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Contradictory results regarding sex effects in social dilemmas have been obtained. In some studies women have contributed more than men; in some studies men have contributed more than women; in some studies no sex differences have appeared. This paper attempts to reconcile these findings. We examine whether the participants' sex, the sex composition of the group, or the resources involved in the social dilemma lead to sex differences in contributions. Two experiments were employed. Subjects were blocked on sex and then were assigned randomly to different groups that varied in sex composition. Although the experiment examined repeated decisions, no interaction between group members was involved. Results showed that neither the sex of the group member nor the sex composition of the group had significant effects upon individuals' contributions to the group when money was the resource. When the resource changed, sex effects emerged; sex composition still had no effect, however. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study combines two of the major theoretical perspectives in social psychology: social exchange and attribution theory. We propose a theoretical model that depicts the influence of two fundamental social factors--structural power and outcome equity--on causal attributions for exchange outcomes, which in turn mediate behavioral reactions to the exchange outcomes. We manipulate the social factors in a vignette describing an exchange between a female typist and another student (male or female) who needs a paper typed. Female subjects play the role of the typist and respond to a series of questions about their perceptions of the situation. Findings support the hypothesized positive relationships between structural and perceived power, and between outcome equity and perceived fairness. The effects of perceived equity on attributions appear stronger than those of perceived power. Also, there is some support for the role of self attributions in mediating reactions to exchange outcomes in opposite-sex dyads, but such mediating effects are less robust in female dyads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop a formal, testable theory of problem-solving behavior with special relevance to individuals and small groups. The theory is consistent with principles drawn from operant behavior and social exchange theories but also incorporates elements of cognitive psychology. Problem solving is defined as a nonroutine activity oriented toward changing an undesirable state of affairs. The focus on change differentiates problem solving from coping, which is oriented toward relieving feelings of stress. A decision-making model is presented, which takes the problem-solving process through its latter stages. The theory is based on two axioms and three theorems pertaining to the process of decision making. These axioms and theorems serve as the foundation for deriving 14 theorems that establish the antecedent conditions affecting decisions relevant to each of four stages in the problem-solving process. This theory is distinguished from other problem-solving theories in its effort to account for conditions leading to awareness of problems and in its emphasis on generic problem-solving processes rather than on the effectiveness of problem-solving outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, biological, symbolic, and aversive racism are conceptualized on the basis of their most characteristic components. In a survey of 1,760 Dutch secondary school students, the empirical basis for this conceptualization was examined. It is hypothesized that the forms of racism are steps in a single cumulative dimension of ethnic attitudes. This hypothesis is based on Myrdal's rank order of discrimination and Blumer's idea of the color line. The validity of the forms of racism is tested by relating the steps of the ethnic attitude to intentions regarding discriminatory behavior, stereotyping, and attitudes toward affirmative action. It was found that 1) the distinguished forms of racism, operationalized on the basis of literature research, were largely corroborated by our empirical data; 2) the forms of racism can be arrayed on one underlying Guttman-type dimension; and 3) egalitarians, aversive racists, ethnocentrists, symbolic racists, and biological racists scored significantly differently on the variables measuring various expressions of prejudice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has three main objectives. The first is to outline the parameters of methodological relationism, a new metatheoretical perspective created to parallel methodological individualism and methodological holism as overarching theoretical perspectives. The second is to demonstrate that social psychology always has been relational and therefore that methodological relationism is a more appropriate metatheory for this area than are the other two perspectives. Finally, we will show that methodological relationism sheds new light on the long-standing problem of fragmentation in social psychology. We suggest that most social psychology has been relational and therefore has been unified, at least implicitly, under a single metatheoretical perspective. Given this unity, we argue that the idea of crisis in social psychology is overstated. Furthermore, looking at the many varieties of social psychology in this way allows us to envision more clearly the possibility of an integrated social psychological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the intersection of race and gender in contemporary American society by exploring how one aspect of gender relations, the degree of agreement between men and women in their attitudes toward gender stratification, varies between blacks and whites. Both black men and black women tend to express more criticism in their gender-related attitudes than whites, and the level of agreement between the sexes is greater for blacks. I interpret this greater agreement in the context of the resistance to racial inequality, levels of exposure to gender inequality, and the degree of interdependence between the sexes