Readings and Case Studies in Psychology...Readings and Case Studies in Psychology Psychology UNDERSTANDING To the Teacher Readings and Case Studiesserve as a supplement to material

G L E N C O E

Readings and Case Studies in Psychology

PsychologyU N D E R S T A N D I N G

To the TeacherReadings and Case Studies serve as a supplement to material in the textbook

and provide an in-depth look at important issues, experiments, and concepts in psy-chology. They also encourage students to develop their critical thinking abilities.

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ContentsReading 1: Ethics in Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Case Study 1: Early Investigations into Psychological Oddities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Reading 2: Falsifiability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Case Study 2: First Impressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Reading 3: American Child Care Today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Case Study 3: Body Image and Dieting in Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Reading 4: Teenagers in Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Case Study 4: Hormones and Depression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Reading 5: Creativity and Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Case Study 5: Generativity Among Refugees and Survivors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Reading 6: Reversing Stroke and Spinal Cord Damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Case Study 6: Dual-Brain Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Reading 7: Cross-Cultural Studies of Sleep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31Case Study 7: Self-Hypnosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Reading 8: Weightlessness and Perception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Case Study 8: Perfect Pitch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Reading 9: Different Outlooks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Case Study 9: Conditioning Aggression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Reading 10: Remembering Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46Case Study 10: Eyewitness Testimony. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Reading 11: Sound Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Case Study 11: Peacekeeping with Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Reading 12: The Excited Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Case Study 12: Facial Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Reading 13: Change in Japanese College Admissions Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Case Study 13: Who Is Intelligent? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Reading 14: Type T Personalities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Case Study 14: Can Personality Traits Predict Adult Career Success? . . . . . . . . . . 68

Reading 15: Stress Out of Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Case Study 15: Juror Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Reading 16: The Hunt for Mood Genes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Case Study 16: Panic Disorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Reading 17: Modifying Orangutan Behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Case Study 17: Family Therapist and School Counselor Work as a Team . . . . . . . 81

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c.Reading 18: What Makes a Good Marriage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Case Study 18: Culture and Conflict Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Reading 19: Who’s Steering the Ship? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89Case Study 19: Parental Involvement and Students’ Aggressive Behaviors. . . . . . 92

Reading 20: Folklore, Gossip, and the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Case Study 20: “The Jury Will Disregard That!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Reading 21: Steve Blass Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Case Study 21: “Can I Get Some Service Here?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Answer Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

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1. Doing no harm (nonmaleficence). Throughcommission or omission, psychologists striveto benefit those with whom they work, at thesame time taking care to ensure that thepotential for damage is eliminated or mini-mized to the greatest extent possible.

2. Respecting autonomy. The rights of individu-als to decide how to live their lives as long astheir actions do not interfere with the welfareof others is accepted by psychologists as anultimate goal of clients, students, researchparticipants, and others with whom psycholo-gists work. Members of our profession areoften in the business of moving those withwhom we work toward greater independenceand self-reliance.

3. Benefiting others. All decisions that psycholo-gists make should have the potential for apositive effect on others. Often, this principlemust be balanced against doing no harm,respect for autonomy, available resources,and utility.

4. Being just. Actions should be fair and equi-table. Others should be treated as psycholo-gists would want to be treated under similarcircumstances.

5. Being faithful. Issues of fidelity, loyalty, truth-fulness, and respect for those with whom psy-chologists work converge to form the delicate

standards necessary in fiduciary [based ontrust] relationships. When psychologists arestraightforward, sincere, candid, and withoutintent to mislead or deceive anyone, ethicalaction is more likely.

6. According dignity. Psychologists view othersas worthy of respect. This enhances the prob-ability that decisions will be ethical.

7. Treating others with caring and compassion.Psychologists should be considerate and kindto those with whom they work, yet maintainprofessional boundaries.

8. Pursuit of excellence. Maintaining compe-tence, doing one’s best, and taking pride inone’s work are important in ensuring high-quality professional services, as well as pro-viding hedges against unprofessional andunethical actions.

9. Accepting accountability. Psychologists whoact with a consideration of possible conse-quences, who accept responsibility foractions and inactions, and who avoid shiftingblame or making excuses are acting withintegrity. Putting principles over expediency issometimes the longer and more arduous [diffi-cult] route, but in the long run it is the onethat ensures self-respect.

Source: Koocher, G., & Keith-Spiegel, P. (1998). Ethics in Psychology.London: Oxford University Press, 4–5.

R E A D I N G 1 Ethics in Psychology

Directions: Read the following selection, then answer the questions that follow.

Psychology, like most professions, has a code of professional conduct that governs the actions ofmembers of the profession. Would the ethical conduct of a psychologist be an important factor in yourdecision to seek advice from him or her? It should be. Psychologists who operate unethically may do youmore harm than good.

What does it mean to be ethical? People who are ethical use a set of moral values to guide their decision making. Ethical psychologists use the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conductdeveloped by the American Psychological Association (APA) as a basis for their professional conduct.Although this document does not address every possible ethical and unethical action, it does provide a framework in which psychologists can make decisions about their conduct. According to GeraldKoocher and Patricia Keith-Spiegel, the main principles that should guide a psychologist’s ethical behavior include the following:

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c.Understanding the Reading

Directions: Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What do psychologists use to identify ethical and unethical behavior?

2. What is ethical behavior?

3. In what two ways do the principles say psychologists could do harm?

Thinking Critically


4. Which of the items on the list could be viewed as general ethical principles that could apply toeveryone, not just psychologists?

5. What factors may cause a psychologist to act unethically?

6. Psychologists who disregard moral values in their personal lives can still maintain the ethical stan-dards required by the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Do you agree with thisstatement? Explain.

7. According to the nine items on the list, what is an ultimate goal of psychologists regarding clients,students, or experiment participants?

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Introduction

Early psychologists recognized the need forthe scientific study of every facet of humanbehavior. Although they did not have theresearch tools and the technology of modernpsychology, they did attempt to apply the scien-tific method rigorously to their research.

In the late 1800s the psychological commu-nity became embroiled in a debate about psy-chic phenomena. The Society of PsychicalResearch was formed in 1882 for the specificpurpose of bringing science and psychic phe-nomena together. The society had two purposes:“. . . first, to carry on systematic experimentationwith hypnotic subjects, mediums, clairvoyants,and others; and, secondly, to collect evidenceconcerning apparitions, haunted houses, andsimilar phenomena which are incidentallyreported, but which, from their fugitive charac-ter, admit of no deliberate control.” The societywanted to either debunk these mystical phe-nomena or find a scientific explanation for theirexistence.

Hypothesis

William James, a leading psychologist at thetime, explained the difficulty of the task facingthe Society of Psychical Research when he wrote:“In psychology, physiology, and medicine, wher-ever a debate between the mystics and the sci-entifics has been once for all decided, it is themystics who have usually proved to be rightabout the facts, while the scientifics had the bet-ter of it in respect to the theories.”

Method

The society faced a difficult task. First, manypeople who practiced psychic phenomena hadno interest in being subjected to rigorous scien-tific study; they did not see the need. They werealso suspicious of intellectuals whose only goalseemed to be to discredit them. The society, led

by Professor Henry Sidgwick, tried to reassurethese people. Sidgwick was widely regarded forhis impartiality and his unwillingness to drawhasty conclusions. Other members of the societyalso had reputations for fairness and for honest-ly seeking answers to seemingly unexplainablephenomenon.

The society’s second challenge was to findthe financial resources to adequately fund itsresearch. James urged the society to continueeven with meager resources. He challengedthem to continue to gather facts by conductingextensive interviews with the participants andwitnesses in every reported case of psychic phe-nomenon. He believed that by carefully docu-menting these cases, the society would eventual-ly have enough evidence to form some type oftheory. James expressed his concern as follows:“Its [the Society of Psychical Research] sustain-ers, therefore, should accustom themselves tothe idea that its first duty is simply to exist fromyear to year and perform this recording functionwell, though no conclusive results of any sortemerge at first.”

For two years, the society focused primarilyon thought transference, or telepathy. They stud-ied 30 people who claimed to have the power toidentify an object thought of by another person.Although one of the cases, involving two sisters,was found to be a hoax, many other cases couldnot be explained by random chance or by thedeceitful action of the participants.

Another area of research for the society wasthe phenomenon of hypnotic suggestion. Theresearchers observed various subjects underhypnotic trances or performing actions as aresult of posthypnotic suggestion. EdmundGurney performed one set of experiments thatinvolved the automatic writing of subjects as aresult of posthypnotic suggestion.

“For example, a subject during a trance istold that he will poke the fire in six minutes afterwaking. On being waked he has no memory of

Early Investigationsinto Psychological

Oddities

C A S E S T U D Y 1Directions: Read the following case study, then answer the questions that follow.

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c.the order, but while he is engaged in conversa-tion his hand is placed on a planchette, [a devicethat when lightly touched is believed to produceautomatic writing] which immediately writes thesentence, ‘P. , you will poke the fire in six min-utes.’ Experiments like this, which were repeatedin great variety, seem to prove that below theupper consciousness the hypnotic conscious-ness persists, engrossed with the suggestion andable to express itself through the involuntarilymoving hand.”

Gurney became the most tireless worker forthe society. He also researched witchcraft,apparitions, and mental telepathy. His study ofwitchcraft involved reviewing the accounts ofhundreds of witch trials. He found that there was“no first-hand evidence recorded in the trialsexcept the confessions of the victims themselves;and these, of course, are presumptively due toeither torture or hallucination.”

His exploration of apparitions and mentaltelepathy involved collecting about 700 cases ofreported experiences. In these experiences, oneperson would get a mental image of a person indistress. He found many of these cases to behonest reports and concluded that “the mind ofthe person undergoing the calamity was at thatmoment able to impress the mind of the percipi-ent [sic] with an hallucination.” Further researchinto this phenomenon in both England and theUnited States led the society to find that suchexperiences happen too frequently to be

explained by mere chance. In fact, they calculat-ed that such occurrences happen 440 timesmore often than can be attributed to chance.

Conclusions

The Society of Psychical Research failed toimpress many in the scientific community withits findings. Much of their research is consideredcrude by modern standards. Their efforts, how-ever, do indicate that they did apply the scientif-ic method consistently. James responded to crit-ics of the society by saying “… most of thewould-be critics of the Proceedings have beencontented to oppose to [sic] the phenomenarecorded the simple presumption that in someway or other the reports must be fallacious[false], . . .” He criticized scientists who dismissthings that are not easily explained and catego-rized simply because they do not fit into the waythey think things should be.

The Society of Psychical Research produceda great body of evidence, but developed no con-crete theories. The exploration into unexplainedphenomena continues to the present. Of all thephenomena explored, only hypnosis has beenbrought into the mainstream of psychologicalresearch and practice. The other areasresearched by the society remain in the realm ofparapsychology.Source: James, W. (1897/1956). The Will to Believe and OtherEssays in Popular Philosophy. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.,299–327.

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Understanding the Case Study


1. What was the purpose of the Society of Psychical Research?

2. What two reasons are cited for the difficulty of the society’s research task?

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3. What areas of psychic phenomena were studied by the society?

4. What did William James say about the critics of the society?

Thinking Critically


5. Do you think the Society of Psychical Research accomplished its goals? Why or why not?

6. Do you think William James supported the work and findings of the society? Why or why not?

7. As a functionalist, why would William James have been interested in the work of the society?

8. Why do you think the society failed to produce any theories to explain psychic phenomena?

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In 1793 a severe epidemic of yellow fever struckPhiladelphia. One of the leading doctors in the cityat the time was Benjamin Rush, a signerof the Declaration of Independence. During theoutbreak Rush was one of the few physicians whowere available to treat literally thousands of yel-low fever cases. Rush adhered to a theory of med-icine that dictated that illnesses accompanied byfever should be treated by vigorous bloodletting.He administered this treatment to many patients,including himself when he came down with theillness. Critics charged that his treatments weremore dangerous than the disease. However, fol-lowing the epidemic, Rush became even moreconfident of the effectiveness of his treatment,even though several of his patients had died.Why? . . .

Theories and the Falsifiability CriterionBenjamin Rush fell into a fatal trap when assess-

ing the outcome of his treatment. His method of evalu-ating the evidence made it impossible to conclude thathis treatment did not work. If the recovery of a patientmeant confirmation of his treatment (and hence histheory of medicine), then it only seems fair that thedeath of a patient should have meant disconfirmation.Instead, he rationalized away these disconfirmations.By interpreting the evidence as he did, Rush violatedone of the most important rules regarding the con-struction and testing of theories in science: he made itimpossible to falsify his theory.

Scientific theories must always be stated in sucha way that the predictions derived from them canpotentially be shown to be false. Thus the methods ofevaluating new evidence relevant to a particular theo-ry must always include the possibility that the data willfalsify the theory. This principle is often termed the fal-sifiability criterion. . . .

The falsifiability criterion states that, for a theoryto be useful, the predictions drawn from it must be

specific. The theory must go out on a limb, so to speak,because in telling us what should happen, the theorymust also imply that certain things will not happen. Ifthese latter things do happen, then we have a clearsignal that something is wrong with the theory: it mayneed to be modified, or we may need to look for anentirely new theory. Either way, we shall end up with atheory that is nearer to the truth. In contrast, if a theorydoes not rule out any possible observations, then thetheory can never be changed, and we are frozen intoour current way of thinking, with no possibility ofprogress. Thus a successful theory is not one thataccounts for every possible happening because sucha theory robs itself of any predictive power.

The Theory of Knocking RhythmsA hypothetical example will show how the falsifia-

bility criterion works. A student knocks at my door. Acolleague in my office with me has a theory that makespredictions about the rhythms that different types ofpeople use to knock. Before I open the door, my col-league predicts that the person behind it is a female.I open the door and, indeed, the student is a female.Later I tell my colleague that I am impressed, but onlymildly so because he had a 50 percent chance of beingcorrect even without his “theory of knocking rhythms.”He says he can do better. Another knock comes. Mycolleague tells me it is a male under 22 years old. Iopen the door to find a male student whom I know tobe just out of high school. I comment that I am some-what impressed since our university has a consider-able number of students over the age of 22. Yet I stillmaintain that, of course, young males are quite com-mon on campus. Thinking me hard to please, my col-league proposes one last test. After the next knock, mycolleague predicts, “Female, 30 years old, 5 feet 2inches tall, carrying a book and a purse in the left handand knocking with the right.” After opening the doorand confirming the prediction completely, I have quitea different response. I say that, assuming my colleague

R E A D I N G 2Falsifiability


(continued)

Psychology, like other sciences, is advanced when psychologists propose new theories. The theoriesare tested by various research methods. The results of the tests may support or refute the theory. A theo-ry that is supported by one study will be examined and tested by other researchers. These additionalstudies may provide additional confirmation of the theory or may find flaws in the original theory.Testable theories, then, are stated in such a way that they can be proved false.

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did not play a trick and arrange for these people toappear at my door, I am now in fact extremelyimpressed.

Why the difference in my reactions? Why do myfriend’s three predictions yield three different respons-es, ranging from “So what?” to “Wow”? The answerhas to do with the specificity and precision of the pre-dictions. The more specific predictions made a greaterimpact when they were confirmed. Notice, however,that the specificity varied directly with the falsifiability.The more specific and precise the prediction was, themore potential observations there were that couldhave falsified it. For example, there are a lot of peoplewho are not 30-year-old females who are 5 feet 2 inch-es tall.

Good theories, then, make predictions that exposethemselves to falsification. Bad theories do not putthemselves in jeopardy in this way. They make predic-tions that are so general that they are almost bound tobe true (for example, the next person to knock on mydoor will be less than 100 years old) or are phrased insuch a way that they are completely protected fromfalsification. . . .

Not All Confirmations Are EqualThe principle of falsifiability has important implica-

tions for the way we view the confirmation of a theory.Many people think that a good scientific theory is onethat has been repeatedly confirmed. They assume that

the amount of confirming evidence is critical in theevaluation of a theory. But falsifiability implies that thenumber of times a theory has been confirmed is notthe critical element. The reason is that, as our exampleof the “theory of knocking rhythms” illustrated, not allconfirmations are equal. Confirmations are more orless impressive depending on the extent to which theprediction exposes itself to potential disconfirmation.One confirmation of a highly specific, potentially falsifi-able prediction (for instance, a female, 30 years old, 5feet 2 inches tall, carrying a book and a purse in theleft hand knocking with the right) has a greater impactthan the confirmation of 20 different predictions thatare all virtually unfalsifiable (for instance, a personless than 100 years old).

Thus we must look not only at the quantity of theconfirming evidence, but also at the quality of the con-firming instances. Using the falsifiability criterion as atool to evaluate evidence will help the research con-sumer resist the allure of the nonscientific, all-explain-ing theory that inevitably hinders the search for adeeper understanding of the nature of the world andthe people who inhabit it. Indeed, such theoreticaldead ends are often tempting precisely because theycan never be falsified. They are islands of stability inthe shifting ocean of the modern world.

Source: Stanovich, K.E. (1996). How to Think Straight AboutPsychology. New York: HarperCollins, 21–8.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

(continued)

Understanding the Reading


1. Why did Benjamin Rush believe his treatment worked?

2. What is the falsifiability criterion?

3. What types of predictions can be made using good theories?

4. What is the most important characteristic of confirming evidence?

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c.Thinking Critically


5. The theory states: “Hypnosis will help you ‘remember’ things from your childhood that neveroccurred.” Is the theory stated in such a way that it can be proved false? Why or why not?

6. How can theories that are proved to be false still be useful in advancing psychology?

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Hypothesis

Does your gender, race, or physical appear-ance affect the service you receive in stores? Thehypothesis assumes that all three factors mayaffect the speed of service customers receive.

Method

To test the hypothesis, six assistants ofdiverse racial and ethnic origin were recruited.They consisted of:

one Caucasian maleone Caucasian femaleone African American maleone African American femaleone Hispanic maleone Hispanic female

The researchers chose two outfits for eachsex: one casual and one business. The casualoutfit for both the men and women consisted offaded jeans, an old sweatshirt, soiled athleticshoes, and a well-worn blue jean jacket. Thebusiness attire for the men consisted of a two-piece suit, a white button-down shirt, a tie, andleather dress shoes. The women’s business attireincluded a skirted, two-piece business suit, awhite blouse, leather pumps, and gold jewelry.

The researchers conducted the experimentin two nearby malls. Both malls were located inupper middle-class, predominantly white sub-urbs. The researchers obtained permission fromthe managers of various one-entrance stores toconduct the research. None of the stores’ sales-clerks were informed of the research study. Theresearchers classified the stores as male, female,or gender-neutral depending on the merchan-dise sold.

The six assistants entered the stores in oneof the outfits described above. Each assistantwore both types of clothing. However, no assis-tant entered the same store in both types ofclothing. The assistants carried a small stop-watch in the palms of their hands. When theassistants made eye contact with a salesclerk,

they started the stopwatch. The stopwatch ranuntil a salesclerk made an obvious attempt toprovide service. For example, if the salesclerkapproached and said “May I help you?”, thewatch was stopped.

Results

The analysis examined gender, race, type ofstore, and type of clothing as potential factors fordelayed service. The results indicated the follow-ing significant factors and interactions of factors:

1. race2. type of attire3. gender and attire4. gender and race and attire

The mean data for the interaction of gender,race, and attire is shown at the top of the nextpage. What do the charts show?

1. Men in business clothing were served morequickly than women.

2. Females in casual clothing were served morequickly than the men.

3. African Americans and Hispanics, regardlessof dress, were served more slowly thanCaucasians.

4. No matter the race, service was given morequickly to the assistants in business attire.

Conclusions

Salesclerks’ first impressions do affect thespeed of service. Upon examination, theresearchers found that the majority of sales-clerks were Caucasian. Apparent discriminationexists in the behavior of the salesclerks. Theracial discrimination appears to be clear-cut.More subtle is the discrimination based on dressand gender. It is important to note, however, thatthis study only examined the delay in service,not the specific reasons for it.

Source: Kraus, M. et al. (1998). Latency to serve in stores: Effects ofsex, race, and clothing, As cited in Horvat, J., & Davis, S. DoingPsychological Research. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 14–9.

First Impressions


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1. What were researchers attempting to determine?

2. What types of stores were used for this study?

3. What was being measured in this study?

4. Who received the fastest service? The slowest?

Thinking Critically

Directions: Answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.

5. What are the independent variables in this study?

6. If you were managing one of these stores and were given the results of the study, what recommen-dations would you make to your salesclerks?

7. One study of this type cannot be generalized to assume that all salesclerks in all stores will react inthe same ways. What factors should be changed in future studies to verify or dispute the study’sconclusions?

African American Hispanic Caucasian0

100

200

Assistants

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Business Clothing

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100

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Casual Clothing

Male

Female

Delays of Service

Experienced by Customers

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Exclusive maternal care of infants and young chil-dren is a cultural myth of an idealized 1950s, not a real-ity anywhere in the world either now or in earliertimes. Child care has always been shared, usuallyamong female relatives. Until recently, most Americanchildren of working parents were cared for by otherfemale relatives, but high rates of female employmenthave reduced that source of babysitters. What haschanged over time and varies cross-nationally is thedegree to which child care is bought in the market-place rather than shared among female relatives.

Today, more American children are cared for bypaid providers than by relatives. Relatives have, pre-sumably, some emotional commitment to the healthand safety of relatives’ offspring, therefore, quality ofcare was seldom raised as an issue of concern. Thepredominance of non-relative care in the last decadehas alerted consumers, governments, and theresearch community to the possibly damaging effectof poor quality care on children’s development;. . .

In agricultural societies, infants are typically leftin the care of siblings, grandmothers, or female neigh-bors, who are also caring for their own children. Inindustrialized societies, mothers’ employment outsidethe home has necessitated nonmaternal care of vari-

ous types. . . .Tracing historical changes in maternalemployment provides a guide to the demand for anduse of nonmaternal child care.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, and in nonindus-trial parts of the world today, women are both econom-ically productive workers and primary child caregivers.When employment moved outside the home and intothe factory and office, men followed work into newsettings, and women generally remained at home,without a direct economic role.

In a correlated development, mothers’ roles asknowledgeable caregivers began to be stressed. In thelate 19th and early 20th centuries, child rearing was nolonger a natural species response but a role thatrequired extensive education and knowledge. Childrenbegan to have tender psyches that required maternalattention to develop well. Mothers were given animportant emotional role in the home that complement-ed the fathers’ economic productivity (Kagan, 1980;Scarr, 1984).

Prior to World War II, few women remained in theworkforce after childbearing. The need for industrialworkers during the war brought many mothers intofactories and offices to replace men away at war.Mothers’ employment was culturally sanctioned and

R E A D I N G 3 American Child Care Today


Debate rages about how chil-dren are raised in modern Americansociety. All parties in this debateclaim to be concerned with thequality of child development thatresults from the various alternatives.What is the historic view of caringfor children? Is child developmentaffected by care in child-care centers?

(continued)

Mother* 6%

Father 16%

Others 1%

Grandparents 17%

Other Relatives 9%

Family Child Care (Nonrelatives)

21%

Centers 30%

*Includes mothers working at home or away from home.Source: Casper, L.M. (1996). Who’s Minding Our Preschoolers? U.S. Bureau of the Census,Current Population Reports, 70.

Primary Child-Care Arrangements forPreschoolers of Families withEmployed Mothers in 1993

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c.supported by the government provision of child-carecenters attached to war factories. Mothers, as Rosiethe Riveter, took on the many paid work roles that hadpreviously been denied them.

After the war, government and cultural supportsfor mothers’ employment were withdrawn, child-carecenters were closed, and mothers were told to gohome to make way in the workplace for returning vet-erans. The birthrate soared and new suburbs werebuilt as federally sponsored highway programs fueleda boom in housing outside of cities. All of this was adirect result of government policy that held as ideal atwo-parent family with a working father and a non-working mother, ensconced in single-family dwelling.

Erroneous predictions about an economic reces-sion after the war, which became instead an economicboom fueled by unfulfilled consumer demand for cars,refrigerators, and housing, left many jobs open towomen. Many mothers did not follow official advice togo home, and female employment has grown steadilysince. Goods and services that used to be homemade(e.g., clothing, canned goods, and cleaning) came tobe increasingly purchased, requiring additional familyincome. As the divorce rate and single motherhoodsoared, more mothers needed jobs to support theirfamilies. Today most mothers are employed.

In 1995, 62% of mothers with children under sixyears were employed. This rate was up more than 2%from 1994 and nearly 5% from 1993. Among motherswith children under two years, 58% were working inMarch 1995, up 4% from 1993 (1996 Green Book, ascited in Hofferth, 1996). The ideal of a nonemployedmother remained strong, however. One legacy forworking mothers of the baby-boom generation andbeyond is guilt about their employment. . . .

In surveys by Working Mother magazine in 1995and 1996, readers expressed strong preferences forcenter-based care over home care, whether by rela-tives or not. Child safety and parental control over thearrangements were prominent reasons for the prefer-ence. Home care is unsupervised and usually unli-censed. Television exposés of abuse and neglect inday-care homes have appeared regularly over the lastdecade. Relatives do not always abide by parents’child-rearing preferences, such as toilet-training tech-niques and feeding routines. Paid help is more depend-able and controllable. Child-care centers are openeven if one caregiver is ill or on vacation (Mason &Kuhlthau, as cited in Mason & Duberstein, 1992).

There is an extraordinary international consensusamong child-care researchers and practitioners aboutwhat quality child care is: It is warm, supportive inter-

actions with adults in a safe, healthy, and stimulatingenvironment, where early education and trusting rela-tionships combine to support individual children’sphysical, emotional, social, and intellectual develop-ment (Bredekamp, 1989). . . .

Researchers have explored the possible long-termeffects of day-care experiences in different qualities ofcare for children from different kinds of backgrounds.Children from low-income families are definitely bene-fited by quality child care, which has been used as anintervention strategy (Field, 1991; Ramey et al., 1985,Ramey & Ramey, 1992). Poor children who experiencehigh-quality infant and preschool care show betterschool achievement and socialized behaviors in lateryears than similar children without child-care experi-ence or with experience in lower quality care. For poorchildren, quality child care offers learning opportuni-ties and social and emotional supports that manywould not experience at home.

For children from middle- and upper-income fami-lies, the long-term picture is far less clear. With a fewexceptions that can be explained by the confoundingof family with child-care characteristics in the UnitedStates, research results show that the impact ondevelopment from poorer versus better care within abroad range of safe environments is small and tempo-rary. Given the learning opportunities and social andemotional supports that their homes generally offer,child care is not a unique or lasting experience forthese children.

ReferencesBredekamp, S. (1989, November). Measuring quality through a national

accreditation system for early childhood programs. Paperpresented at the annual meeting of the American EducationalResearch Association, San Francisco, CA.

Field, T. (1991). Quality infant day-care and grade school behavior andperformance. Child Development, 62, 863–70.

Hofferth, S. (1996). Child care in the United States today. The Future ofChildren, 6 (2), 41–61.

Kagan, J. (1980). Perspectives on continuity. In O.G. Brim & J. Kagan(eds.), Constancy and Change in Human Development. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press, 1–15.

Mason, K., & Duberstein, L. (1992). Consequences of child care forparents’ well-being. In A. Booth (ed.), Child Care in the 1990s:Trends and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 127–158.

Ramey, C., Bryant, D., Sparling, J., & Wasik, B. (1985). Project CARE: Acomparison of two early intervention strategies to prevent retardeddevelopment. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 5 (2),12–25.

Ramey, C., & Ramey, S. (1992). Early educational intervention withdisadvantaged children—to what effect? Applied and PreventivePsychology, 1, 131–140.

Scarr, S. (1984). Mother Care/Other Care. New York: Basic Books.

Source: Scarr, S. (1998). American child care today. AmericanPsychologist, 53, 95–106.

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1. In 1993, what percentage of preschool children with working mothers were cared for by a relative?

2. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, what two primary roles did mothers have?

3. What event caused large numbers of mothers to enter the workforce in the 20th century?

4. Which children benefit most from quality child care: poor, middle-income, or upper-incomechildren? Why?

Thinking Critically


5. Compare and contrast the role of mothers with young children in an agricultural society and in anindustrial society.

6. How does society affect the decision of mothers of young children to enter the workforce?

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Introduction

Traditionally, dieting and similar behaviorsthat show concern for physical appearance havebeen reserved for teenagers and adults. Thisstudy examines dysfunctional eating behaviorsin children as young as seven. This study buildson early research that indicated that children asyoung as third grade were concerned aboutbeing overweight and their appearance.

Preadolescent children are at a great risk ofdoing permanent physical and cognitive harm tothemselves by dieting. Children have less bodyfat than adults and are growing and developingat a rapid rate. Risks of dieting for childreninclude kidney failure, dental decay, heart beatirregularities, stunted physical growth, andreduced cognitive development.

Hypothesis

Body image and dieting behaviors areunderstood by children as young as seven.Children at that age envision an ideal bodyshape, know that restrictive eating behaviorsinfluence body shape, and express dissatisfac-tion with their current body size and shape.

Method

A sample of 431 children in the second,third, and fourth grades in Melbourne, Australia,participated in a survey. The survey wasdesigned to assess knowledge of what dieting isand determine how many children had engagedin some type of restrictive eating behavior. Partof the survey also examined the children’s ideasabout ideal body shape and weight. Parents con-sented to their children’s participation in thesurvey. Participants were assured that all theirresponses would be kept confidential.

To begin the study, the children’s currentbody weights and heights were recorded. Resultswere as follows:

The first part of the survey was a behaviorinventory that asked questioned like “I diet …”with answer choices that included always, some-times, and never. Then, more open-ended ques-tions were asked that allowed children to explainwhat dieting means. One concern in designing aquestionnaire to be used with children is thetendency for young children to give expectedanswers to leading questions. To avoid errorscreated by leading questions, children weregiven the option to answer “I don’t know,” “Inever diet,” or similar responses to the open-ended questions.

Children were next shown a series of sevengender-appropriate figures that ranged fromvery thin to obese. Children responded to thefollowing questions:

1. Which figure looks most like the way youcurrently look?

2. Which figure looks most like the way youwould like to look?

3. Which figure looks most like the way youfeel?

Finally, children took a modified version ofthe Eating Attitudes Test designed by researchersto measure dieting behaviors, food occupation,and weight concerns. This 26-item survey asksquestions like “I am scared about being over-weight.” Children select from a range of respons-es from always to never.

Results

The researchers examined the results of thesurveys by age group, body mass (underweight,

C A S E S T U D Y 3 Body Imageand Dietingin Children

Directions: Read the following case study, then answer the questions that follow.

(continued)

Boys Girls

Overweight 19.3% 23.7%Normal weight 59.9% 48.6%Underweight 20.8% 27.7%

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normal weight, overweight), and gender. About28 percent indicated that they did not knowwhat dieting was. Of the remainder, their ideasabout dieting showed a clear understanding ofsociety’s beliefs and attitudes toward dieting.Dieting has become a national pastime. Aboutone in five Americans will go on a diet this yearand many more will talk about going on a diet.Popular culture idealizes thin as beautiful.People see dieting as an acceptable way toachieve a beautiful body.

About 23 percent of the participants indicat-ed that they have dieted. More girls than boysindicated that they had dieted. The three mostpopular forms of dieting among participantswere:

1. actively reducing their intake of specificfoods

2. reducing their overall intake of food3. eating healthy foods

The study clearly showed that children asyoung as seven have a clear understanding oftheir body image and are frequently dissatisfiedwith it. Both boys and girls displayed a signifi-cant difference between their perceived bodysize and the ideal body size. In addition, the dif-ference between the ideal and how they felt wassignificantly different. The findings are shown inthe following table:

The study did not show a strong correlationbetween body-image dissatisfaction and dieting.This finding indicates that children do not yethave the abstract reasoning skills to relate theseconcepts. Studies with adolescents have shown astrong correlation between body-image dissatis-faction and dieting.

Conclusions

Children from all age groups sampledunderstand the concept and behaviors associat-ed with dieting. A significant number of the par-ticipants expressed dissatisfaction with theirbody shape and size. Researchers believe thatsociety is communicating messages about idealbody shape and size to these young children.Interestingly, the girls in the study tended tochoose the tall, lean figure as their ideal. Boyschose a more muscular and solid representationfor their ideal.

Further study is needed to help understandwhy children at such a young age have such aclear understanding of behaviors that are poten-tially harmful to them. Possible explanationsinclude society’s emphasis on physical appear-ance, better education about nutrition, and theinfluence of role models such as parents.

Source: Kostanski, M., & Gullone, E. (1999). Dieting and body imagein the child’s world: Conceptualization and behavior. Journal ofGenetic Psychology, 160 (4), 488–98.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. What was the purpose of this study? Who participated in the study?

2. What percentage of boys and girls were overweight? Of normal weight?

3. What three assessments were children asked to make about the gender-appropriate figures shownto them?

Boys Girls

Feeling smaller than the ideal 18% 13%Feeling larger than the ideal 30% 34%

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c.4. What dieting practices did children say they had tried?

Thinking Critically


5. What part of the hypothesis was not supported by the findings of this study? What does this suggestabout children’s cognitive skills?

6. Why do you think some children are dissatisfied with their body sizes?

7. What recommendations would you make to parents who are concerned about the findings of thisstudy?

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Many adults believe that it is more difficult to be a teenager today than when they were growing up.Although not all researchers agree, there is some evidence to suggest that American society is changingso rapidly that it is forcing its adolescents toward adulthood without the necessary time and training fora smooth transition from childhood to adulthood. The consequences to the adolescent and to societymay be felt for several decades.

R E A D I N G 4 Teenagers in Crisis


(continued)

There is no place for teenagers in American soci-ety today—not in our homes, not in our schools, andnot in society at large. This was not always the case:barely a decade ago, teenagers had a clearly definedposition in the social structure. They were the “nextgeneration,” the “future leaders” of America. Theirintellectual, social, and moral development was con-sidered important and therefore it was protected andnurtured. The teenager’s occasional foibles [minorflaws] and excesses were excused as an expressionof youthful spirit, a necessary Mardi Gras beforeassuming adult responsibility and decorum. Teenagersthus received the time needed to adapt to the remark-able transformations their bodies, minds, and emotionswere undergoing. Society recognized that the transi-tion from childhood to adulthood was difficult and thatyoung people needed time, support, and guidance inthis endeavor.

