patterns in the peer group. Measures of gender identity were (a) feelings of gender typicality, (b) contentment with one's gender assignment, (c) felt pressure for gender conformity, and (d) intergroup bias (feeling that one's own sex is superior to the other). Measures of adjustment included self-esteem, peer rejection, victimization by peers, and specific social behaviors. Participants were 206 children in Grades 3 through 8. Low gender typicality, low gender contentedness, and high felt pressure were all associated with maladjustment. Furthermore, children were especially likely to be at risk for poor adjustment when two of these factors occurred together (e.g., low gender typicality in combination with high felt pressure, low gender contentedness in combination with high felt pressure, or low gender typicality in combination with low gender contentedness). Intergroup bias was unrelated to adjustment. Analyses relating gender identity to characteristics of reciprocated friends and disliked peers indicated that children tend to choose friends with similar clusters of gender identity-linked characteristics and avoid children who do not possess those characteristics. Interpretations and directions for future research are offered.