John Dollard

Under What Conditions Do Opinions Predict Behavior

HIGH on the list of problems harassing opinion researchers is that of validity. When people tell an interviewer how they expect to act, will they really act that way when the time comes? This article discusses some of the social and cultural factors which tend to sustain the validity of surveys, and also various other factors which tend to make peoples opinions unreliable indices for predicting their behavior. Seven conditions which, if kept in mind, may assist in understanding the relationship between opinion and action are presented. The author, well known for his writing on race relations, morale, and other subjects, is Research Associate in Psychology, and a member of the Institute of Human Relations, at Yale University.

Measurement of motivational variables in psychotherapy

Among many psychoanalysts quantification has acquired a bad reputation. They think of quantification or measurement as a destruction of the meaningfulness of the therapeutic interaction, as an insensitivity to vital processes of therapy, as a rather stupid and arrogant use of numbers. One can understand why they feel this way; there have been many misguided attempts at measuring psychoanalytic concepts. But in these misguided attempts, the troubles arose not from quantification, but from the erroneous applications of analytic theory. For example, the easy assumption that repression can be equated with forgetting is just plain wrong; and whether an investigator making this erroneous assumption uses quantification or not is quite beside the point.

Measurement of Electrical Skin Resistance during Interviews

Previous investigators have shown that the level of a patients electrical skin resistance before and after a psychotherapeutic interview is related to the content of the interview (4, 5). Their findings make it reasonable to expect that changes in skin resistance within an interview will throw some light on the nature of the moment-to-moment interaction between patient and therapist. The present paper describes the development of apparatus for making continuous measurements of skin resistance during therapeutic interviews. ELECTRODES In attempting to measure skin resistance continuously, we soon discovered that none of the commercially available electrode-holders is satisfactory, because every electrode-holder is made so that it either fails to maintain firm contact with the skin or causes the patient so much discomfort that the psychotherapy is disrupted. Thus, we found it necessary to design one. Our electrode-holder, constructed as shown in Fig. 1, keeps the electrodes in firm contact with the skin. At first we made the electrode-holder of Bake

Measurement of what the patient learns from psychotherapy.

All therapy sessions and a follow-up interview were tape recorded with a test sample of 10 neurotic patients treated in short term, psychodynamically oriented therapy. Two researchers studied the content of the sessions and listed the basic “messages” expressed in the interventions of the therapist and repeated or expanded by the patient. The four main messages were selected for each patient. A rating scale was devised for verbal and behavioral learning of the messages as evaluated in a follow-up interview which asked specifically about the main messages. The ratings of message learning by two independent raters were highly reliable. A mental health rating scale was designed which measured 1) the patients symptoms and complaints, 2) attitude toward self, 3) sexual adjustment and 4) social functioning. A figure representing change in mental health for an item was obtained by subtracting the rating for the initial sessions from that for the follow-up. Mental health ratings (which were applied reliably by two independent raters) were used in validating hypotheses as to the therapeutic effects of learning of the main messages taught during therapy. The findings were as follows. The patients who, in a follow-up, indicated that they had learned better verbally what the therapist taught were more likely than others to exhibit behavior relevant to what was taught and were more likely to have improved more than others in mental health. The patients who, in a follow-up, indicated that they had learned better behaviorally what the therapist taught were likely to have improved more than others in mental health. The patients who, in a follow-up, indicated that they had learned better behaviorally what the therapist taught about sex were more likely than others to have improved in sex adjustment. Improvement in attitude toward self was associated with improvement in social functioning.

WHEELER, RAYMOND HOLDER, and F. THEODORE PERKINS. Principles of Men tal Development. Pp. 529. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1932.

death rate from tuberculosis and various other conditions, of males than of females within the same social and racial categories, thereby pointing strongly towards the assumption that the &dquo;occupational environment&dquo; under which many breadwinners must work is causally related to the increased mortality of persons in middle life and beyond. Despite the title of the work, the relative weight of heredity and environment is kept in mind throughout. The author leans heavily to the environmentalist point of view, additional impressiveness being given to his conclusions by the painstaking care and discrimination with which he handles his data, and by the complete mastery of the literature and methodology of his field that he displays. In the preparation of a new printing, attention should be given to proof-reading errors on page 62, line 20; page 79, line 7; and page 203, line 13. NILES CARPENTER University of Buffalo

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be likened to some inner vector) which selectively accumulates in the course of evolution. This discussion enables the making of a point which seems really important. On page 3 the authors say, &dquo;The young child is already familiar with this culture, at his own level.&dquo; We tend to answer, &dquo;I’ll say he is.&dquo; The point to be stressed is that the authors seem to have the view of culture as an external artifact rather than as