In today’s rapidly changing society, teenagershave lost their once privileged position. Instead, theyhave had a premature adulthood thrust upon them.Teenagers now are expected to confront life and itschallenges with the maturity once expected only of themiddle-aged, without any time for preparation. Manyadults are too busy retooling and retraining their ownjob skills to devote any time to preparing the next gen-eration of workers. And some parents are so involvedin reordering their own lives, managing a career, mar-riage, parenting, and leisure, that they have no time togive their teenagers; other parents simply cannot traina teenager for an adulthood they themselves have yetto attain fully. The media and merchandisers, too, nolonger abide by the unwritten rule that teenagers are aprivileged group who require special protection andnurturing. They now see teenagers as fair game for allthe arts of persuasion and sexual innuendo oncedirected only to adult audiences and consumers. Highschools, which were once the setting for a uniqueteenage culture and language, have become minia-tures of the adult community. Theft, violence, sex, and

substance abuse are now as common in the highschools as they are in the streets.

The imposition of premature adulthood upontoday’s teenagers affects them in two different butclosely related ways. First, because teenagers need aprotected period of time within which to construct apersonal identity, the absence of that period impairsthe formation of that all-important self-definition.Having a personal identity amounts to having an abid-ing sense of self that brings together, and gives mean-ing to, the teenager’s past while at the same time giv-ing him or her guidance and direction for the future. Asecure sense of self, of personal identity, allows theyoung person to deal with both inner and outerdemands with consistency and efficiency. This senseof self is thus one of the teenager’s most importantdefenses against stress. By impairing his or her abilityto construct a secure personal identity, today’s societyleaves the teenager more vulnerable and less compe-tent to meet the challenges that are inevitable in life.

The second effect of premature adulthood is inor-dinate stress: teenagers today are subject to morestress than were teenagers in previous generations.This stress is of three types. First, teenagers are con-fronted with many more freedoms today than wereavailable to past generations. Second, they are experi-encing losses, to their basic sense of security andexpectations for the future, that earlier generations didnot encounter. And third, they must cope with the frus-tration of trying to prepare for their life’s work inschool settings that hinder rather than facilitate thisgoal. Any one of these new stresses would put aheavy burden on a young person; taken together, theymake a formidable demand on the teenager’s ability toadapt to new demands and new situations.

Contemporary American society has thus struckteenagers a double blow. It has rendered them morevulnerable to stress while at the same time exposingthem to new and more powerful stresses than wereever faced by previous generations of adolescents. It

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c.is not surprising, then, to find the number of stress-related problems among teenagers has more than tre-bled in the last decade and a half.

Source: Elkind, D. (1984). All grown up and no place to go:Teenagers in Crisis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. pp. 3–6.

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1. When teenagers were considered future leaders, how did society treat them?

2. What changes does the author believe have occurred in society to make teens lose their place?

3. According to the author, how have high schools changed?

4. What two effects on teens does the author cite as a result of society’s push toward prematureadulthood?

Thinking Critically


5. Do you agree with the author’s point of view about society’s treatment of teens? Explain yourreasoning.

6. Compose a letter to your congressional representative expressing your views on allowingadvertisers to use sex or violence to sell products to teens.

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Introduction

Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Ph.D., from ColumbiaUniversity, has researched how emotional prob-lems arise in females during adolescent develop-ment. At the onset of puberty, a female’s estradi-ol level increases rapidly. This increase continuesuntil adult levels of estrogen are reached duringlate adolescence or early adulthood. Researchershave noted that many young women seem tohave little control over their emotions. Brooks-Gunn labels this emotional dysregulation. Herresearch centers on transitions in and out ofadolescence. In this particular study, she investi-gates whether depression in adolescence oradulthood is affected by the emotional dysregu-lation experienced by large numbers of adoles-cent females.

Hypothesis

Hormonal changes in females during puber-ty and stress at home and school result in emo-tional dysregulation and affect the likelihood ofdeveloping problems with depression either dur-ing adolescence or later in life.

Method

Brooks-Gunn conducted a longitudinalstudy involving 120 girls who were 14 at thebeginning of the study. Physical, emotional, andpsychological evaluations were made when thegirls were 14, 16, and 22. Based on the evalua-tions, Brooks-Gunn categorized the girls at eachstage as those with and those without depressiveproblems.

Based on the evaluations made when theparticipants were 14 and 16, Brooks-Gunn divid-ed them into four categories:

1. Positive These participants showed no signsof depressive problems at either evaluation.About 65 percent of the participants fell intothis category.

2. Early transient These participants showeddepressive problems at 14 but not at 16.About 10 percent of the participants fell intothis category.

3. Late transient These participants showeddepressive problems at 16 but not at 14.About 10 percent of the participants fell intothis category.

4. Recurrent These participants showed signsof depression at both ages. About 10 percentof the participants fell into this category.

Results

For the majority of participants, emotionaldysregulation as a result of hormonal changesdoes not lead to depression later in life. Thestudy showed that participants who were cate-gorized as early transient had poorer bodyimages. It also indicated that participants cate-gorized as late transient experienced morefamily conflicts and problems during early ado-lescence. Participants who were categorized asrecurrent had higher body fat and slightly earlierages of menarche. They tended to have poorbody images and did not relate as well to peers.Conflicts with parents were also more numer-ous. Recurrent participants showed only a slight-ly higher rate of depressive problems in earlyadulthood.

During the evaluations made when theparticipants were 22, the researchers encoun-tered some females who had not experienceddepression during adolescence, but were nowstruggling with it. The study indicated thatthese participants had experienced more nega-tive school and family events during middleadolescence.

Conclusions

The hormonal changes that occur duringpuberty for females do not seem to cause psy-chological problems later in life. The study does

Hormones andDepression


(continued)

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c.suggest, however, that the combination of emo-tional dysregulation, family and school stress,and other emotional factors such as poor bodyimage do increase the incidence of recurrent orchronic psychological problems.

Source: Azar, B. (1995). Paths that lead to teen depression. The APAMonitor, 26 (10), 26.

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1. What changes occur in a female’s estrogen level during puberty?

2. What is emotional dysregulation?

3. What was the purpose of the longitudinal study? Did the study results support the hypothesis?Explain.

4. What categories did Brooks-Gunn use to classify participants after the first two evaluations?

5. What do the results suggest about the adolescent experience of participants who were categorizedas recurrent?

Thinking Critically


6. What does the study suggest about the importance of physical appearance to adolescent females?

7. Do you think the emphasis on appearance is innate or learned? Provide evidence to support yourposition.

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Would you describe yourself as creative? Recent research indicates that creative people tend toremain creative throughout their lives. Creativity is not reserved for the young. Composers, artists, andmusicians often remain productive and creative throughout their lives. Their creativity brings meaningand purpose that enhances the quality of their lives.

R E A D I N G 5 Creativity and Aging


(continued)

Despite a severe intestinal disorder, painter HenriMatisse created some of his greatest work near theend of his life. So did Auguste Renoir, Claude Monetand Pablo Picasso. And some creative people, likeGrandma Moses, don’t start their creative careers untilthey’re past 70.

Psychologists have been studying the creativelives of older people and how creativity can enhancethe aging process. In a range of studies, they’ve foundthat being creative can add richness to the agingprocess; that those who followed their creative pas-sions are happier old people; and that many creativepeople develop new creative styles in old age.

For the past 20 years, Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D.,professor of psychology at the University of California-Davis, has studied the career trajectories of com-posers, writers and artists.

Simonton has found, in part, that creativity doesnot decline with age, though it may change in form.

‘Swan-song’ creativity Creative people often change strategies in old

age, Simonton has found. Composer Igor Stravinsky, for example, began in

later life to compose pieces much differently than hehad earlier, changing from writing traditional polytonalmusic to more radical ‘twelve-tone’ music that usedthe musical scale in a different way.

Relatedly, Simonton has found a ‘swan-song’ phe-nomenon: a time in which people’s work becomesmore meaningful and aesthetically concise as theyface death.

Different kinds of artists have different creativepeaks, Simonton added: For instance, lyric poets maypeak earlier than novelists. In addition, some people—like Grandma Moses—begin creative careers later inlife, thus peaking late in life, he noted.

A recent study at University of Nebraska-Lincolnfound that thinking and acting creatively can help peo-

ple adapt to the aging process and find meaning in life.Participants in the study—who were a mix ofnonartists and artists ages 60 and older—said thatbeing creative enhanced their life satisfaction. In addi-tion, creativity can encourage greater cognitive flexi-bility, the study found.

Sixty percent of the study participants said they’dbecome even more creative as they’ve gotten older.Of the remaining 40 percent, half said they’d remainedconsistently creative throughout their lives.

Follow your passionThose who follow their creative passions through-

out life are happier people in old age, StephanieDudek, Ph.D., has found. . . .

In 1991, Dudek followed up a University ofCalifornia-Berkeley study by Donald Mackinnon, Ph.D.,and colleagues of 124 male architects, engineers andartists between 1958 and 1960. Participants in 1958were 53-years-old on average.

Dudek interviewed 70 of the original architects inthe study, all of those who were still alive in 1991. Shedivided the architects into three groups: famous; verysuccessful; and ‘nice guys,’ men who had neverstrived to be famous, but who had fulfilling careers. Allthe men in the studies had followed their creative pas-sions in their careers, Dudek said. With few excep-tions, they reported that they were happy with theirlives and wouldn’t do things differently, and that cre-ativity had enhanced their lives and made their old agemore successful and enjoyable.

If people exercise creativity throughout their lives,their old age should be no different, Simonton said.‘People with lots of creative potential keep on creatingeven in old age,’ he said.

Source: Margoshes, P. (1995, May). Creative spark lives on, canincrease with age. The APA Monitor, 26 (5), 37.

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1. What does Simonton’s study of creativity and aging indicate?

2. What is ‘swan-song’ creativity?

3. Can creativity increase with age?

4. Into what three groups did Dudek divide the participants in her 1991 study? What were her conclusions?

Thinking Critically


5. Does a creative person need to achieve fame to find satisfaction with his or her talents? Why or whynot?

6. List one or more areas in which you are creative. Projecting into the future, develop a life plan thatwould allow you to use your creativity throughout your life. Consider how you can develop your tal-ents and how you can use them even if physical limitations slow you down.

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In 1939, eight million Jews lived in Europe.By the end of World War II in 1945, six million ofthese Jews had been killed. We know this system-atic genocide as the Holocaust. Those whoremained at the end of the war could be dividedinto two groups: refugees and survivors.Refugees fled their homelands for safe havenslike the United States, China, and the SovietUnion. Refugee families remained together andsuffered relatively few casualties during the war.Survivors were those who lived through the ter-ror of the concentration camps. Many survivorsleft the camps totally alone in the world, the onlysurviving member of their families. All had expe-rienced severe deprivation and a multitude ofhorrors.

Recent studies have compared generativityamong refugees and survivors. Four specific gen-erativity behaviors were examined:

1. Biological generativity, which ensures sur-vival through bearing children.

2. Parental generativity, which creates a stablefamily unit to nurture children.

3. Technical generativity, which passes on skillsfrom one generation to the next.

4. Cultural generativity, which introducesthe next generation to the celebrations,

rites, and cultural achievements of pastgenerations.

The participants in the study ranged in agefrom 63 to 75. They had been adolescents oryoung adults at the time of the war. The studyparticipants completed two surveys used toassess generativity. Each was also interviewedat length to gather additional data.

Biological Generativity

Although both refugee and survivor groupsexhibited strong biological generativity, the sur-vivor group’s desire was stronger. The entire sur-vivor group viewed the need for children as away to continue the family line. Especially strongamong the survivor group was the need to havebiological children. Adoption was not seen as anoption. Refugees also desired children, but weremuch more open to adoption if reproductionwas not possible.

Parental Generativity

Significant differences in parental generativi-ty were apparent between the two groups. Therefugee group expressed both material and emo-

Generativity AmongRefugees and

Survivors


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c.tional components to raising children. Typicalnurturing behaviors found in the population atlarge characterize the refugee group. The sur-vivor group focused primarily on providingmaterially for their children. Since all had experienced extreme loss and deprivation, theydesired to provide materially for their childrenso that they would never have to suffer. Theemotional distance noted in the survivors alsoappears to result from their experiences in thecamps. With such a tragic and painful past, emo-tional connections, even with their own chil-dren, proved difficult. Typical nurturing behav-iors were often a missing component in thehomes of survivors. Should they speak of thepast to their children? All expressed reluctance,but most eventually shared at least a portion oftheir stories with their children.

Technical Generativity

Technical generativity was not prevalent ineither group. Few participants had completedhigh school or had any formal professional train-ing. Therefore, they had no technical skills topass on to their children. Although most partici-pants were economically secure, their achieve-ments resulted from hard work rather than agood education. Both groups valued educationhighly and made provisions for their children toreceive good quality educations. Both groupsespecially valued higher education, even thoughthey had been denied the right to it.

Cultural Generativity

The war and the Holocaust virtuallydestroyed the culture into which the refugeesand survivors had been born. During the twodecades after the war, both groups showed limit-ed interest in their cultural heritage. As the sur-vivors aged, however, they expressed more inter-est in passing on Jewish heritage and traditions.For many, the holidays and celebrations ofJewish life gained significance.

One strong component of cultural generativ-ity that appeared in the survivor group wasZionism. Zionism is an ancient concept, but in

the twentieth century it has focused primarily onthe establishment and protection of a Jewishhomeland. Largely as a result of the Holocaust,the state of Israel was created in 1948 to give theJews a homeland. Both refugees and survivorshave been strong supporters of Zionism.Survivors speak with pride of the one positiveeffect of the Holocaust. They have contributedgenerously to the state, although none of thestudy participants lived in Israel.

For survivors, another consistent culturaltheme was that the Holocaust be rememberedso that it is never repeated. As the survivors haveaged, they have recognized the need to have theevents of the Holocaust and their sufferingremembered, not only by their families, but alsoby humanity. This larger cultural context hasbecome a rallying point as the survivorsapproach the end of their lives.

Conclusions

Disruptions early in life affect one’s futuredrive toward generativity. Refugees lived throughthe upheaval, but did not experience the terrorof the concentration camps. For many of them,guilt was a significant element of their existence.Although their culture was destroyed by the war,they still felt guilty for not having suffered likethe concentration camp survivors. They seemedless able than the survivors to make new culturalconnections and find significant purpose in lifebeyond raising their families.

Survivors could not escape their past. Itcolored every part of their future. They showedstronger generative behaviors largely as a meansof defining their past. Except for nurturing skillsneeded for strong parental generativity, theyshowed more generative behaviors than therefugees. The interviews with survivors demon-strate that they have used generative behaviorsto build a future out of the horrors of the past.Their cry of “Never Again” has become areminder to all societies of the horrors of theHolocaust.

Source: McAdams, D. & de St. Aubin, E. (1998). Generativity andAdult Development. Washington, DC: American PsychologicalAssociation.

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1. What two groups were used for the study?

2. Which generative behavior was least evident among both groups?

3. What was the primary difference between the two groups in parental generativity?

4. What was the strongest part of cultural generativity for the survivor group?

Thinking Critically


5. Would you expect veterans of World War II to share any of the same generative characteristics withthe survivors? Why or why not?

6. Although survivors felt strongly that the Holocaust be remembered so that it would not be repeated,they were reluctant to share their experiences with their children. In fact, several of the adult chil-dren of study participants asked the researchers for a copy of their parents’ interview so that theycould learn more about their parents’ Holocaust experience. Explain this apparent contradiction.

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Brain injuries, including strokes and severe head trauma, disable tens of thousands of Americansyearly. In addition, spinal cord injuries that result in paralysis occur daily. The disabilities that result canbe devastating to the victims. Regenerating brain tissue and repairing spinal cord damage are not yetpossible, but strides are being made toward reducing the severity of many disorders and injuries.Eventually, researchers hope to use a combination of methods to repair the damage.

R E A D I N G 6 Reversing Strokeand Spinal Cord

Damage


(continued)

Scientists are on the brink of doing the unthink-able—replenishing the brains of people who have suf-fered strokes or head injuries to make them wholeagain. And as if that is not astonishing enough, theythink they may be about to reverse paralysis.

The door is at last open to lifting the terrifying sen-tence these disorders still decree—loss of physicalfunction, cognitive skills, memory, and personality—which costs the nation $65 billion annually.

Until recently there was virtually nothing doctorscould do for the 500,000 Americans who have strokeseach year, the 500,000 to 750,000 who experiencesevere head injury, or the 10,000 people who are para-lyzed after spinal cord damage.

But that is about to change. Researchers nowthink it may be possible to replace destroyed braincells with new ones to give victims of stroke and braininjury a chance to relearn how to control their body,form new thinking processes, and regain emotions.

And after demolishing the long-standing myth thatbrain cells can’t regenerate or proliferate, scientistsare developing ways to stimulate cells to do just that.

Although stroke, head injury, and paralysis arethree of the most devastating things that can happento anyone, scientists have recently learned that thedamage they cause is not preordained: it takes placeover minutes, hours, and days, giving them a preciousopportunity to develop treatments to halt much of thedamage.

Most of the new remedies are not yet available,but an explosion of research in the last five to tenyears has convinced scientists that some of them willwork. . . .

Scientists are finding that treatments that work inone type of injury—stroke, head trauma, or spinaldamage—are likely to work in the others. All of thesedisorders share many of the same mechanisms of celldestruction, which come in two phases, primary andsecondary injury.

In the primary, or initial, injury, blood flow to a partof the brain is blocked by a clot that plugs an artery or

by a physical blow. Brain cells, or neurons, are eitherdamaged or die right away because they are deprivedof nourishing blood.

This initial destruction then triggers a chemicalattack against tissue that was not damaged in the pri-mary injury. The second phase of injury invokes aprocess called excitotoxicity and it affects nearbyhealthy cells, often killing more brain tissue than theinitial injury.

Like someone yelling “fire” in a crowded theater,damaged and dying cells scream out a slew of chemi-cals. These chemicals, which normally help brain cellstalk to each other, become dangerously toxic in exces-sive amounts. They literally cause healthy cells tobecome overexcited to the point of death, when theytoo spew out their death-throe chemicals.

Interestingly, scientists believe that excitotoxicityis a genetically programmed suicide mechanismdevised by nature to kill unneeded or unhealthy cells.Such cell death occurs during fetal development, forinstance, to get rid of billions of overproduced braincells and the webbing between fingers.

It is this same excitotoxic response that is rapidlytriggered in stroke, head trauma, or spinal injury toproduce the destructive secondary injury. Evidencealso indicates that the excitotoxic reaction can occurover a longer period of time, causing a slow form ofsuicide that may be the final pathway for cellular deathin Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other degenerativeneurological disorders.

The suicide reaction—its scientific name is apop-tosis—begins when a damaged or dying neuronreleases massive amounts of a neurotransmitter calledglutamate. Glutamate is normally one of the mostimportant chemical messengers in the brain.

But when too much glutamate is present, theNMDA receptors (“doors” on cell surfaces) arejammed open. Sodium floods in, causing the cell toswell. Calcium rushes in and smashes at the cell’sgenetic controls, producing enzymes that eat away the cell’s internal support structure and destructive

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molecules, called free radicals, that chew away itsmembrane wall.

“It would be like going into the cabin of a 747 jet-liner with a sledgehammer and starting to hit left andright,” Washington University’s Dennis Choi said.“Everything just starts going haywire.”

The discovery of the key steps in the suicide cas-cade of secondary injury is leading to the development

of drugs to block them. Experiments in animals showthat by blocking the secondary injury, much of thedamage that normally occurs from a stroke, head trau-ma, or spinal injury can be prevented.

Source: Kotulak, R. (1997). Inside the Brain: RevolutionaryDiscoveries of How the Mind Works. Kansas City, MO: AndrewsMcMeel Publishing, 173–7.

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1. What are the common consequences of strokes, head traumas, and spinal cord injuries?

2. What are the two phases of cell destruction common to strokes, head traumas, and spinal cordinjuries?

3. What is the biological purpose of excitotoxicity?

4. What happens when too much glutamate is present in the brain?

Thinking Critically


5. What common psychological effects occur in victims of strokes, head traumas, and spinal cordinjuries?

6. Although experiments have been successful in animals, the drugs used are not yet widely availablefor humans. If someone you cared for experienced a severe head trauma, would you want him orher to participate in a study of these drugs? Why or why not?

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Neurologists, psychiatrists, and psycholo-gists have demonstrated that different areas ofthe brain are responsible for different behaviorsand control different sensory inputs. For exam-ple, studies have shown that the left hemispherecontrols the right side of the body, and the righthemisphere controls the left side of the body.Scientists also attribute different abilities to theright and left hemispheres. The left hemispherecontrols language and verbal reasoning, whilethe right hemisphere manages spatial under-standing. Recent studies have sought to identifyif emotions are processed differently by the twohemispheres. This area of study has been labeled“dual-brain psychology.”

Existing Research

Psychiatrist Fredric Schiffer began his stud-ies in dual-brain psychology by reviewing theresearch done with patients who had undergonecommissurotomies, a surgical procedure thatseparates the brain’s two hemispheres by sever-ing the corpus callosum. This radical surgery hasproven successful in relieving severe epilepticseizures. Dr. Eran Zaidel researched how thebrain functions after this radical surgery. Heused simple visual and motor tests to under-stand how the two halves of the brain work. Hehad a patient sit in front of a screen. Pictureswere flashed to either the right or left side of thescreen. Pictures that were flashed to the rightside of the screen were processed by the lefthemisphere and vice versa. Zaidel asked thepatient to name the objects shown in the pic-tures. The patient could name the objects thatwere flashed on the right side of the screen, butcould not name the objects flashed on the leftside of the screen. This seemed to confirm thatlanguage is a left brain function and that theright brain is mute.

Zaidel took the study one step further. Eventhough the right hemisphere is mute, he won-dered how the right brain processed the picture.

He hypothesized that the right brain did recog-nize the object, but simply had no way to nameit. He repeated the experiment. When an imagewas flashed on the left side of the screen, thepatient was asked to use his right hand to selectthe object from a group of objects. Although thepatient could not name the object, he alwaysmade the correct selection. Zaidel concludedthat although the right brain is mute, it doesprocess visual information correctly.

Other studies with commissurotomypatients have shown that, when divided, the twohalves of the brain function independentlyenough to say that the patient has two minds.

Dual-Brain Psychology Research

Schiffer wondered what applications Zaidel’sfindings had on those whose brains were intact.Since information is processed differently by thetwo hemispheres, he hypothesized that emo-tions are also processed differently. To test hishypothesis, he modified two pairs of safety gog-gles. On one pair, he used white tape to com-pletely cover the left lens and the left half of theright lens. This allowed vision through the rightvisual field only. Therefore, the informationwould be processed by the brain’s left hemi-

C A S E S T U D Y 6 Dual-BrainPsychology


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The Human Brain

LeftHemisphere

RightHemisphere

Corpus callosum

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sphere. On the other pair, he completely coveredthe right lens and the right half of the left lens.This allowed vision through the left visual field,which would be processed by the brain’s righthemisphere.

During psychotherapy sessions, he askedpatients to select one pair of the goggles to wear.One of the first patients to test the goggles wasan agoraphobic woman who feared all unfamil-iar places. She needed to travel to a different cityand was working with Dr. Schiffer to overcomeher phobia. Schiffer had her select a pair of thegoggles to wear as the session began. She chosethe pair that had the left side completely cov-ered, allowing her to see only from her rightvisual field. Schiffer asked her to imagine herselfin the different city. What was her level of anxi-ety? Could she deal with it? Her response wasthat she would feel lost and very anxious. Shedid not believe that she could go through withthe visit.

Schiffer had her put on the other pair ofglasses that gave her vision only to the left visualfield. After a 15-second period of adjustment, heasked her how she would feel in the differentcity. This time her responses were much morepositive. She thought she could manage the visitand not be overcome with anxiety. She wasmuch calmer when contemplating the trip thanwhen she had been seeing through her rightvisual field. Subsequent trials indicated differ-ences in about half the patients. Some sensedminor differences in emotions, while some indi-cated strong differences.

To further test the hypothesis that differenthemispheres process emotions differently,

Schiffer used the taped glasses with 70 partici-pants. They were randomly assigned to one pairof glasses. After a 45-second period of adjust-ment, they were asked to rate their level of anxi-ety using a 5-point scale (0 for no anxiety to 4 forextreme anxiety). After participants gave theirratings, they were asked to switch to the otherpair of glasses. Participants also rated their levelof anxiety with the second pair.

Results

Of the 70 participants, 60 percent reported aone-point difference in anxiety level between thetwo pairs of glasses and 23 percent reported atwo point or greater difference. Of the 70 partici-pants, four had a four-point difference in theirrating. These four participants exhibited highlevels of anxiety. In fact, the only variable thatshowed significance was level of anxiety. Otherpossible variables, including gender, handed-ness, and age, did not significantly affect theresults.

Conclusions

The brain’s left and right hemispheres doprocess emotions differently. Treatments can bedeveloped that allow patients to reduce their lev-els of anxiety by teaching them to use differenthemispheres. In addition, the two hemispherescan learn to work together to create a healthy,whole person.

Source: Schiffer, F. (1998). Of Two Minds: The RevolutionaryScience of Dual-Brain Psychology. New York: The Free Press.

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1. What does the left hemisphere of the brain control?

2. What does the right hemisphere of the brain control?

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c.3. Describe the results of Zaidel’s study on commissurotomy patients.

4. What was Schiffer’s hypothesis about emotions?

Thinking Critically


5. Why would patients with high levels of anxiety show a greater difference in level of anxiety betweenthe brain’s two hemispheres?

6. Anxiety has many causes, including depression, phobias, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stressdisorder. Describe further research that could be conducted to determine if different causesof anxiety are processed differently by the brain and, therefore, require different types of dual-braintherapy.

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What is your pattern of sleep? Do people in all cultures and throughout history share similar sleeppatterns? Anthropological research indicates that sleep patterns in today’s culture may be strikingly dif-ferent from the patterns of our ancestors. New research may change the way we view sleep.

R E A D I N G 7 Cross-CulturalStudies of Sleep


(continued)

Ah, the sweet simplicity of sleep. You tramp intoyour bedroom with sagging eyelids and stifle a yawn.After disrobing, you douse the lights and climb intobed. Maybe a little reading or television massages thenerves, loosening them up for slumber.

There’s a surprising twist, however, at the heart ofthis familiar ritual. It simply doesn’t apply to peoplecurrently living outside of the modern Western world—or even to inhabitants of Western Europe as recentlyas 200 years ago.

In such contexts, and probably throughout humanevolution, solitary shut-eye organized around a regularbedtime and a single bout of sleep proves about ascommon as stock car racing or teleconferencing.Surprisingly, anthropologists have rarely scrutinizedthe sleep patterns and practices of different cultures. . .

An initial attempt to draw back the veils of sleep inhunter-gatherer groups and other traditional societieshas uncovered a wide variety of sleep customs,reports anthropologist Carol M. Worthman of EmoryUniversity in Atlanta. None of these snooze styles,however, looks anything like what modern Westernfolk take for granted.

This finding raises profound questions for the bur-geoning discipline of sleep research, Worthman says.Over the past 50 years, scientists have avidly delvedinto slumber’s biology. Early research identified periodsof rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, during whichintense dreams often occur. . . . Researchers have alsotaken strides toward treating insomnia and other sleepdisturbances.

While investigators readily concede that theydon’t yet know why people sleep and dream, theyassume that they at least know how people shouldsleep: alone or with a partner for a solid chunk of thenight. Sleep studies therefore take place in laborato-ries where individuals catch winks while hooked up toa bevy of brain and body monitors.

However, the distinctive sleep styles of non-Western groups may mold sleep’s biology in waysundreamed of in sleep labs, Worthman suggests. Theymay influence factors ranging from sleep-related

genes to the brain’s electrical output during varioussleep phases. . . .

A seemingly innocent question awakenedWorthman to her discipline’s ignorance of how peoplesleep. In 1994, she had a conversation with pediatri-cian Ronald E. Dahl of the University of PittsburghSchool of Medicine, who studies the effects of mooddisorders on sleep. He asked the Emory scientist to tellhim what anthropologists know about the history andprehistory of sleep. “[My] bald, if somewhat overstat-ed, answer was ‘zero,’” she says. . . .

So, Worthman contacted seven researcherswhom she knew had intimate knowledge of one ormore traditional societies, including nomadic foragers,herders, and village-based farmers. Among these far-flung populations, none of the investigators, by theirown admission, had systematically studied how peoplesleep. After plumbing what the researchers hadabsorbed about nighttime activities, Worthman hasassembled a preliminary picture of sleep practices in10 non-Western populations.

Worthman’s findings rip the covers off any linger-ing suspicions that people everywhere sleep prettymuch alike. Far from the wallpapered confines ofmiddle-class bedrooms, sleep typically unfolds inshared spaces that feature constant backgroundnoise emanating from other sleepers, various domesticanimals, fires maintained for warmth and protectionfrom predators, and other people’s nearby nighttimeactivities.

Groups in Worthman’s analysis include Ache for-agers in Paraguay, Kung hunter-gatherers in Africa,Swat Pathan herders in Pakistan, and Balinese farm-ers in Indonesia. For all these groups and six others,communal sleep equals safe sleep, because sleeperscan count on there being someone else up or easilyawakened at all hours of the night to warn others of athreat or emergency. . . .

Many rituals occur at night and exploit the need tosleep. For instance, initiation rites often force partici-pants to cope with sleep deprivation. In other cere-monies, individuals enter somnolent, or near-sleep,

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c.states in order to magnify an occasion’s psychologicalimpact and to induce spiritual visions.

Consider the communal sleep of the Gebusi, NewGuinea, rainforest dwellers, who grow fruit in smallgardens and occasionally hunt wild pigs. Women, girls,and babies crowd into a narrow section of a communi-ty longhouse to sleep on mats. Men and boys retreat toan adjacent, more spacious longhouse area, wherethey sleep on wooden platforms.

Gebusi females retire at dark for about 10 hours ofrest and sleep. In contrast, the men stay up later andfrequently conduct rituals. About once a month, every-one attends an all-night dance and feast, catching upon sleep the next day.

Each week or two, Gebusi men go to seances ledby a “spirit medium,” at which they try to keep spiritsawake throughout the night. Participants attempt toslip in and out of a near-sleep state as the medium,who’s usually adept at operating in this half-consciouscondition, sings about the spirit world and other matters.

As in most of the other studied societies, theGebusi express concerns about exposure to ghosts,evil spirits, and witchcraft during sleep. They considerdeep sleep risky, since a sleeper’s spirit may wander offtoo far and fail to return. The Gebusi view group slum-ber as a way to lessen the danger of spirit loss, whichthey view as especially likely while a person dreams.

Whether or not one believes that sleeping puts aperson’s spirit at risk, slumber appears to have crucialeffects on body and mind. A culture’s sleeping styleserves as a growing child’s training ground for manag-ing biologically based systems of attention and alert-ness, Worthman contends. Balinese farmers provide astriking example of this sleep-related tutoring.

Balinese infants are carried and held continuouslyby caregivers so that they learn to fall asleep even inhectic and noisy situations. This grooms them to exhib-it what the Balinese call “fear sleep” later in life,Worthman says. Children and adults enter fear sleepby suddenly slumping over in a deep slumber whenthey or family members confront intense anxiety or anunexpected fright. They are literally scared into sleep.

Infants in middle-class American homes, who usu-ally sleep alone, may not learn to ground their sleepingand waking cycles in a flow of sensations that includebodily contact, smells, and background noises,Worthman proposes. In fact, babies forced to bounceback and forth between the sensory overload of thewaking world and the sensory barrenness of dark,quiet bedrooms may often find it difficult to relax, fallasleep, wake up, or concentrate, she theorizes. . . .

If sleeping patterns in traditional societies remainlittle known, those of prehistoric humans are a total

mystery. Still, in settings that roughly mimic ancientnighttime conditions, sleep undergoes an intriguingshift, says psychiatrist Thomas A. Wehr of the NationalInstitute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD.

When prohibited from using artificial light fromdusk until dawn, people who formerly slumbered insolid blocks of time begin to sleep in two periods sepa-rated by an hour or two of quiet rest and reflection.

Wehr and his coworkers asked 15 healthy adultsto rest and sleep in darkness for 14 hours (6 P.M. to 8 A.M.) each night for several weeks. Volunteers sleptfor 11 hours each of the first few nights, apparently tocatch up on their sleep. They then settled into a pat-tern of lying awake for a couple of hours before fallingasleep for 3 to 5 hours in the evening. An hour or so ofquiet wakefulness ensued, followed by about 4 morehours of sleep in the early morning. . . .

Participants in Wehr’s study usually awoke out ofREM sleep to end their first slumber session. DuringREM sleep, the brain becomes about as active as it iswhen wide awake. One function of this sleep phasemay be to set the stage for waking up, Wehr holds.

If prehistoric people slept in two nightly periods,then regularly awakening out of REM sleep may haveallowed them to reflect on and remember their dreamsin a semiconscious state that’s generally unavailable tomodern sleepers. Sleep compressed into a single stintmay thus encourage modern humans to lose touchwith dreams, myths, and fantasies, Wehr argues.

These results, first reported in 1993, also raise thepossibility that people who wake up once or twiceeach night don’t necessarily suffer from insomnia. “A natural human sleep pattern may reassert itself inan unwelcome world and get labeled as a disorder,”Wehr says.

The two-phase sleep pattern observed by Wehrcorresponds remarkably closely to the way in whichmost Western Europeans slept between 500 and 200years ago, according to historian A. Roger Ekirch ofVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State University inBlacksburg. While doing research for a book on night-time behaviors during that era, Ekirch came acrossseveral hundred references to what he identifies as“segmented sleep.”

From country farms and villages to city apart-ments, early modern Europeans usually sank eachevening into what they called a “first sleep,” whichlasted for several hours. Shortly after midnight, theyawoke and spent 1 or 2 hours in a “watching period.”A “second,” or “morning,” sleep followed.

The watching period presented many opportuni-ties, Ekirch notes. People coming out of their first sleepoften stayed in bed to pray, converse with a bedfellow,contemplate the day’s events or the meaning of a

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dream, or simply let their minds wander in a semicon-scious state of contentment that was prized at the time.

A 16th-century physician wrote that many laborersdozed off exhausted at the start of each night. Sexualintercourse with their wives typically occurred in thewatching period, after a recuperative first sleep.

These days, Western societies treat sleep more asan unavoidable stretch of downtime than as a preludeto sex or a time for inner reflection. Only intensive

investigations across cultures and classes will illumi-nate the lushness of sleep’s landscape, Worthmanpredicts.

Adds Wehr, “We’re going to have to reconceptual-ize what it means to sleep normally.”