among blacks. I consider the implications of my results for understanding how race and gender interact in shaping attitudes toward gender inequality and how men's social dominance and women's dependence influence the degree of agreement between men and women in their criticism of gender stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attitude-behavior relationship has had a prominent place in social and behavioral science for more than a half-century. The initial expectations of strong asymmetrical causality have not been borne out, and contemporary research suggests that attitude-behavior consistency is a highly complex phenomenon. This paper undertakes a conceptual analysis based on the simplest longitudinal case in order to make explicit some overlooked features of the attitude-behavior relationship. Empirical examples are presented, and problems for further work are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the combination of job and household circumstances modifies the association between employment and the sense of control over one's life. Data are from a 1985 sample of 809 Illinois adults. The average sense of control is greater among people with paying jobs than among those without. The difference increases with greater job autonomy and higher earnings. Not all household contexts of employment are alike, however; people who do most of the household work find employment less beneficial to their sense of control. Also, the more family income comes from sources other than one's earnings, the less that employment increases the sense of control. For married women, the typical combination of low pay, low autonomy, high responsibility for household chores, and family income other than personal earnings negates the positive association between employment and the sense of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that people are aware of who is affiliated with whom in their immediate social world. Their perceptions of the patterning of affiliation, however, do not correspond to the patterning actually displayed by interacting humans. Affiliation is not categorical; perceptions of affiliation are, however. On the basis of experimental evidence about errors in learning simple social structures, a theory that accounts for this discrepancy is proposed. This theory suggests that people impose a categorical form on noncategorical affiliation patterns by a process of "filling in the blanks" in their experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the lack of theoretical work on young children in sociology by presenting an interpretive approach to childhood socialization. This approach emends traditional psychological views of human development by demonstrating that socialization is a collective process which occurs in a social rather than a private realm. The interpretive approach argues that children, through their participation in cultural routines, creatively appropriate information from the adult world to produce their own unique peer cultures. This process of interpretive reproduction enables children to become a part of adult culture--that is, to contribute to its reproduction and extension--through their negotiations with adults and their creative production of a series of peer cultures with other children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a series of articles which deals with theoretical and empirical developments in social psychology.

Building on work on the matching law, this paper proposes a model of choice behavior that includes both costs and benefits. We compare our model with alternative models in the behavioral literature, and use the results of two experiments with human subjects to assess the predictive accuracy of the various models. Comparing the models for both obtained and scheduled reinforcement, we find our model superior. The results support two general principles of choice behavior: In accord with the matching law, subjects do not maximize payoffs or produce a step-wise function in making choices, and the elements in choice situations interact multiplicatively. We discuss the implications of these principles for assessing choice behavior in social situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of feeling norms underlying romantic love among early adolescent females. On the basis of data from in-depth interviews, transcriptions of naturally occurring discourse, and field notes, we find that girls not only acquire cultural knowledge about romantic love, but also develop several feeling and expression norms to deal with their own concerns about romance. These norms involve the relative importance of romantic relationships and the appropriate object of romantic feelings. Girls also use a variety of discourse strategies to communicate normative information and to reinforce feeling norms to friends, ranging from playful language activities to more serious modes of discourse. Yet, even though girls obtain normative information about romantic love, they do not always abide by feeling and expression norms. Instead, they sometimes respond to these norms with resistance and defy them intentionally. This finding suggests that emotion norms constrain, but do not determine, adolescent females' affect and behavior. The relevance of adolescence for romantic socialization in particular and for emotion processes more generally is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we answer the question: Do people select interaction partners to enhance their self-image, or do they strive to maintain a stable view of self? Affect control theory, a quantified version of symbolic interactionism, predicts that individuals adopt strategies which maintain their identities in order to secure a stable definition of the situation. When individuals have low self-esteem, they select interactions that maintain this low self-esteem, even when these interactions cause negative emotions. Two Experiments examined the cognitive, affective, and behavioral effects of identity-confirming and -disconfirming information. Study 1, which assessed the cognitive and emotional outcomes of identity-relevant feedback, revealed that people with