Charles E. Kimble

Public Self-Focus and Sex Differences in Behavioral Self-Handicapping: Does Increasing Self-Threat Still Make it “Just a Man’s Game?”

The present study examined the effects of public self-focus and participants’ sex on self-handicapping behavior. Research in the area of self-handicapping has consistently shown that men alone tend to self-handicap behaviorally. Because conditions of public self-focus tend to make the evaluative implications of per formance more salient, the authors hypothesized that people would self-handicap more when they are self-focused (as opposed to other-focused). Men and women were presented with an important intellectual evaluation and were allowed to practice for the upcoming test as much as they wanted. Results showed that men self-handicap more when they are self-focused but women do not behaviorally self-handicap under self-or other-focused conditions. Heightened concern over possible failure in self-focused conditions appeared to be the critical mediator in encouraging self-handicapping behavior among men.

Development of Self-Handicapping Tendencies

This study was undertaken to determine when U.S. children begin to self-handicap, that is, to reduce preparation effort before evaluations rather than applying themselves to do their best. The personal variables examined for their impact on practice behavior were gender, grade level, and self-esteem. The situational variables were time of the self-esteem test (before or after the evaluation task) and importance of the evaluation task. The results showed that (a) the 6th-grade boys were more likely than the 6th-grade girls to self-handicap, (b) the 3rd-grade children were not as affected as the 6th-grade children by the self-evaluation implications of performance evaluations, (c) self-handicapping by low-self-esteem and high-self-esteem 6th graders depended on recent experiences, and (d) the self-affirming experience of a self-esteem test reduced the motivation to self-handicap among high-self-esteem 6th-grade boys.

Gaze and emotional expression: The effects of message positivity–negativity and emotional intensity.

Abstract The effects of emotional positivity-negativity and emotional intensity on actors gaze were examined by simulating emotional situations to a camera. Female subjects were first asked to act out a neutral message as if they were speaking to a person to obtain a baseline for direct gaze. Subjects were then asked to perform a positive or a negative message to the camera. Half the subjects attempted to express the message with strong emotion; half expressed it with weak, ambivalent emotion. As expected, it was found that more direct gaze was maintained when expressing strong emotion. Whether the message was positive or negative did not affect gaze direction. The results were discussed in relation to the dimensions of nonverbal communication.

ASSOCIATION AND DISSOCIATION BY FOOTBALL FANS

This study examined the tendency of fans to associate themselves with preferred teams when they win and dissociate themselves from preferred teams when they lose. We offered and gave buttons of preferred team to viewers who were watching two teams play a professional football game on television. More fans of the winning team voluntarily gave their postgame reactions and signed their names next to their indicated preferred team than fans of the losing team Analysis of responses to a mood questionnaire completed after the game indicated that fans of the winning team were elated and fans of the losing team were dejected after the game. These results support an hypothesis that fans attain a feeling of vicarious achievement through being fans.

Personal, Interpersonal, and Situational Influences on Behavioral Self-Handicapping

ABSTRACT This study explored the combined effects of personal factors (participant sex), interpersonal factors (experimenter sex), and situational factors (performance feedback) on two forms of behavioral self-handicapping. Participants received non-contingent success or failure feedback concerning their performance on a novel ability and were given the opportunity to self-handicap before performing again. Behavioral self-handicapping took the form of (a) exerting less practice effort (practice) or (b) choosing a performance-debilitating tape (choice). Men practiced least after failure feedback and chose a debilitating tape if they were interacting with a female experimenter. Generally, across all participants in both choice and practice conditions, high performance concern and the presence of a male experimenter led to the most self-handicapping. Results are interpreted in terms of self-presentational concerns that emphasize a desire to impress or an awareness of the female or male experimenters acceptance of self-handicappers.

Effectiveness of counteraggression strategies in reducing interactive aggression by males.

Studies on techniques of reducing aggression have typically examined passive, matching, and punitive strategies of counteraggression and have been remarkably inconsistent in their findings. This research was designed to resolve the contradictory results by reconceptuallzing the strategies in terms of counteraggression/aggression (cA/A) ratios. We predicted that the norm of reciprocity and the tendency to exploit weakness would make a cA/A ratio of less than but close to 1.0 (matching) most effective in reducing aggression. Ten cA/A ratios were used. One hundred male subjects set punishment level set by their opponent (a confederate) on 25 trials, and, on 13 losing trials, received punishment. The most effective cA/A ratios for reducing aggression were the lowest ones. Lower cA/A ratios reduced aggression and ratios greater than 1.0 increased aggresion. Contrary to the results of previous studies, the matching strategy was ineffective in reducing aggresion.

AN ATTRIBUTIONAL VIEW OF ATTRACTION: EVALUATIVE GAINS VERSUS FAVORABLE COMPARISONS

Kelleys (1967) attribution theory suggests that a selective evaluator whose opinion was more positive toward the target than toward comparison others would be liked more than a gain evaluator whose opinion of the target changed from negative to positive. This hypothesis was tested. In addition, the selective evaluator was compared to a nonselective one, and the gain evaluator was compared to a positive one. The selective evaluator and the positive evaluator were liked more than the gain evaluator. These findings were interpreted by comparing these conditions with a maximum attraction situation implied by Kelleys model.

DOES LOCUS OF CONTROL SIMILARITY INCREASE ATTRACTION

This study explores the possibility that the failure to obtain support for Byrnes effect, similarity of attitude, on the dimension of locus of control is associated with methodological artifacts. 24 internal and 21 external subjects (mostly females) rated their attraction to the locus of control protocols of three bogus strangers. These protocols were constructed using the method of constant discrepancy to reflect attitudes that were (1) similar to, (2) dissimilar to, and (3) the mirror image of each subjects own responses. The results indicated that both internal and external subjects were more attracted to a similar stranger than to a dissimilar one.

Do Necessary or Sufficient Causal Information Conditions Affect Attributions More

The purpose of this experiment was to determine how single sentences of information about the consensus, distinctiveness, or consistency of a behavioral event affect attributions. The logical model of attribution, derived from Kelleys ideas on covariation, indicates that particular types of information (e.g., low consensus) imply that a person, a stimulus, or a circumstance is a necessary or a sufficient condition for the behavioral event. It was expected that conditions of necessary cause would produce stronger attributions than those of sufficient cause would. We presented low or high consensus, distinctiveness, or consistency information or no information about one of five behavioral events on each of 105 trials. Strength and speed of attribution to a person, a stimulus, or a circumstance were measured on each trial. Conditions of necessary cause did produce the strongest attributions in five of six comparisons, but two of the six sufficient cause conditions also influenced attributions substantially. In general, people appear to know the patterns of information indicating that a factor is a necessary and sufficient condition and use the three-dimensional patterns as templates to fill in missing information for attributions when they consider a single bit of information.