Source: Bower, B. (1999, September 25). Slumber’s unexploredlandscape. Science News, 156 (13), 205–207.

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1. What is the primary difference between the current sleep practices in the United States and historicsleep patterns?

2. Why do people in some cultures sleep in communal groups?

3. What is “fear sleep” as experienced by the Balinese?

4. What did Thomas Wehr discover in his sleep study?

Thinking Critically


5. You have a friend who reports that he falls asleep easily around 11 PP.. MM .., but then awakens for aboutan hour most nights around 2 or 3 A.M. He seems near exhaustion. What would be the traditionalexplanation for his problem? How might the information contributed by anthropologists changethis view? Given the anthropological view, what recommendations would you make to your friend?

6. Why do sleep patterns in America differ so greatly from those of our ancestors and those in moretraditional cultures?

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Background

What happens when traditional medicinefails to provide relief from chronic pain? Chronicpain is long-term pain from a known orunknown source that cannot be relieved throughsurgery or physical therapy. Millions ofAmericans suffer from chronic pain at someperiod in their lives. Traditional medicine hastreated such pain with medications and selectedexercises. Statistics show that 40 percent of thepeople who are prescribed medication forchronic pain will abuse their medication.Society, including those in the medical profes-sion, is exploring alternative treatments thatmay prove as effective, and perhaps more effec-tive, than traditional medical treatments.

Case Report

A woman in her late 40s was injured in a caraccident. Her most serious injury was a com-pression fracture of her spine. The fracture andaccompanying muscle spasms resulted in severeand continuous pain. No type of surgery couldrelieve her pain, so doctors gave her a series ofpain medications, nerve blocks, and anesthetics.These procedures managed the pain, but hadunpleasant side effects.

Two years later, the woman was in anothercar accident. This time, in addition to cuts andbruises, she fractured her breastbone, one rib,and a foot. After this accident, her pain wors-ened and she had difficulty completing simpletasks such as combing her hair and dressing her-self. She was unable to work. She also experi-enced additional health problems in the nextseveral months.

The pain, frustration over her limitations,and uncertainty about the future left herdepressed. Over the next six months, she visitedseveral doctors at several clinics seeking help.Doctors prescribed 13 different medications atvarious times to either manage her pain or affecther mood. The drugs included Darvocet, a pow-

erful pain reliever, and Valium, a drug commonlyprescribed to treat anxiety. None of these drugsproved helpful; the many side effects actuallymade the problems worse.

When she entered the Behavioral MedicineClinic, she walked with a cane, had limitedmovement in her head and neck, and continuedto be depressed. Since she had received littlerelief from traditional medical treatments, shehad begun to study the principles of self-hypno-sis from library books. She slowly learned how tomanage her pain through a self-induced state ofhypnosis. While seated, she would close her eyesand visualize her pain as a lake. She became pro-gressively more relaxed by continuing to usemental imagery to reduce the size of the lake.She used these techniques to make the painmore manageable and to deal with her anxietyover the exercises physical therapists asked herto do. The doctors at the Behavioral MedicineClinic encouraged her to continue with the self-hypnosis on a daily basis, to be as physicallyactive as possible, and to try to live without painmedications.

Within seven months, she:

■ was nearly free of all pain■ was not taking any pain medications■ had increased her physical activity and was

walking without the cane■ had returned to work part-time■ was no longer suffering from depression

Conclusions

Cases such as the one described here arehelping to shift the focus of the medical commu-nity toward a biopsychosocial approach to thetreatment of pain. This approach combines tra-ditional medical treatments with psychologicaland social approaches to treatment. The mostcommon alternative treatments are group thera-py, relaxation therapy, biofeedback, guidedimagery, and hypnosis.

C A S E S T U D Y 7Self-Hypnosis


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The National Institutes of Health supportthese alternative treatments, especially relax-ation therapy and hypnosis, for chronic pain suf-ferers. Several studies over the past 30 years indi-cate that hypnosis is especially effective at con-trolling both acute and chronic pain and atrelieving the accompanying depression.

Self-hypnosis is the technique preferred bymany physicians and psychologists. It allows the

patient more control and responsibility. It alsolessens the chance that the physician or psy-chologist will be seen as a manipulator.

Source: Mickelson, C., Brende, J., & Gonzalez, J. (1999). What ifyour patient prefers an alternative pain control method: Self-hypnosis in the control of pain. Southern Medical Journal, 92 (5),521–23.

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1. What is chronic pain?

2. Why did the woman in the case study learn self-hypnosis?

3. What imagery did she use for her pain?

4. How did she use this image to reduce her pain level?

5. What types of treatment are combined in the biopsychosocial approach to pain management?

Thinking Critically


6. Why do you think self-hypnosis relieved pain when all the other treatments failed in this instance?

7. If given the option of hypnosis or self-hypnosis to manage pain, which would you prefer? Why?

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In the second half of the 20th century space travel became a reality. Until the first space travelersbraved the unknown, scientists and doctors could only speculate on how the human body would reactto weightlessness. Some of their speculations proved true, such as space motion sickness that is com-monly experienced by space travelers at the beginning of a flight. Others proved false. One thing hasbecome quite clear—the body can adapt to weightlessness and then readjust to gravity. Researchers areattempting to use what has been learned in space to treat people on Earth with problems such as bal-ance disorders.

R E A D I N G 8 Weightlessnessand Perception


(continued)

. . . As most doctors can attest, it is difficult to pre-dict what will happen when a brand-new challenge ispresented to the human body. Time and again, spacetravel has revealed its marvelous and sometimes sub-tle adaptive ability. But only in the past few years havescientists begun to understand the body’s responsesto weightlessness, as the data—the cumulative experi-ence of nearly 700 people spending a total of 58 person-years in space—have grown in quantity and quality.Pursuit of this knowledge is improving health care notonly for those who journey into space but also for thoseof us stuck on the ground. The unexpected outcome ofspace medicine has been an enhanced understandingof how the human body works right here on Earth.

Feeling Gravity’s PullAlthough many factors affect human health during

spaceflight, weightlessness is the dominant and singlemost important one. The direct and indirect effects ofweightlessness precipitate a cascade of interrelatedresponses that begin in three different types of tissue:gravity receptors, fluids and weight-bearing structures.Ultimately, the whole body, from bones to brain, reacts.

When space travelers grasp the wall of theirspacecraft and pull and push their bodies back and forth, they say it feels as though they are station-ary and the spacecraft is moving. The reason isembedded in our dependence on gravity for perceptualinformation.

The continuous and pervasive nature of gravityremoves it from our daily consciousness. But eventhough we are only reminded of gravity’s invisiblehand from time to time by, say, varicose veins or anoccasional lightheadedness on standing up, our bodiesnever forget. Whether we realize it or not, we haveevolved a large number of silent, automatic reactionsto cope with the constant stress of living in a downward-pulling world. Only when we decrease or increase the

effective force of gravity on our bodies do we conscious-ly perceive it. Otherwise our perception is indirect.

Our senses provide accurate information aboutthe location of our center of mass and the relativepositions of our body parts. This capability integratessignals from our eyes and ears with other informationfrom the vestibular organs in our inner ear, from ourmuscles and joints, and from our senses of touch andpressure. Many of these signals are dependent on thesize and direction of the constant terrestrial gravita-tional force.

The vestibular apparatus in the inner ear has twodistinct components: the semicircular canals (threemutually perpendicular, fluid-filled tubes that containhair cells connected to nerve fibers), which are sensi-tive to angular acceleration of the head; and the otolithorgans (two sacs filled with calcium carbonate crys-tals embedded in a gel), which respond to linear accel-eration. Because movement of the crystals in theotoliths generates the signal of acceleration to thebrain and because the laws of physics relate thatacceleration to a net force, gravity is always implicit inthe signal. Thus, the otoliths have been referred to asgravity receptors. They are not the only ones.Mechanical receptors in the muscles, tendons andjoints—as well as pressure receptors in the skin, par-ticularly on the bottom of the feet—respond to theweight of limb segments and other body parts.

Removing gravity transforms these signals. Theotoliths no longer perceive a downward bias to headmovements. The limbs no longer have weight, so mus-cles are no longer required to contract and relax in theusual way to maintain posture and bring about move-ment. Touch and pressure receptors in the feet andankles no longer signal the direction of down. Theseand other changes contribute to visual-orientation illu-sions and feelings of self-inversion, such as the feelingthat the body or the spacecraft spontaneously reori-

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ents. In 1961 cosmonaut Gherman Titov reported vividsensations of being upside down early in a space-flight of only one day. Last year shuttle payload spe-cialist Byron K. Lichtenberg, commenting on his earlierflight experiences, said, “When the main engines cutoff, I immediately felt as though we had flipped 180degrees.” Such illusions can recur even after sometime in space.

The lack of other critical sensory cues also con-fuses the brain. Although orbital flight is a perpetualfree fall—the only difference from skydiving is that thespacecraft’s forward velocity carries it around thecurve of the planet—space travelers say they do notfeel as if they are falling. The perception of fallingprobably depends on visual and airflow cues alongwith information from the direct gravity receptors. . . .

The aggregate of signal changes produces, in halfor more of space travelers, a motion sickness that fea-tures many of the symptoms of terrestrial motion sick-ness: headache, impaired concentration, loss ofappetite, stomach awareness, vomiting. Space motionsickness usually does not last beyond the first threedays or so of weightlessness, but something similarhas been reported by cosmonauts at the end of longflights.

At one time, scientists attributed space motionsickness to the unusual pattern of vestibular activity,which conflicts with the brain’s expectations. Now it isclear that this explanation was simplistic. The sicknessresults from the convergence of a variety of factors,including the alteration of the patterns and levels ofmotor activity necessary to control the head itself. Asimilar motion sickness can also be elicited by com-puter systems designed to create virtual environments,through which one can navigate without the forcesand sensory patterns present during real motion[Gibbs, W. W. (1994, December). Virtual reality check,Scientific American.]

Over time, the brain adapts to the new signals,and for some space travelers, “down” becomes simplywhere the feet are. The adaptation probably involvesphysiological changes in both receptors and nerve-cellpatterns. Similar changes occur on the ground duringour growth and maturation and during periods of majorbody-weight changes. The way we control our balanceand avoid falls is an important and poorly understoodpart of physiology. Because otherwise healthy peoplereturning from space initially have difficulty maintain-ing their balance but recover this sense rapidly, post-flight studies may allow doctors to help those non-space travelers who suffer a loss of balance on Earth.

Bernard Cohen of the Mount Sinai School ofMedicine and Gilles Clement of the National Center forScientific Research in Paris undertook just such astudy after the Neurolab shuttle mission, which endedon May 3, [1998]. To connect this work with patients

suffering from balance disorders, Barry W. Peterson ofNorthwestern University and a team of researchers,supported by the National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration and the National Institutes of Health,are creating the first whole-body computer model ofhuman posture and balance control. . . .

Down to Earth When space travelers return to the world of

weight, complementary changes occur. If the effects ofweightlessness are completely reversible, everythingshould return to its normal condition at some time afterthe flight. We now know that most systems in the bodydo work reversibly, at least over the intervals for whichwe have data. We do not yet know whether this is ageneral rule.

Space travelers certainly feel gravitationally chal-lenged during and just after their descent. As one per-son said after nine days in space: “It’s quite a shock.The first time I pushed myself up, I felt like I was liftingthree times my weight.” Returning space travelersreport experiencing a variety of illusions—for example,during head motion it is their surroundings that seemto be moving—and they wobble while trying to standstraight, whether their eyes are open or closed.

Most of the body’s systems return to normal withina few days or weeks of landing, with the possibleexception of the musculoskeletal system. So far noth-ing indicates that humans cannot live and work inspace for long periods and return to Earth to lead nor-mal lives. This is clearly good news for denizens of theupcoming International Space Station and for anyfuture interplanetary missions. In fact, the station,assembly of which should begin late this year or earlynext year, will provide researchers with a new oppor-tunity to investigate the effects of space travel onhumans. On its completion in five years, the station willhave 46,000 cubic feet of work space (nearly five timesmore than the Mir or Skylab stations) and will includesophisticated laboratory equipment for the next gener-ation of medical studies. Recognizing the need for acomprehensive attack on all the potential human risksof long-duration space travel, NASA has selected andfunded a special research body, the National SpaceBiomedical Research Institute, to assist in defining andresponding to those risks.

Many of the “normal” changes that take place inhealthy people during or just after spaceflight are out-wardly similar to “abnormal” events occurring in illpeople on Earth. For example, most space travelerscannot stand quietly for 10 minutes just after landingwithout feeling faint. This so-called orthostatic intoler-ance is also experienced by patients who have stayedin bed for a long time and by some elderly people.Source: White, R.J. (1998). Weightlessness and the human body.Scientific American, 279 (3), 58–63.

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1. What is the primary effect on the human body during spaceflight?

2. What structures of the inner ear are sensitive to side to side movement of the head?

3. What structures of the inner ear are sensitive to forward motion of the head?

4. What is the difference in perception between skydiving and spaceflight?

5. What Earth-based activity may create motion sickness similar to that experienced during spaceflight?

6. What immediate effect of gravity do space travelers experience when they return to Earth?

Thinking Critically


7. Imagine that a recent editorial published in the leading newspaper in your community stated “Wehave only limited funds. Research dollars should be spent helping people here on Earth, not sendingpeople into outer space.” Write a rebuttal of this statement.

8. What would a typical day be like if you could not distinguish which way was up and which wasdown?

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Background

About 1 in 2,000 people have perfect pitch.People with perfect pitch can hear a single noteand name it or can sing the exact tone of a noteeach time without hearing any other tone for areference. People with perfect pitch know thatfluorescent lights hum in B-flat and toilets flushin E-flat. Although more musicians have perfectpitch than the general population, it is still a rel-atively rare talent. Musicians who do not haveperfect pitch develop a keen sense of relativepitch. That is, they can sing a note if givenanother note as a reference.

Hypothesis

Perfect pitch is an inherited trait that mustbe nurtured and developed in order to survive.

Method and Results

Researchers have developed two theoriesabout the influence of heredity. First, researchersat the University of Southern California at SanDiego theorized that all infants are born with per-fect pitch. They reached this conclusion by study-ing a sample of native Vietnamese and Chinesespeakers. Both of these languages are tonal lan-guages; that is, the same word may have severalmeanings depending on the tone used when theword is spoken. (Note: Tonal languages are notbased on the sounds of an alphabet. There is norelationship between the way a word is writtenand the way the word is spoken. For example, allChinese writing uses the same characters, but thetwo Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese,are so different that speakers of each languagecannot understand one another.) Researchersfound that all the people in their sample had per-fect pitch. They concluded that perfect pitch isinnate, and when nurtured will survive.

The second theory proposed that perfectpitch is an inherited trait; that is some, peopleinherit perfect pitch while others do not.Although the trait may be inherited, it must be

nurtured in order to develop. Researchers at theUniversity of California at San Francisco haveproposed this theory. They sampled people fromall walks of life using 40 pure tones. The partici-pants wrote down the note that corresponded tothe tone. In order to be classified as having per-fect pitch, participants had to get 38 or morenotes correct. Once researchers identified peo-ple with perfect pitch, they asked for a bloodsample and asked if other family members sharethis trait.

Using neurobiology, researchers hoped toidentify the specific gene and DNA sequence re-sponsible for perfect pitch. To date, most geneticresearch has been targeted at identifying heredi-tary factors for certain diseases. Researchersbelieve that it is time to use the knowledge gainedto identify other traits, such as perfect pitch.

Researchers have already identified that per-fect pitch does seem to run in families. About 48percent of the participants with perfect pitchreported that they had one or more family mem-bers with the same talent. One of the scientistsinvolved in the research, Shai Shaham, has per-fect pitch. This is an ability he shares with hisfather, sister, and younger brother.

The researchers are particularly interested inone ethnic group that has a high incidence of

Perfect Pitch


(continued)

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c.perfect pitch—the Ashkenazi Jews of EasternEurope. For several centuries this relatively smallgroup married primarily within their ethnicgroup. As a result their gene pool is consideredhomogeneous. Ashkenazi Jews who have or hadperfect pitch are the late pianist VladimirHorowitz, Metropolitan Opera’s artistic directorJames Levine, and the San Francisco Symphony’smusic director, Michael Tilson Thomas. By con-centrating on one ethnic group, researchershoped to quickly narrow the search for the tell-tale DNA.

Researchers also asked participants a secondquestion: Did you study music as a young child?The findings indicated that early music trainingis essential to maintaining one’s perfect pitchability. Most participants who have perfect pitchbegan music lessons by the age of 6. Researchersfound that only 2 percent of those with perfectpitch began music training after the age of 12.These findings led researchers to conclude thatthe ability to perceive pitch perfectly is inherit-

ed, but the ability must be nurtured throughexposure to music and music education.

Conclusions

Researchers still do not fully understandhow we perceive the world. As science and tech-nology develop, they hope to be able to clearlyidentify which perceptual traits and abilities areinherited and which are learned. The most con-clusive research to date indicates that perfectpitch does have an inherited component. Thesample of tonal language speakers was too smallto conclude that perfect pitch is an innate ability.

Even if perfect pitch is inherited, it seemsapparent that the ability must be nurtured anddeveloped. Most educators would not recom-mend forcing children to take music lessons at avery young age, but they do recommend expos-ing children to music, especially classical music.

Sources: Dickinson, A. (1999). Little musicians. Time, 154 (24), 114;Krieger, L. (1997). Perfect pitch: Nature or nurture. San FranciscoExaminer, A15.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. What is perfect pitch?

2. What was the researchers’ hypothesis?

3. Who did the researchers in San Diego use as participants? Why were these participants used?

4. What did the researchers find with the sample of people who spoke a tonal language?

5. What did the researchers at the University of San Francisco use to test for perfect pitch?

6. What did the San Francisco researchers conclude about nature versus nurture as it relates to perfectpitch?

Thinking Critically


7. Do you think that all speakers of tonal languages have perfect pitch? How would you test yourhypothesis?

8. What other perceptual abilities may have an inherited and a learned component?

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Learned helplessness is the giving-up reaction,the quitting response that follows from the beliefthat whatever you do doesn’t matter. Explanatorystyle is the manner in which you habituallyexplain to yourself why events happen. It is thegreat modulator of learned helplessness. An opti-mistic explanatory style stops helplessness,whereas a pessimistic explanatory style spreadshelplessness. Your way of explaining events toyourself determines how helpless you canbecome, or how energized, when you encounterthe everyday setbacks as well as momentousdefeats. . . .

How do you think about the causes of themisfortunes, small and large, that befall you?Some people, the ones who give up easily, habit-ually say of their misfortune: “It’s me, it’s going tolast forever, it’s going to undermine everything Ido.” Others, those who resist giving in to misfor-tune, say: “It was just circumstances, it’s goingaway quickly anyway, and, besides, there’s muchmore in life.”

Your habitual way of explaining bad events,your explanatory style, is more than just thewords you mouth when you fail. It is a habit ofthought, learned in childhood and adolescence.Your explanatory style stems directly from yourview of your place in the world—whether youthink you are valuable and deserving, or worth-less and hopeless. It is the hallmark of whetheryou are an optimist or a pessimist.

There are three crucial dimensions to yourexplanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness,and personalization.

PermanencePeople who give up easily believe the causes of bad events that happen to them are perma-nent: the bad events will persist, will always bethere to affect their lives. People who resisthelplessness believe the causes of bad eventsare temporary.

PERMANENT (Pessimistic)“I’m all washed up.”“Diets never work.”“You will always nag.”

TEMPORARY (Optimistic)“I’m exhausted.”“Diets don’t work when you eat out.”“You nag when I don’t clean my room.”

. . . If you think about bad things in always’sand never’s and abiding traits, you have a per-manent, pessimistic style. If you think in some-times’s and lately’s, if you use qualifiers andblame bad events on transient conditions, youhave an optimistic style. . . .

The optimistic style of explaining goodevents is just the opposite of the optimistic styleof explaining bad events. People who believegood events have permanent causes are moreoptimistic than people who believe they havetemporary causes.

TEMPORARY (Pessimistic)“It’s my lucky day.”“I try hard.”“My rival got tired.”

PERMANENT (Optimistic)“I’m always lucky.”“I’m talented.”“My rival is no good.”

Optimistic people explain good events tothemselves in terms of permanent causes: traits,abilities, always’s. Pessimists name transientcauses: moods, effort, sometimes’s. . . .

People who believe good events have per-manent causes try even harder after they suc-ceed. People who see temporary reasons forgood events may give up even when they suc-ceed, believing success was a fluke.

R E A D I N G 9Different Outlooks


(continued)

Cognitive learning theorists have identified that optimists and pessimists process information differ-ently. Many studies have shown that optimists are healthier, get better jobs, advance more quickly intheir careers, are better athletes, and may live longer. Optimists are less likely to succumb to helpless-ness, even when encountering numerous bad events beyond their control.

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c.Pervasiveness: Specific vs. UniversalPermanence is about time. Pervasiveness isabout space. . . .

It comes down to this: people who makeuniversal explanations for their failures give upon everything when a failure strikes in one area.People who make specific explanations maybecome hopeless in that one part of their livesyet march stalwartly on in the others.

Here are some universal and some specificexplanations of bad events:

UNIVERSAL (Pessimistic)“All teachers are unfair.”“I’m repulsive.”“Books are useless.”

SPECIFIC (Optimistic)“Professor Seligman is unfair.”“I’m repulsive to him.”“This book is useless.”

. . . Now for the converse. The optimisticexplanatory style for good events is oppositethat for bad events. The optimist believes thatevents have specific causes, while good eventswill enhance everything he does; the pessimistbelieves that bad events have universal causesand that good events are caused by specific factors. . . .

SPECIFIC (Pessimistic)“I’m smart at math.”“My broker knows oil stocks.”“I was charming to her.”

UNIVERSAL (Optimistic)“I’m smart.”“My broker knows Wall Street.”“I was charming.”

Personalization: Internal vs. ExternalWhen bad things happen, we can blame our-selves (internalize) or we can blame other peo-ple or circumstances (externalize). People whoblame themselves when they fail have no self-esteem as a consequence. They think they areworthless, talentless, and unlovable. People whoblame external events do not lose self-esteemwhen bad events strike. On the whole, they like

themselves better than people who blame them-selves do.

Low self-esteem usually comes from internalstyle for bad events.

INTERNAL (Low self-esteem)“I’m stupid.”“I have no talent at poker.”“I’m insecure.”

EXTERNAL (High self-esteem)“You’re stupid.”“I have no luck at poker.”“I grew up in poverty.”

. . . Of the three dimensions of explanatorystyle, personalization is the easiest to under-stand. After all, one of the first things a childlearns to say is “He did it, not me!”Personalization is also the easiest dimension tooverrate. It controls only how you feel aboutyourself, but pervasiveness and permanence—the more important dimensions—control whatyou do: how long you are helpless and acrosshow many situations.

Personalization is the only dimension simpleto fake. If I tell you to talk about your troubles inan external way now, you will be able to do it—even if you are a chronic internalizer. You canchatter along, pretending to blame your troubleson others. However, if you are a pessimist and Itell you to talk about your troubles as havingtemporary and specific causes, you will not beable to do it. . . .

The optimistic style of explaining goodevents is the opposite of that used for badevents. It’s internal rather than external. Peoplewho believe they cause good things tend to likethemselves better than people who believe goodthings come from other people or circumstances.

EXTERNAL (Low self-esteem)“A stroke of luck. . .”“My teammates’ skill. . .”

INTERNAL (High self-esteem)“I can take advantage of luck.”“My skill. . .”

Source: Seligman, M.E.P. (1991). Learned Optimism. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 15–16, 43–50.

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(continued)

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1. What are the two explanatory styles?

2. When do you develop your explanatory style?

3. What are the three dimensions of the explanatory style?

4. Which of the dimensions controls what you do?

Thinking Critically


5. List three good events and three bad events that have occurred in your life in the past month.Describe your reactions to the events. Classify each description using the three dimensions listed inthe reading. From these results, do you tend to be an optimist or a pessimist?

6. Does being an optimist mean that you always blame others for your troubles? Explain your reasoning.

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C A S E S T U D Y 9 ConditioningAggression


Male blue gourami fish establish territoriesthat contain good nesting sites. Once estab-lished, males defend their sites by biting and tailbeating rivals who enter their territory. The loserof the fight displays recognizable submission.The submissive posture includes folded fins,faded color, and a more horizontal body angle.

Karen Hollis and a group of researchers setout to answer the question: Are conditioned fishmore likely to continue winning even when theconditioned stimulus is not present?

Thirty-six adult male blue gouramis wereused. The researchers divided the aquariumsinto three sections (left, right, and center) usingtwo acrylic panels, one opaque and one trans-parent, that could be raised and lowered (seediagram below). Researchers placed 36 fish inthe left and right compartments. Throughout thestudy, they remained either on the left or theright, even when moved to other aquariums.

The center compartments contained stimu-lus fish during the training phase. The stimulus

fish served as the unconditioned stimulus sincethe sight of another male fish causes the bluegourami to defend his territory. Trainingoccurred over 24 days. The researchers dividedthe 36 fish into two groups. Each fish in thePavlovian-conditioned group (PAV) was condi-tioned using a red light (conditioned stimulus)paired with the presentation of a stimulus fish(unconditioned stimulus).

Although the fish in the unconditionedgroup (UNP) saw both the red light and thestimulus fish during training, the light and stim-ulus fish were never presented together.Therefore, no conditioning occurred.

After training, researchers conducted a two-part contest. In the first part of the contest,researchers paired some of the PAV with UNP.The PAV were presented with the red light imme-diately before the contest. They won 80 percentof the contests against their UNP counterparts.In the second part of the contest, Pavlovian-con-ditioned fish encountered each other; however,researchers presented some with the red light(PAV-L) immediately before the contest and oth-ers with no light (PAV-NL). PAV-L won all of thecontests against the PAV-NL.

After two days of rest, the winners and losersfaced another contest, this time with a differentmale fish. All of the Pavlovian-conditioned fishthat won their first encounter also won their second contest.

The findings indicate that conditioned maleswere better able to vigorously defend their terri-tories. While the exact physiological mechanismis unknown, it appears that Pavlovian-condi-tioned males had a competitive advantage. Thelong-term consequences of conditioning seemalso to be positive since it appears that winningprevious contests sets the stage for winningfuture contests. The results seem to indicate thatthe winners continue to win.

Source: Hollis, Karen, et al. (1995). Pavlovian conditioning ofaggressive behavior in blue gourami fish (Trichogastertrichopterus): Winners become winners and losers stay losers.Journal of Comparative Psychology, 109 (2), 123–33.

1 2 3

Red Light

OpaquePanel

TransparentPanel

PAV Group Stimulus Fish UNP Group

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1. For what purpose do male blue gourami fish establish territories?

2. What was the unconditioned stimulus and conditioned stimulus in this study?

3. In the first contest, how were the contest pairings set up?

4. In the second contest, what percentage of losers from Contest 1 defeated a winner from Contest 1?

Thinking Critically


5. Why do you think that Pavlovian-conditioned fish that were not shown the light (PAV-NL) performedmore poorly than the unconditioned fish (UNP) when facing PAV-L fish?

6. Would conditioning aggressiveness in other types of animals or humans show similar results?Explain your answer.

7. In addition to conditioning, what other explanations are possible for the finding that winners keepwinning?

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Have you ever been surprised to find that you have completely forgotten an event that someone elseremembers vividly? Some theories of memory assume that our brain keeps a record of everything thatwe have encountered. Other theories propose that the brain does not keep a permanent record of every-thing. Some things are completely erased, while others are stored in such a way that some effort isrequired to retrieve them.

R E A D I N G 10 RememberingDetails


(continued)

“What do you mean, you don’t remember?That was the party where John made such a foolof himself; he actually tried to eat the artificial ivy.”

“Was that the same party where he tried toput the poodle in the punch bowl?”

“No, No. Not that one. That was years ago.You mean you really don’t remember?”

A fascinating article on remembering by aUniversity of Utah psychologist, Marigold Litton, beginswith these “memories.” Litton had always been inter-ested in studying people’s ability to remember eventsthat had occurred in their lives. When she began thiswork, her first question was “Where can I find somepeople who will be available for long periods of time,who are reliable, who won’t move away, who won’t getbored with the study, and whom I could convenientlyfollow on a regular basis?” The only person she couldfind who satisfied all of these criteria was herself. Shewould be the sole subject.

Every day for the six-year period from 1972 until1977, she wrote down what happened to her. Eachmemory was recorded on a separate card in the formof a brief description, such as “I have dinner at theCanton Kitchen; delicious lobster dish,” or “I land atOrly Airport in Paris.” On the back of each card shewrote the date for each event, and then gave it a ratingin terms of how important, emotional, or surprising theevent was. By 1977 she had written down descriptionsof more than five thousand items.

Every month she tested her memory. She pickedabout 15 cards at random from the file and read thedescriptions. Each item could be anywhere from oneday to six years old, and for each she tried to remem-ber as quickly as possible when the event hadoccurred. Linton reasoned that the more informationshe had about an event and its context, the moreaccurately it could be dated. Each month she spentfrom eight to twelve hours testing her memory in thisway.

Linton learned some interesting things about herown memory. After about six months of studying her-self, she found she would typically be quite depressedafter each test session. The reason was that her gen-eral procedure was to “warm up” before each test bysimply thinking over the highlights of her life over theprevious year. During these warm-up exercises, sheusually thought of happy times—friends, successes, agood life. But when she started pulling the individualevents from her file box, she discovered that the cardscontained not only happy memories but also numerousirritations: Her car breaks down and she can’t find any-one to help; she fights with a lover; she gets a paperrejected by a scientific journal. Once she realized thesource of stress, it seemed to help reduce it.

After six years of studying her memory, she trans-ferred all the information to special computer cardsand fed them to a computer. The computer analysesrevealed that by the end of any one year, she had for-gotten 1 percent of the items written during that year.By the time those items were about two years old, shehad forgotten about 5 percent more. Forgetting contin-ued so that by the time the study ended, she had for-gotten over 400 items of the 1,350 she wrote down for1972, or about 30 percent. In general she seemed toforget things at a low, fairly steady rate, with the num-bers of forgotten items usually increasing slightly fromyear to year.

What kinds of things did she remember? Most ofthe memories were fairly unique, nonrepeated events,like a traffic accident, or surprising events, like a ten-nis game in which one of the players was injured. Itwas pretty easy to supply a date for “the tennis gamein which Ed got hit in the eye.” However, she could notremember the names of the other players in the game.Assuming that Linton’s memory processes are likemost of ours, this suggests that people remember gen-eral information for some time, but that many detailsdrop out.

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Overall, Linton’s results suggest that specificmemories are regularly dropping out. They are notlocked in memory for all time, unless they are repeatedor relived or unless they are unusually significant.Despite these apparent losses, all is not gloomy. Afterseveral phone calls from the same person, it may notbe possible to remember any one conversation or evenwhen it took place. But it becomes easier and easier to

identify and remember the person’s voice. This meansthat even though specific events are forgotten, consid-erable knowledge is retained. The mind, Lintonthought, undergoes a spring cleaning.

Source: Loftus, E. (1980). Memory. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,121–123.

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1. Initially what happened to Marigold Litton after each test session?

2. Why did the memory tests have this effect?

3. At the end of the test in 1977, how much of 1972’s memories had she forgotten?

4. What types of memories tended to be long-lasting?

5. Why do routine events tend to fade from memory over time?

Thinking Critically


6. Complete the sentence below with a routine response and with a surprising response. If each eventoccurred, which would you be more likely to remember two years from now?

“I was riding the bus with a friend who suddenly…”

7. If you were to conduct a study of your own memory, would you use Litton’s method? Why or whynot?

8. What potential problem could mar the accuracy of Litton’s study?

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Background

Hypnosis has been used with traumatizedcrime victims to help them reconstruct crimescenes. Defense attorneys, however, have ques-tioned both the techniques used and the resultsof the hypnosis. Some studies suggest that hyp-nosis can be used, either inadvertently or delib-erately, to alter memory. Other studies have con-cluded that little memory enhancement occursthrough hypnosis. As a result of these studiesand defense attorney objections, some stateslimit the admissibility of evidence discoveredthrough hypnosis. Psychologists, therefore, haveresearched other ways to enhance the memoryof eyewitnesses without using hypnosis. Fundedby a grant from the National Institute of Justice,two researchers, Ronald Fisher and R. EdwardGeiselman, developed a nonhypnotic interviewprocess that helps the eyewitnesses reconstructthe events.

Using crime scene training tapes designed totrain police officers, the researchers developedthe Cognitive Interview. The interview is basedon four principles:

1. Event-Interview Similarity Based on thetheory that we remember things better whenplaced in a similar situation, the CognitiveInterview seeks to reconstruct as accurately

as possible the external, emotional, and cog-nitive conditions that existed at the time ofthe event. Even small details, such as weath-er, are not ignored.

2. Focused Retrieval Every effort is made dur-ing the interview process to keep the witnessfocused on the events. The interviewer pre-vents outside distractions and interruptions.

3. Extensive Retrieval Although the processseems tedious to many eyewitnesses, theCognitive Interview encourages the witnessto repeatedly attempt to retrieve the event’sdetails. Research has shown that the moreattempts someone makes to remember particular details, the more likely he or she isto successfully retrieve the details frommemory.

4. Witness-Compatible QuestioningIndividuals organize and store memories dif-ferently. The Cognitive Interview, therefore,is not a set series of questions. The inter-viewer must determine the general way inwhich an individual witness stores memo-ries and tailor the questions to help the wit-ness reconstruct the event in as much detailas possible.

The interview itself is divided into severalphases. At first the interviewer asks the witnessto recount the event in as much detail as possi-ble. Although a record is made of the account,the interviewer uses this phase to plan for themore detailed interview to follow. The interview-er seeks to understand the way in which the witness stores and processes memories. In thesecond phase, the interviewer guides the witnessthrough a detailed reconstruction of the eventsusing the information learned during the firstphase. Finally, the interviewer uses various men-tal representations to learn more details aboutthe events. For example, if a witness cannotremember a name, he or she will be asked torecall any information about the name, such asnumber of syllables, first letter, or ethnicity.

C A S E S T U D Y 10 EyewitnessTestimony


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Often these bits of information will help the wit-ness remember additional details.

Hypothesis

The Cognitive Interview yields more infor-mation from eyewitnesses of real-life crimesthan the standard police interview.

