Robert W. Fuhrman

On the trait implications of social behaviors: Kindness, intelligence, goodness, and normality ratings for 400 behavior statements

Four hundred stimulus behaviors and their mean normative ratings for kindness, intelligence, goodness, and normality were presented for use in person perception and memory studies. Each of the four normative ratings was based on a separate sample of 35 to 39 undergraduate students from the University of Illinois. Rankings of the mean ratings were provided to facilitate a quick comparison of the behavior ratings along each of the four trait dimensions. In addition, a cluster analysis of the behaviors was reported, using the mean kindness, intelligence, and normality ratings as defining variables. Six clusters were distinguished: (1) behaviors that primarily conveyed kindness; (2) behaviors that primarily conveyed unkindness; (3) behaviors that conveyed an unusual amount of intelligence; (4) behaviors that conveyed general intelligence; (5) behaviors that conveyed a general lack of intelligence; and (6) behaviors that conveyed very little information about kindness or intelligence.

Event memory: the temporal organization of social action sequences.

We used comparative judgment procedures in two experiments to investigate the cognitive processes that mediate peoples reconstruction of the social events they read about. Subjects in Experiment 1 read a passage describing a series of behaviors manifested by a person in three situations. Subsequently, they were given pairs of these actions and were asked to judge either which action occurred sooner or which occurred later. These judgments were (a) faster when the behaviors being compared occurred near the middle of the situation to which they pertained than when they occurred near either the beginning or the end, (b) faster when the three situations were unrelated to one another than when they were thematically related, and (c) faster when the behaviors being compared occurred in different situations than when they occurred in the same situation. Actions were compared more quickly if they were far apart in the overall series presented than if they were close together, replicating the symbolic temporal distance effects obtained when scripted actions are judged on the basis of general knowledge. However, a semantic congruity effect (a tendency for actions near the beginning of the series to be discriminated more quickly when subjects are asked which comes sooner, but for actions near the end to be discriminated more quickly when subjects are asked which comes later) was not evident. In Experiment 2, subjects read a passage about a persons visit to a restaurant in which both generic actions (e.g., ordering the meal) and particularized actions (e.g., salting the fries) were described. Symbolic distance had a greater effect on judgments of particularized actions than on judgments of generic actions. Congruity effects were found only for judgments of generic actions. To account for these effects, a model of temporal order judgments is proposed that considers both the manner in which situation-specific actions are encoded into memory at the time they are learned and the process of comparing the actions at the time they are judged.

Judgment Biases and Characteristics of Friendships of Mexican American and Anglo-American Girls and Boys.

Gender and ethnic patterns in ratings and assessments of four dimensions of friendship qualities were investigated (emotional attachment, support, shared activities, and conflicts) with 122 Anglo-American and Mexican American early adolescents (63 girls; mean age 10.36 years), as were links between ratings and assessments. Participants named a favorite friend, rated their perceptions of the hypothetical behaviors of that friend or an unfamiliar peer in scenarios that varied by actor’s intention and outcome of the actor’s behavior on the participant, and completed two measures designed to assess friendship quality. Girls, but not boys, rated friends’ behaviors as more positive than the similar behaviors of unfamiliar peers and reported higher levels of attachment and support in their friendships. Similar rating patterns were found for Anglo-American and Mexican American participants. In addition, ratings of friends’ behaviors in scenarios that presented neutral intentions were correlated with the level of emotional attachment reported in the friendship.

Interrelatedness of Proactive Coping, Reactive Coping, and Learned Resourcefulness

Research has identified that coping strategies used by individuals depend on temporal locations of stressors. Dispositional attributes are also identified as predictors of coping. The current study identified commonalities of proactive coping, reactive coping, and learned resourcefulness measures. The analysis yielded three factors reflective of the coping process.