both high and low self-esteem feel good when praised and bad when they receive negative feedback on their performance. People with low self-esteem, however, think that the criticism is accurate, and like the critic more than do people with high self-esteem. Study 2 examined the implications of these responses for social interaction. Consistent with affect control predictions, subjects selected interaction partners who provided identity-consistent feedback. People with low self-esteem preferred to interact with a critic rather than with someone who said flattering things about their performance, even though the negative feedback made them feel bad. We discuss our results in terms of their implications for role stability and for the behavior of people with chronically negative self-identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I develop and discuss the concept of "identity-relevant stressors." Identities refer to individuals' conceptions of themselves in terms of the social roles that they enact (e.g., spouse, parent, worker, churchgoer, friend). An identity-relevant experience is one that threatens or, alternatively, enhances an identity that the individual values highly; identity-irrelevant experiences occur in roles that the individual does not value highly. This concept can help solve a problem in the stress literature, namely the inability of stress theory to account parsimoniously for social status differences in psychological distress. I propose that I) individuals' identity structures (their hierarchical identity rankings) should vary systematically by social status; 2) because of differential resources, lower-status individuals should be exposed to proportionately more identity-threatening stressors and higher-status individuals to more identity-enhancing experiences, and 3) variation in exposure to identity-relevant experiences should explain status differences in psychological distress more fully than conventional measures of life events and chronic strains. To illustrate the potential utility of this theoretical approach, I discuss gender and marital status differences in psychological distress as cases in point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between leadership and formal and informal organizational structures. Focusing on dyads as the unit of analysis, we explore the effects of friendship and two kinds of formal ties on the presence or absence of leadership relations in three organizational settings. The ways in which formal and informal structures affect respect relations vary along a continuum for the three organizations from least to most hierarchical. Respect relations are predicted strongly by informal ties in the participatory organization, weakly in the professional organization, and no: at all in the hierarchical organization. The pattern for formal ties is the opposite: formal reporting relations predict respect relations most strongly in the hierarchical organization, less strongly in the professional organization, and least strongly in the participatory organization. We also find that respect relations are affected differently by the combination of formal and informal social structures in the three organizations. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for research on leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the relationship between objective and subjective time. Ordinarily one's perception of time is synchronized roughly with the time of clocks and calendars (synchronicity), but under certain conditions it seems that time is passing very slowly (protracted duration). We used two different methods to obtain personal narratives concerning the experience of protracted duration. First, we collected narratives from autobiographies, newspaper accounts, and other sources in the mass media and popular press. Second, we elicited narratives from students through semistructured, open-ended life-history interviews. Both sets of data exhibit the same bifurcation: protracted duration arises in situations that are abnormally eventful or abnormally uneventful. We formulate a theoretical interpretation that explains this bifurcation in terms of the individual's situated engrossment with his or her circumstances. Given certain modifications, this interpretation also can explain how individuals accomplish synchronicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural equation models of individual action typically do not take into account the network of interpersonal influence that appears, in virtually all of the fields of social psychology, as an important determinant of individuals' actions. It is not sufficiently appreciated that a proper test of a causal model is placed in jeopardy when this network is ignored. Some research has dealt with methods of estimating the causal impact of a network of interpersonal influences, once such a network has been made a part of a causal model. Hardly any attention, however, has been given to the theoretical foundations and implications of extending the general linear model to encompass a network of interpersonal influences. This paper is concerned with these foundations and implications: its goal is to make the network approach to individual action accessible to a larger audience of sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group-level properties have played a significant role in social science theory and research. Since the 1970s, however, they have been criticized for explaining only an insignificant proportion of the variance of a variety of variables, such as suicide and academic achievement. We believe that the ensuing methodological debate, although certainly important, has obscured some important theoretical questions. In this paper we examine the usefulness of aggregate dependent variables, whose ratio of between-unit to within-unit variance may be small, in testing macro theory and in linking micro and macro theories; and we examine the usefulness of contextual independent variables in testing micro theory arid in linking micro and macro theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate sex and race differences in the way in which students respond