Method

Sixteen robbery detectives from the Metro-Dade Police Department were included in thestudy. Initially, the police officers were asked totape-record selected interviews with eyewitness-es to robberies. The criteria for recording theinterviews was as follows:

“(a) Each case was to be seriousenough so that ample time and resourceswere available, if necessary, to conduct athorough interview; (b) at least one victimor witness had a decent chance to observethe suspect or suspects and the event; and(c) each interviewed victim or witness hadto be reasonably fluent in English andcooperative.”

During the initial phase, the 16 detectivesconducted 88 interviews. These were used as thepretraining interviews.

Next, the detectives were divided into twogroups. One group was trained in the CognitiveInterview technique. The other group was nottrained and became the control group. Aftertraining, the Cognitive Interview group practicedthe technique and received feedback from thetrainers.

The post-training phase consisted of 24interviews using the Cognitive Interview tech-

nique and 23 interviews from the untrainedgroup. These interviews were analyzed for thenumber of relevant facts discovered. Statementsof opinion or unrelated facts were ignored.

Results

Two types of results were analyzed:

1. Interviews before and after training from thesame detective were assessed.

2. Interviews from the trained group were com-pared to interviews from the untrainedgroup.

Detectives who were trained in the CognitiveInterview process obtained on average 47 per-cent more useful information after training com-pared to their pretraining interviews. In fact, forone detective the amount of useful informationobtained increased 115 percent.

When comparison was made between thetrained and untrained group, the trained groupobtained 63 percent more information than theuntrained group.

Conclusions

Training in the Cognitive Interview process,which uses psychologists’ knowledge of howmemories are stored, can significantly increasethe amount of information obtained from eye-witnesses. The Cognitive Interview process canreplace hypnosis and other speculative forms ofmemory enhancement as a means of obtainingaccurate, detailed eyewitness accounts.

Source: Fisher, R., Geiselman, R., & Amador, M. (1989). Field test ofthe cognitive interview: Enhancing the recollection of actualvictims and witnesses of crime. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(5), 722–27.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

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1. Why has hypnosis been questioned as a means of helping eyewitnesses remember crime sceneevents?

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c.2. What are the four principles of the Cognitive Interview?

3. What people made up the control group in this study?

4. Describe the two ways in which the data from the study were analyzed.

Thinking Critically


5. In the Cognitive Interview, the interviewer seeks to reconstruct the external, emotional, and cogni-tive conditions surrounding the event. Why are each of these important in remembering events?

6. The Cognitive Interview process yields more facts about events than standard police interview tech-niques. Further research has examined whether recall using the Cognitive Interview techniqueresults in more incorrect facts. What would you expect the findings to be?

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Why are children able to learn a second language more readily than adults? Recentresearch suggests that infants first learn sound patterns and then attach meanings to thesound patterns. Researchers theorize that learning a second language incrementally insmall pieces is easier. As the brain matures, it loses its ability to process information inthese small bits. Instead it responds to whole thoughts, sentences, and ideas. This makeslearning a second language more difficult.

R E A D I N G 11Sound Patterns


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AmericanSign

Language

At age 15, Alex learned one of the embar-rassments of adult life: After a month in theMiddle East, his 7-year-old sister was trans-lating for him while he struggled to under-stand, let alone speak, Arabic. Why did shelearn the language so easily while Alex grap-pled with it?

Psychologists studying language acquisi-tion are beginning to understand Alex’s dilem-ma. They’re finding that language learning isincremental, with the first step simply recog-nizing sound patterns. According to onehypothesis, it’s the incremental nature of chil-dren’s language learning that makes it easy.But by puberty, the brain’s maturity makes itharder to learn in such small increments andlanguages become more difficult.

Sounding it OutAs evidence of how children learn lan-

guage incrementally, researchers find thatinfants first learn to distinguish sound pat-terns of their native languages. This abilitydevelops faster than any other aspect of language. It’s not surprising that sound per-ception develops first and fastest, says psy-chologist Peter Jusczyk, PhD, of the StateUniversity of New York-Buffalo. When theyaren’t sleeping, infants spend most of theirfirst year listening to speech sounds detachedfrom meanings. Even when parents try toteach their children a particular word, moretimes than not, they imbed it in a sentence.‘Babies need to break that sentence downinto sound patterns and pick out individualwords,’ explained Jusczyk.

Once that happens, they can relate indi-vidual sound patterns to particular meanings.This idea of putting an unknown object to a

known sound pattern is contrary to the tradi-tional view that babies learn sound patterns,such as words, to name objects they’re inter-ested in.

Jusczyk doesn’t deny that object-namingoccurs, but he contends that babies alsostore word patterns in memory and eventuallyattach them to objects in the environment.

To study how babies learn to go fromsound patterns to meaning, Jusczyk, graduatestudent Denise Mandel and David Pisoni,PhD, of Indiana University recently studied 4-and-a-half-month-old infants’ responses totheir names. Babies hear their own namesmore than most other words, so it will proba-bly be one of the first recognized. Decipheringthe age at which infants recognize theirnames might provide a first clue to theantecedents of relating sound to meaning, theresearchers reasoned.

They based their study on past research,which finds that when babies recognizesounds, they listen to them longer than lessrecognizable sounds. For example, 6-month-old infants listen longer to someone speakingtheir native language than to someone speak-ing a foreign language.

To measure how long babies listened totheir names, the researchers played eachinfant’s name through a loud speaker andtimed whether and for how long the babyturned its head toward the speaker. Theinfants also heard recordings of three othernames—one with a similar sound pattern totheir name and the other two with differentsound patterns. For example, Joshua wouldhear his name, then ‘Agatha,’ which has thesame sound pattern as ‘Joshua,’ then ‘Maria’and ‘Eliza.’

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c.The infants listened longer to their own names

than to any other name, even the ones with similarsound patterns. ‘This finding suggests that 4-and-a-half-month-olds have a rather detailed representationof the sound patterns of their names,’ the researchersconcluded.

This doesn’t mean they understand what theirnames mean, but it’s the first step, said Jusczyk.‘Infants as young as 4-and-a-half months of age arelearning to recognize sound patterns that will have aspecial personal significance for them,’ he concluded.

Younger is BetterThese incremental steps to learning language may

make children better learners than adults, according toa theory developed by psychologist Elissa Newport,PhD, of the University of Rochester. Because languagehas many components, learning it in small piecesmakes things easier, she reasons.

Her theory issued from work on the ‘critical peri-od’ theory of language learning: The idea that there’s afinite period when children can easily learn language,an idea based on anecdotal evidence that childrenlearn foreign languages faster than adults.

To test the theory, Newport and colleagueJacqueline Johnson, PhD, of the University of Virginiastudied Chinese subjects who had learned English as asecond language. The 44 subjects in the study differedby the age they arrived in the United States (from 3years old to 39 years old). None knew English beforearriving, all had been living in the United States for noless than five years and an average of 10 years, all hadlearned English by immersion in the culture and all hadattended American schools since their arrival.

The researchers found that the younger peoplewere when they arrived in the United States, the betterthey scored on a language test designed by theresearchers. The correlation between language abilityand age of arrival was as strong as that between heightand weight—one of the strongest correlations around,said Newport. ‘It’s clear that there is a superiority ofchildren over adults in language learning,’ said Newport.

Less is MoreThe critical learning period doesn’t end abruptly,

Newport said. Instead the ability to learn languagegradually declines as the brain matures. By late puber-ty, everyone learns at about the same rate.

Traditional neurobehavioral theory likens thedecline in learning to the winding down of a biologicalclock: The mechanism for language learning is at itsprime in young children and declines as they mature.

Newport’s theory examines the decline in learningability more as a difference in how children and adultsapproach learning. Research shows that children canonly handle small bits of information at a time becausethey have a more limited perspective than adults.

For example, when given novel information, suchas signs from American Sign Language, children dopoorly, often remembering only a piece of the sign—the hand shape, but not the hand movement or viceversa. Adults, on the other hand, have a wide perspec-tive; they’re quite good at remembering whole signs,for example.

In the case of language learning, Newportbelieves that ‘less is more.’ Children’s limited perspec-tive forces them to learn language in stages.

They acquire a few pieces at a time and learnslowly how to put them together. This system works forlearning language because language is composed ofmany little parts.

Adults, on the other hand, perceive all the piecesat once and have to find the organization within the bigpicture. Indeed, adults learn languages fast at first,picking up lots of vocabulary and entire sentences atone time.

But they soon fizzle out, taking a long time to trulyunderstand the organization of a foreign language.Newport likens it to the tortoise and the hare: Childrenstart out slowly, but far surpass adults over time.

Source: Azar, B. (1996). Sound patterns: Learning language keys.The APA Monitor, 27 (1), p. 20.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

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1. What is the first task an infant faces in learning his or her native language?

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2. How did Peter Jusczyk test infants’ abilities to recognize their own names?

3. What did Jusczyk find about an infant’s attention to his or her own name compared to other soundpatterns?

4. What is the critical period theory of language learning?

5. What did Elissa Newport and Jacqueline Johnson conclude from their study of Chinese participantsin a language study?

Thinking Critically


6. Your school district is considering introducing children to a second language beginning in the firstgrade. Some people argue that young children have enough to learn already and second languageinstruction should begin in high school. Which view do you support? Why?

7. Although children may have a superior ability to learn language, at what types of learning do teensand adults excel?

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Increasingly, the United States, in conjunc-tion with the United Nations, sends peacekeep-ing troops around the globe. U.S. troops servealongside troops from other United Nationscountries. Barriers to communication andunderstanding are great. As a result, the U.S.Army has become keenly interested in foreignlanguage training.

Hypothesis

Psychologist Alice Healy, Ph.D., along withcolleagues at the University of Colorado, is working with the army using psycholinguisticsto analyze how people learn a second language.Their hypothesis is that: “People use strategiesfrom their native language to process and under-stand foreign language….”

Method for Testing Native LanguageStrategies

Healy and postgraduate assistant Liang Tao,Ph.D., examined the use of pronouns and nounphrases to identify subjects in sentences.Examples of common English phrasing include:

Noun/noun phrase sequence:Bill Clinton addressed the media. The

president spoke forcefully for the need forimproved educational opportunities.

Noun/pronoun sequence:Bill Clinton addressed the media. He spokeforcefully for the need for improved educa-tional opportunities.

Noun/zero anaphora (no noun or pronoun):Bill Clinton addressed the media and spokeforcefully for the need for improved educa-tional opportunities.

Chinese uses the same strategies; however,zero anaphora is much more common inChinese than in English.

To see how Chinese speakers whose secondlanguage was English used their native languagein understanding English, Healy and Tao devel-oped a study using standard reading compre-hension tests. Some tests were given intact; thatis, no modifications were made. Some tests werealtered using the zero anaphora strategy. Finallysome had changes to noun phrases and pro-nouns that would be considered inappropriatein both English and Chinese.

The three versions of the tests were adminis-tered to both native English and native Chinesespeakers.

Results

Native Chinese speakers scored consistentlylower on the intact and inappropriate versions.However, they did significantly better on testsusing the zero anaphora strategy. The findingsseem to indicate that the Chinese speakers didtransfer their native language skills to under-standing English.

The army can use these findings as theydesign foreign language training programs for troops who may be assigned for overseaspostings.

Source: Azar, B. (1995). Psycholinguistics helps keep the peace.The APA Monitor, 26 (5), p. 36.

C A S E S T U D Y 11 Peacekeepingwith Words


The United Nations Flag

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1. Why is the United States Army interested in foreign language training?

2. What is Alice Healy’s hypothesis about the way people learn a second language?

3. What three common subject identifier strategies are used in both English and Chinese?

4. What were the results of the Healy/Tao study?

Thinking Critically


5. Why is it important for peacekeeping troops to be able to communicate clearly with other peace-keeping troops?

6. What recommendations would you make to the Army as it seeks to address its needs for languageskills among its troops?

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When you do not get enough sleep, what happens to your motivation? Do you lack the energy anddrive to care about what is happening around you? Psychologists and other scientists are discoveringthat our moods are largely regulated by chemical activity in the brain. Sleep deprivation affects the levelsof these chemicals and reduces our motivation.

R E A D I N G 12The Excited Brain


(continued)

The neuroscience of emotion is still in a fairlyearly stage of development. For thousands of years,people have been thinking about what sorts of thingsmake us feel happy or unhappy, elated or depressed.While it is not known exactly how sleep and sleep debthelp the brain create good feelings and bad, we arelearning how the brain puts itself in an “up” mood andhow addictive drugs create a “high” by stimulating thebrain’s pleasure centers. We also have a simple modelof how the brain becomes activated and fully con-scious during waking and dreaming activity. What wehave found is that the biochemistry of wakefulness andsleep is intimately tied in with the state of the emotion-al part of the brain. The waking brain naturally excitesand primes itself for vital interaction with the externalworld, while the sleep-deprived brain suppresses thatnatural buoyancy by damping the brain’s neurochemi-cal activity.

A brain circuit called the reticular activating sys-tem plays a major role in arousal. It is highly likely thatthe biological clock operates on this system to wakeup the brain and keep it awake. The reticular activatingsystem is a small collection of nerves that originatesdeep in the brain stem, the most ancient and primitivepart of the brain. A relatively few cells in the brainstem reach out and touch nearly every cell in thebrain. These cells carry neurotransmitters, that relayactivating signals from the reticular activating system.These neurotransmitters are norepinephrine, dopamine,and acetylcholine. Norepinephrine is one of the keyneurotransmitters for arousal, acting as the brain’sform of adrenaline. Dopamine is known to be involvedin body movement and pleasure. Acetylcholine alsoacts as a prime arousal chemical and is known to beimportant in carrying signals concerning muscle move-ments. Another neurotransmitter, serotonin, also has astrong effect on mood.

These excitatory neurochemicals prepare thebrain’s 100 billion nerve cells to react more quickly.It is also no surprise that they interface closely with

the limbic system, which is sometimes called the emo-tional brain. This is because we must be wired not onlyto react quickly to challenge in a purely mechanicalway but also to be motivated emotionally to face chal-lenges. The reticular activating system sets the emo-tional brain on edge, as when runners ready to starta race get down on their hands and the balls of theirfeet. The activating system doesn’t so much createfeelings as set an emotional tone for any stimulus thatfilters into our brain.

The activity of the limbic system is like the back-ground music in a movie. The screen shows someonecreeping down a hallway at night toward a closeddoor. If the background music is tense, perhaps in aminor key, with a few discordant notes thrown in, weinterpret the scene as suspenseful and feel anxiousabout what might lie behind the door. If the music isbouncy and jovial, like something out of an old CharlieChaplin movie, we interpret the same scene quite dif-ferently. We are prepared for humor and might imaginethe doorknob coming off when the person tries to openthe door. If a monster does pop from behind the door,we might think “What a silly monster suit.”

Now consider the movie that constantly plays inyour head—the images of the world around you thatsensory stimulation tells you is “reality.” The nervecells sprouting out of the base of the brain are creatingthe mood music inside you by acting directly on all theother brain cells, making them more or less reactive tothe scenes that are coming in from the outside world.When we get a good night of sleep, and the reticularactivating system is priming the emotional brain prop-erly, our norepinephrine and dopamine infusions cre-ate a positive, energetic “background music.” Theresult is a feeling of mental and physical energy wecall vitality and an internal psychological push calledmotivation. Without them we get depressed. (I shouldnote that clinical depression is very different from feel-ing low or down. In clinical depression, the brain’s nat-ural biochemistry is seriously altered.)

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One major hypothesis about how sleep affectsmood is that sleep somehow replenishes these excita-tory neurotransmitters in the brain. Over the course ofthe day, neurotransmitters are released from nervecells. Some are recycled back into the cell and othersare lost. By keeping brain activity high, sleep depriva-tion may prevent the brain from replacing lost neurotransmitters. When nerve activity is decreased,alerting is impaired. Your thoughts don’t flow assmoothly as they should. You feel down.

To counterbalance the brain’s accelerators, othernerve cells and neurotransmitters act as the brain’sbrakes. The most widely distributed nerve cell receptorin the brain is GABA, the receptor that alcohol andbenzodiazepine sleeping pills act on. An activatedGABA receptor makes a nerve cell much less reactiveto stimuli, slowing the rate of information processing,and uncocking the hammer in the emotional brain.

Another of the brain’s primary braking mecha-nisms is adenosine. Adenosine is one of the moleculesthat results when the brain breaks down its primaryenergy source, adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. Whenthe brain is very active and using a lot of energy, moreadenosine is present in the brain. This surplus ofadenosine acts as a natural governor, reining in brainactivity so that it doesn’t run too fast. Increasingadenosine concentration in the brain may be part ofthe reason we feel mental fatigue when we face emo-tional or mentally challenging situations. The increased

brain activity may create a lot of free adenosine, whichthen depresses brain activity.

One school of thought holds that the sleep driveactively suppresses brain activity through this brakingmechanism, thereby linking sleepiness and mood. Themore time we are awake, the more the inhibitory cir-cuits of the brain damp down the stimulation of thereticular activating system, as if the nerve excitatoryand dampening systems are fighting for control of thebrain. As various areas of the brain are slowed downby this braking action, the effects show up in how weact, think, and feel. The dampening of nerve activity ofmotor areas makes us less coordinated; the dampeningof nerve activity in the cerebral cortex makes us slowin thought; and quenching nerve activity in the emotion-al brain makes us feel less vital, less motivated. Tocounteract this we can walk around, concentrateharder, and give ourselves a pep talk, but eventuallythe brain’s sleep drive triumphs. At some point no men-tal trick will stimulate brain activity in the areas weneed to stay awake—it’s like trying to light wet saw-dust with a match. We have to fall asleep.

After we sleep, the brakes are off again.Dopamine and norepinephrine release in the brainincreases. We feel alive again.

Source: Dement, W.C., & Vaughan, C. (1999). The Promise of Sleep.New York: Delacorte Press, pp. 278–281.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

(continued)



1. What part of the brain plays a major role in motivation?

2. Which neurotransmitters control motivation?

3. How do the excitatory neurochemicals affect motivation?

4. What is the “emotional brain” and what does it do?

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c.5. What is one hypothesis of how sleep affects our moods?

6. What are the two primary receptors that slow activity in the brain?

7. As nerve activity slows in the limbic system, how do we feel?

Thinking Critically


8. You are on the track team at your school. The state championships are being held on Saturday. Yourcoach insists that the entire team get a good night’s sleep on Friday. The coach has even asked theteam members’ parents to set a 10 P.M. curfew for this Friday night. You and your date had plannedto go to the late movie on Friday, but you know that if you are caught breaking curfew, you will notbe allowed to compete. Why do you think your coach is insisting on the curfew? What should youdo?

9. Does this biological explanation of motivation contradict the other theories of motivation discussedin your textbook? Why or why not?

10. Recall the last time you were in a bad mood. How much sleep did you get the night before? Did yourmood become worse as you became more tired? Do you think there was a correlation between sleepand your mood in that instance? Explain.

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Emotions are expressed in a variety of ways.People from one culture may misunderstand theemotional expressions of people from other cul-tures. Studies of facial expressions have notedsimilarities and differences among cultures. Forexample, many similarities exist between thefacial expressions of Americans and Japanese.Along with those similarities, researchers havenoted some striking differences.

Research has identified seven universalfacial expressions of emotion. People across cul-tures make the same basic facial expressions inreaction to anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happi-ness, sadness, and surprise. These facial expres-sions are theorized to be biologically innate inall people regardless of race, culture, or gender.

Hypothesis

Although the same basic facial expressionsare used for the seven emotions, display ruleswithin the culture affect how and when theseexpressions are made. These display rules varywidely among cultures. Specifically, there aremarked differences between Japanese andAmerican display rules.

Differences Between Cultures

When an emotion is sent to the brain to beprocessed, the signal is filtered through both theinnate signal for the facial expression and theculturally accepted display rules learned duringearly childhood. The actual expression is a resultof the innate signal and the learned display

rules. Cultures may affect the innate signal infive ways:

1. Deamplify the expression, which results inshowing less emotion than is felt.

2. Neutralize the expression, which results inno facial expression even when one is felt.

3. Amplify the expression, which results inshowing more emotion than what is felt.

4. Mask the expression, which results in show-ing something different than what you feel.

5. Blend expressions, which mixes two or moreof the expressions at the same time.

Method

A study conducted by Paul Ekman andWallace Friesen used American and Japaneseparticipants. In the study, the participants wereasked to view extreme stress-inducing filmsincluding an amputation and a childbirth withforceps. The participants’ facial expressions werevideotaped without their knowledge. In the firstseries, participants viewed the videotapes alone.In the second series, participants viewed thestressful films again, but this time a higher-status experimenter was in the room with eachparticipant.

Results

During the first series, both American and Japanese participants exhibited the samefacial expressions, which included fear, disgust,sadness, and anger. This finding continues to

Facial Expressions


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c.support the findings that there are universalexpressions.

During the second series, the presence of theexperimenter had no effect on the facial expres-sions of the American participants. The Japaneseparticipants, however, either displayed no emo-tion or smiled. These responses not only differedfrom their American counterparts, they weretotally different from their initial responses tothe same films.

Conclusions

The Americans had no culturally based display rule that was affected by the presence ofthe experimenter. The Japanese participantswere reacting to the culturally based display rulethat negative emotions are not shown in thepresence of someone of higher status. This dis-play rule caused them to mask their facialexpressions.

Source: Matsumoto, D. (1996). Unmasking Japan: Myths andRealities About the Emotions of the Japanese. Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. What has research indicated are the seven universal facial expressions of emotion?

2. How do researchers believe we acquire these seven universal facial expressions?

3. If there are universal facial expressions, what causes differences in the way emotions are expressed?

4. Identify two of the five display rules.

5. According to this experiment, what difference exists between the way in which Americans andJapanese express emotions?

Thinking Critically


6. What display rules do Americans have?

7. How are display rules, like the Japanese rule in the study, formed?

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Japan’s “exam hell” might just be cooling down. This studying marathon is what high school stu-

dents nationwide must do to pass the universityentrance exams that are a focal point of K-12 educa-tion here. Grades from those tests—calculated downto the decimal point—determine what college a stu-dent can attend. That, in turn, often shapes job oppor-tunities down the road.

But recently, some Japanese colleges have beenreconsidering their practice of measuring a student’sworth in terms of exam grades alone. With the Ministryof Education’s backing, they are introducing an “officeadmissions” (OA) system that evaluates studentsbased on extracurricular activities and recommenda-tions, as well as their exam grades, much the wayAmerican schools do.

The shift away from entrance exams represents asea change for the education system and, observerssay, for the country. Advocates say diminished empha-sis on college-entrance exams will change K–12 edu-cation, ending the focus on rote learning. This, theyargue, would be a crucial step toward reinvigoratingJapan, now burdened by recession and troubled byincreasing numbers of reluctant, rebellious students.

Critics charge that the end of entrance examscould threaten Japan’s highly valued egalitarianism.But in a sign of the depth of the changes ahead, edu-cators say that the answer to Japan’s problems mayjust be a new emphasis on quality over equality.

“Until now, Japanese education has always beenknowledge-oriented,” says Hikota Koguchi, dean ofacademic affairs at Tokyo’s prestigious WasedaUniversity, which now admits 10 percent of its studentson the OA system.

“You can see it in the bureaucratic quality ofJapan today. Society has lost its vitality, we don’t haveenough creative, original minds,” he says. “Having auniversity full of people who can only study isn’t all

that good anymore. Unless we correct the overempha-sis on egalitarianism, there’s no future for Japan.”

Colleges aren’t legally required to hold entranceexams. Indeed, since 1967 the Ministry of Educationhas been sending guidelines to the country’s colleges,urging them to use various measures to evaluatepotential students, from recommendations to exams.

The schools have always insisted that exams arethe only objective way to judge candidates. ButJapan’s declining birth rate is making education amore competitive industry these days. Fewer con-sumers mean schools have to make changes to attractbusiness.

In 1990, Tokyo’s blue-chip Keio University beganadmitting some students on the OA system. Sevenother private universities have partially adopted the OAsystem since then. Next year, three well-regarded pub-lic universities will follow suit.

While these schools are only using the OA systemselectively—in a few faculties or only for a certainpercentage of admissions—education ministry officialssay the shift will yield benefits.

“A written exam doesn’t tell a school what poten-tial students have after they enter,” says Akira Noie,head of the ministry’s entrance exam department.“[The OA system] is a way to find more motivated, cre-ative students. We’re not saying the entrance exam isan evil, we’re just saying it’s not everything.”

The ministry expects the college-level changes tocreate a domino effect in K-12 education, where rotelearning is largely the rule. “This is a way for highschools to change too,” says Mr. Noie. “We often hearcomplaints from high schools that because the univer-sities are focused on exams, they can’t adopt a morecreative approach to education.”

But straying from the tried and true makes somepeople nervous. Critics argue that the OA system willdumb down education, that the rigorous standards of

R E A D I N G 13 Change in Japanese College

Admissions Policies


(continued)

In Japan students have traditionally earned the right to attend specific colleges and universities bytheir score on rigorous college entrance exams. High schools prepare students for these exams, andmany parents send their children to special juku, which are after-school programs designed to provideadditional preparation for the exams. These juku sessions can last up to four hours after the regularschool day has ended. The pressure to do well on the entrance exams is immense. A new policy amongJapanese colleges and universities, however, may change the way students are admitted to colleges anduniversities.

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c.Japanese schools will slide if more “creative” teach-ing is introduced.

“There are many cases where not-very-smart stu-dents are being accepted at top-ranking universitiesthese days,” wrote prep school teacher Hiroshi Yamadain an opinion piece in last month’s Sapio magazine.“This recommendation system will make things worse.”

An employee at one of Japan’s ubiquitous prepschools, or juku, Mr. Yamada teaches kids whose par-ents send them to prep school after their normalschool day is done.

The added hours of nighttime and weekend studyare supposed to give them an edge—although juku varywidely in quality and wealthier parents can afford betterschools. Fewer entrance exams mean fewer juku.

Others argue the end of entrance exams will cre-ate rents in Japan’s social fabric. “We have to remem-ber that there are some areas that were meant to beequal, and the exam system is one of them,” socialcritic Tetsuya Miyazaki writes in the February issue ofShukan Bunshun magazine.

Mr. Miyazaki argues that some students will sufferif schools start to look for extracurricular activities in

addition to good grades. Students who have to workpart time for financial reasons will suffer from “oppor-tunity discrimination,” he says, as they won’t be able tovolunteer the way other students will.

Students themselves have none of these misgiv-ings. “Universities should definitely look at students’abilities, not just their marks,” says Maiko Kitagawa, ahigh school junior in Tokyo. “I just hate it when I seeolder friends endlessly cramming for the entranceexams.”

At Tsukuba University, one of the national universi-ties that will begin using the OA system next year, themood is upbeat. “People are all different,” saysMakoto Natori, vice president of academic affairs.“We can’t apply one fixed measurement to everybody.”

He argues that the OA system will allow studentsto rediscover the love of learning after years of study-ing simply to make the grade. “We want students withenthusiasm, students who can think on their own,” hesays. “That’s what Japan needs right now.”

Source: Gaouette, N. (1999, March 2). Judging kids on more thanexams. Christian Science Monitor, 91 (65), 16.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. Why is a good score on the college entrance exams so important to Japanese students?

2. What does Hikota Koguchi, dean of academic affairs at Waseda University, claim is the problem withthe current entrance exam system?

3. What new system is being used by some colleges and universities?

4. Why are critics nervous about changing the system?

5. How does Tetsuya Miyazaki think the new system will create “opportunity discrimination”?

Thinking Critically


6. Why are the Japanese college entrance exams a form of egalitarianism?

7. Compare and contrast the Japanese college entrance exam system and the United States system forcollege admissions. Use a graphic organizer similar to the one below to organize your information.

Japanesesystem

Both

U.S.system

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Most people think they know what intelli-gence is. Experts use long, expansive definitionsto explain the nature of intelligence. Withoutinput from the experts, most people also have agood idea of what intelligence is. RobertSternberg, who developed the triarchic model ofhuman intelligence, has conducted extensiveresearch into how everyday people recognizeand explain intelligence.

Hypothesis

Everyday people know what intelligence is.And although they may not express it in thesame terms, everyday people recognize andunderstand intelligence in much the same wayas researchers and psychologists.

Method

Personal interviews were conducted with476 men and women. The study included stu-dents studying at a library, commuters on theirway to work, and homemakers entering super-markets. One experiment involved giving theparticipants a blank sheet of paper and askingthem to list behaviors that characterized intelli-gence, academic intelligence, everyday intelli-gence, or unintelligence.

A list of 250 distinct behaviors was compiled;170 described intelligence and 80 describedunintelligence. To further refine the list, 28 peo-ple responding to a newspaper advertisementwere selected to rate on a 10-point scale each ofthe 250 behaviors. Ratings were based on howideally the behavior described an intelligent orunintelligent person. A statistical technique

known as factor analysis was used to refine thefinal list into a few primary characteristics.

Results

“It turned out that people conceived of intel-ligence as having three facets, which we labeled(in descending order of perceived importance)practical problem-solving ability, verbal ability,and social competence. Comparable facets foracademic intelligence were verbal ability, prob-lem-solving ability, and social competence, andfor everyday intelligence were practical prob-lem-solving ability, social competence, charac-ter, and interest in learning and culture—againin order of perceived importance. The facets foracademic intelligence were almost the same asfor intelligence, except that their ordering ofimportance changed. The facets for everydayintelligence were somewhat less similar to thosefor intelligence in general but had more of aneveryday slant.”

Conclusions

“Our study showed that the resemblancebetween the views of scientists and nonscientistsis surprisingly clear. On the whole, what psy-chologists mean by intelligence seems to corre-spond generally to what people untrained inpsychology mean by intelligence. On the otherhand, what psychologists study corresponds toonly part of what people mean by intelligence inour society, which includes a lot more than IQtests measure, such as everyday competence andcommon sense in the conduct of our lives.”

Source: Sternberg, Robert J. (1988). The triarchic mind: A newtheory of human intelligence. New York: Viking.

Who Is Intelligent?


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c.Understanding the Case Study


1. Does the author believe that only experts can recognize intelligence? Explain.

2. How did the author test his hypothesis?

3. What three facets did the participants attribute to intelligence?

4. What facets of everyday intelligence were identified?

5. Did the author find that researchers or everyday people had the broader view of what constitutesintelligence? What is the broader view?

Thinking Critically


6. What kind of test could you design to evaluate a person’s everyday intelligence?

7. Further studies indicated that students placed more value on academic intelligence as a part of gen-eral intelligence than working people did. Why do you think this happened?

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FIVE. . .FOUR . . .THREE. . .TWO. . .ONE. . .SEE YA!”And Chance McGuire, 25, is airborne off a 650-ft. con-crete dam in Northern California. In one second hefalls 16 ft., in two seconds 63 ft., and after three sec-onds and 137 ft. he is flying at 65 m.p.h. He prays thathis parachute will open facing away from the dam, thathis canopy won’t collapse, that his toggles will behandy and that no ill wind will slam him back into thecold concrete. The chute snaps open, the sound rico-cheting through the gorge like a gunshot, and McGuireis soaring, carving S turns into the air, swooping over awinding creek. When he lands, he is a speck on a pathalong the creek. He hurriedly packs his chute and then,clearly audible above the rushing water, lets out a warwhoop that rises past those mortals still perched onthe dam, past the commuters puttering by on the road-way, past even the hawks who circle the ravine. It is acry of defiance, thanks and victory; he has survivedanother BASE jump.

McGuire is a practitioner of what he calls the kingof all extreme sports. BASE—an acronym for building,antenna, span (bridge) and earth (cliffs)—jumping hasone of the sporting world’s highest fatality rates: in its18-year history, 46 participants have been killed. Yetthe sport has never been more popular, with more thana thousand jumpers in the U.S. and more seeking toget into it every day.

It is an activity without margin for error. If your chutemalfunctions, don’t bother reaching for a reserve—thereisn’t time. There are no second chances.

Still, the sport’s stark metaphor—a human leavingsafety behind to leap into the void—may be a perfectfit with our times. As extreme a risk taker as McGuireseems, we may all have more in common with himthan we know or care to admit. Heading into the mil-lennium, America has embarked on a national orgy ofthrill seeking and risk taking. The rise of adventure andextreme sports like BASE jumping, snowboarding, iceclimbing, skateboarding and paragliding is merely themost vivid manifestation of this new national behavior.Investors once content to buy stocks and hold them

quit their day jobs to become day traders, makingvolatile careers of risk taking. . . . In ways many of ustake for granted, we engage in risks our parents wouldhave shunned and our grandparents would have dis-missed as just plain stupid. . . .

A full 30% of this year’s Harvard Business Schoolgraduates are joining venture-capital or high-techfirms, up from 12% just four years ago. “The extendedperiod of prosperity has encouraged people to behavein ways they didn’t behave in other times—the waypeople spend money, change jobs, the quit rate, daytrading, and people really thinking they know moreabout the market than anyone else,” says PeterBernstein, an economic consultant and author of thebest-selling Against the Gods: The Remarkable Storyof Risk. “It takes a particular kind of environment for allthese things to happen.” That environment—unprece-dented prosperity and almost a decade without amajor ground war—may be what causes Americans toexpress some inveterate need to take risks.

There is a certain logic to it: at the end of adecade of American triumphalism abroad and prosper-ity at home, we could be seeking to upsize our person-alities, our sense of ourselves. Perhaps we as a peopleare acting out our success as a nation, in a mannerunfelt since the postwar era.

The rising popularity of extreme sports bespeaksan eagerness on the part of millions of Americans toparticipate in activities closer to the metaphoricaledge, where danger, skill and fear combine to giveweekend warriors and professional athletes alike asense of pushing out personal boundaries. Accordingto American Sports Data Inc., a consulting firm, partici-pation in so-called extreme sports is way up. Snow-boarding has grown 113% in five years and now boastsnearly 5.5 million participants. Mountain biking, skate-boarding, scuba diving, you name the adventuresport—the growth curves reveal a nation that loves toplay with danger. Contrast that with activities likebaseball, touch football and aerobics, all of which havebeen in steady decline throughout the 90’s.

R E A D I N G 14Type T Personalities


(continued)

Personality theorists explore how people conduct their lives. What makes one person willing to riskhis or her life and another person unwilling to leave home? Researchers try to explain such differencesbetween people. Some psychologists also explore whether groups of people share common personalitycharacteristics. Psychologist Frank Farley, for example, has proposed that Americans tend to be risk tak-ers, while the Japanese tend to be risk averse. Do environmental differences or innate personality traitscreate such differences?

