Roger E. Ulrich

Student Acceptance of Generalized Personality Interpretations

Two groups of Ss were given personality tests and their interpretations, which were identical for each S. Ss were asked to rate the interpretations on a scale ranging from Excellent to Very Poor. They were also asked to make any additional comments which they felt appropriate. In the first group the tests and interpretations were given by a professional psychologist, whereas in the second they were given by students. In both the experiments a significant number of Ss rated the interpretation as good or excellent, but there was no difference in the ratings when given by a student or a psychologist. They also wrote comments containing praise for the examiner and indicated their complete acceptance of the interpretation. It is suggested that similar circumstances may occasionally exist in the actual counseling setting.

Fighting and avoidance in response to aversive stimulation.

Avoidance behavior in single and paired rats was established by placing the animals into a chamber and allowing their shock-induced random movements to produce a bar press. Single subjects consistently performed better in the avoidance situation than paired subjects. This finding was related to the high incidence of shock elicited fighting which was observed between the paired animals. Both avoidance and fighting responses were typically made by one of the paired subjects while the other showed only the stereotyped fighting reaction. The addition of a naive subject into the chamber with a subject that had previously learned to avoid, also produced fighting behavior which disrupted the avoidance responding.