to intransitive sentiment relations. First, we examine the effects of sex and race on the tolerance of students for intransitive friendships. Second. we investigate how sex and race affect the manner in which an intransitive sentiment relationship is resolved. The results provide evidence that boys and blacks are more likely to add a friend to resolve intransitivity than are girls and whites. Black boys are affected least by others' sex in resolving intransitivity. Black girls are affected most strongly by reciprocation and least strongly by relative popularity. Implications of these findings for characteristics of students' social networks are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of employment-related social policies on the well-being of working parents of preschoolers; Sweden in the 1970s is used as a case in point. The study draws on three cohorts of employed men and women in Sweden whose oldest child was under age seven in 1968, 1974, or 1981 (N 1447). Multivariate (log-linear) techniques reveal differences in two measures of well-being by gender with an interaction by year, such that although employed mothers still reported higher levels of distress than fathers in 1981, this gap narrowed over the 13-year survey period. Workplace supports benefited mothers more than fathers, but the use or availability of workplace supports does not account for the shifts in well-being from 1968 to 1981. Nevertheless, permitted absence autonomy reduced the likelihood of psychological strain and physical exhaustion for working mothers and mental exhaustion and fatigue for working fathers. Part-time hours and being on leave also reduced employed mothers' psychological strain, but fathers' symptoms of distress were not altered by these structural supports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Japanese women's occupational conditions affect their psychological processes. We find that self-directed work increases their intellectual flexibility and the self-directedness of their orientations; this finding replicates earlier findings about these important psychological outcomes of self-directed work, even in a culture where self-directedness for women is particularly disvalued culturally. Self-directed work also leads to less traditional attitudes towards the elderly, whereas working in a traditional industry makes such attitudes more traditional. This finding shows that Japanese women's work experiences can affect even their acceptance of traditional norms. Our evidence also shows that Japanese women are substantially less likely than their husbands to do self-directed work on the job. The resultant occupationally induced lessening of self-directed orientation may contribute to women's accepting cultural norms that keep them in subservient positions. Thus the culturally and social structurally determined occupational experiences of Japanese women clearly affect how they confront major social and personal problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports three substantive findings from national survey data concerning the relationship between legal approval and moral concern in the abortion dispute. First, the moral beliefs of opponents of abortion reinforce their legal stance, whereas many people favor legal abortion despite personal moral reservations. Second, although there is little difference between men's and women's attitudes towards the legality of abortion, women are far more likely to feel that abortion is morally wrong. This gender difference holds even when education, religious preference, and church attendance are controlled. Third, a content analysis of open-ended responses illustrates the variety of moral concerns. There are no discernible gender differences in concerns mentioned, but opponents of abortion are much more absolute and rule-bound in their moral stance than are those who support legal abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships of two psychological constructs that pertain to many domains of human activity: satisfaction and involvement. After reviewing the causal relationships between these constructs, we estimate a series of models of job satisfaction and job involvement using data from the 1973-1977 Quality of Employment Survey Panel. Job satisfaction was found to have a direct positive contemporaneous effect on job involvement. This finding is consistent with symbolic interactionist thought concerning the determinants of the prominence hierarchy of identities as well as with theorizing about the development of self-schemata in cognitive social psychology. There was some evidence that job involvement influences job satisfaction indirectly through work autonomy. The findings indicate the potential fruitfulness of considering satisfaction and involvement in generic terms and of extending their investigation to other spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of group identification is central to both social interdependence theories of reference groups (e.g., Hyman 1942; Merton 1949; Newcomb 1943) and to social identification theory (e.g., Tajfel and Turner 1979). Yet the social psychological literature contains comparatively little empirical analysis of what factors lead to "identifying with" or `feeling close to" a social group. This paper uses nationally representative survey data joined with various measures of social and political contexts (derived from census and electoral data) to explore that topic, focusing specifically on 11 social groups. Three hypotheses are offered, concerning how readily a person is identified as an objective member of a group (the similarity hypothesis), the general salience of the group in society as a whole and temporarily in local politics (the salience hypothesis), and the proportion of fellow group members in the local environment (the social density hypothesis). The results provide tentative support for all three hypotheses, although how group members are influenced by the social and political contexts in which they live is determined at least partially by the group's place within the broader American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overattribution