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c.The pursuits that are becoming more popular have

one thing in common: the perception that they aresomehow more challenging than a game of touch foot-ball. “Every human being with two legs, two arms isgoing to wonder how fast, how strong, how enduringhe or she is,” says Eric Perlman, a mountaineer andfilmmaker specializing in extreme sports. “We aredesigned to experiment or die.”

And to get hurt. More Americans than ever areinjuring themselves while pushing their personal limits.In 1997 the U.S. Consumer Products SafetyCommission reported that 48,000 Americans wereadmitted to hospital emergency rooms with skate-boarding-related injuries. That’s 33% more than theprevious year. Snowboarding E.R. visits were up 31%;mountain climbing up 20%. By every statistical meas-ure available, Americans are participating in and injur-ing themselves through adventure sports at anunprecedented rate.

Consider Mike Carr, an environmental engineerand paraglider pilot from Denver who last year sur-vived a bad landing that smashed 10 ribs and collapsedhis lung. Paraglider pilots use feathery nylon wings totake off from mountaintops and float on thermal windcurrents—a completely unpredictable ride. Carr alsomountain bikes and climbs rock faces. He walkedaway from a 1,500-ft. fall in Peru in 1988. After hisrecovery, he returned to paragliding. “This has takenover many of our lives,” he explains. “You float like abird out there. You can go as high as 18,000 ft. and gofor 200 miles. That’s magic.”

America has always been defined by risk; it maybe our predominant national characteristic. It’s a coun-try founded by risk takers fed up with the EnglishCrown and expanded by pioneers—a word that seemsutterly American. Our heritage throws up heroes—Lewis and Clark, Thomas Edison, Frederick Douglass,Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart—whobucked the odds, taking perilous chances.

Previous generations didn’t need to seek out risk;it showed up uninvited and regularly: global wars,childbirth complications, diseases and pandemics fromthe flu to polio, dangerous products and even theomnipresent cold war threat of mutually assureddestruction. “I just don’t think extreme sports wouldhave been popular in a ground-war era,” says DanCady, professor of popular culture at California StateUniversity at Fullerton. “Coming back from a war andgetting onto a skateboard would not seem soextreme.”

But for recent generations, many of those tradi-tional risks have been reduced by science, govern-ment or legions of personal injury lawyers, leavingboomers and Generation X and Y to face less real risk.Life expectancy has increased. Violent crime is down.You are 57% less likely to die of heart disease than

your parents; smallpox, measles and polio have virtual-ly been eradicated.

Combat survivors speak of the terror and theexcitement of playing in a death match. Are we some-how incomplete as people if we do not taste that terrorand excitement on the brink? “People are [taking risks]because everyday risk is minimized and people want tobe challenged,” says Joy Marr, 43, an adventure racerwho was the only woman member of a five-personteam that finished the 1998 Raid Gauloises, the grand-daddy of all adventure races. This is a sport thatrequires several days of nonstop slogging, climbing,rappelling, rafting and surviving through some of theroughest terrain in the world. Says fellow adventureracer and former Army Ranger Jonathon Senk, 35:“Our society is so surgically sterile. It’s almost like oursocialization just desensitizes us. Every time I’m outdoing this I’m searching my soul. It’s the Lewis andClark gene, to venture out, to find what your limitationsare.”…

Psychologist Frank Farley of Temple Universitybelieves that taking conscious risk involves overcom-ing our instincts. He points out that no other animalintentionally puts itself in peril. “The human race isparticularly risk taking compared with other species,”he says. He describes risk takers as the Type T person-ality, and the U.S. as a Type T nation, as opposed towhat Farley considers more risk-averse nations likeJapan. He breaks it down further, into Type T physical(extreme athletes) and Type T intellectual (AlbertEinstein, Galileo). He warns there is also Type T nega-tive, that is, those who are drawn to delinquency,crime, experimentation with drugs, unprotected sexand a whole litany of destructive behaviors.

All these Type T’s are related, and perhaps evendifferent aspects of the same character trait. There is,says Farley, a direct link between Einstein and basejumper Chance McGuire. They are different manifesta-tions of the thrill-seeking component of our characters:Einstein was thrilled by his mental life, and McGuire—well, Chance jumps off buildings . . . .

The question is, How much is enough? Withoutsome expression of risk, we may never know our limitsand therefore who we are as individuals. “If you don’tassume a certain amount of risk,” says paraglider pilotWade Ellet, 51, “you’re missing a certain amount oflife.” And it is by taking risks that we may flirt withgreatness. “We create technologies, we make newdiscoveries, but in order to do that, we have to pushbeyond the set of rules that are governing us at thattime,” says psychologist Farley.

Source: Greenfeld, K.T. (1999, September 6). Life on the edge. Time,29–36.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

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1. What does the writer claim is our new national behavior?

2. Name three ways in which Americans are expressing this national behavior.

3. What explanations are given for the increased popularity of extreme sports?

4. How have risks been reduced in our everyday lives?

5. How does Frank Farley characterize the Type T personality?

Thinking Critically


6. Why do humans take intentional risks when other animals do not?

7. Does Frank Farley’s hypothesis support or undermine the view that the environment is the primarydeterminant of personality characteristics? In what ways?

8. Do you agree with Farley’s view? Defend your position.

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Introduction

A longitudinal study conducted over 70 yearsexplored the relationship between personalitytraits using the five-factor model of personality(“Big Five”) and general mental ability withcareer success. For the purposes of the study,two aspects of career success were considered:intrinsic success (job satisfaction) and extrinsicsuccess (income and occupational status).

The dimensions of the five-factor modelinclude neuroticism, extroversion, openness toexperience, agreeableness, and conscientious-ness. Neuroticism involves six facets: anxiety,hostility, depression, self-consciousness, vulner-ability, and impulsiveness. Extroversion involvessociability and is related to the experience ofpositive emotions. Conscientiousness includesthree related facets: achievement orientation,dependability, and orderliness. Openness toexperience is characterized by intelligence andunconventionality. Agreeableness is being trust-ing of others and likeable.

Hypotheses

The study explored several hypotheses inmeasuring intrinsic and extrinsic career success.The primary hypotheses are as follows:

■ Neuroticism will be negatively related tointrinsic and extrinsic career success.

■ Extroversion will be positively related tointrinsic and extrinsic career success.

■ Conscientiousness will be positively relatedto extrinsic career success.

■ Personality measures collected in adulthoodwill explain more variance in career successthan will childhood measures.

■ General mental ability will be positivelyrelated to extrinsic career success.

■ Personality will explain incremental variancein career success beyond that explained bygeneral mental ability.

Method

Researchers used the intergenerational stud-ies, a set of three studies that followed partici-pants from early childhood to retirement. TheInstitute of Human Development at theUniversity of California, Berkeley administeredthe studies. The sample was drawn from two ofthe studies. The first enrolled 318 children fromBerkeley who were born between January 1928and July 1929. The second study began in 1931with 212 children seven to nine years old.

The studies continued to gather informationfrom the sample for more than 60 years. Duringtheir childhood, study participants had manymeasurements taken through medical examina-tions, strength tests, and extensive interviews bytrained psychologists. Many of these measure-ments were collected several times throughoutthe person’s childhood.

Researchers conducted three major follow-upstudies when participants were ages 30–38, 41–50, and 53–62. There was also a follow-up mailsurvey completed in 1990 when participantswere 61–70.

The psychologists conducting the study tocompare personality to career success were notthe researchers involved in the intergenerationalstudy. As frequently happens with longitudinalstudies, researchers make the data available toother psychologists for analysis. Since the inter-generational study collected so much informa-tion, the personality researchers could make reliable and valid analyses based on the data.

Results

Results indicated that neuroticism was sig-nificantly negatively correlated with job satisfac-tion (intrinsic career success), while opennessto experience, conscientiousness, and generalmental ability were significantly positively corre-lated with job satisfaction.

Neuroticism is negatively correlated tointrinsic and extrinsic career success. Individuals

C A S E S T U D Y 14 Can PersonalityTraits Predict Adult

Career Success?


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who score high on neuroticism are more likely toexperience a variety of problems, including neg-ative moods, anxiety, fear, depression, irritability,and physical symptoms. Neurotic individuals arelikely to be especially affected by negative lifeevents and to have bad moods linger. These fac-tors carry over into their work environment andaffect both job satisfaction and income/occupa-tional level.

The second hypothesis that extroversion ispositively correlated to intrinsic and extrinsiccareer success was only partially supported.Extroversion was positively correlated to extrin-sic career success, but no correlation was foundbetween extroversion and job satisfaction(intrinsic career success).

Researchers found that conscientiousnessand income/occupational status were positivelycorrelated. In an unhypothesized effect,researchers found that the correlation betweenconscientiousness and job satisfaction was themost consistent result.

The results also support the hypothesis thatthe Big Five traits explained significant incre-mental variance in career success beyond thatexplained by general mental ability.

The study did not support the hypothesisthat personality measures collected in adulthoodwill explain more variance in career success thanwill childhood measures. In fact, the study shows

that most of the Big Five personality factors arerelatively stable over time. Of the five factors, con-scientiousness was the most stable, while agree-ableness was the least stable of the five traits.

Conclusions

Results indicate a correlation between par-ticular career paths and particular traits andbetween personality traits and intrinsic andextrinsic career success. Since the personalitytraits are relatively stable over time, it is possibleto predict career success using childhood per-sonality measures.

In terms of career paths chosen by differentpersonality types, the study showed that extro-verts tended to gravitate toward social jobsand jobs high in interpersonal activities.Conscientious individuals tended to be attractedto investigative jobs and those jobs that requirethinking, organizing, and understanding. Thosewho rated high in general mental ability alsotended to gravitate toward investigative jobs,but they stayed away from conventional, rule-regulated jobs. Study participants who rankedhigh on the neuroticism factor were most likelyto be employed in jobs involving physical activity.

Source: Judge, T.A., & Higgins, C.A. (1999). The big five personalitytraits, general mental ability, and career success across the lifespan. Personnel Psychology, 52 (3), 621–52.

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1. How many participants were enrolled in the study?

2. What two areas of career success were studied?

3. What were the researchers’ hypotheses?

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c.4. Which hypotheses were not supported by the findings of the study?

Thinking Critically


5. Is it important to try to match personality, mental ability, and career path? Why or why not?

6. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages to job candidates if a company uses personality testresults as hiring or promotion criteria.

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Anxiety is the extreme end of the ordinary continu-um of arousal. Grappling with a tough mental problemor returning a tennis serve both activate arousal. Thisincreased arousal is fitting and useful; such tasksrequire extra mental and physical reserves.

But when the arousal does not fit the task athand—more particularly, when it is too great—then itbecomes anxiety. In anxiety, arousal that might be fit-ting for confronting a given threat intrudes into anothersituation, or occurs at such a high pitch that it sabo-tages an appropriate response.

During an anxiety state, attention can cling to thesource of threat, narrowing the range of awarenessavailable for other things. The narrowing of attentionunder stress is amply documented. For example, in aclassic study volunteers were put through a simulateddeep-sea dive in a pressure chamber (Weltman, Smithand Egstrom, 1971). The dive, done under water, wasdramatic, with real changes in pressure and oxygen.Because of the oxygen changes there were someactual, but minor, dangers involved, and the volunteerslearned some emergency procedures. During the divesimulation, the volunteers had to perform a centraltracking task and at the same time monitor a flashinglight. As the dive proceeded and the volunteers gotmore and more anxious, they could continue with thecentral task, but lost track of the light.

The notion that anxiety narrows attention is notnew. Samuel Johnson said it pithily: “Depend upon it,Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fort-night, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

When the stress response drives attention, itfocuses on the threat at hand. This is fine when atten-tion and bodily arousal are poised to deal with a threatand dispatch it on the spot. But stress situations inmodern life rarely allow for that option. Most often wehave to continue with life as usual while dealing withsome ongoing situation of threat: carry on at work dur-ing a drawn-out marital fight, do the taxes despite achild’s worrisome illness.

Attention primed to focus on a threat dominateseven when other matters should be more pressing;

thoughts of the threat intrude out of turn. The opera-tional definition of anxiety is, in fact, this very intrusion.

The role of intrusion in anxiety is most thoroughlydescribed by the psychiatrist Mardi Horowitz(Horowitz, 1983). “Intrusion,” Horowitz writes, refers to“unbidden ideas and pangs of feeling which are diffi-cult to dispel, and of direct or symbolic behavioralreenactments of the stress event.” This squares wellwith an attentional definition of anxiety: unbiddenthoughts and feelings impinge on awareness.

Horowitz showed how anxiety impinges onawareness with a simple experiment. He had groupsof volunteers watch one of two stressful films—oneshowing ritual circumcision among teenageAborigines, the other depicting bloody accidents in awoodworking shop (both are mildly horrifying)—aswell as a neutral film of a man jogging.

After seeing the films, the volunteers undertook atask in which they rate whether a tone was higher,lower, or the same as the preceding tone. This task,though boring, demands a focused, sustained vigi-lance. Between segments of tones, the volunteerswrote a report of what had been on their mind duringthe task.

Not surprisingly, the volunteers reported far moreintruding film flashbacks during the tone task afterseeing the films on circumcision or accidents thanafter the film about running. The more people wereupset by the films, the more intrusions.

Based on a detailed investigation of dozens ofpatients with stress-based symptoms, Horowitz hasbeen able to enumerate many of the guises and dis-guises anxious intrusions take. His list is wide-rangingand particularly instructive: every one of the varietiesof intrusions is some aspect of the stress responsecarried to an extreme. These include:

• Pangs of emotion, waves of feeling that wellup and subside rather than being a prevailingmood.

• Preoccupation and ruminations, a continualawareness of the stressful event that recurs

R E A D I N G 15Stress Out of Place


(continued)

Threats create stress in all humans. Our bodies have a variety of reactions to perceived threats.Some reactions are physical, such as tensing the muscles; others are cognitive, such as the focusing ofattention on resolving the threat. When our attention is focused on a threat, we are less able to deal withday-to-day events.

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c.uncontrollably, beyond the bounds of ordinarythinking through of a problem.

• Intrusive ideas, sudden unbidden thoughtsthat have nothing to do with the mental taskat hand.

• Persistent thoughts and feelings, emotions orideas which the person cannot stop once theystart.

• Hypervigilance, excessive alertness, scanningand searching with a tense expectancy.

• Insomnia, intrusive ideas and images that dis-turb sleep.

• Bad dreams, including nightmares and anx-ious awakening, as well as any upsettingdream. The bad dream does not necessarilyhave any overt content related to a real event.

• Unbidden sensations, the sudden, unwantedentry into awareness of sensations that areunusually intense or are unrelated to the situ-ation at the moment.

• Startle reactions, flinching or blanching inresponse to stimuli that typically do not war-rant such reactions.

References

Horowitz, M. (1983). Psychological response to serious life events. InShlomo Breznitz (ed.), The Denial of Stress. New York: InternationalUniversities Press.

Weltman, G., Smith, J.E., & Egstrom, G.H. (1971). Perceptual narrowingduring simulated pressure-chamber exposure, Human Factors, 13,79–107.

Source: Goleman, D. (1985). Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology ofSelf-Deception. New York: Simon and Schuster, 44–46.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. Where does anxiety fit on the scale of arousal?

2. What happens during an anxiety state?

3. What happened to the divers as their level of anxiety increased?

4. What is the attentional definition of anxiety?

5. Identify three features of the stress response to an extreme.

Thinking Critically


6. Why is it more difficult to concentrate on boring tasks when you are under extreme stress?

7. Describe a stressful situation that you have encountered. Did you experience any of the anxiousintrusions? If so, what were they? If not, how did you avoid these intrusions?

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How do jury trials that involve many gorydetails, photographs, and exhibits affect thestress level of the jury? If there is an effect, doesit hamper juries in their duty to find guilt orinnocence? As more cases receive significantnationwide press coverage, psychologists havebegun to examine the stress levels of juries.

Hypothesis

Juror stress during long and difficult casesinvolving gruesome details can result in immedi-ate physical and psychological symptoms ofstress and can have long-lasting consequences.

Method

Thomas Hafemeister, J.D., Ph.D., and LarryVentis, Ph.D., have designed and begun a majorlongitudinal study of jury stress. The studybegan with a pilot program using jurors fromtwo separate juries with two defendants fromthe same case. The case involved a “notorious1993 carjacking in Maryland in which a womanwas dragged for more than a mile from her cardoor as she tried to save her baby, who was stillin the car.”

The survey group consisted of 20 jurors, 8alternates, and 120 ‘veniremen’ who were part ofthe original pool questioned to serve on the jurybut were not selected. The 120 veniremen servedas the control group for the study. The group wassurveyed immediately after the trial using a 90-item checklist designed to measure 20 aspects ofjury stress. In addition to stress aspects that werepart of the trial, the survey also measured thestress caused by disruption to the jurors’ person-al lives. The survey was re-administered to thesame group three months later.

Results

The veniremen, as expected, did not showmarked levels of stress resulting from the trial.The jurors and alternates experienced significantstress as a result of their service. The findings onthe alternates yielded a surprising amount ofstress that seemed to stem from the fact thatthey had listened to all the evidence, but werenot given the opportunity to participate in theverdict.

In the survey immediately after the trial,women showed more stress than men. The survey three months later, however, showed nosignificant differences in the stress level of thegenders as a result of their jury experience.

The gruesome evidence and testimony, aswell as the deliberations, were found to be highlystressful for all jurors.

Conclusions

Jury stress is likely the inevitable product ofthe responsibility placed on the jurors. However,some courts have taken an active role in helpingjurors deal with the stress. Hafemeister recom-mends a five-step model for jury debriefing thatincludes: “making sure jurors understand thereasons for the debriefing; reviewing normalreactions to stress with jurors; encouraging butnot forcing jurors to discuss their reactions tothe trial; fostering mutual support and under-standing among jurors; and making concretesuggestions about returning successfully to theirdaily lives.”

Source: DeAngelis, T. (1995). What factors influence juror decision-making. APA Monitor, 26 (6), 5–6.

Juror Stress


(continued)

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c.Understanding the Case Study


1. What are veniremen?

2. How did the veniremen function in this survey? Why?

3. When were the surveys administered to the jurors?

4. What was the surprising factor in the alternates’ stress level?

5. What suggestions did Hafemeister make for helping jurors deal with stress during a trial?

Thinking Critically


6. Among our constitutional rights is the right to a fair trial by a jury of our peers. Does juror stressthreaten our right to a fair trial? Defend your answer.

7. In highly publicized cases, jurors are often sequestered to avoid being influenced by the media or byother people’s discussion of the case. What effect do you think sequestration has on juror stress?

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Manic depression, commonly called bipolar disorder, is one of many psychological disorders thatare thought to have a genetic basis. Researchers have documented family histories of these disordersand hypothesize that heredity plays a part in the development of the disorder. Until recently, however,researchers have not had the tools to test and confirm their hypotheses. New technologies are beginningto allow psychobiologists to zero in on the specific genes that contribute to the development of bipolardisorder. Although some controversies surround this sort of research, many psychologists and physi-cians hope that such research will lead to effective treatments for bipolar disorder.

R E A D I N G 16 The Hunt for Mood Genes


(continued)

Researchers are hunting for “mood-disorder”genes that lead to manic-depression. If such moodgenes are found, they should help scientists devisebetter drugs to control the disease, predicts neurobiol-ogist Samuel H. Barondes, author of Mood Genes.

Manic-depression affects one out of every 100people, and it runs in families. Therefore, the illness islikely to have a genetic basis. However, Barondes saysthat a combination of genes working together is proba-bly at the root of manic-depression, rather than simplyone gene, as with sickle cell anemia. Environment andlife experiences also play a role.

The process of finding the specific genes respon-sible for manic-depression out of the 100,000 or sohuman genes is like tracking down an enemy spy witha secret radio transmitter by gradually homing in onthe source of the radio waves.

The mood-gene hunter first finds a family or isolat-ed population that is prone to manic-depression, thenanalyzes the DNA from this population to see if thepeople who have the disorder also have certain genet-ic markers (the few thousand genes or segments ofDNA whose locations are known). If it happens thatmanic-depression is “linked” to any of these markers,the hunter knows a mood gene lies close to that mark-er on a particular chromosome, thus narrowing thesearch.

The results so far are tantalizing but inconclusive.According to one study, the “long arm” of chromosome18 appears to be a hot spot for mood genes, but otherstudies have pointed to areas on chromosomes 4, 6, 13,and 15 as well.

Finding mood genes will allow testing to determinewhether individuals from affected families are likely to

get the disease. Mood-gene tests would also verify thediagnoses of manic-depression in people who showsymptoms.

Controversy for mood-gene testing seems likely: Itmay eventually be performed on fetuses, and someparents might choose abortion rather than bear chil-dren with the disease. People will object to mood-generesearch for this reason, but Barondes argues that thebenefits for disease sufferers will be too enormous toforgo.

New drugs made possible by mood-gene researchmay be effective enough to render the disease harm-less, so the issue of eugenics could become moot.New drugs would result from a better understanding ofthe proteins, enzymes, or hormones that mood genesmake and the jobs that these specialized moleculesperform in the emotional circuitry of the brain.

“Knowing the identity and function of mood geneswill provide the opportunity to develop whole new cat-egories of drugs with completely different moleculartargets. Such a change of direction is sorely needed,”Barondes writes. Current antidepressant drugs, suchas Prozac, were discovered by accident. Scientistsaren’t sure exactly why they work, and they don’t workwell in all cases.

“In the long run a major benefit of mood-gene dis-covery may be the prevention of all symptoms ofmanic-depression—even initial attacks,” Barondesposits, concluding that such knowledge “may not justbe used to foretell our destinies, but also to forestallthem.”

Source: Minerd, J. (1999). The hunt for mood genes. Futurist, 33 (5), 11.

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1. How common is manic depression (bipolar disorder)?

2. How could identifying the specific gene or genes involved be used to help people with a genetictendency for the disorder?

3. What potential controversies does the author raise about the gene research?

4. Why does Samuel Barondes think that knowing the identity and function of mood genes could aid inthe development of drugs to treat the disorders?

Thinking Critically


5. Take one of the following positions and write a defense of the position:

Gene research to find the exact source of psychological disorders should be funded by tax dollars.

Gene research has too much potential for misuse. No tax dollars should be used to fund suchresearch.

6. What do you think Samuel Barondes means when he says that the knowledge gained from theresearch “may not just be used to foretell our destinies, but also to forestall them”?

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Case History

Jane had been a shy child who disliked beingfar away from her mother. She experienced agreat deal of separation anxiety, especially whenshe was young. Her father was an alcoholic, andwhen he was drinking, her parents would getinto loud arguments. Her parents’ fighting terri-fied her. When she was 17, her father was mur-dered by a mugger.

Jane married at 21 and had three childrenduring the next nine years. She was content as ahomemaker and took great pride in her immac-ulate housekeeping. She began experiencingpanic attacks when she was 26. She would awak-en in the middle of the night in terror. She wouldbe sweating and her heart would be pounding.For some time, she did not tell anyone about theattacks, which always occurred at night. At firstthe attacks were infrequent, but as she becamemore frightened by what was happening to her,the frequency of the attacks increased.

She began to have attacks during the day,especially when she was outside the house andaround other people. Her rapid pulse and short-ness of breath would cause dizziness. She wasafraid that she was dying. She grew increasinglyisolated and stayed at home whenever possible.Even going to the grocery became a nearlyimpossible task. Her husband insisted that sheseek treatment.

Diagnosis

Over the next 20 years, Jane saw 200 doctors.None were able to relieve her symptoms for anylength of time. She was diagnosed with severedepression and given electric shock therapy.Although Jane was depressed, her problem wasnot depression. It was only a symptom of herreal disorder. She was treated with a variety ofantidepressants and antianxiety drugs. Otherthan Valium, none gave her any relief, andValium only helped up to a point. The physicianstreated her symptoms by removing her tonsils,

pulling her teeth, telling her that she had aninner ear imbalance, and a variety of other treat-ments that proved worthless. Jane often felt likeshe was going to die, and no one seemed toknow how to provide an answer.

When Jane was 37, her husband died sud-denly. The panic attacks also ceased. For severalyears, she threw herself into working as an officemanager and raising her children. She seemedlike a different person. At 42, she remarried.When her second husband began drinking, thepanic attacks returned. She was hospitalizedthree times, but the doctors could not find anyphysical cause for her problem. They recom-mended therapy. Jane finally saw a therapist whocorrectly diagnosed her panic disorder.

The therapist knew that research indicatesthat separation anxiety and fear of being aloneduring childhood is one suspected cause ofpanic disorder later in life. The attacks usuallybegin during a person’s late teens or early twen-ties. Additional research has concluded that shychildren are more prone to anxiety in adulthoodthan outgoing children (Ritter, 1995). Alcoholismin the family is also suspected as a contributingfactor. A Duke University study found “that adultchildren of alcoholics showed a significantlyhigher tendency toward panic disorder than thegeneral population” (Wilson, 1993).

Initially, Jane’s attacks began at night whileshe was asleep. Researchers have found that“nocturnal panic attacks occur during light sleepwhen the body is relaxed and heart rate and res-piration have slowed. Some researchers thinkthat a sensitive person might react to a changein her body, such as muscle twitches, during thisperiod of relaxation” (Barlow & Cerny, 1988).Other researchers propose the “false-suffocationalarm” theory. This theory concludes that theperson suffers from a breathing problem thatsends a signal to the brain that the person is suf-focating. The sensation is false, but the result is apanic attack (Talan, 1994).

Why did Jane’s panic attacks cease for sever-

Panic Disorder


(continued)

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c.al years? Researchers are not certain, but theyhave found that there is no noticeable pattern inthe attacks. They may occur regularly for a time,suddenly cease, and just as suddenly reappear.In Jane’s case, the need to support and raise herfamily after her first husband’s death may havehelped ease the attacks. Many sufferers of panicdisorder find that throwing themselves into workdoes help the symptoms. Work, however, is not acure; the attacks usually begin again. The imme-diate cause of Jane’s recurrent attacks may havebeen her second husband’s drinking. This mayhave reminded her too much of her childhoodstruggles with an alcoholic father.

Treatment

Once properly diagnosed, therapists current-ly recommend a combination of cognitive,behavior, and drug therapy to help a personrecover. Medication is used only to control thesymptoms while the person is working on recov-ery. Medication is not considered a long-termsolution. Cognitive therapy helped Jane the

most. She came to realize that she had distortedideas about herself and her environment. As shelearned to change those ideas, her symptomsdiminished. Jane learned to think logically abouther fears and to understand that most of themwere unwarranted. She came to understand thatthere was nothing physically wrong with her. Shealso accepted the fact that she would have panicattacks from time to time, but that they wouldnot kill her. As she accepted the attacks, theyoccurred less frequently.

References

Barlow, D.H., & Cerny, J.A. (1988). Psychological Treatment of Panic.New York: The Guilford Press, 16.

Ritter, M. (1995, May 25). Inhibited tots may suffer anxiety later, studysays. The Record.

Talan, J. (1994, May 30). The realm of Freud may lose a territory. TheRecord.

Wilson, M., et al. (1993). Psychiatric disorders in adult children ofalcoholics. American Journal of Psychiatry, 150 (5), 793–800.

Source: Weinstock, L., & Gilman, E. (1998). Overcoming PanicDisorder. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. When did Jane’s panic attacks begin? When did the initial attacks occur?

2. What incorrect diagnoses did Jane receive?

3. What caused Jane’s panic attacks to cease for a time?

4. What theories have been proposed for the causes of panic disorder?

5. How is panic disorder generally treated today?

Thinking Critically


6. Why do you think panic disorder is so difficult to diagnose?

7. Why do you think that Jane’s need to work and raise her children alone eased her symptoms for aperiod of time?

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…This is the story of the one-of-a-kind relation-ship between the baby’s mother and the humans whotake care of her.

During the last several years, zoologist BethMoore and senior staff veterinarian Kirk Suedmeyerhave worked countless hours to get the mother, namedJill, to trust them. In the end, using positive reinforce-ment, they trained her to do things that no other zoo inthe world has been able to get an orangutan to do.

They got her to stick her arm into PVC pipe with ahole cut in the top so Suedmeyer could regularly drawblood. They had her urinate into a cup and hand it overfor analysis. And, almost unbelievable, they trained herto waddle to the front of her cage, grab the bars overher head and allow Suedmeyer to rub gel on herswollen tummy for ultrasounds.

That allowed caretakers to monitor the health ofthe orangutan fetus like never before—a critical step,because Jill’s last baby was stillborn.

Zoo Director Mark Wourms was thrilled. Not onlydid the accomplishment reflect well on the Kansas CityZoo, but it also provided researchers with “invaluableinformation about reproduction in an endangeredspecies.”

As long as anyone can remember, if zoo staffneeded to draw blood or perform an ultrasound onorangutans or other great apes, they had to immobilizethem first.

Orangutans are extremely strong—six to seventimes stronger than humans. Getting close to them canbe dangerous. That makes the prospect of giving themshots, drawing blood and rubbing ultrasound goo ontheir bellies all the more dicey.

So how did the Kansas City Zoo manage it?Suedmeyer just smiled.

“All you have to do is ask them,” he said. “We justnever asked them before.” Why go to the time, troubleand expense of shooting them with a tranquilizer dart

when you can earn their cooperation with positivereinforcement?

Enter the pudding and frozen raspberries.Orangutans love them. They also love gelatin, frozenblueberries and yogurt. You can see it in their faces asthey lift their heads and pucker their lips—the univer-sal orangutan symbol for “more.”

With time, training and big spoonfuls of treats,Suedmeyer and Moore learned orangutans would doalmost anything.

The program of behavior modification—calledoperant conditioning—began almost seven years agowith another orangutan. It started with changing theanimal’s feelings about the vet.

“Before,” Suedmeyer said, “every time I wouldcome up, it was a bad thing.”

Then he changed his approach. He decided tocome to the bars and just sit. No tranquilizer gun. Nonothing, he just sat.

Eventually, through training, the animal learned thatif he came close to Suedmeyer, he would be rewarded—with pudding, raspberries or something else.

They trained Jill the same way.Come here, get a treat. Put your arm through the

pipe, get a treat. Let them stick you with a needle andget a really, really big treat.

Since zoo staff members knew they would need tosee the infant orangutan, Moore even used positivereinforcement to train Jill to show her the baby.

They practiced with a stuffed orangutan.“We started with her touching the baby outside

bars,” Moore said.“Eventually we gave her the little stuffed animal

inside the bars. And we were teaching her things, liketo hold it up in case we needed to give it a bottle.

“But when she had her own baby, I thought: ‘Ohmy gosh. There’s just no way she’s going to let us seeit.‘ ”

R E A D I N G 17 Modifying Orangutan Behavior


(continued)

Behavior modification techniques are widely used with humans to help change unwanted behav-iors. Behavior modification techniques include classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Oneform of operant conditioning involves giving rewards for desired behavior. The reward encourages repe-tition of the behavior. Specialists at the Kansas City Zoo used special food rewards to gain the trust of apregnant orangutan. By modifying her behavior, they were able to monitor the health of the fetus duringits development.

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c.But Jill surprised Moore by showing her the baby,

named Pendamai, an Indonesian word meaning“peacemaker.”

“She came up to the bars, and I told her it wasreally a beautiful baby,” Moore said. “I said, ‘Gosh, Jillyou did such a beautiful job.’ And I said, ‘Can I seeyour baby?’ ” And she just sort of leaned forward andlet us look at the baby.

Zoo spokeswoman Denise Rendina saw the wholething.

“That animal absolutely presented the baby forBeth to see,” she said. “I was just like, ‘That is just the

sweetest thing I have ever seen.’ It was phenomenal.”Whether you want an animal to show you her

baby or let you give her a shot, the key is patience,trust, training and rewards.

Orangutans can’t reason like humans, Suedmeyersaid. But they can make a simple cost-benefit decision.

“It’s like: ‘Yeah, that’s going to hurt. But it won’thurt that badly, and I really like those raspberries.’”

Source: Fussell, James A. (1999, October 24). Zoo staff wins ape mom’strust. Kansas City Star. Reprinted in The Columbus Dispatch. p. 6D.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. Identify three things Jill, the orangutan, was taught to do.

2. What rewards did the zoologist and veterinarian use to modify Jill’s behavior?

3. How did the behavior modification help them monitor the health of the fetus?

4. Why had Jill learned to dislike the veterinarian?

5. Once the baby was born, how did the behavior modification help the veterinarians monitor thebaby’s health?

Thinking Critically


6. How did the zoologist and veterinarian use systematic desensitization to accomplish their goals?

7. What similarities and differences exist between behavior modification in humans and in animals?

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Case Study

Robert, a 9-year-old boy in the fourth grade,was brought to me by his mother. This was doneon the advice of Robert’s school counselor, whofelt Robert’s repeated misbehavior was out ofcontrol. The school counselor also felt thatRobert’s problems stemmed from conflict withinhis family, and that seeking services outside theschool would be beneficial for the whole family(this center was on a referral list for Robert’sschool district). Additionally, the school coun-selor knew that “in order to fully understand[Robert’s] behavior, a counselor has to under-stand both the teacher-student interaction andthe interactions within [Robert’s] family” (Hinkle& Wells, 1995).

Cindy, Robert’s mother, reported that Robertwas easily distracted and often got frustratedwith specific tasks that led to Robert getting intofights with his fellow students. Robert also com-plained constantly about the advanced-levelcourses he was taking in school, which includedintensive reading assignments. Socially, Robertwas involved with a boys club off and on for oneyear until his mother took this privilege away asa punishment for his behavior. According toCindy, Robert had very few friends because healways ended up fighting with them. Robert’s sis-ter, Rebecca, an 11-year-old in the fifth grade,was also in advanced classes but did not exhibitthe same behaviors as Robert. Her chief com-plaint was that she did not like to read. Cindyand David (children’s biological father) havebeen divorced five years and were separated fortwo years before then. The children have alwaysresided with Cindy, with David living two statesaway. The children have very little contact withtheir father, in fact, the last visit was two years

ago and they only saw him for one day. Up untilrecently, David called Robert and Rebecca two orthree times a year and sent Cindy child supportevery six to nine months. Within the last month,David had called them four times.

Family Sessions

For the initial visit, Cindy intended forRobert to have an individual session; after all,Robert’s school counselor suggested that Roberthad some emotional problems. However, theclient for that session (and those to come) wouldbe the whole family, since the focus of interven-tion efforts would be for the family-school sub-system (Lewis, 1996).

