Joseph B. Juhasz

PERSONALITY AND PREFERENCE FOR PAINTING STYLE

40 university students were asked to choose between the cubist or surrealist from among 15 pairs of slides of paintings according to their aesthetic preference. Their choices were correlated with scores on Rotters internal vs external locus of control scale. The data support the hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between preference for cubism over surrealism and internal locus control and vice versa.

PERSONALITY AND PREFERENCE FOR ARCHITECTURAL STYLE1

This is a replication of an earlier study relating personality to painting style. As in the previous study we are interested in the relation between fatalism as measured by Rorters inrernal vs external locus of control scale and preference for classical vs romantic art. The prediction that external locus of control (fatalism) is positively related to preference for romantic building and vice versa was confirmed.

Psychology of Paradox and Vice Versa

Paradox, illogicality, contradictoriness—these ate words not often mentioned in psychology. Role theory, however, does provide a possible frame for accommodating paradox in that it does not attempt to objectivize human experience; and it views events and actions as equivocal. It is through a recognition of multivalence that role theory makes its primary contribution to psychology, speaking, as it does, in equi- and multi-vocalizations.

Some Conceptual Limits on Reliability Estimates of Measures of Imagining

It is argued that to the degree that some imagining processes are transformatory in nature, estimates of reliability either bear no relation to their validity or in fact may indicate lack of validity. This is so because the nature of transformation implies that the object under study will not stand still to be measured. Any indication of reliability would then merely be a fortuitous coincidence between the waxing and waning of the object to be measured and of the measuring device. Alternatively, the presence of reliable measurement may indicate that the imagining being measured is related to verbal-mathematical reasoning.

Information processing in imagination using nonverbalizable visual stimuli.

In groups of 20 to 25, 146 undergraduates were tested as to their ability to mentally combine two shapes. They were to pick the correct choice from 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, or 15 alternatives. The shapes were previously proven to be effectively unverbalizable but recognizable and discriminable. Contrary to expectation, there was no negative decrement in performance with increasing numbers of incorrect alternatives.