effect has proved to be a well-replicated if not a tenacious finding in the social psychological literature. This paper explores the possibility that 1) the robustness of the overattribution effect may be partially due to the insensitivity of traditional measures to subjects' judgmental uncertainty (i.e., attitude extremity scores) and 2) ability (i.e., attributional complexity) and motivation (i.e., normativeness of the position defended in the essay) may interact to diminish the overattribution effect. On the basis of Jones and Davis's (1965) correspondent inference theory, confidence measures were included to rap subjects, judgmental uncertainty. Subjects, who were identified as being high versus `low in attributional complexity (Fletcher, Danilovics, Fernandez, Peterson, and Reeder 1986) were exposed to essays in favor of (normative) or opposed to (counternormative) federal support for AIDS research that had been prepared under free choice or constraint conditions. Subjects then estimated the essayist's attitude on the issue and rated their confidence in the attitude estimate. Attitude extremity scores showed the standard overattribution effect. As predicted, however, diminution of the overattribution effect was found for high-complexity subjects evaluating counternormative essays prepared under constraint. The discussion focuses on qualifications on the previously established pervasiveness of the overattribution effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the emotional socialization of children in day care. Field notes describing emotional interactions between children and their caregivers illustrate 1) how caregivers often deny the legitimacy of children's emotions through lack of recognition and response; 2) how they encourage children to reconstruct their emotions, emphasizing performance or simulation over understanding; 3) how myth contributes to these practices; and 4) how these practices are influenced by emotional relationships. We elaborate and discuss these themes in the context of postmodernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the attitude-behavior literature, considerable disagreement exists as to when groups and institutions will influence attitudes, when they will influence behavior independently of attitudes, and when they will influence behavior by interacting with attitudes. By drawing on research on the bases of power, this paper attempts to specify the conditions that create each type of effect. Traditional classifications of the bases of power, however, cannot explain interactions. Attitude-behavior research suggests that interactions result from facilitation power. Facilitation power in part consists of the ability to influence behavior by providing social cooperation or fry altering environmental circumstances. National survey data are used to examine how the bases of power available to schools, religious institutions, and peers influence drug use. The results generally support the hypotheses relating types of power to types of effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerson's exchange theory builds from the micro-social toward the macro-social level of conception, observation, and analysis. Yet although this theory is important, some of its main concepts were formulated originally in simple, categorical terms and require refinement. Some progress toward such refinement is evident in recent research on the measurement of positional power. Aiming toward further progress, the present paper proposes a procedure for measuring power imbalance at the exchange network level, reports exploratory experimental data testing the measure in a hypothesis implied by Emerson's theory, and suggests a direction for future research using the measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of prejudice and of conflict-based concern with protecting group position on people's attitudes toward the black political movement. Analyses of national survey data show the existence of black-white differences in trends in attitudes toward the black political movement; in part, these trends reflect differential strategic adaptation to changes in the political context. For many whites, attitudes toward the black political movement are related to other conflict attitudes (perceptions of conflicting group objectives and fraternal deprivation) and to general social protest orientations net of the effects of measures of prejudice. Attitudes toward the black political movement also influence racial policy preferences. Each of the conflict attitudes, however, is related strongly to measures of prejudice. Implications of the results of the group conflict and prejudice approaches to racial attitudes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the roles of gender identity and self-esteem in both physical and sexual abuse in dating relationships. A sample of heterosexual college dazing relationships is examined. Data are collected on both inflicting and sustaining physical and sexual abuse for men and for women. No support is found for the long-held theory that abuse is a result of compulsive masculinity. Instead, in accordance with identity theory, we find that physical and sexual abuse are associated with the playing out of a less masculine (more feminine) identity for both males and females. In addition, low self-esteem appears to be associated with inflicting physical abuse for men and sexual abuse for women only in a spurious fashion: both low self-esteem and inflicting abuse result from a more feminine gender identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although self-disclosure has been shown to be an important verbal means for conveying and strengthening solidarity in very close relationships, little attention has been paid to other ways in which talk is used to convey and develop solidarity among friends. This paper shows how talk is used to build cohesion by examining collaborative talk, in which an utterance supports or ratifies the previous utterance in some manner. Although collaborative talk occurs in a number of forms, collaborative narratives are of particular interest because the very strategies that are required