Members

As a family, Cindy, Rebecca, and Robert spokeof their “system” and defined the members andtheir roles via a family genogram [a chart of theirfamily relationship]. Cindy held the authorityand, with Robert and Rebecca’s input, made allthe decisions. All appeared quite close and com-municated well with each other, sharing feelingsand thoughts freely. When asked about David’srole, Cindy and Rebecca became teary eyedreportedly because they never talk about hisabsence; Robert said he did not care about hisdad. Cindy admitted her bitterness about Davidnot being a responsible father and her sadness forthe children not having a close relationship withhim.

Roles

Cindy stated that she was a full-time nurse,which leaves her drained at the end of the day.

Family Therapist andSchool Counselor

Work as a Team


(continued)

The following study uses a team approach to provide therapy to a 9-year-old boy who is havingtrouble in school and with his social skills. By working together, the school, the family unit, and thefamily therapist can best address Robert’s problems. The study is presented by the family therapist.

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c.After her “compensated” work at a local hospital,she goes home, where she performs varioushousehold chores, including cooking dinner,washing dishes and clothes, and helping Robertand Rebecca with their homework. Robert andRebecca spend the day at school and the after-noon in day care. At home, they spend up to fivehours completing their homework. Robert andRebecca have assigned chores, but these areoften put aside so they can complete theirhomework.

School

Robert stated that the teachers at his andRebecca’s school did not like him and never lis-tened to him. Furthermore, they assigned “stu-pid” homework that was too difficult for any“human being” to do. Rebecca did not complainas much but admitted getting frustrated with themany assigned readings. Cindy stated that theschool counselor recommended that Robert seea therapist because his chronic behavior wasmore than could be handled at school. Robertacknowledged that he often did not feel in con-trol and was not sure why.

Intervention

To offer problem-oriented family counselingto this group, it was important to collaboratewith the other “professionals” involved withRobert and his family (Kraus, 1998). This collab-oration formed a structure made up of separateorganizations so there would be a “pooling ofresources and expertise with a commitment ofpartnership agencies to a common mission”(Cassidy & LaDuca, 1997). This collaborationincluded the family members, the family thera-pist, and the school counselor. The school coun-selor had to be recruited, since she represented aunique position within Robert’s school as a liai-son with his teachers. Coordinating a meeting ofthis type can be difficult when there are manyindividuals involved. However, the informationgathered is invaluable because it serves to edu-cate all those involved about factors of whicheach may be unaware.

It was in this collaborative “community”(Keys et al., 1998) that information was sharedabout Robert’s behavior. Cindy and I learnedfrom the school counselor and teachers that

Robert acted out during transitions and com-plained that many of the boys in his classes triedto start fights with him. They also felt that Robertwas lacking appropriate social skills. To recipro-cate, Cindy and I shared that Robert resented hisfather and his father’s random phone calls; hefelt he did not have a constant “male” to talk to,let alone listen to him. . . . It was also shared thatCindy was not allowing Robert to attend a boysclub as a consequence of him not completing hishomework.

Discussion

After this meeting, it was agreed that thedesired change was for Robert to feel in controlof his emotions. Thus, a mutual agreement wasestablished. Cindy’s role would be to set up ahousehold structure with rewards and conse-quences for chores and homework and allowRobert (and Rebecca) opportunities to interactsocially with other children outside of school.This would include Robert attending the boysclub unconditionally and possibly getting amentor. . . . Also, as a family, Cindy, Rebecca, andRobert would have to set aside some qualitytime where each could be free from his or herdaily routines. Finally, family members wouldneed to discuss the father’s role in their lives andset up an agreement with him to establish a rou-tine of communication.

My role would be one of continuing sessionsin which Robert could talk about his feelingstoward his father and the family could connectthese emotions with Robert’s current anger.Another role would be to encourage the familyto develop a schedule so that each membercould share a proportionate amount of house-hold chores with encouragement from Cindy.

The school counselor would have the task ofcoordinating classroom arrangements withRobert’s teachers. This would include placingRobert in the front of the classroom to reducehis distractions and pairing him with anotherstudent so he would have the opportunity toimprove his social skills. The school counselorwould also place Robert in a group counselingsetting with other children who shared similarissues.

Thus, there was now a family-school coali-tion involved in helping Robert express and con-trol his emotions. . . . Hence, as family therapists,

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

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our role is often to look at the whole family asour client. In doing so, we have to offer “our”whole family; that is, our fellow school coun-selors. This inclusion is an example to our clientsthat it often takes a collaborative effort toaddress issues.

Conclusion

Families must be studied and treated con-textually if pertinent issues are to be includedwithin the formula for effectively addressingtheir concerns. When a child is experiencing dif-ficulty at home or at school, it is important toinclude parties from both settings to assist inbringing about the most effective treatmentplan. With this as a given, it is imperative thatthe school counselor and family therapist beopen to the various cultural influences that areaffecting the presenting problems. For eitherparty to ignore the influence that these varioussettings have on family life is to be left ignorantof significant information that could affect both

the assessment of the situation and the eventualtreatment plan. Although the roles and settingsdiffer, the school counselor and family therapisthave a common goal—to provide a service thatis in the best interest of the family. To do less isto risk failure.

References

Cassidy, K.A., & LaDuca, S.T. (1997). Sweet home family support center: A collaboration between education and human services. In W.M.Walsh & G.R. Williams (Eds.), Schools and Family Therapy: UsingSystems Theory and Family Therapy in the Resolution of SchoolProblems. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Hinkle, J.S., & Wells, M.E. (1995). Family counseling in the schools.Greensboro, NC: ERIC/CASS.

Keys, S.G., Bemak, F., Carpenter, S.L., & King-Sears, M.E. (1998).Collaborative consultant: A role for counselors serving at-riskyouth. Journal of Counseling and Development, 76, 123–133.

Kraus, I. (1998). A fresh look at school counseling: A family-systemsapproach. Professional School Counseling, 1(4), 12–17.

Lewis, B. (1996). A proposal for initiating family counseling interventionsby school counselors. The School Counselor, 44(2), 93–99.

Source: Rotter, J.C., & Boveja, M.E. (1999). Family therapists andschool counselors: A collaborative endeavor. Family Journal, 7 (3),276–279.

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1. What problems was Robert having at school?

2. What was Robert’s relationship with his mother and father?

3. What professionals formed a collaborative team to provide help to Robert and his family?

4. What family changes were recommended to Cindy and her family?

5. What changes were recommended for Robert at school?

Thinking Critically


6. How might the irregular contact with his father have affected Robert’s behavior with his peers?

7. The study recommends treating families in context. What does this mean? Why is it important?

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The myth of marriage goes like this: somewhereout there is the perfect soul mate, the yin that mesheseasily and effortlessly with your yang. And then thereis the reality of marriage, which, as any spouse knows,is not unlike what Thomas Edison once said aboutgenius: 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspira-tion. That sweaty part, the hard work of keeping a mar-riage healthy and strong, fascinates John Gottman.He’s a psychologist at the University of Washington,and he has spent more than two decades trying tounravel the bewildering complex of emotions thatbinds two humans together for a year, a decade oreven (if you’re lucky) a lifetime.

Gottman, 56, comes to this endeavor with the bestof qualifications: he’s got the spirit of a scientist andthe soul of a romantic. A survivor of one divorce, he’snow happily married to fellow psychologist JulieSchwartz Gottman (they run couples workshopstogether). His daunting task is to quantify such intangi-bles as joy, contempt and tension. Ground zero for thisresearch is the Family Research Laboratory on theSeattle campus (nicknamed the Love Lab). It consistsof a series of nondescript offices equipped with videocameras and pulse, sweat and movement monitors toread the hearts and minds of hundreds of couples whohave volunteered to be guinea pigs in longitudinalstudies of the marital relationship. These volunteershave opened up their lives to the researchers, dissect-ing everything from the frequency of sex to who takesout the garbage. . . .

Among his unexpected conclusions: anger is notthe most destructive emotion in a marriage, since bothhappy and miserable couples fight. Many popular ther-apies aim at defusing anger between spouses, butGottman found that the real demons (he calls them“the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”) are criticism,contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. Hisresearch shows that the best way to keep thesedemons at bay is for couples to develop a “love map”of their spouse’s dreams and fears. The happy couplesall had such a deep understanding of their partner’s

psyche that they could navigate roadblocks withoutcreating emotional gridlock.

Gottman’s research also contradicts the Mars-Venus school of relationships, which holds that menand women come from two very different emotionalworlds. According to his studies, gender differencesmay contribute to marital problems, but they don’tcause them. Equal percentages of both men andwomen he interviewed said that the quality of thespousal friendship is the most important factor in mari-tal satisfaction.

Gottman says he can predict, with more than 90percent accuracy, which couples are likely to end upin divorce court. The first seven years are especiallyprecarious; the average time for a divorce in this groupis 5.2 years. The next danger point comes around 16 to20 years into the marriage, with an average of 16.4years. He describes one couple he first met as newly-weds: even then they began every discussion of theirproblems with sarcasm or criticism, what Gottmancalls a “harsh start-up.” Although they professed to bein love and committed to the relationship, Gottman cor-rectly predicted that they were in trouble. Four yearslater they were headed for divorce, he says.

An unequal balance of power is also deadly to amarriage. Gottman found that a husband who doesn’tshare power with his wife has a much higher risk ofdamaging the relationship. Why are men singled out?Gottman says his data show that most wives, eventhose in unstable marriages, are likely to accept theirhusband’s influence. It’s the men who need to shapeup, he says. The changes can be simple, like turningoff the football game when she needs to talk. Gottmansays the gesture proves he values “us” over “me.”

Gottman’s research is built on the work of manyother scientists who have focused on emotion andhuman interaction. Early studies of marriage reliedheavily on questionnaires filled out by couples, butthese were often inaccurate. In the 1970s several psy-chology labs began using direct observation of cou-ples to study marriage. A big boon was a relatively

R E A D I N G 18 What Makes a Good Marriage?


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What makes a marriage work? Psychologist John Gottman is using a state-of-the-art laboratory toconduct a longitudinal study to learn more about what ingredients make a successful marriage.Although much research has focused on couples who are dealing with difficulties, Gottman’s study alsoexamines characteristics that lead to successful marriages.

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new tool for psychologists: videotape. Having a visualrecord that could be endlessly replayed made it mucheasier to study the emotional flow between spouses.In 1978 researchers Paul Ekman and Wallace Freisendevised a coding system for the human face that even-tually provided another way to measure interchangebetween spouses.

Although early studies focused on couples in trou-ble, Gottman thought it was also important to studycouples whose marriages work; he thinks they’re thereal experts. The Love Lab volunteers are interviewedabout the history of their marriage. They then talk infront of the cameras about subjects that cause conflictbetween them. One couple. . ., Tim and Kara, arguedconstantly about his friend Buddy, who often wound upspending the night on Tim and Kara’s couch. Theresearchers take scenes like this and break downevery second of interaction to create a statistical pat-tern of good and bad moments. How many times didshe roll her eyes (a sign of contempt) when he spoke?How often did he fidget (indicating tension or stress)?The frequency of negative and positive expressions,combined with the data collected by the heart, sweatand other monitors, provides a multidimensional viewof the relationship. (Tim and Kara ultimately decidedBuddy could stay, only not as often.)

Gottman and other researchers see their work asa matter of public health. The average couple whoseek help have been having problems for six years—long enough to have done serious damage to theirrelationship. That delay, Gottman says, is as dangerousas putting off regular mammograms. The United Stateshas one of the highest divorce rates in the industrializedworld, and studies have shown a direct correlation be-tween marriage and well-being. Happily married peopleare healthier; even their immune systems work betterthan those of people who are unhappily married ordivorced. Kids suffer as well; if their parents split, they’remore likely to have emotional or school problems.

But going to a marriage counselor won’t neces-sarily help. “Therapy is at an impasse,” Gottman says,“because it is not based on solid empirical knowledgeof what real couples do to keep their marriages happyand stable.” In a 1995 Consumer Reports survey, mar-riage therapy ranked at the bottom of a poll of patientsatisfaction with various psychotherapies. The maga-zine said part of the problem was that “almost anyonecan hang out a shingle as a marriage counselor.” Evencredentialed therapists may use approaches that haveno basis in research. Several recent studies haveshown that many current treatments produce fewlong-term benefits for couples who seek help.

One example: the process called “active listen-ing.” It was originally used by therapists to objectivelysummarize the complaints of a patient and validate the

way the patient is feeling. (“So, I’m hearing that youthink your father always liked your sister better andyou’re hurt by that.”) In recent years this techniquehas been modified for marital therapy—ineffectively,Gottman says. Even highly trained therapists wouldhave a hard time stepping back in the middle of a fightand saying, “So, I’m hearing that you think I’m a fat,lazy slob.”

Happily married couples have a very different wayof relating to each other during disputes, Gottmanfound. The partners make frequent “repair attempts,”reaching out to each other in an effort to prevent neg-ativity from getting out of control in the midst of con-flict. Humor is often part of a successful repair attempt.In his book, Gottman describes one couple arguingabout the kind of car to buy (she favors a minivan; hewants a snazzier Jeep). In the midst of yelling, the wifesuddenly puts her hand on her hip and sticks out hertongue—mimicking their 4-year-old son. They bothstart laughing, and the tension is defused.

In happy unions, couples build what Gottman callsa “sound marital house” by working together andappreciating the best in each other. They learn to copewith the two kinds of problems that are part of everymarriage: solvable conflicts and perpetual problemsthat may represent underlying conflicts and that canlead to emotional gridlock. Gottman says 69 percent ofmarital conflicts fall into the latter category. Happyspouses deal with these issues in a way that strength-ens the marriage. One couple Gottman studied arguedconstantly about order in their household (shedemanded neatness, and he couldn’t care less). Overthe years they managed to accommodate their differ-ences, acknowledging that their affection for eachother was more important than newspapers piled up inthe corner of the living room.

As psychologists learn more about marriage, theyhave begun devising new approaches to therapy.Philip Cowan and Carolyn Pape-Cowan, a husband-and-wife team (married for 41 years) at the Universityof California, Berkeley, are looking at one of the mostcritical periods in a marriage: the birth of a first child.(Two-thirds of couples experience a “precipitous drop”in marital satisfaction at this point, researchers say.)“Trying to take two people’s dreams of a perfect familyand make them one is quite a trick,” Pape-Cowan says.The happiest couples were those who looked on theirspouses as partners with whom they shared house-hold and child-care duties. The Cowans say one wayto help spouses get through the transition to parentingwould be ongoing group sessions with other youngfamilies to provide the kind of support people used toget from their communities and extended families.

Two other researchers—Neil Jacobson at theUniversity of Washington and Andrew Christensen at

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c.UCLA—have developed what they call “acceptancetherapy” after studying the interactions of couples inconflict. The goal of their therapy is to help peoplelearn to live with aspects of their spouse’s charactersthat simply can’t be changed. “People can love eachother not just for what they have in common but forthings that make them complementary,” saysJacobson. “When we looked at a clinical sample ofwhat predicted failure in traditional behavior therapy,what we came upon again and again was an inabilityto accept differences.”

Despite all these advances in marital therapy,researchers still say they can’t save all marriages—and in fact there are some that shouldn’t be saved.

Patterns of physical abuse, for example, are extremelydifficult to alter, Gottman says. And there are caseswhere the differences between the spouses are soprofound and longstanding that even the best therapyis futile. Gottman says one quick way to test whether acouple still has a chance is to ask what initially attract-ed them to each other. If they can recall those magicfirst moments (and smile when they talk about them),all is not lost. “We can still fan the embers,” saysGottman. For all the rest of us, there’s hope.

Source: Kantrowitz, B., & Wingert, P. (1999, April 19). The scienceof a good marriage: Psychology is unlocking the secrets of happycouples. Newsweek, 133 (16), 52–57.

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1. What was John Gottman’s unexpected conclusion in conducting his longitudinal study?

2. What emotions and behaviors has Gottman identified that are destructive to marriage?

3. What technology do researchers use today to help gather data? What type of data can be gatheredwith this tool?

4. Why do researchers see their work as a matter of public health?

5. What do the Cowans recommend to address the stress that many marriages experience at the birthof their first child?

Thinking Critically


6. Why may “active listening” not work as a therapy technique in marriage counseling?

7. Zick Rubin has identified three components of romantic love: need, attachment, and intimacy. Howcan love maps and acceptance therapy strengthen these three components?

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Background

Culture may be defined as an integrated pat-tern of beliefs, activities, and knowledge that onegeneration passes to the next. People within theculture share a common language, manner ofacting, and beliefs that guide behavior. Althoughculture changes over time, these changes tend tobe slow and subtle. A major cultural divide existsbetween individualistic cultures like the UnitedStates and collectivistic cultures such as theChinese and the Kurds. In individualistic cul-tures, the individual’s opinions, beliefs, and atti-tudes are given priority. In collectivistic cultures,the group’s opinions, beliefs, and attitudes aregiven priority. Understanding differences inthese cultures helps us live in a global world.When conflicts arise, each culture has differentexpectations about how to resolve them. Thisstudy examines the way in which conflicts areresolved and disputes are settled in the twotypes of culture.

Hypothesis

In individualistic cultures, conflicts areresolved using a formal legal process. The lawsof the state take priority over tradition or moralvalues. Conflicts between family members,friends, or neighbors often end up in the formallegal system. When conflicts reach the legal sys-tem, members of the culture accept the state’srule of law. In collectivistic cultures, traditionand religion take priority over laws enacted bythe state. Disputes, especially those among fami-ly members, friends, and neighbors are oftenresolved informally, rather than through the for-mal legal system.

Method

The study examined three cultures: one indi-vidualistic, Germany, and two collectivistic,Kurdish and Lebanese. The study was conductedin Germany. The Kurdish and Lebanese partici-

pants were seeking asylum in Germany. Theywere recent arrivals to Germany and had spenttheir adult lives to that point in either Turkey(Kurds) or Lebanon (Lebanese). They were askedto respond to the interviewers’ questions basedon their understanding of the legal systems oftheir homeland. The German participants weredirected to respond based on their understand-ing of the German culture and legal system.

To verify the original assessment that theGermans had a more individualistic mind-set,while the Kurds and Lebanese had a more col-lectivistic mind-set, participants completed a14-question survey used to measure individual-ism and collectivism.

The interviews were conducted in the nativelanguage of each participant. The interviewersall used the same questionnaire. It consisted offive vignettes involving typical conflict situa-tions. Cultural experts reviewed the vignettes toensure that the conflict situations in thevignettes were typical of what would be found inthe cultures of the participants.

The first vignette was as follows: “Imaginethat your cousin had bought a second-hand carfrom a stranger. Because the engine broke downafter two days, the cousin wants an explanationfrom the seller; the seller claims not to know himand denies that he sold him a car. A heated argu-ment turns into a physical fight in which thecousin is severely injured.”

After reading the vignette, the interviewersasked a series of open-ended questions aboutthe participants’ views of legitimate authority,their willingness to accept government law overin-group resolution of conflicts, and their viewson shame and guilt.

Results

The 14-question survey verified theresearcher’s assessment that German culturetends to be individualistic and the culture of theKurds and Lebanese tends to be collectivistic.

Culture and Conflict Resolution


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c.For purposes of analysis, the responses of theKurds and Lebanese were combined and com-pared with the German responses.

Legitimate authority to resolve conflicts restswith the state in individualistic cultures. Germanparticipants were much more willing to resolvedisputes in court than were the Lebanese andKurdish participants. Participants from the col-lectivistic cultures gave more weight to traditionand religion as the legitimate authority in resolv-ing conflict.

In addition, members of individualistic cul-tures preferred a formal process to resolve dis-putes and conflicts. When crimes were commit-ted, the Germans recommended calling thepolice and involving the courts. Members of thecollectivistic cultures preferred an informalprocess that involved self-regulation and a will-ingness of the offending party to apologize.Often family members of the parties in a conflicthelp resolve the dispute.

Conclusion

Members of collectivistic cultures are morewilling to abide by the norms of tradition andreligious or moral authority. They are less likelyto involve the state, represented by policeauthority and the court system, in settling dis-putes, especially if those disputes involve peoplein their own group. For example, disputesamong family members or neighbors do notgenerally find their way to court in collectivisticcultures. Instead they are resolved as a part ofnormal social relationships with a friend or fam-ily member serving as a mediator between theparties in conflict.

Members of individualistic cultures tend torely more heavily on the state and the formallegal system to resolve conflicts. They preferlegal consistency and are willing to take disputesinvolving family members or friends through theformal legal process.

Source: Bierbrauer, G. (1994). Toward an understanding of legalculture: Variations in individualism and collectivism between Kurds,Lebanese, and Germans. Law & Society Review, 28 (2), 243–64.

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1. How are individuals and groups viewed differently in individualistic and collectivistic cultures?

2. What is the hypothesis of the study?

3. What method was used to conduct the study?

4. How did the researchers verify the accuracy of their assumption about the culture of each partici-pant? Was their assumption accurate?

Thinking Critically


5. Given the nature of each culture, explain why collectivistic cultures rely more heavily on traditionand religious and moral authority, while individualistic cultures rely more heavily on the authorityof the state.

6. Write a vignette that could be used to assess collectivistic and individualistic viewpoints. Then dis-cuss the vignette from each perspective.

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In 1911, two groups of explorers set off on anincredible mission. Though they used different strate-gies and routes, the leaders of the teams had the samegoal: to be the first in history to reach the South Pole.Their stories are life-and-death illustrations of the Lawof Navigation.

One of the groups was led by Norwegian explorerRoald Amundsen. Ironically, Amundsen had not origi-nally intended to go to Antarctica. His desire was to bethe first man to reach the North Pole. But when he dis-covered that Robert Peary had beaten him there,Amundsen changed his goal and headed toward theother end of the earth. North or south—he knew hisplanning would pay off.

Amundsen Carefully Charted His CourseBefore his team ever set off, Amundsen had

painstakingly planned his trip. He studied the methodsof the Eskimos and other experienced Arctic travelersand determined that their best course of action wouldbe to transport all their equipment and supplies bydogsled. When he assembled his team, he choseexpert skiers and dog handlers. His strategy was sim-ple. The dogs would do most of the work as the grouptraveled fifteen to twenty miles in a six-hour periodeach day. That would allow both the dogs and the menplenty of time to rest each day for the following day’stravel.

Amundsen’s forethought and attention to detailwere incredible. He located and stocked supply depotsall along the route. That way they would not have tocarry every bit of their supplies with them the wholetrip. He also equipped his people with the best gearpossible. Amundsen had carefully considered everypossible aspect of the journey, thought it through, andplanned accordingly. And it paid off. The worst prob-

lem they experienced on the trip was an infected tooththat one man had to have extracted.

Scott Violated the Law of NavigationThe other team of men was led by Robert Falcon

Scott, a British naval officer who had previously donesome exploring in the Antarctic area. Scott’s expedi-tion was the antithesis [opposite] of Amundsen’s.Instead of using dogsleds, Scott decided to use motor-ized sledges and ponies. Their problems began whenthe motors on the sledges stopped working only fivedays into the trip. The ponies didn’t fare well either inthose frigid temperatures. When they reached the footof the Transantarctic Mountains, all of the poor ani-mals had to be killed. As a result, the team membersthemselves ended up hauling the two-hundred-poundsledges. It was arduous [difficult] work.

Scott hadn’t given enough attention to the team’sother equipment. Their clothes were so poorlydesigned that all the men developed frostbite. Oneteam member required an hour every morning just toget his boots onto his swollen, gangrenous feet. Andeveryone became snowblind because of the inade-quate goggles Scott had supplied. On top of everythingelse, the team was always low on food and water. Thatwas also due to Scott’s poor planning. The depots ofsupplies Scott established were inadequately stocked,too far apart, and often poorly marked, which madethem very difficult to find. Because they were continu-ally low on fuel to melt snow, everyone became dehy-drated. Making things even worse was Scott’s lastminute decision to take along a fifth man, even thoughthey had prepared enough supplies for only four.

After covering a grueling eight hundred miles inten weeks, Scott’s exhausted group finally arrived atthe South Pole on January 17, 1912. There they found

R E A D I N G 19 Who’s Steering the Ship?


(continued)

What makes a good leader? Some personality traits may help makea leader. But most psychologists agree that leadership skills can belearned. Great leaders agree that they are always learning andimproving their skills. One skill that good leaders develop is calledthe “law of navigation,” which is the ability to chart a course forthe group. Whether the group is a large corporation or a smallsocial club, it must have a purpose and a direction. Effective leaders set a direction and communicate their plan to the group.

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c.the Norwegian flag flapping in the wind and a letterfrom Amundsen. The other well-led team had beatenthem to their goal by more than a month!

If You Don’t Live by the Law of Navigation. . .As bad as their trip to the pole was, that isn’t the

worst part of their story. The trek back was horrific.Scott and his men were starving and suffering fromscurvy. But Scott, unable to navigate to the very end,was oblivious to their plight. With time running out anddesperately low on food, Scott insisted that they col-lect thirty pounds of geological specimens to takeback—more weight to be carried by the worn-out men.

Their progress became slower and slower. Onemember of the party sank into a stupor and died.Another, Lawrence Oates, was in terrible shape. Theformer army officer, who had originally been broughtalong to take care of the ponies, had frostbite sosevere that he had trouble going on. Because hebelieved he was endangering the team’s survival, it’ssaid that he purposely walked out into a blizzard torelieve the group of himself as a liability. Before he leftthe tent and headed out into the storm, he said, “I amjust going outside; I may be some time.”

Scott and his final two team members made it onlya little farther north before giving up. The return triphad already taken two months, and still they were 150miles from their base camp. There they died. We knowtheir story only because they spent their last hourswriting in their diaries. . . . Scott had courage, but notleadership. Because he was unable to live by the Lawof Navigation, he and his companions died by it.

Followers need leaders able to effectively navi-gate for them. When they’re facing life-and-death situ-ations, the necessity is painfully obvious. But, evenwhen consequences aren’t as serious, the need is justas great. The truth is that nearly anyone can steer theship, but it takes a leader to chart the course. That isthe Law of Navigation.

Navigators See the Trip AheadGeneral Electric chairman Jack Welch asserts, “A

good leader remains focused. . . . Controlling yourdirection is better than being controlled by it.” Welchis right, but leaders who navigate do even more thancontrol the direction in which they and their peopletravel. They see the whole trip in their minds beforethey leave the dock. They have a vision for their desti-nation, they understand what it will take to get there,they know who they’ll need on the team to be success-ful, and they recognize the obstacles long before theyappear on the horizon. Leroy Eims, author of Be theLeader You Were Meant to Be, writes, “A leader is onewho sees more than others see, who sees farther thanothers see, and who sees before others do.”

The larger the organization, the more clearly theleader has to be able to see ahead. That’s truebecause sheer size makes midcourse correctionsmore difficult. And if there are errors, many more peo-ple are affected than when you’re traveling alone orwith only a few people. The disaster shown in therecent film Titanic was a good example of that kind ofproblem. The crew could not see far enough ahead toavoid the iceberg altogether, and they could notmaneuver enough to change course once the objectwas spotted because of the size of the ship, the largestbuilt at that time. The result was that more than onethousand people lost their lives.

Where the Leader Goes. . .First-rate navigators always have in mind that

other people are depending on them and their ability tochart a good course. I read an observation by JamesA. Autry in Life and Work: A Manager’s Search forMeaning that illustrates this idea. He said that occa-sionally you hear about the crash of four militaryplanes flying together in a formation. The reason forthe loss of all four is this: When jet fighters fly ingroups of four, one pilot—the leader—designateswhere the team will fly. The other three planes fly onthe leader’s wing, watching him and following himwherever he goes. Whatever moves he makes, the restof his team will make along with him. That’s truewhether he soars in the clouds or smashes into amountaintop.

Before leaders take their people on a journey, theygo through a process in order to give the trip the bestchance of being a success.

Navigators Draw on Past ExperienceEvery past success and failure can be a source of

information and wisdom—if you allow it to be.Successes teach you about yourself and what you’recapable of doing with your particular gifts and talents.Failures show what kinds of wrong assumptions you’vemade and where your methods are flawed. If you failto learn from your mistakes, you’re going to fail againand again. That’s why effective navigators start withexperience. But they certainly don’t end there.

Navigators Listen to What Others Have toSay

No matter how much you learn from the past, itwill never tell you all you need to know for the present.That’s why top-notch navigators gather informationfrom many sources. They get ideas from members oftheir leadership team. They talk to the people in theirorganization to find out what’s happening on the grass-roots level. And they spend time with leaders from out-side the organization who can mentor them.

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Navigators Examine the Conditions beforeMaking Commitments

I like action, and my personality prompts me to bespontaneous. On top of that, I have reliable intuitionwhen it comes to leadership. But I’m also conscious ofmy responsibilities as a leader. So before I make com-mitments that are going to impact my people, I takestock and thoroughly think things through. Good navi-gators count the cost before making commitments forthemselves and others.

Navigators Make Sure Their ConclusionsRepresent both Faith and Fact

Being able to navigate for others requires a leaderto possess a positive attitude. You’ve got to have faith

that you can take your people all the way. If you can’tconfidently make the trip in your mind, you’re not goingto be able to take it in real life. On the other hand, youalso have to be able to see the facts realistically. Youcan’t minimize obstacles or rationalize your chal-lenges. If you don’t go in with your eyes wide open,you’re going to get blindsided. As Bill Easum observes,“Realistic leaders are objective enough to minimizeillusions. They understand that self-deception can costthem their vision.” Sometimes it’s difficult balancingoptimism and realism, intuition and planning, faith andfact. But that’s what it takes to be effective as a navi-gating leader.

Source: Maxwell, J.C. (1998). The 21 Irrefutable Laws ofLeadership. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 33–39.

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1. What were the differences between Amundsen’s and Scott’s expeditions?

2. How did these differences affect the outcomes of the expeditions?

3. What does Leroy Eims say about leaders?

4. How can failures in leadership help a leader?

5. How does the author describe the qualities of effective navigating leaders?

Thinking Critically


6. What styles of leadership might use the law of navigation discussed by the author?

7. Evaluate the leader of a secondary group to which you belong based on his or her ability to chart acourse for the group.

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Introduction

Aggressive and violent acts have increased inschools across the United States. Violence pre-vention programs seek to reverse the trend. Across-sectional study of middle school studentsexplored whether there should be a strongparental component in such programs.

Hypothesis

The researchers stated their hypothesis asfollows: “that students who do not live with bothparents, who have poor relationships with theirparents, who have low parental monitoring, andwho perceive that their parents support fightingwill be more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviorand carry weapons.”

Method

The study consisted of a survey of all sixth,seventh, and eighth graders from urban middleschools in a large school district in Texas. Thefinal sample included 8,865 usable surveys, rep-resenting 88.5 percent of the school population.Students were evenly distributed by gender andgrade.

Before the survey was administered, parentalpermission was obtained. Students were assuredthat all results would be confidential. Studentswere given the opportunity to decline participa-tion, although few did. The first part of the sur-vey asked students to self-report their aggressivebehaviors during the past week. Aggressivebehaviors ranged from teasing and name-callingto fighting. Students reported the number oftimes during the past week that they had engagedin such behaviors using a scale of 0 to 6 times.Separate questions asked for the frequency offighting, injuries due to fighting, and if weaponshad been brought to school.

The second section of the survey asked stu-dents to describe their relationships with theirparents. Specifically, it asked students who they

lived with, how well they got along with theirparents, and how closely their parents moni-tored their activities. This section also includeda series of 10 statements designed to assessstudents’ perception of their parents’ attitudeabout aggressiveness and violence. Studentsresponded “yes” or “no” to these statementsindicating if their parents had recommendedthis solution to conflict. For example, one state-ment was “If someone calls you names, ignorethem.” Students responded by indicating if theirparents had ever given them this advice.

Results

The average number of aggressive acts com-mitted by students in the prior week was 16,although the majority of these acts were notconsidered violent. About 10 percent admittedto carrying a handgun to school and 25 percenthad brought other kinds of weapons to school.On all measures of aggressive behavior, the inci-dence was lower for girls than for boys.

In the family life measures, 60 percentreported that they lived with both parents, and70 percent said that they had a good or verygood relationship with their parents. There was amarked difference in parental monitoringbetween boys and girls. Only 50 percent of theboys reported that their parents monitored themajority of their activities, while 66 percent ofthe girls reported high parental monitoring.

All the measures of family structure played asignificant role in aggressiveness of these stu-dents. Students who lived with both parentswere the least likely to commit violent acts atschool. They were less likely to fight, be injuredin a fight, or carry a weapon. Students who had a good relationship with their parents were somewhat less likely to commit violent acts or to be involved in fights. In addition, those students who reported high parental monitoring were three times less likely to commit aggressive acts.

C A S E S T U D Y 19 Parental Involvement

and Students’

Aggressive Behaviors


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The final measure of family structure andaggressiveness compared student aggressivenessand students’ perceived parental stance towardaggression and violence. Of all the measures,relationship proved strongest. Students whobelieved their parents supported fighting as asolution to problems were much more likely toresort to violence to resolve conflicts. For exam-ple, only 14.5 percent of boys who said their par-ents supported peaceful solutions had beeninvolved in a fight at school within the pastweek, while 57.5 percent of boys who believedtheir parents supported aggression had beeninvolved in a fight. The difference among girls iseven more striking with a range from 7.5 percentto 64 percent.

Conclusions

Most observers believe that the prevalenceof violence and aggression in schools today istoo high. As psychologists and school adminis-trators search for ways to reduce aggression,parental involvement will be a key factor in anyprogram’s success. While prevention programsmay not be able to influence the basic familystructure, the programs can encourage parentalinvolvement with their children. These programscan also include an educational element for par-ents to encourage them to support peacefulsolutions to conflict.

Source: Orpinas, P., & Murray, N. (1999). Parental influences on students’aggressive behaviors and weapon carrying. Behavior, 26 (6), 774–87.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

(continued)



1. What is the hypothesis of this study?

2. Who were the participants in this study?

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 100%

20%

40%

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Fought at School

Carried Handgun

Violent Acts by Boys

Number of Violent Acts

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100%

Violent Acts by Girls

Number of Violent Acts

Per

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c.3. What was the average number of aggressive acts committed by students in the prior week?

