Charles L. Richman

Attitudes Toward Domestic Violence: Race and Gender Issues

Previous research has notextensively addressedhow attitudes toward domestic violence vary betweenethnicities and genders. This experiment utilizeddomestic violence scenarios with the husbands andwifes ethnicities varied to form four combinations ofEuropean-American and African-American couples.Participants were 156 European-American (87 female and69 male) and 109 African-American (73 female and 36 male)undergraduate introductory psychologystudents aged 18-24 years. Participants read thescenario and completed 7 questionnaires about theirattitudes toward the scenario, domestic violence, andwomen. Analyses showed that women relative to menblamed the husband more for the abuse, sympathized morewith the wife, and rated the incident as more serious,and African-American participants sympathized more with African-American victims. In addition,participants blamed the African-American husband lessfor the abuse than the EuropeanAmerican husband. Bothwomen and European-Americans, relative to men and African-Americans, had more positive views ofwomen and disapproved more strongly of wife beating.This research demonstrates that participant gender andethnicity, as well as abuser and victim ethnicity, do have an effect on attitudes toward domesticviolence.

Spontaneous alternation behavior in animals: A review

Factors affecting spontaneous alternation behavior (SAB) in animals, for example, age, gender and species studied; type of apparatus and cues employed; and neuro-anatomical, neuro-chemical and motivational status of the organism, were reviewed. Despite a myriad of experiments showing interesting main effects of such variables, little research has been performed assessing the interactive affects of these factors on alternation behavior. For example, psychologists test rats in central nervous system (CNS) lesion studies, whereas psychopharmacologists tend to assess SAB in mice. Most importantly, studies have not been reported investigating the possible interactions among species, brain lesions and drugs. This is an unfortunate omission since several important alternation models include propositions relating to cholinergic and/or serotonergic coding in the hippocampus. Examination of behavioral studies revealed the primary cue for alternation among invertebrates to be body turn, whereas vertebrates rely primarily on directional and odor cues. Reference to the seeking of stimulus change remains the most compelling motivational account of why animals manifest this ubiquitious and reliable behavior pattern.

Effects of bulbectomization, strain, and gentling on emotionality and exploratory behavior in rats

Abstract The present research was concerned with the effects of olfactory bulb removal, strain, and gentling on emotionality, exploration and spontaneous alternation behavior. Whereas, emotionality and open-field ambulation were found to be increased; exploration behavior was reduced following bulbectomization. Strain differences were also observed. Within a broad range of emotionality, bulbectomization was not found to adversely effect the level of spontaneous alternation behavior.

The relationship between mothers’ eating restraint and their children’s attitudes and behaviors

Dieting practices and beliefs of fourth-grade children and their mothers were studied. The children’s self-esteem, locus of control, and eating restraint were also assessed. Fifty children and their mothers were administered an eating restraint scale. The children were also administered self-esteem and locus of control scales. Although the children’s eating restraint, self-esteem, and locus of control were not related, the mothers’ eating restraint was found to be positively related to their daughters’ eating restraint and internality scores. No relationship was found between the mothers’ eating restraint and their sons’ eating restraint and internality scores. The results are discussed in terms of same-sex identification processes.

The interaction of semantic memory with storage and retrieval processes

A procedure for separating storage from retrieval (R. Chechile & D. L. Meyer, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 1976, 14, 430–437) lead to the conclusion that memory development involves changes in both storage and retrieval. Nevertheless, these changes resulted from the interaction of storage and retrieval mechanisms with the age-related elaboration of the semantic memory system. This study shows that the memory improvement with age, between kindergarten and second grade, vanished when the meaningfulness of the materials were equated. The most plausible interpretation of the results is the hardware invariance hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, the memory apparatus for information processing is constant across ages, but the hardware is used more effectively if there is a better-developed semantic memory system.

Is the bizarreness effect a special case of sentence reorganization

The effects on memory of two types of bizarre sentences (rarely occurring, or atypical, and never occurring, or illogical) were investigated in comparison with those of common sentences. In Experiment 1, the effects of these three types of sentences, which were presented for 7 sec, were measured in mixed-list conditions. Evidence for the bizarreness effect (advantageous memorial effects of bizarre sentences over common ones) was found only with atypical and common sentences. In Experiment 2, the stimulus presentation time was 35 sec; free-recall and sentence-access performance were superior for the illogical sentences as opposed to the common and the atypical sentences. A proposal based on the assumption that subjects tend to spontaneously modify sentence structure is suggested.

Racism 102: The Classroom.

Within our educational institutions today, supremism (racial superior attitudes) are a function of how schools enforce discipline, use standardized tests, select curriculum and texts, and of teacher attitudes. To illustrate the expression of supremism in American schools today, in Study 1, the authors instructed European American 4th-year teachers-in-training to estimate the grade point average (GPA) and IQ of four African American or four European American children. The GPAs and IQs of the African American children were estimated to be significantly lower than those of the EuropeanAmerican children. Study 2 showed that the racial attitudes of European American student teachers predicted their evaluation of and the pleasure they derivedfrom reading a short story or a poem supposedly written by an African American author It was concluded that old-fashioned racism remains afundamental problem at all grade levels in American schools today.

Effects of three cognitive strategies on long-distance running

The present research was designed to assess the effects of three cognitive strategies on long-distance running. In comparison with the control subjects, the subjects who were administered associative, task-specific instructions demonstrated a substantial improvement in their running times. Dissociative and psyching-up instructions were no more effective in improving running times than were control instructions. A positive relationship was found between the use of associative and dissociative instructions and running times.

Personality changes as a function of minimum competency test success or failure

The present study was conducted to assess the psychological effects of success/failure on the North Carolina Minimum Competency Test (MCT). Measures of self-esteem decreased and neuroticism and apprehension increased following knowledge of MCT failure. However, when high-academic-risk students passed the MCT, indices of dominance/assertiveness increased without corresponding changes in self-esteem, neuroticism, or apprehension. These data were discussed in terms of their relationship to current educational policies as they impact on high school students.

Subject-Generated Bizarreness: Imagery or Semantic Processing

The bizarreness effect was assessed when subjects were instructed to generate bizarre and common images, sentences, or both from single noun or noun pair presentations. Stimulus interval times were 45 s. Subject-generated materials produced the bizarreness effect when subjects were instructed to image, create sentences, or perform both tasks. These findings were independent of whether single nouns or noun pairs were presented. It was concluded that in this paradigm, imaginal processes may be unimportant in producing the effect. The predictions of several hypotheses that attempt to account for the bizarreness effect are compared.