to produce a coherent narrative also lead to a greater perception and feeling of solidarity among group members. Adolescent females use a variety of strategies when telling personal narratives jointly. Some of the strategies reflect sociolinguistic rules of narratives, such as dividing the different functions of description and evaluation among the different speakers. Other strategies reflect grammatical rules of narratives, such as maintaining coherence through repetition and conjunction. Girls also use sequencing rules to establish coherence when the speaker changes. In all cases the strategies help to enhance solidarity among the narrators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's experiences during the first grade, as they pass through a key life-cycle transition, are an especially critical but generally neglected period in the sociology of child development. This paper examines the process of educational achievement for a birth cohort of Baltimore children followed prospectively over their first-grade year. Employing a social-psychological model of the early schooling process. the analysis identifies some of the personal. interpersonal, and situational factors that influence cognitive development during this period of transition from "home child" to "school child." Gains on standardized tests of verbal and mathematical competence are used as achievement criteria. Black children experienced more transition shock than white children in making the move into full-time schooling, as indicated by their lower initial report card marks and slower pace of cognitive growth during the year. The processes determining the achievement of the two groups also were somewhat different. Personality/temperament variables turned out to be very important for early schooling: evidence was found as well for the efficacy of parents as "significant others." Self-expectations had effects only on verbal test performance; there was no indication of peer influence during this important settling-in period. Implications of these findings for models of development and for understanding the social psychological basis of the achievement process are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research on intransitive or unbalanced sentiment relations focused on the incidence of intransitivity in triads embedded in a larger social network. The theoretical explanations for in transitivity, however, are directed toward the attitudes and sentiments of an individual rather than toward the structure of triadic configurations and the global properties of groups. This paper argues that intransitivity should be studied at the individual level, with the person experiencing the intransitive relationship as the focus of attention. Analyzing longitudinal data on 2,175 intransitive sentiment triplets from fourth- and fifth-grade students, we show that individuals' personal characteristics and the structural properties of their dyadic and triadic ties affect both their tolerance for in transitivity and the manner in which they resolve intransitive friendships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power-dependence theory and the social exchange framework on which it is based have been restricted to the analysis of rewarding exchanges. The only costs considered have been the "rewards foregone "from alternative exchange relations. This paper reports the first in a series of experiments studying power use in social exchange when actors have control over both positive and negative outcomes for one another. The relative effects of balance and imbalance in power over positive outcomes (reward power) and power over negative outcomes (punishment power) are compared in a laboratory experiment in which two real subjects and two computerized actors are connected in four-person exchange networks. Analyses of the distribution of exchange between the two real actors found that only imbalance in reward power affected power use. Punishment rarely was used and power use was no greater when punishment power was imbalanced than when it was balanced. An explanation for these findings, which suggests that imbalances in reward and punishment power are likely to affect behavior under different structural conditions, is proposed and hypotheses are offered for future testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a longitudinal second-order confirmatory factor-analytic model of alienation in employed U.S. men, based on Seeman's original five-facet conceptualization. Alienation appears in this model as a second -order factor that is significantly related to all five of these facets. Powerlessness and self-estrangement are shown to be the two central facets. Meaninglessness, normlessness and cultural estrangement show progressively smaller relationships to the underlying alienation construct. Although cultural estrangement is significantly related to the underlying construct, removing it results in a model that fits the data slightly better, Cross-national comparisons using cross-sectional data from Poland and Japan confirm the generalizability of this model. However, the magnitudes of the relationships of both normlessness and cultural estrangement to the second-order factor are somewhat different for Japan than for the United States and Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the value of a reformulated and reoperationalized functional approach to attitudes. The development of two new procedures for directly assessing functions is described. First, a content analysis procedure was devised, using essays written by undergraduate students describing their attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Patterns of themes were identified in the essays that indicate the presence of three functions: Experiential-Schematic, Defensive and Self-Expressive. Correlations with theoretically relevant measures indicate that the content analysis procedure effectively assesses attitude functions. In a second study, an objectively-scored method, the Attitude Functions Inventory (AFI), was developed and used to assess the functions served by attitudes toward lesbians and gay men and toward persons with three