4. Which of the family structure measures influenced students’ aggressive behaviors?

5. Which family structure measure is most clearly related to school violence?

Thinking Critically


6. What elements would you include in a violence prevention plan for students? Why?

7. What elements would you include in a violence prevention plan for parents? Why?

8. What other factors may be contributing to the rise of violence in schools?

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A phony Web site touting a mythical corporatetakeover sent stock prices soaring—and then plum-meting—on Wall Street Wednesday [April 7, 1999]. Ithammered home an important lesson that is often lostin the hype about the Internet: You can’t believe every-thing you read on line—even when it’s relayed by well-meaning colleagues and friends. Rumors and hoaxesproliferate in cyberspace, and perfectly reasonablepeople are prone to believe them and pass them on.

“We trust technology more than the government,”said Patricia Turner, a professor of African-Americanstudies at the University of California at Davis andauthor of I Heard It Through the Grapevine. “TheInternet seems to be a sophisticated purveyor of infor-mation, so we think, `If it comes through expensivehardware, it must be so.’”

The bogus Web site, which looked like a page ofBloomberg News and “reported” the sale of anAmerican technology company called PairgainTechnologies Inc., was obviously the work of a sophis-ticated snake-in-the-grass. And the fraud worked:Some investors were left sheepishly counting theirlosses, while some day traders, who use the Internetto capitalize on instant changes in stock prices,undoubtedly cleared a tidy profit.

Government regulators were searching for thesource of the story yesterday, and Lycos Inc., whichoperates the service where the phony Web pageappeared, said it would cooperate.

Hackers and hoaxers who alter pages or postphony sites are as old as the medium itself; just this

week, a prankster set up a satiric page designed toconvince browsers it was the official Senate campaignsite for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York. And cybercelebrity Matt Drudge routinely spreads rumors on hiswidely read Web site. But the spread of misinformationon line isn’t always malicious, although it is almostalways infectious. As more and more people are rely-ing on the Internet for information and communication,the old-fashioned urban legend—once passed fromneighbor to neighbor by word of mouth—has prolifer-ated in cyberspace. Tall tales of horror and doom, ofcorruption and gloom, breed rapidly in cyberspace,spreading as fast as a cold virus in a room full of tod-dlers.

Some of these rumors are harmless, like the wide-ly circulated tale about the upscale department storethat charged $250 for a cookie recipe. Others areannoying, like the chain e-mail promising good luck orquick cash. But still others have the potential to harmbusinesses or to inspire genuine fear.

A few examples: Have you heard the one aboutdesigner Tommy Hilfiger making racist statements onthe Oprah Winfrey show? Have you been warnedabout asbestos in tampons or air freshener that killspets? Have you been cautioned about kidnappers inmall parking lots or gang members lurking on highwaysor needles infected with the AIDS virus that show up inmovie theaters and coin-return slots? Have you beenalerted that the Voter Rights Act is set to expire in2007, disenfranchising African-Americans? None ofthese stories is true. But all of them have been circu-

R E A D I N G 20 Folklore, Gossip, and the Internet


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Do you remember the old game of telephone? Youwould pass a secret message from person to person and seehow garbled the original message became by the end of theline. Gossip is as old as human history. Today, however, elec-tronic communication can spread gossip around the globealmost instantaneously. Once gossip or myth has begun tocirculate on the Web, it is proving difficult to stop.

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c.lating for years via e-mail and electronic bulletinboards. Enough people believe them to make theserumors multiply with a few taps on a keyboard and aclick of a mouse.

Folklorists who study such trends say theserumors proliferate because they tap into deep societalfears. “They touch on our ambivalence about thethings we worry about, the things that concern us,”Turner said. Rumors about the spread of the AIDS virusand tall tales about stolen kidneys, for instance, reflectcommon anxieties about infectious disease as well asa general concern about the health care system. Andrumors about government conspiracies, such as theone about the Voter Rights Act, reveal an overall soci-etal distrust of “official” information.

At the same time, these stories can stroke egos;people who pass them on to friends and colleaguesoften feel as if they are doing a good deed. “It feeds aperson’s sense of self-importance,” said BarbaraMikkelson, . . .”They think, `If I can warn you about thisbig scary thing that is happening in our world, for thatmoment, I will feel like I’m in the spotlight a little bit.’

“And you also have access to a wider audience,”she said. “Before if you got a great story, you’d make aphotocopy and stick it up on the bulletin board by theelevator. Now all you have to do is hit the alt-forwardkey and send it out.” The ease of transmission makes itnearly impossible to kill an Internet rumor, no matterhow outrageous, defamatory, or potentially damaging.The Hilfiger rumor, for one, exploded on the Internet in1996, and it’s still going strong. According to the story,long proven false, the designer went on the Oprahshow and said that he didn’t want African-Americansor Asians to wear his pricy signature clothing. BothHilfiger and representatives from the Oprah showissued statements denying the rumor—Hilfiger hasnever even appeared on the show—but the tale sim-mers down for a while and then reemerges apace.

That kind of story is what experts call a “divingrumor,” a tale that is repeatedly debunked but refuses

to die. “It’s like one of those carnival games, whereyou have a mallet and you have to hit whatever comesup,” said Gary Alan Fine, a sociology professor atNorthwestern University and author of ManufacturingTales. “It comes up. It is batted down. Then a fewweeks later, it comes up again in another place.”

A textbook example of a diving rumor emergedlate last year. According to the original tale, SteveBurns, host of the Nickelodeon children’s show “Blue’sClues,” had died in a car crash. The rumor fizzled, buta few weeks ago, it reemerged—with dramatic embel-lishment. The new version claims that the cable net-work is covering up Burns’s death by using a look-alikein the show, a tale similar to the “Paul is dead” storiesthat circulated about Paul McCartney in the ‘60s and‘70s. But this particular story didn’t just affect matureadults: It spread among young children, who wereunderstandably distraught. “Some people might thinkthis is a joke, but it isn’t funny for these children,” saidAngela Santomero, the show’s co-creator and co-executive producer. “They regard Steve as a greatcamp counselor, and that’s why they’re so upset.”Daniel Anderson, a psychology professor at theUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst and a “Blue’sClues” consultant, said the rumors were likely startedby cynical adults who are put off by the show’s inno-cence. “There is a resentment of the characters thathave special places in the hearts of children,” he said.“But these kinds of rumors can be extremely destruc-tive and are certainly upsetting to young children.”. . .

For all of its chaotic freedom, the Internet has adark side: Every day is April Fools’ Day in cyberspace.Pernicious rumors are difficult to squelch and evenharder to trace. “It’s hard to find the precise momentwhen an urban legend comes into being,” saidMikkelson. “It’s like trying to find out where a riverstarts.”

Source: Hartigan, P. (1999, April 9). Unfounded rumors can proveindestructible in cyberspace. Boston Globe, p. A1.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

(continued)



1. What happened when a phony Web site announced a mythical corporate takeover?

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2. How were urban legends spread before the Internet?

3. Give an example of a business that may have been harmed from a myth that was spread via theInternet.

4. Why do folklorists say these rumors multiply?

5. What is a “diving rumor”?

Thinking Critically


6. How can you avoid being fooled by an urban myth?

7. How would you feel if you were the victim of untrue rumors spreading on the Internet? What wouldyou do to address the falsehood?

8. How do these urban myths strengthen your existing attitudes?

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Hypothesis

When a judge tells a jury to disregard certaininformation, can the jury forget what they haveread or heard? How can the opposing attorneyminimize the effects of such information? Thehypothesis of this case study assumes that anattorney can reduce the effects of pretrial public-ity or inadmissable evidence by creating the sus-picion that this information was presented withulterior motives.

Method

To test the hypothesis, an experiment wasconducted in which participants became mockjurors in a murder trial. Researchers prepared atrial transcript and created what looked likecopies of newspaper articles and a set of instruc-tions to the jurors. These were standard judicialinstructions directing jurors to not be influencedby prejudice or passion, and to make all judg-ments “from evidence received in the trial andnot from any other source.”

Participants were asked to imagine that theywere jurors in an actual trial. Each was to readthe material provided and make a decision con-cerning innocence or guilt in the case. Therewould be no jury deliberation. Responses fromeach “juror” would be anonymous.

All participants read the same 22-page tran-script of the trial, State of New York v. CharlesWilson. The defendant, Charles Wilson, wasaccused of killing his estranged wife and a maleneighbor. The transcript consisted of the judge’sopening instructions to the jury, the openingand closing statements of the prosecution andthe defense, and the testimony of six witnesses.

The prosecution argued that Wilson believedhis wife was having an affair, hired a privateinvestigator to prove this, and killed his wife andthe neighbor when he discovered them togetherin her home. Wilson had moved out of theirhome two weeks before the murder. The knife

used to kill the victims had Wilson’s fingerprintson it, and a witness testified that he had seen thedefendant in front of his wife’s home on thenight of the killings.

The defense argued that the evidenceagainst Wilson was circumstantial; that Wilson’sfingerprints were on the knife because it was hisown hunting knife, which was among the manypersonal items he had left in the house when hemoved out; and that the testimony of the eyewit-ness was unreliable and not relevant to the mur-ders themselves.

Participants were randomly assigned to oneof three groups: the control group, the pretrialpublicity group, and the suspicion group. Thecontrol group read only the transcript of thetrial. Their judgment then was solely based onthe facts presented in the case.

Before being given the transcript, partici-pants in the pretrial publicity group were givencopies of newspaper-style articles. Onedescribed the crime, the accusations against thedefendant, and that he had been arraigned. Asecond article reported that Wilson had a historyof beating his wife and reported that “sources”said Wilson’s fingerprints had been found on themurder weapon and that witnesses had placedhim at the scene of the crime. Also included wasa column called “In My Opinion” complete witha photograph of the “columnist.” This column,written in an emotional and hostile way, report-ed that Wilson was an alcoholic, prone to vio-lence when drinking, and quoted unnamedsources saying Wilson was jealous of his wife.The column contained other bits of negativeinformation about Wilson and called strongly forhis conviction.

Participants in the suspicion group were alsogiven the packet of newspaper articles and thecolumn, plus one additional item: a brief newsarticle that called into question the motives ofthe media covering the case. At no point was thecolumnist mentioned specifically, although the

C A S E S T U D Y 20 “The Jury WillDisregard That!”


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defense attorney did deny the allegations in thecolumn. The defense attorney called the mediacoverage of the case “completely libelous” andsaid, “The coverage of this case serves as anotherfine example of how the media manipulatesinformation to sell papers, and knowinglyignores facts which would point toward a defen-dant’s innocence.” The attorney suggested thatthe district attorney’s office may have plantedinformation in the media “in order to sway pub-lic opinion.”

Results

The principal hypothesis was that exposingparticipants to pretrial publicity would increasethe likelihood that they would think the defen-dant was guilty, but that making participantssuspicious about the pretrial publicity wouldreduce this effort.

In the “no publicity” control group, a minori-ty of the jurors offered a guilty verdict. Of thepretrial publicity group, more than three-quar-ters voted guilty, indicating that negative pretrialpublicity tended to bias the participants againstthe defendant. Participants in the suspiciongroup, however, were no more likely to convictthan were jurors in the control group.

Conclusions

The study shows that pretrial publicityagainst the defendant can influence a jurytoward conviction, but that creating suspicionregarding the motives behind the source(s) ofsuch publicity can offset the negative effects.

Source: Fein, S., & McCloskey, A.L. (1997). Can the jury disregardthat information? The use of suspicion to reduce the prejudicialeffects of pretrial publicity and inadmissible testimony. Personality& Social Psychology Bulletin, 23 (11), 1215–26.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. What was the hypothesis of this case study?

2. What kind of “evidence” did the researchers prepare to serve as pretrial publicity?

3. How did the column, “In My Opinion,” create the attitude in the reader that the defendant wasguilty or not guilty?

4. Were the jurors to deliberate together and decide as a group, or were their decisions to be madeindividually? Why?

5. How did the results vary among the control, pretrial publicity, and suspicion groups?

Thinking Critically


6. In a case where there has been considerable pretrial publicity, why would a judge instruct a jury tomake all judgments “from evidence received in the trial and not from any other source”?

7. How can pretrial publicity prejudice people who serve on juries? How can this prejudice belessened?

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It almost never fails. Any time a big league pitchercan’t find home plate with his fastball, Steve Blass getsa telephone call. Any second now, he can expectAtlanta pitcher Mark Wohlers’ agent to break in withan emergency call. “They say, ‘We’d like you to talk tothis guy,’” Blass says, “and I say, ‘I’m the last guy youwant to talk to him!’”

Blass is baseball’s most enduring mental mystery.After pitching the Pittsburgh Pirates to the 1971 WorldSeries title, and winning 19 games the next year, Blasslost control of his pitches in 1973 and was out of thegame, at 32, in 1974. “To this day, I don’t know whatcaused it,” says Blass, now a Pirate broadcaster. “Inever had a sore arm in my life.” The malady remainscommonly known in baseball circles as “Steve BlassDisease.” Blass didn’t have a team psychologist to turnto, although on his own he sought out everything shortof shock therapy. “I went to a hypnotist and he said,‘You’re a bad subject.’” Blass wishes he could havetapped into today’s advances in sports psychology. “Ithink there would be more things for me to try,” hesays. There have been considerable strides made inhelping athletes cope with the mental side of sports.Agent Leigh Steinberg says many of his famous clientsuse acupuncture, acupressure, meditation and yogafor stress relief. The Dodgers and Angels have sportspsychologists on staff, although many players are stillreluctant to take a seat on the couch. “No one wantsto admit it’s mental,” Angel team psychologist KenRavizza says. “They say ‘It’s my arm, my mechanics, it’snot my head.’ It’s the biggest barrier I have to overcome,the whole shrink image. I say, ‘I’m not a shrink, I’m astretch.’ On the Angels, maybe one-fourth of the guysare really into it.” Troy Percival and Tim Salmon are twoAngels not reluctant to admit they work with Ravizza.Percival uses breathing techniques to stay calm on themound. “The game goes from 100 to 1,000 mph,” hesays. “If you can’t slow it down, the game’s over.”

Modern sports psychology was popularized in thelate 1960s by Soviet and East German doctors in theirwork with Olympic athletes. Yet, 30 years later, Ravizzasays only about half a dozen major league baseballteams employ psychologists. In the macho world ofbaseball, getting players to open up is about as easyas hitting Greg Maddux. “This is about being great, it’snot that you’re messed up,” Ravizza tells players.Former Angel Damion Easley, now with Detroit, hasbeen using hypnotherapist Pete Siegel since 1995, yetonly recently admitted it publicly. Easley didn’t even tellhis teammates. Salmon says, “A lot of players say,‘Hey, wait a minute, I don’t need my whole game ana-lyzed.’” Easley finally “came out” because he creditsSiegel for salvaging his career. “I feel it’s my responsi-bility to help others,” Easley said recently.

“And when I went through a tough time, this ishow I got out.” Ravizza is not familiar with Siegel’swork, but says that, in general, players have to becareful in seeking counsel. “There is no magic dust,”Ravizza says. “A hypnotist says, ‘I’m going to changeyou overnight?’ I’m sorry, I disagree. You might get aquick fix, but it’s got to be developed over time. I see alot of people selling witch oil.” Salmon agrees. “Peopleare always looking to jump on your coattails and beassociated with success of a person,” he says. “Youcan confuse players, overload players. Paralysis byanalysis. I take a very simple approach.” Some seetoday’s modern players and wonder how they couldpossibly be stressed out. “In my day, you had to pro-duce on the field, then had to work in the winter to putfood on the table,” former Dodger Ralph Branca says.“I’d say there was more pressure in my day.” Many oftoday’s players enjoy salaries that can secure them forlife, free agency, guaranteed contracts and no-tradeclauses. “There could be a lack of pressure,” St. LouisCardinal Manager Tony La Russa argues. “It’s a toughtime to be excellent, tougher now than ever before.

R E A D I N G 21Steve Blass Disease


(continued)

Professional athletes are paid large sums of money to entertain us. We demand excellence in returnfor that money. What happens when a successful athlete suddenly loses his ability to perform, notbecause of a physical problem, but because of a psychological problem? Steve Blass did not find ananswer to this problem. Today the advances in sports psychology may be able to supply other profes-sional athletes the help they need to stay on top of their game.

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You have to dig real deep inside yourself. A lot of thenatural motivators are not there anymore, like survival,like conditions of employment. A lot of them don’tworry, believe me.” Yet, if stress on the modern athleteis different, Steinberg argues that it’s very real. “Everysingle week, unhappy athletes call up,” Steinbergsays. Salmon also disagrees that today’s athletes haveless stress. “ESPN shows everything you do,” Salmonsays. “On every news channel there is some sarcasticsportscaster, part-time comedian. If you screw up,some guy makes a joke about it and all the guys in thelocker room are watching. Scrutiny, that’s probably dif-ferent than in the past.” Steinberg says increasedmedia coverage and sports-talk radio have dramatical-ly raised expectations for players and fans. “Peoplewith large amounts of money, power and success arenot necessarily calm, placid and content,” Steinbergsays. “Unfortunately, if they don’t deal with it well, itcan be alcohol that ends up being the stress reliever.”Steinberg says he doesn’t believe any of his topclients, mostly NFL stars, see sports psychologists.Who needs a shrink when you can lean on your agent?It is Steinberg, in fact, who serves as his clients’ pri-mary care giver. Steinberg has found one method oftherapy particularly effective. “You will find, while not

scientific, for many athletes it’s the ability to sit on achair at home, with no one talking to them, with asatellite dish, flipping from TV show to TV show,”Steinberg says.

“That’s probably the No. 1 method of vegging out.”Ravizza thinks most fans underestimate what it meansto be in the public spotlight. “One of the biggest fearsof pro athletes is embarrassment,” he says.

“When it comes to performance, that hasn’tchanged. They all stand naked before the gods, andthe great ones thrive on that.” Sports psychology couldnot solve the mystery of Steve Blass, although he leftno base unturned in search of a cure. “I would put twofilm projectors in a room and put up the footage when Iwas throwing good and when I was throwing bad, andI didn’t see any difference,” he says. “I could warm upin the bullpen and be fine, but when I got a hitter upthere, I just froze up.” Blass’ legacy? “Me and LouGehrig,” he says. “The only two guys with diseasesnamed after us.”

Source: Dufresne, C. (1998, August 9). Skull sessions: Many formsof therapy are available to help today’s stressed-out, strugglingathlete cope with the mental side of the world of sports. LosAngeles Times. p. 12.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________



1. What happened to Steve Blass that ended his professional baseball career?

2. How was modern sports psychology popularized?

3. What does Ken Ravizza, the Anaheim Angels team psychologist, caution about seeking counsel?

4. What is the difference between the stress felt by professional baseball players today compared toplayers in the 1950s and 1960s?

Thinking Critically


5. If you were a sports psychologist and had a player who suddenly was unable to perform, what typesof therapy or treatment would you recommend?

6. Assume you listen to a sports-talk radio program. The professional team in your city has just hired asports psychologist. Many fans are calling in complaining about pampering million-dollar athletes.You think it is a good idea to have a sports psychologist available to players. When you call in to theshow, what would you say?

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Hypothesis

Common sense tells us that waiting time incheckout lines directly correlates with customersatisfaction, a subject of concern for someindustrial/organizational and consumer psychologists. Customer satisfaction increases aswaiting time decreases. There, however, is a dif-ference between objective waiting time and per-ceived waiting time. Objective waiting time isthe actual time spent in line. The perceived wait-ing time may be longer or shorter than theobjective waiting time depending on a variety offactors such as the person’s mood, what else theperson has to do, the apparent efficiency or inef-ficiency of the checkers, and the customer’sexpectations about waiting in line. For this study,both objective and perceived waiting times wereassessed.

Method

To test the hypothesis, two large, high-vol-ume supermarkets from different chains wereselected. The store in Sacramento, California, islocated in a predominately white community.Customers’ median age is 37.4 years and medianincome is $37,721. The Woodland, California,store is located in a community with a predomi-nantly white and Hispanic population.Customers’ median age is 30.4 years and medianincome is $34,420.

Store management at both stores cooperatedwith the study. Measurements were taken duringslow times (8 A.M. to 11 AA .. MM ..) and busy times(4:30 P.M. to 7:30 P.M.) on two separate Saturdays.Observation prior to these two dates determinedwhich checkers were faster and which wereslower.

Several research teams were used. Each con-sisted of three or four members so that as large asample as possible could be gathered. Someresearchers were assigned to the checkers. Theyused naturalistic observation techniques andrecorded the wait time and serve time. Wait time

is defined as the time when the person enteredthe line until the time the checker began to servehim or her. The serve time measured the actualcheckout process from the checker’s greeting tothe point where the money was received and thereceipt was given.

The remaining researchers were assigned tointerview customers as they started to leave thestore. The brief interview consisted of four questions:

1. How long do you think you were waiting inline today before you reached the checker?(perceived wait time)

2. Was your wait today shorter, longer, or aboutas long as you expected? (participant’sexpectations about the wait)

3. How satisfied are you with the service you received today? (satisfaction with the checker)

4. How satisfied are you with the store? (satis-faction with the store)

The sample consisted of 117 customers fromthe Woodland supermarket and 155 customersfrom the Sacramento store.

Results

Research confirmed that the store environ-ment (busy or slow) and the speed of the check-ers (faster or slower) did affect objective waitingtime, perceived waiting time, and serve time.

Objective waiting time was longer at theSacramento supermarket when the store wasbusy. Objective waiting time was longer at theWoodland supermarket when the store was slow.At both stores objective waiting time was longerwith a slow checker than with a fast checker.

Perceived waiting time was longer at theSacramento store when the store was busy,whereas the opposite was true at the Woodlandstore. At the Sacramento store, perceived waitingtime was longer with the slower checker, where-as at the Woodland store the speed of the checker

C A S E S T U D Y 21 “Can I Get SomeService Here?”


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did not affect the customer’s perceived waitingtime.

Serve time was constant at the Sacramentostore but was longer at the Woodland store whenthe store was not busy.

At both the Sacramento and the Woodlandstores, customers were more satisfied with theirservice when their waiting times were shorterthan or as long as they expected. Waiting timeexpectations did not affect customers’ satisfac-tion with the store itself, in either supermarket.

Customer satisfaction was high at both theSacramento store and the Woodland store.Eighty-nine percent of customers at theSacramento store, and 96 percent of customersat the Woodland store indicated that their wait-ing times were shorter than or as long as theyexpected.

Conclusions

Results of the study confirmed that as per-ceived waiting time decreases, satisfaction withthe server increases. Interestingly, perceivedwaiting time influenced satisfaction or dissatis-faction with the server but had very little influ-ence on satisfaction with the store.

For the majority of customers, their per-ceived waiting time was greater than their objec-

tive waiting time. Customers’ perception of wait-ing time, not the actual waiting time, did influ-ence their satisfaction with the service.

Checkout time at the Sacramento store didnot vary as much between busy times and slowtimes, but objective time, perceived time, andserve time were longer at the Woodland storeduring times when the store was not so busy. Apparently checkers at the Woodland store var-ied their speed with the changes in the storeenvironment (busy or not busy). Customer satis-faction at the Woodland store increased, notdecreased, with the slower speed of the check-ers, suggesting that interaction between cus-tomer and checker increase during slow times.Results imply that this heightened interactionincreases customer satisfaction with the service.

This study showed that longer perceivedwaiting time and longer objective waiting timedo not necessarily decrease customer satisfac-tion. Interaction between checker and customer,which this study did not measure, may be moreinfluential than perceived or objective waitingtime.

Source: Tom, G., & Lucey, S. (1997). A field study investigating theeffect of waiting time on customer satisfaction. Journal ofPsychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 131 (6), 655–60.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

(continued)



1. Standing in line is common in fast-food outlets, retail stores, banks, theme parks, and other places.What type of store was selected as the setting for this study?

2. What is the difference between objective and perceived wait time?

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c.3. What four questions did the interviewers ask?

4. Why was the objective wait time longer at the Woodland store when the store was not busy?

Thinking Critically


5. Why is it important for store management to study customer satisfaction as it correlates with cus-tomers’ wait times?

6. If the study showed that perceived wait time is important to the customer, what could store managers do to make perceived wait time seem shorter for shoppers?

7. As an industrial/organizational or consumer psychologist, what recommendations would you maketo the management of the Woodland store about the personality characteristics of checkers? Explainyour answer.

Name __________________________________ Date ______________ Class _______________

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Chapter 1, Reading

1. Psychologists use the Ethical Principles and Codeof Conduct from the American PsychologicalAssociation.

2. Ethical behavior consists of actions and decisionsthat follow a set of moral values or a code of pro-fessional conduct.

3. They could do harm through commission or omis-sion errors. Commission represents actions takenthat result in harm. Omission represents actionsnot taken or information not given that results inharm.

4. Student answers may vary. In a broad sense, all nine of the items could be viewed as generalethical principles for living. However, the broadeststatements seem to be “being just,” “being faithful,” and “treating others with caring andcompassion.”

5. Student answers will vary. The motivations forpsychologists to act unethically include greed,desire for recognition, an unfeeling or uncaringattitude, and revenge.

6. Students may agree or disagree with this state-ment. Those who agree with it will argue that thecode of conduct gives a psychologist significantboundaries that can be recognized and actedupon, even by someone with no moral principles.Students may point to people they know who lead,or appear to lead, double lives, one professionaland one personal. Those who disagree will arguethat a lack of ethical principles in one’s personallife will eventually spill over into one’s professionallife. The media regularly report examples of suchbehavior.

7. The ultimate goal is to treat clients with respectand dignity as human beings, to improve theircondition, and to give them respect.

Chapter 1, Case Study

1. Its purpose was to use scientific research toexplain psychic phenomena.

2. The two reasons cited are the resistance of thosepracticing psychic phenomena to being subjectedto scientific experimentation and a lack of finan-cial resources to conduct the study.

3. The society studied thought transference, hypno-sis, witchcraft, apparitions, and mental telepathy.

4. He said that they were closed-minded in theirthinking, because they dismissed any phenomenathat did not fit into their idea of the way thingsshould be.

5. Students should recognize that although the societycollected an impressive body of evidence, itsentire purpose was to develop theories to explainsuch phenomena. It failed in that endeavor.

6. It appears that he did support their research sincehe encouraged them to continue to gather andrecord facts.

7. William James was interested in mental processesand the way that mental processes could improveeveryday life. If the society could have produceduseful theories about psychic phenomena, Jameshoped that psychologists could find ways to usethese phenomena to help people with everydayliving.

8. Answers will vary. Possible answers include thefact that some aspects of behavior defy scientificexplanations or that researchers have not yet beenable to understand how the human mind workswell enough to create scientific theories for somephenomena.

Chapter 2, Reading

1. He believed his treatment worked because somepeople got better. He rationalized that those whodied were too sick to have been saved by any treatment.

2. Scientific theories must be stated in such a waythat predictions made using the theory can beproved false.

3. Specific predictions can be made using good theories.

4. The quality of the confirming evidence is moreimportant than its quantity.

5. Student answers may vary. Some students may saythat the theory could be confirmed in a generalway by suggesting to participants who are underhypnosis things that have not occurred. If, whenthe participants are returned to normal conscious-ness, they remember these false events as true,you would have a confirmation of the theory.

6. When research results falsify a theory, researchershave a basis for developing new theories and rul-ing out other possibilities. For example, the earli-est proposals that different parts of the brain wereresponsible for different functions proved to be anaccurate insight, even though the specific func-tions assigned to various areas of the brain provedto be totally wrong.


1. Researchers were studying how race, gender, styleof clothing, and type of store affected the delay inservice by salesclerks.

2. Retail stores in two shopping malls were used inthe study. The stores were one-entrance (smaller)stores that specialized in female, male, or gender-neutral merchandise.

3. The delay in service (based on the race, gender, orattire of the customer) was being measured.

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4. Caucasian males in business clothing received thefastest service. African American males in casualattire received the slowest service.

5. The independent variables are gender, race, typeof store, and type of clothing.

6. Student answers will vary. Many will say that sales-clerks should be reminded of the importance of allcustomers. Service based on race or gender shouldnot be the model used by any store. Service basedon attire may be somewhat more defensible, espe-cially if the store is busy. Salesclerks should bereminded, however, that first impressions can bemisleading.

7. The malls used in this study were located in pre-dominantly Caucasian, upscale areas. Also, thesalesclerks were primarily Caucasian. Future stud-ies could use urban malls and stores with a betterracial mix of salesclerks and customers.

Chapter 3, Reading

1. In 1993, 48 percent of preschool children withworking mothers were cared for by a relative.

2. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, mothers wereeconomically productive workers and primarychild caregivers.

3. World War II caused large numbers of mothers toenter the workforce to replace the male workersaway at war.

4. Children from low-income families gain the mostbenefit from quality child care because low-income children benefit from learning opportuni-ties and social and emotional supports that theyotherwise might not get.

5. In agricultural societies, where the home and thefarm were seen as a unit, mothers contributed tothe family’s income by working on the farm. Sincemuch of the family’s food came from the farm,mothers also canned and preserved food for useduring the winter. This assured that the familywould have food during the farm’s nonproductivemonths even if there was limited income duringthose months. Mothers also took the primaryresponsibility for child rearing.

In industrial societies, work was no longerdone at home, which often left the mother unableto provide economically for the family. Her rolebecame primarily one of child rearing. If the fami-ly’s income was not sufficient, however, manymothers had to learn to juggle work outside thehome with child-rearing responsibilities.

6. Student answers will vary. Societies that value theeconomic role of mothers in the workplace willsupport that role by accommodating the responsi-bilities of work and child care. Providing qualitychild care is a signal of support, while lack of good,

affordable care signals a lack of support. Also, thevalues that society places on child rearing willaffect the decision of mothers to enter the work-force. If having “all the right things” is viewed ascritically important, many mothers of preschoolersmay feel pressured to re-enter the workforce evenif they would prefer to stay at home.


1. The purpose of the study was to see if young chil-dren engage in and understand body image anddieting behavior. The study’s participants were 431children in the second, third, and fourth grades inMelbourne, Australia.

2. Results showed that 19.3 percent of boys and 23.7percent of girls were overweight while 59.9 percentof boys and 48.6 percent of girls were of normalweight.

3. Children were asked to select the figure that mostresembled them, the ideal figure, and the one thatthey felt most like.

4. Children had actively reduced their intake of spe-cific foods, reduced their overall food intake, andeaten healthier foods.

5. The study did not support the idea that youngchildren understand the relationship betweenrestrictive eating habits and body-image dissatis-faction. This indicates that children do not yethave fully developed abstract reasoning skills andthat their reasons for dieting are other thanbecause of poor body image.

6. Student answers will vary. Examples include unre-alistic expectations and trying to fit in with peers.

7. Student answers will vary. Recommendations mayinclude encouraging parents to know what theirchildren think about their body and how thataffects their self-image, and helping their childrenidentify other qualities about people that are moremeaningful than physical appearance.

Chapter 4, Reading

1. Society paid close attention to the moral, intellec-tual, and social development of teens. Society alsorecognized adolescence as a time of transitionfrom childhood to adulthood.

2. The author cites the pace of change, adults whoare too busy for parenting, adults who have notyet matured fully themselves, aggressiveness ofmerchandisers and the media to sell to the teenmarket, and the serious real-world problems thatare commonplace in high schools.

3. High schools have become miniature communi-ties with all the social problems found in the adultworld.

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4. The author cites increased vulnerability to stress,while exposing teens to increased stress.

5. Student answers will vary. Although teens mayhave a difficult time understanding the point ofview of older generations, they will likely relate tomany of the societal problems the author lists.

6. Student answers will vary. The letters should be ingood form. Students who support no limits on thetypes of merchandise and media available to themwill cite the right to free speech. If the majority ofthe class favors no restrictions, cite studies on thedesensitization of children resulting from repeatedexposure to such things as violence and sexualinnuendo.


1. The estrogen level increases rapidly.2. Emotional dysregulation is the seeming inability

to control one’s emotions. It occurs frequentlyduring adolescence.

3. The longitudinal study was designed to study theeffect of hormonal changes and stress on the like-lihood of developing depression either duringadolescence or adulthood.

4. The categories are positive, early transient, latetransient, and recurrent. She concluded that hor-monal changes during puberty do not cause psy-chological problems later in life.

5. Recurrent participants had higher body fat andexperienced menarche earlier. They also experi-enced numerous other emotional and social prob-lems during adolescence.

6. The study suggests that physical appearance isextremely important to adolescent females.

7. Student answers will vary. Evidence to support thebiological (innate) basis for the behavior wouldstate that female evolution has been based prima-rily on the ability to attract a mate and take one’splace in society as a childbearer. Evidence to sup-port that the behavior is learned would come fromthe social development theorists who would pro-vide examples from other cultures in which physi-cal appearance does not seem to cause the stressin adolescence that occurs among Americanteens.

Chapter 5, Reading

1. Creativity does not decline with age, but maychange in form. Also, creativity may enhance theenjoyment of old age.

2. ‘Swan-song’ creativity is a time in which people’swork becomes more meaningful and aestheticallyconcise as they face death.

3. A University of Nebraska-Lincoln study indicatedthat 60 percent of the respondents had becomemore creative as they aged.

4. The three groups were famous; very successful;and men who had never strived for fame, but whohad fulfilling careers. She found that these menwere, in general, happy with their lives and thatcreativity had enhanced their lives even if they hadnot achieved fame or fortune.

5. In general, creativity can be an end in itself. It isnot essential to become famous with one’s creativetalents to be satisfied. The more important aspectof creativity is the joy and satisfaction that the cre-ativity brings to the creator.

6. Student answers will vary. Often young peopletend to view current talents as just for fun orsomething that can only be done when you areyoung (e.g., athletic talents). Many creative peoplefind ways to build careers and lifelong hobbiesaround their creative talents.


1. The two groups were refugees and survivors of theHolocaust. Refugees had fled Europe, while sur-vivors had suffered through life in a concentrationcamp.

2. Technical generativity was least evident amongthe two groups, since many had not completedhigh school or learned a trade.

3. The refugees were more able to nurture their chil-dren as well as provide for their material needs.Survivors provided for the physical needs, butoften lacked the ability to give strong nurturing oremotional support.

4. Zionism was the strongest component of culturalgenerativity for the survivor group.

5. Student answers will vary. The baby boom afterWorld War II seems to indicate that biological gen-erativity was important to veterans. Veterans whohave had terrible experiences in war often have adifficult time connecting emotionally to others, soparallels could be drawn with parental generativi-ty. There appears to be little connection betweensurvivors and veterans in terms of technical orcultural generativity.

6. The actual reasons seem to vary. Some survivorssimply could not speak of the past. Others did notwant their children to know of their pain; they didnot want to color the perspective of their children,especially when the children were young. Othersfelt that their experience was not significant com-pared to those who died. They wanted theHolocaust remembered, but not necessarily theirown stories remembered. Others could not sepa-

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rate the guilt of survival from their stories. To tellof the experience would bring back the guilt.Finally, in some families the Holocaust experienceformed a great emotional chasm between the sur-vivor and his or her children. When the survivorwas finally ready to speak of the events, the chasmseemed too wide to cross.

