Journal of personality and social psychology
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Based on recent evidence supporting the assumption that cognitive dissonance is experienced as an unpleasant emotional state, and further evidence pertaining to the effects of drinking alcohol, it was predicted that among social drinkers, dissonance arousal would increase the amount of drinking and that drinking, in turn, would reduce dissonance and subsequent attitude change. This hypothesis was tested in the first two experiments by having subjects taste rate different brands of an alcoholic beverage--ostensibly to test taste discrimination but in fact to measure the amount of drinking--immediately after dissonance was aroused by having them write a counterattitudinal essay. The effect of drinking on dissonance reduction was assessed by measuring subjects' postattitudes immediately after the drinking task. ⋯ Evidence that the dissonance-reducing effect of drinking resulted form some effect of drinking alcohol was provided by the finding, in the second and third experiments, that neither water or coffee drinking was sufficient to eliminate attitude change in this paradigm. Both the practical and theoretical implications are discussed. The practical implication is that some forms of alcohol abuse may evolve through the reinforcement of drinking as a means of reducing dissonance; the theoretical implication is that dissonance may be frequently reduced through behaviors that ameliorate the feelings of dissonance without involving cognitive change.
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Social psychological research on helping has, in part, been concerned with the intervention of bystanders into emergencies. Pertinent empirical literature does not seem to be available on what factors bystanders use to define an emergency nor the effect of such a decision on the rate of helping. ⋯ We found that (a) Emergencies are a subclass of problem situation that usually result from accidents; (b) there is a high degree of agreement concerning what problem situations are definitely an emergency; (c) emergency situations are differentiated from other problem situations by threat of harm or actual harm worsening with time, unavailability of an easy solution to the problem, and necessity of obtaining outside help to solve the problem; (d) disagreement on whether a problem situation is an emergency or not results from differing perceptions of the degree to which threat of harm or actual harm worsens with time; (e) bystanders are more likely to help in emergency than in nonemergency problem situations. The results were interpreted as indicating that the need of the victim is a salient feature used by bystanders in determining whether or not to help.
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Archival data pertaining to 102 instances of serious collective violence were examined in order to study the relationship between ambient temperature and the occurrence of such events. Results indicated that the frequency of collective violence and ambient temperature were curvilinearly related. ⋯ Additional findings indicated that ambient temperature increased significantly during the 7 days preceding the outbreak of collective violence, remained stable during its occurrence, but then decreased significantly in the 3 days following its termination. Possible implications of these findings, as well as their relationship to the results of previous laboratory studies, are discussed.
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The present study investigated the effects of depression on causal attributions for success and failure. Specifically, female university students were separated into depressed and nondepressed groups on the basis of Costello--Comrey Depression Scale scores, and then received either 20%, 55%, or 80% reinforcement on a word association task. Following the task, attributions were made for outcome using the four factors of effort, ability, task difficulty, and luck. ⋯ Contrary to expectations, depressives also made internal attributions for a successful outcome. The findings for depressives were discussed in relation to the recently revised learned helplessness model of depression, which incorporates causal attributions. For nondepressives, the findings were considered in terms of the self-serving biases hypothesis.
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This study investigated the relationship of preoperative level of fear, extent of information seeking (coping), and amount of information received about surgery to recovery from surgery. It was hypothesized that a curvilinear relationship would be found between level of preoperative fear and recovery and between extent of information seeking and recovery; it was also hypothesized that amount of preoperative information obtained would interact with extent of information seeking. The subjects were 57 female patients between the ages of 18 and 68 who were schedule for abdominal surgery. ⋯ Results showed a linear relationship between level of preoperative fear and recovery, with the least favorable recovery associated with high levels of preoperative fear. A significant interaction was found between level of preoperative fear and amount of preoperative information, with high-fear subjects who reported little preoperative information experiencing the least favorable recovery period. The findings are discussed in terms of the parallel response model proposed by Leventhal.