stigmatizing disabilities: AIDS, mental illness and cancer. in the At'!, the Self-Expressive function observed in the first study was subdivided into Social-Expressive and Value-Expressive functions. Preliminary data support the AFI's validity. Theoretical and methodological implications for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines violence in white, heterosexual, dating relationships among college students and highlights the gender differences that are found. Our analysis focuses on particular individual and relationship-specific characteristics that influence the propensity for men and women to use and receive violence. The results strongly suggest that seriousness of the relationship and the personality dimensions of instrumentality and expressiveness explain dating violence for men, while a situation of jealousy explains dating violence for women. Additionally, though men and women do not significantly differ in the rate at which they use violence, women are more likely than men to receive violence. These findings are understood in terms of the aspect of control ;which we argue underlies violent relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbal interaction is related to the task at hand. Language and other social practices are interdependent. Not all students of language use and social interaction, however, will concede that ethnographic material, participant attributes, and patterns of social organization that are constitutive of talk need to be included in studies of conversation or discourse. The researcher can exercise considerable discretion in what the reader will be shown or told about "context." In the present paper, / discuss two senses of "context" as it involves conversational interaction in a bureaucratic environment. This use of the term "context" includes an institutionalized framing of activities or ways that group-derived prescriptive norms pressure and/or channel people with designated titles, presumed competencies, duties or responsibilities into certain physical spaces at certain times in order to engage in a finite number of specifiable activities. Within this institutionalized context or framing of activities, emergent processes of talk appear that creates a more narrow view of "context" in the sense of locally organized and negotiated interaction. I have chosen a conversation between three physicians in a university medical center to underscore the importance of context at different levels of analysis. The analyst's decision to focus on particular sociolinguistic notions rather than the interrelationship between discourse and broader and narrow senses of social structure will frame different expectations for the reader and different substantive conclusions on the part of the researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the interpretive conception of social interaction and examines it in terms of the mode of description required for deductive explanation. It is argued that interpretive descriptions of interaction cannot satisfy the requirements of literal description imposed by the logic of deductive explanation. The consequences of this for interpretive conceptions are outlined. In particular, attention is given to the suggestion that the process of interpretation itself be taken for investigation, as proposed in the study of sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that the organization of citizen calls to emergency services reveals how the sequential machinery of conversation is adapted by speaker-hearers to organize, coordinate and exhibit to one another their knowledge and purposes on particular occasions. It is in the way such knowledge is brought to bear, and purposes at hand made evident, that recurrent sequences of interactionally and institutionally relevant activity are built out of local and particular materials. Thus, the sequential organization of conversation is a fundamental resource for social activities directed to matters outside of, but addressable through talk, and for achieving regular, recurrent patterns of action in the face of varying details and circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "satisficing" is of central importance to many investigations of the social psychology of economic decision making. Through the examination of materials drawn from an actual business negotiation, this paper seeks to explore the interactional features of satisficing as a rational course of economic action. Two devices for accomplishing outcomes which satisfice are noticed and analyzed. Some implications of this mode of analysis for studies of decision making are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using as data videotapes of conversation in natural settings, this paper investigates (1) how displaying uncertainty is organized as interactive activity, (2) how this activity can be used to modify the participation framework of the moment, (3) the consequences this has for subsequent interaction and (4) how such events can invoke larger social identities in the midst of moment to moment interaction. Alternative syntactic and paralinguistic techniques for displaying uncertainty make relevant different types of responses from recipients. Such structure provides speakers with resources for shaping emerging interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SYMLOG method of group analysis has been in use for more than ten years. During that time, very little data have been published concerning validation of its major instrument, the Adjective Rating Form. One version of that form, the Individual and Organizational Value Form, has been used in making more than 10,000 sets of ratings for bat/i research and consulting purposes. This paper presents item-to-scale correlations based on 6432 of these sets of ratings. Serious flaws in the scales are detected. A revised form is presented. Item-to -scale correlations based on 544 sets of ratings on the new form demonstrate substantial improvement over the earlier version. In addition, normative data are presented for both forms, showing greater differentiation through the use of the new items. Finally, parallel studies currently