Chapter 6, Reading

1. Common consequences of strokes, head traumas,and spinal cord injuries include loss of physicalfunction, paralysis, cognitive impairment, loss ofmemory, and changes in personality.

2. The two phases are primary and secondary injury.Primary injury occurs at the moment of the strokeor trauma. The secondary injury occurs over hoursor days.

3. Excitotoxicity is a genetically programmed mecha-nism to kill unneeded or unhealthy cells.

4. The NMDA receptors are left open, minerals enterin excessive quantities, and enzymes are producedthat destroy the cell membrane.

5. Student answers will vary. Psychological effectsinclude changes in personality, feelings of hope-lessness and despair, and emotional upheaval.

6. Student answers will vary. Scientific clinical stud-ies are needed for all drugs to win approval by theFood and Drug Administration. Although drugsprove effective in animals, the same results maynot be obtained in humans. In addition, the vari-ous side effects may make the drug unusable inhumans. The risk and potential benefits of partici-pating in a study must be carefully weighed.


1. The left hemisphere controls the right side of thebody, language, and verbal reasoning.

2. The right hemisphere controls the left side of thebody and spatial reasoning.

3. Zaidel’s study confirmed that language is a left-brain function. However, it demonstrated thatthe right brain does process visual informationcorrectly.

4. Schiffer hypothesized that emotions are processeddifferently by the left and right hemispheres of thebrain.

5. Student answers may vary. Some may concludethat anxiety results from disparity between the leftand right hemispheres. If this is true, those withlow levels of anxiety have better integrated the twohalves of the brain. Therefore, there is little differ-ence when studying only one hemisphere. Othersmay explain that if the emotions that create theanxiety are stronger in one hemisphere, those with

great anxiety will show a greater differencebetween hemispheres than those with low levelsof anxiety.

6. Additional research could study people with vari-ous disorders. Similar tests could be performedwith each disorder to determine if anxiety levelschange from hemisphere to hemisphere. Forexample, do most people with depression showgreater anxiety in the left or right brain? If it isfound that one hemisphere is significant, thera-pies can be developed to treat that hemisphere.

Chapter 7, Reading

1. Current patterns call for one extended sleep peri-od. In the past, and in other cultures, sleep is oftenconducted in two parts with a period of wakeful-ness or semi-wakefulness in between.

2. Communal sleep equals safe sleep. It providessafety from predators, attackers, and spirits.

3. Fear sleep is a state of deep sleep that is a suddenreaction to intense anxiety or unexpected fright.Certain people who are accustomed to sleeping insensory-filled locations may engage in fear sleep.

4. He found that people slept in one long stretch forthe first few days, presumably to catch up on theirsleep. Then they slept in two segments with a timeof wakefulness between the segments.

5. The traditional view is that the friend is sufferingfrom insomnia. The anthropological view wouldsuggest that this is a normal sleep pattern. Usingthe anthropological model, your friend should goto bed earlier and use the wakeful period in themiddle of the night in some constructive manner.

6. Student answers will vary. Explanations includeartificial light has shortened the sleep cycle, therelative safety of modern life from traditionalnighttime threats, and the rise of an industrialsociety that regulates the day by work shifts.


1. Chronic pain is long-term pain from a known orunknown source that cannot be relieved throughsurgery or physical therapy.

2. She was not being helped by any of the traditionalapproaches to pain management, so she tookresponsibility for her own health and learned howto manage the pain through self-hypnosis.

3. She used a lake to symbolize her pain.4. She became more relaxed and eased the pain by

visualizing the lake getting smaller. She was ableto reduce her pain to a more manageable level.

5. The biopsychosocial approach combines tradi-tional medical treatments like surgery and physi-cal therapy with psychological and social

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approaches such as group therapy, relaxation ther-apy, hypnosis, and biofeedback.

6. Student answers will vary. Answers should explorethe altered state of consciousness achieved duringhypnosis as the explanation for success.

7. Student answers will vary. Many students will notea primary advantage of self-hypnosis is the abilityto use the technique whenever and wherever onedecides, rather than waiting for the hypnotist tobecome available.

Chapter 8, Reading

1. Weightlessness is the primary effect on the bodyduring spaceflight.

2. The three semicircular canals of the inner ear areresponsible for side to side motion.

3. The otolith organs in the inner ear are responsiblefor forward motion.

4. In spaceflight, travelers do not feel like they arefalling as they do when skydiving probably due tothe lack of perceptual cues.

5. Virtual reality games and simulations can createthe same type of motion sickness.

6. They experience gravity pulling on their bodiesand making them feel heavier than they actuallyare. They also may experience a variety of illu-sions.

7. Student answers will vary. Their arguments shouldcenter around the ways in which research in spacehas helped us understand more about how thebody works on Earth.

8. This is a creative writing assignment. Challengestudents to consider how their day-to-day liveswould be different.


1. Perfect pitch is the ability to identify a note or tonewithout having another note for reference.

2. The hypothesis was that perfect pitch has both aninherited and a learned component.

3. The researchers used native Vietnamese andChinese speakers because they use a tonal lan-guage.

4. They found that the entire sample had perfectpitch.

5. They used 40 pure tones.6. The researchers concluded that the ability is

inherited, but will flourish only if developed andnurtured.

7. Answers will vary. The most obvious way to testthe hypothesis is to conduct a perfect pitch studysimilar to the one used at the University ofSouthern California at San Diego with speakers oftonal languages.

8. Answers will vary. An example would be the acutesense of smell that may be inherited, but must bedeveloped for specialized use such as perfumetesting.

Chapter 9, Reading

1. The two explanatory styles are optimist and pessimist.

2. You develop your explanatory style during child-hood and adolescence.

3. The three dimensions of the explanatory style arepervasiveness, permanence, and personalization.

4. Pervasiveness and permanence control what you do.5. Student answers will vary. Students are likely to

find that their responses are primarily optimisticor pessimistic.

6. Student answers will vary and the exercise is by nomeans conclusive. For a more thorough test ofoptimism and pessimism, use the test developedby Seligman, which is printed in LearnedOptimism.


1. Male blue gourami fish establish territories fornesting sites (to attract a suitable mate).

2. The unconditioned stimulus is the stimulus fish,while the conditioned stimulus is the red light.

3. Pavlovian-conditioned fish (PAV) were paired withunconditioned fish (UNP), and Pavlovian-condi-tioned fish presented with the red light (PAV-L)were paired with Pavlovian-conditioned fish thatwere not presented with the conditioned stimulus(PAV-NL).

4. No loser of Contest 1 defeated a winner of Contest1 (0%).

5. The best nesting sites enhance the reproductivepossibilities of the male by allowing them toattract the best females.

6. Student answers will vary. Since territorialinstincts are strong in other species, it seems likelythat similar conditioning would be possible withother types of animals. However, conditioningaggressiveness without pairing it with a strongmotivation for the aggressiveness may not be assuccessful.

7. Student answers will vary. The strongest possibilityis that winners incur less pain and take less physi-cal punishment than losers. As a result, winnersare more fit and less fearful in later contests.

Chapter 10, Reading

1. She became depressed because she rememberedfrustrating or irritating events.

2. Before the tests she would review the highlights of

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her life. During the reviews she generally recalledhappy memories. During the memory tests shewas reminded of irritations that had occurred.

3. She had forgotten over 400 of the 1,350 items, orabout 30 percent.

4. Long-lasting memories tended to be fairly unique,nonrepeated events, or surprising events.

5. Routine events tend to be uninteresting and rela-tively unimportant. We are unlikely to share themwith others or review the events in our minds.

6. Students will complete the sentence in manyways. In general, they will be more likely toremember the surprising event two years fromnow.

7. Student answers will vary. Some students willpoint out that Litton was really only testing herability to remember dates, not general memoryfunction. (Note: This can be extended to a groupproject in which students design a test of theirown memories.)

8. By constantly writing down her memories andtesting herself periodically, Litton was using tech-niques that actually helped to encode memoriesand improve recall. Most people do not recordtheir memories or test themselves and might notrecall events as easily as Litton did.


1. Some believe that hypnosis can be used to altermemories, as well as enhance them. Since eyewit-ness testimony is to be based on recollections ofthe facts, alterations to memories could affect theability to recall facts correctly.

2. The four principles of the Cognitive Interview are event-interview similarity, focused retrieval,extensive retrieval, and witness-compatible questioning.

3. The control group consisted of the robbery detec-tives who were not trained in the CognitiveInterview technique.

4. The data were analyzed by comparing the inter-views of the trained detectives before and aftertraining and by comparing the post-training inter-views of the trained group with interviews of theuntrained group.

5. Student answers will vary. Using the information-processing model of memory, we know that mem-ories are originally encoded through our senses.That makes the external conditions of the eventimportant. One way we store information is by itsimportance. Therefore, events that are more emo-tional or cognitively more significant may beremembered better or longer.

6. The actual results, which students should be ableto infer, indicate that the Cognitive Interview

process does not yield more incorrect facts thanstandard police interview procedures. The pur-pose of the Cognitive Interview is not to altermemories, but to retrieve them more effectively.

Chapter 11, Reading

1. Infants first learn to recognize the sound patternsof their native languages.

2. Jusczyk played each infant’s name through a loud-speaker and timed whether and for how long theinfant turned his or her head in response.

3. The infant responded for a longer period to his orher own name than to other names, includingones that sounded similar.

4. The critical period theory is the idea that there is a finite period when children can easily learnlanguage.

5. They concluded that children are superior toadults in learning language because they learnsound patterns first and then attach meaning tothe patterns.

6. Most students will take the position that second-language instruction should be introduced inyounger grades. They will base their reasoning onthe reading, which points to children’s superiorability to learn languages and the fact that thebrain matures by puberty to the point that lan-guage learning becomes difficult.

7. Student answers will vary. Abilities at which teens and adults are superior to children includethe ability to reason, solve problems, and thinkcritically.


1. Since the Army is participating in peacekeepingmissions with other United Nations troops, it mustaddress how it will keep peace and communicatewith troops whose native language is not English.

2. Healy hypothesized that people use strategiesfrom their native language to process and under-stand foreign language.

3. The three strategies are: noun/noun phrase,noun/pronoun, and noun/zero anaphora.

4. Native Chinese speakers did worse on the unal-tered and inappropriate tests, but better on thezero anaphora test. This indicates that these peo-ple did use strategies from their native language inunderstanding their second language.

5. Peacekeepers must clearly understand their rolesand avoid conflicts among themselves in order tobe able to mediate disputes and diffuse tense situ-ations. Clear and precise communication is neces-sary to achieve this goal.

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6. Student answers will vary. One suggestion wouldbe to recruit U.S. citizens who are first- or second-generation immigrants from the countries towhich you will most likely need to send peace-keeping troops. Such individuals either speak the language or have a working knowledge of thelanguage.

Chapter 12, Reading

1. The reticular activating system, a small collectionof nerves deep in the brain stem, plays a majorrole in motivation and arousal. It sets the tone forany stimulus that reaches the brain.

2. The neurotransmitters are norepinephrine,dopamine, acetylcholine, and serotonin.

3. The neurochemicals prepare the brain’s nerve cellsto react more quickly.

4. The emotional brain is the limbic system. It setsthe emotional tone for the stimuli we receive, sim-ilar to the background music in a movie.

5. One hypothesis is that sleep may replenish theexcitatory neurotransmitters in our brain.

6. GABA and adenosine slow brain activity.7. We feel less vital and less motivated.8. The coach knows that the body performs better

physically, mentally, and emotionally when it iswell rested. You should observe the curfew for thisone night if you want to perform well on Saturday.

9. Student answers will vary, but the basic responseshould show that the biological explanation com-plements the other theories. For example, theincentive theory includes the effect of the environ-ment on motivation, while the biological explana-tion only explores the chemical changes that affectthe strength or weakness of our motivation.

10. Answers will vary. Most students will be able todescribe a correlation between their mood and theamount of sleep.


1. The seven emotions are anger, contempt, disgust,fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

2. Researchers theorize that these facial expressionsare innate; we are born with them.

3. Display rules that are unique to the culture inwhich we live affect how and when the expres-sions are made.

4. The rules are to deamplify, neutralize, amplify,mask, or blend the expression.

5. The primary difference is that the Japanese have adisplay rule that keeps them from displaying neg-ative emotions in front of someone of higher sta-tus. In such situations, the Japanese will masktheir facial expressions. The Americans have nosuch display rule.

6. Student answers will vary. They will likely draw ontheir own experiences. In some families the dis-play of emotion is discouraged; in others, it isencouraged.

7. Student answers will vary. Display rules usuallyresult from cultural norms, traditions, and sociallaws. The Japanese have a rather formal and tradi-tional society. The display rules were formed overmany centuries to meet their social needs.

Chapter 13, Reading

1. The exams determine which college or universitythe student can enter. This, in turn, shapes stu-dents’ possible choices of jobs upon graduation.

2. He claims that society has lost its vitality becauseit lacks creative minds with original ideas in thecountry’s various power structures.

3. The office admissions system (OA) is replacing thecurrent system. It uses information about stu-dents’ extracurricular activities and recommenda-tions in addition to the exam scores.

4. Critics are nervous that the OA system will destroyequality in selection, will result in the dumbingdown of education, will hurt the juku industry,and will create social unrest.

5. He thinks that the new system will hurt those whohave to work after school and are unable to partic-ipate in extracurricular activities.

6. The entrance exams allow all students an equalchance at admissions to the best colleges and uni-versities. Admission to these universities hasalways been based strictly on entrance examscores, not on who you know or how much moneyyou have.

7. Student answers will vary. Encourage students toresearch the two systems to find similarities suchas the importance of test scores for admission,and differences such as the fact that U.S. collegesand universities have always considered factorsother than test scores in making admission decisions.


1. No, the author believes that laypeople can identifyintelligence as well.

2. He asked 476 men and women to describe behav-iors that characterize intelligence, academic intel-ligence, everyday intelligence, and unintelligence.The behaviors were refined into a list of behaviorsfor each type of intelligence or unintelligence.

3. The participants identified practical problem-solvingability, verbal ability, and social competence.

4. Facets of everyday intelligence are practical prob-lem-solving ability, social competence, character,and interest in learning and culture.

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5. Everyday people had the broader view in that theyincluded everyday competence and commonsense in their lists.

6. Student answers will vary. Most students will likely identify some type of “What would you doif” situations.

7. Students are surrounded by academia on a dailybasis. Since it is a larger part of their lives than forworking people it is likely to be more significant intheir descriptions. Also, since many students arerelatively young, they may not have discovered theimportance of common sense and character indaily living.

Chapter 14, Reading

1. He identifies risk taking and thrill seeking as ournew national behavior.

2. Three expressions of this new behavior areincreased participation in extreme sports, careerchoices in volatile industries, and an upswing inthe use of hard drugs.

3. The increased popularity of extreme sports mayresult from a need for danger and risk, a sense ofpushing personal boundaries, the need to test ourlimits, and the lack of risk in our everyday lives.

4. Risks have been reduced by science, government,lawsuits, and medical advances.

5. He sees risk takers as Type T personalities.6. Student answers will vary. Students may cite the

ability to create that seems to be unique tohumans. They could argue that all creativity is aform of risk taking.

7. Farley’s hypothesis supports the view that person-ality traits are environmentally determined. Thegenetic makeup of Americans is extremely diverse,making an inherited need for risk taking unlikely.Farley’s position is that culture strongly influenceshuman development of their personalities.

8. Student answers will vary. Some will note thatalthough interest in extreme sports is growing, thetotal number of Americans involved in these activ-ities is very small. It may not be accurate, there-fore, to classify the personality of an entire nationby a small percentage of its population. Some stu-dents will support Farley’s view by saying that thecultures of the two countries are vastly different.Cultural influences may shape a personality char-acteristic like risk taking.


1. Three hundred eighteen from Berkeley, and 212from Oakland.

2. The study focused on intrinsic (job satisfaction)and extrinsic (rate of pay, occupational status)career success.

3. The researchers explored several hypotheses,including the following: Neuroticism will be nega-tively related to intrinsic and extrinsic career suc-cess. Extroversion will be positively related tointrinsic and extrinsic career success.Conscientiousness will be positively related toextrinsic career success. Personality measures col-lected in adulthood will explain more variance incareer success than childhood measures. Generalmental ability will be positively related to extrinsiccareer success. Personality will explain incremen-tal variance in career success beyond thatexplained by general mental ability.

4. The study did not support the hypothesis thatextroversion is related to job satisfaction (intrinsiccareer success). It also did not support thehypothesis that personality measures collected inadulthood will explain more of the variance incareer success than will childhood measures.

5. The study suggests that career success will begreater when personality traits, general mentalability, and the career path match. If people arenot well suited for the career they have chosen,they are likely to face frustration, job burnout, orother negative experiences that will lessen careersuccess.

6. Student answers will vary. Advantages includefinding out before you accept a job that you are orare not well suited for it, a reasonably objectiveway to reduce the list of candidates for a position,and some level of assurance that you will be agood fit with the job. The two largest disadvan-tages are possible discrimination by eliminatingcandidates who may be otherwise qualified for thejob and eliminating qualified candidates becausethe job type has not been properly correlated withpersonality factors or general mental ability.

Chapter 15, Reading

1. Anxiety is at the extreme high end of the arousalscale.

2. Attention clings to the source of the threat andfocuses attention on the threat by narrowingawareness.

3. The divers continued to concentrate on the cen-tral task but lost track of the light.

4. The attentional definition of anxiety states that un-wanted thoughts and feelings intrude on awareness.

5. Students will list three of the following: pangs ofemotion; preoccupation and ruminations; persist-ent thoughts and feelings, emotions or ideas thatthe person cannot stop; hypervigilance or exces-sive alertness; insomnia; bad dreams; unbiddensensations; or heightened startle reactions.

6. Your mind and body are reacting to the stress byfocusing attention on the cause of the stress. With

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attention thus focused, boring or repetitive taskscan simply be forgotten.

7. Students will describe various situations in whichthey felt stress. Students may have experiencedany of the symptoms listed in the reading. If theydid not experience any of the symptoms, it is likelythat the situation was resolved before the anxietystate was reached.


1. Veniremen are potential jurors who complete thequestioning process but are not selected.

2. The veniremen served as the control groupbecause they were not exposed to the indepen-dent variable of actually serving on the jury.

3. The surveys were administered immediately afterthe trial and three months later.

4. The alternates listened to all the testimony andanalyzed the evidence, but they played no role inthe verdict or sentencing.

5. Hafemeister suggested a five-step model thatincludes: making sure jurors understand the rea-sons for the debriefing, reviewing normal reac-tions to stress with jurors; encouraging but notforcing jurors to discuss their reactions to the trial;fostering mutual support and understandingamong jurors; and making concrete suggestionsabout returning successfully to their daily lives.

6. Student answers may vary. However, if studentsbelieve that juror stress affects the fairness of tri-als, ask them to explain an alternative that wouldbe fairer. The reality is that trials involving grue-some details will create stress; however, helpingjurors manage the stress is likely the best way toaddress the potential problem.

7. Student answers will vary. A few inconclusivestudies point to sequestration as a source of jurorstress, but there is not clear evidence that thestress affects the outcome of the trial.

Chapter 16, Reading

1. It affects about 1 in every 100 people, and it runsin families.

2. It would allow testing of members of affected fam-ilies, verify diagnoses, and, hopefully, lead to newdrugs that can treat the disorder.

3. Once the genes are identified, fetuses can be test-ed, and a positive test could lead to an abortion.

4. Currently, researchers do not know why drugs likeProzac work. Such drugs also do not work foreveryone. By identifying the specific genes, moretargeted and effective drugs can be developed.

5. Students should write a vigorous defense of theposition they choose. Although they may state the

other sides of the controversy, they should clearlytake a stand.

6. Barondes envisions a time when psychologicaldisorders can be diagnosed and corrected throughgene therapy or molecule manipulation.


1. The attacks began when Jane was 26. Initially, theyoccurred only at night.

2. Jane was diagnosed with severe depression, tonsil-litis, problems with her teeth, an inner ear imbal-ance, and other diagnoses of physical ailments.

3. The attacks ceased when her first husband diedand she threw herself into working and raising herchildren.

4. Some researchers think the attacks are caused bythe person noticing physical changes while in alight stage of sleep. Others think that people withpanic disorder have breathing problems that makethem feel like they are suffocating. Otherresearchers attribute the attacks to separationanxiety and shyness during childhood. Many suf-ferers are the children of an alcoholic parent.

5. Panic disorder is often treated with cognitive,behavior, and drug therapy. The drugs are usedonly to control the symptoms while the othertherapies are being used.

6. Student answers will vary. The physical symptomslike the increased heart and breathing rates arereal. Physicians must first rule out physical prob-lems. Most people who suffer from panic disorderdo experience depression. Treating the person fordepression, however, will not solve the problem.

7. One of the problems that people with panic disor-der face is thinking irrationally about their prob-lems. When they are able to focus on other thingsand not let the attacks overwhelm them, thesymptoms may, for a time, subside.

Chapter 17, Reading

1. Jill was taught to allow the vet to draw blood, uri-nate into a cup, and allow an ultrasound.

2. The rewards consisted of pudding, frozen raspber-ries, gelatin, frozen blueberries, and yogurt.

3. By modifying the orangutan’s behavior, they wereable to avoid tranquilizing the animal to check thehealth of the fetus. They were able to draw bloodregularly and perform ultrasounds.

4. Jill learned that the veterinarian would disable herwith the tranquilizer gun.

5. Through behavior modification, they were able toget Jill to show them the baby.

6. They began the modification by simply sitting out-side the bars. Eventually, Jill would be rewarded

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each time she came near the vet. The rewardsreduced her anxiety about the vet. Through eachstage of the conditioning, the rewards continuedto reduce anxiety and encourage Jill to cooperate,even if the procedure was painful or uncomfort-able.

7. The basic process of behavior modification is thesame for humans and animals. The differencesexist in the types of rewards and in the range ofapplications for which behavior modification isused. In animals, the rewards must be tangible. Inhumans, the rewards can be intangible, such asacknowledgment and appreciation. In humans,mental imaging can be used to conquer fears,whereas animals do not have the reasoning capac-ity to respond to mental imaging.


1. Robert was disruptive especially during transi-tions, and he often complained that the other boyswanted to fight with him. He lacked good socialskills. He also had a great deal of homework andstruggled with the amount of reading that wasrequired.

2. Robert had a good relationship with his mother.She was supportive and consulted him in deci-sions affecting him. Robert had little contact withhis father. His father had recently been callingmore frequently, but Robert had no stable rela-tionship with him.

3. The professionals were the family therapist andthe school counselors. Some students will includeRobert’s teachers, but the counselor actually par-ticipated in the therapy and consulted with teach-ers about Robert’s progress.

4. Cindy would set up a household structure thatprovided rewards and consequences for choresand schoolwork completion. Robert would beencouraged to interact socially with other chil-dren, including attending the boys club. As a family, they would establish quality time thatwould be free of chores and schoolwork. Theywould discuss the role of Robert’s father andestablish a pattern of communication.

5. Robert will be placed at the front of the class toreduce distractions. He will be paired with anotherstudent to improve his social skills. He will alsoparticipate in group counseling with other chil-dren in similar situations.

6. Student answers will vary. Robert does not knowwhat to expect from males. He may be disappoint-ed with infrequent contact and confused by hisfather’s recent attempts to maintain more contact.He may translate that into a lack of trust towardother people, especially his peers.

7. Student answers will vary. Treating a family in con-text means to consider the circumstances thataffect the family and its members. In this case,Robert’s behavior at school affected his behaviorat home. Additionally, Robert’s strained relation-ship with his father affected him in school and insocial situations. By examining all aspects ofRobert’s situation, the counselor and therapist willbe better able to help Robert.

Chapter 18, Reading

1. He found that anger was not the most destructiveemotion in marriage.

2. He has found that criticism, contempt, defensive-ness, and stonewalling are destructive. He alsoidentified an unequal balance of power as a causeof marital difficulty.

3. Researchers use videotapes in which they canclosely examine the emotional responses betweenpartners. They provide a more accurate recordthan self-reported behaviors.

4. Studies have shown that happily married couplesare healthier and have a stronger immune system.In addition, unhappy marriages often result inemotional problems for the couple and emotionaland behavioral problems for the children. By elim-inating these problems, better health can be main-tained.

5. They recommend that couples share householdand child care responsibilities. They also recom-mend group therapy with other new parents.

6. Student answers will vary. When people are com-municating in destructive ways, no amount ofactive listening is likely to resolve the problem.Gottman identifies criticism, contempt, defensive-ness, and stonewalling as demons of marriage. Ifthis is true, couples who listen actively to theirpartner’s expression of these negative emotionswill damage their relationship further rather thanimproving it.

7. Student answer will vary. A love map demonstratesacceptance and intimacy because the person isable to explain his or her spouse’s dreams andfears. Acceptance therapy starts from a point ofacceptance of the differences that exist in the rela-tionship and communicating the need to maintainand strengthen the relationship.


1. Individuals’ beliefs, opinions, and behaviors aremore important in individualistic cultures. In col-lectivistic cultures, the group’s beliefs, opinions,and attitudes are more important than those ofthe individual.

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2. The hypothesis is that in individualistic cultures,people rely on the formal legal system to resolvedisputes even among family members and friends.Collectivistic cultures rely on tradition, moral andreligious authority, and an informal dispute reso-lution process.

3. The researchers used vignettes and a question-naire assessing people’s attitudes. The interviewswere conducted in the native language of the par-ticipants.

4. They used a 14-item survey. The results did sup-port the researchers’ assumption that theGermans were from an individualistic culture andthe Kurds and the Lebanese were from a collec-tivistic culture.

5. In collectivistic cultures, the group and its beliefs,behaviors, and attitudes are more important thanthe individual. The group often defines thesethings in terms of tradition or religion. In order tobe a part of the group, you learn the same atti-tudes, beliefs, and behaviors. In individualisticcultures, differences among people are toleratedand, in fact, encouraged. Traditions and religionare not common to all members of the individual-istic society. To prevent anarchy, authority toresolve conflict is given to a legitimate authority,such as the state.

6. Student vignettes will vary. Possible vignette:Arthur is shopping for a new dining room set. Heis deciding between two antique sets that are simi-lar in style. He finally selects the more expensive ofthe two, writes a check for the purchase, andmakes arrangements with the dealer to deliver theset next week. When the set arrives, it is the wrongone. Arthur phones the dealer, who insists that thecorrect set has been delivered. The dealer tellsArthur that he had no other sets in his shop thatday. The two get in a heated argument. Arthurgoes to the dealer’s shop to continue the argu-ment. As they argue, an antique lamp gets broken.

Students’ analyses of their vignettes shoulddemonstrate that they understand the differentapproaches used by the two cultures. In an indi-vidualistic culture, this type of dispute would like-ly end up in court. In a collectivistic culture, afriend would likely be called in to mediate thedispute.

Chapter 19, Reading

1. Amundsen prepared and planned for the expedi-tion in great detail. He consulted experts, theEskimos (Inuit), about modes of travel and appro-priate clothing. He supplied his expedition withadequate supplies and the best gear. He had aclear strategy that balanced progress with the abil-

ities of his team. In contrast, Scott did not consultexperts and chose a means of transportation thatwas unworkable. He did not prepare adequatesupplies or gear. He made spur of the momentdecisions such as taking an extra team memberwhen adequate supplies were not available or ask-ing team members to carry extra weight.

2. Amundsen and his team achieved their goal andreturned home. Scott’s expedition did reach itsdestination, but did not achieve its goal. The teamdid not have the energy or supplies for the returntrip and they all lost their lives.

3. He says that leaders see more than others see, seefarther than others, and see things before othersdo.

4. Leaders can use failures to ponder and changewrong assumptions and flawed methods. They usethis knowledge to build future successes.

5. He describes them as optimistic, realistic, pre-pared, effective, and wise.

6. The authoritarian and democratic leadershipstyles use the law of navigation. A laissez-faireleader, by definition, does not set direction for thegroup.

7. Answers will vary. A secondary group could be theschool and the leader is the principal. Studentsevaluate the leader’s ability to set a direction forthis group. Encourage students to include specificexamples when possible.


1. The hypothesis is that students who do not livewith both parents, who have poor relationshipswith their parents, who have low parental moni-toring, and who perceive that their parents sup-port fighting will be more likely to exhibit aggres-sive behavior and carry weapons.

2. The participants were 8,865 students in the sixth,seventh, and eighth grades in an urban school dis-trict in Texas.

3. The average was 16 acts.4. All four measures influenced aggressiveness: living

with both parents, good relationship with parents,parental monitoring, and perceived parental sup-port for aggressiveness.

5. The strongest relationship exists between studentviolence and a student’s perceived parental sup-port for violence.

6. Student answers will vary. Examples include peerresolution of conflicts, role-playing activities thatdemonstrate alternate means of resolving prob-lems, and counseling available for the stressesfaced by teens. Some teens need to improve theirsocial and problem-solving skills. All studentsneed to understand what services are available for

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conflict resolution in a nonaggressive manner.7. Student answers will vary. Examples include par-

ent education about their role in the aggressive-ness of their children and support groups for par-ents who are struggling with difficult issues intheir own lives.

8. Answers will vary. Students may point to theamount of violence in the movies, on TV, or invideo games. They may mention increased stressor increased drug use or other social pressures aswell.

Chapter 20, Reading

1. Some investors lost money, while others, especial-ly day traders, made a profit.

2. They spread by word of mouth from person toperson or by posting the item on bulletin boards.

3. Tommy Hilfiger was hurt by the story that he stat-ed on Oprah that the company did not wantminorities to purchase its expensive clothing.Hilfiger has never appeared on the show, but thathas not stopped the rumor from persisting.

4. Rumors multiply because they tap into deep soci-etal fears and stroke egos.

5. A diving rumor is a tale that is repeatedly exposedas false but refuses to die.

6. Student answers will vary. Some students will like-ly see little reason to avoid these myths; they enjoythe tabloid approach to information. Others willpoint out that if it sounds unbelievable, youshould investigate the facts as thoroughly as possi-ble before passing the legend along.

7. Student answers will vary. Although some studentsmay say they would simply laugh it off, challengethem to think of something that could really hurtthem or one of their friends. For some types ofrumors, it may be best not to respond becausethat encourages the rumor to stay alive. If, howev-er, the content could really harm you or someoneclose to you, you may need to take aggressiveaction to try to find the source and expose him orher.

8. Answers will vary. Once attitudes are formed theybecome difficult to change. Information that sup-ports existing attitudes tends to be believed.Information that refutes our attitudes tends to bediscounted.


1. The hypothesis was that jurors are influenced bypretrial publicity about a case. The influence, how-ever, can be mitigated when suspicion is raisedabout the motives of the media.

2. The researchers created a transcript of the trial,

newspaper articles describing the case, and anopinion column calling for the conviction of thedefendant.

3. The opinion column created the attitude in thereader that the defendant was guilty by stronglystating the writer’s opinion (which ran against thedefendant’s innocence) and calling for the defen-dant’s conviction.

4. Jurors were to make their judgments individually.Researchers wanted to test the effects of pretrialpublicity, not group conformity.

5. More than three-quarters of the pretrial publicitygroup voted for conviction. Less than a majorityof the control and suspicion groups voted forconviction.

6. The American justice system depends on juriesconsidering only the evidence presented at thetrial in making jury decisions, not media coverageand opinions of the case.

7. Pretrial publicity can prejudice a jury by creatingthe idea of guilt or innocence in people’s mindsbefore the actual evidence is presented.Statements made in the media may be presentedas facts, even though they could not be presentedat the trial as facts. The media may also create animpression of the defendant that is prejudicial.The prejudice can be lessened by changing the siteof the trial to a location that has not received thesame pretrial publicity. The judge can also instructthe jury not to consider any information exceptthat presented at the trial. In a real juror situation,the verdict must be unanimous. Therefore, if oneor two people can focus on the facts of the trialonly, the defendant can receive a fair trial.

Chapter 21, Reading

1. In 1973, he lost control of his pitches. He had nophysical problems, and he could not find anymechanical problems with his pitches.

2. It was popularized in the late 1960s by Soviet andEast German doctors in their work with Olympicathletes.

3. He cautions that psychologists do not providemagic cures. Hypnosis and other therapies mayhelp, but they take time to work. He also warnsthat you can overload an athlete with too muchanalysis, which leads to confusion.

4. Before the high salaries paid to professional base-ball players, the players had to worry about sup-porting their families during the off season whenthey received no money. Today, the stress resultsfrom not having sufficient motivation, being con-stantly scrutinized in the media, and increasedexpectations that accompany the large salaries.

5. Student answers will vary. Hypnosis and medita-

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tion are widely used treatments. Cognitive therapythat changes a person’s inaccurate ways of think-ing would also be a good recommendation.

6. Student answers will vary. Encourage them tomake their points clear and brief. For example, astudent might say “I think it’s a great idea to have asports psychologist on staff. He can help playerskeep focused on performing their best. After all,we do want the team to win.”


1. Two supermarkets were selected, 35 miles apart sothat their customer base would not overlap.

2. Objective wait time is the actual, measurable timespent standing in line. Perceived wait time is thelength of time that the customer thinks he or shehas waited in line.

3. How long do you think you were standing in linetoday before you reached the checker? Was yourwait today shorter, longer, or about as long as youexpected? How satisfied are you with the service

you received today? How satisfied are you with thestore?

4. It appears that the checkers spent more time chat-ting with customers when the store was not busy,which increased both the wait and serve times.

5. Customer satisfaction results in return businessfor the store. If customers become sufficiently dis-satisfied, they will go elsewhere to shop. Althoughsatisfaction may be based on things other thanwait time, it is certainly an important factor incustomer satisfaction.

6. Answers will vary. Theme parks install videoscreens that patrons in the long waiting lines canwatch. Supermarkets place tabloid racks in check-out lanes so that customers will have something to“read.” This may lessen the perceived wait time.

7. Since customer satisfaction was high during theslow time even though the objective wait time waslonger, the psychologist could recommend thatmanagement look for candidates who are friendlyand outgoing, as well as efficient.

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Readings and Case Studies in Psychology...Readings and Case Studies in Psychology Psychology UNDERSTANDING To the Teacher Readings and Case Studiesserve as a supplement to material