under way in Norway and Sweden are cited as an indication that the method proposed here ma)' be used for perfecting both original scales and translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between gender identity and verbal behavior in same-sex interactions. Using structural symbolic interactionism (Stryker, 1980), it is argued that gender identity, as the set of meanings individuals attribute to themselves as modes or females, is more important for shaping role performance than gender per se. Using a technique developed by Burke and Tully (1977), the gender identities of 91 college undergraduates were measured. A sample of these students (30 females, 26 males) participated in dyadic role-playing exercises, and their conversations were recorded and coded for the use of overlaps and interruptions by the speakers. An event history model was estimated in order to assess the impact of the gender identity scores on the rate of overlaps and interruptions produced. Findings indicate that the more "male like" a person's gender definition, regardless of the person's sex, the greater the risk that the person will overlap or interrupt the speech of another. The findings of this study have implications for the analysis of structure and process in day-to-day interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper addresses a call for clarification of the distinction between demeanor and status characteristics to permit analysis of their respective roles in social influence processes. A conceptual framework for the differentiation of demeanor from both specific status and performance connotations is proposed and evaluated in the context of a critique of Lee and Ofshe (1981). 126 people viewed one of a series of videotapes of a pair of actors debating a personal injuries compensation case, the tapes differing in terms of whether the high- or low-award proponent was behaviorally dominant, and which was of higher alleged external status. Status information was introduced after participants had seen approximately half the discussion film and had responded to a first block of questions; a repeat series of questions was put at the conclusion of the discussion film. Although neither variable was seen to influence viewers' award recommendations, they did, both individually and in interaction, affect viewers' perceptions of the actors. The results are interpreted as supporting the contention that Lee and Ofshe's demeanor effect was probably due to a performance differential. Further implications of the proposed formulation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews research dealing with strength-related attitude properties. The inter-correlations between the properties are generally not high, and a number of the dimensions -including affective-cognitive consistency. certainty, direct experience, stability and vested interest-can successfully moderate the attitude-behavior relationship. Thus, there is evidence that the properties can not be used interchangeably as measures of strength. It is also far from certain that attitude strength is a global, unitary property. The findings suggest that attitude measurement will be improved if several dimensions are used, and of moderating as well as direct predictive effects are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that influence processes can stimulate or inhibit originality on the part of individuals. In particular, we hypothesized that exposure to persistent minority views causes subjects to reexamine the issue and to engage in more divergent and original thought. Subjects exposed to persistent majority views should concentrate on the position proposed, converge thinking and be less original. Testing the originality aspect of these propositions, subjects were exposed to either a majority or minority judgment that "blue" stimuli were "green." Subsequent to this manipulation, subjects gave associations to the words "blue" and "green." Findings indicate that subjects in the minority condition gave more associations overall and that these associations were more original, i.e., less statistically frequent. than subjects in the majority condition or the control. There is additional evidence that, after the first association, subjects in the majority condition are even less original titan control subjects. Their associations are more conventional, i.e., statistically frequent. Results are discussed in the context of influence processes and creativity as well as the differential impact of majority vs. minority influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption of subcultural permissiveness among blacks is tested using a national representative sample of black adolescent females, ages 15-19 years. Logit models are used to analyze differences in observed levels of permissiveness among adolescent females by SES, religiosity and close friends' sexual attitudes. The model of premarital permissiveness presented in this paper reveals that social class, as measured by family income, has no significant effect on levels of permissiveness. However, it was necessary to include frequency of church- attendance and perception of close friends' permissiveness in order to explain the premarital sexual attitudes of black adolescent females. Implications for further research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent critique Allen Liska (1984) pointed out a potential weakness in the Fishbein/Ajzen model (1975): by assuming a fully recursive model, Liska believes that Fishbein and Ajzen miss some of the subtleties of the relationship between beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behavior. In this paper the Wisconsin model is used to test Liska's notion that social status does not exert its total influence on behavior through attitudes, subjective norms and, finally, behavioral intentions, as Fishbein and Ajzen contend. While the results do not fully accord with Liska's contention, neither do they fully support the Fishbein/Ajzen model: the centrality of intentions is not lost, but neither are the effects of social slams totally mediated by behavioral intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]