The finding that attraction is a function of attitude similarity has been interpreted as a special case of the effect of positive and negative reinforcements on attraction. A simple discrimination learning task was employed in which the reinforcements were attitude statements similar and dissimilar to the opinions of the subject. The presentation of similar attitude statements after each correct response and dissimilar attitude statements after each incorrect response significantly changed response probability. The hypothesis that such statements could be used as reinforcers in a learning situation was thus confirmed.
The repression-sensitization dimension has been hypothesized to be associated with adjustment in a curvilinear fashion with both sensitizers and repressers showing more evidence of maladjustment than neutrals. The Repression-Sensitization (R-S) scale and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) were administered to 91 college undergraduates and intercorrelated. Approximately half of the CPI scales yielded significant negative correlations with the R-S scale. Rather than the hypothesized curvilinear relationship, repressers appear to be the best adjusted of the 3, sensitizers the most maladjusted, while neutrals fall between the 2 defense groups. The 7 CPI scales which relate most consistently to repression-sensitization are Sociability, Sense of Weil-Being, Self-Control, Tolerance, Good Impression, Achievement via Conformance, and Intellectual Efficiency.
A scale designed to measure a personality dimension involving attitudes toward food was constructed by means of internal-consistency item-analysis procedures. A pool of 221 true-false items was administered to 400 undergraduates. The analysis yielded 62 cross-validated items scored for males, 65 for females. With new samples, split-half reliability was found to be .73 for males, .74 for females. Test-retest reliability (6 weeks) was .86 for males, .82 for females. In a validational study with 204 undergraduates, scores on the food scale were found to be positively correlated with self-ratings of viscerotonia and negatively correlated with cerebrotonia, as hypothesized.Investigations of individual differences in affective responses to food or food-related cues have been confined primarily to aversive reactions. Typically, a list of various foods is presented, and subjects are asked to indicate those items which they dislike, those which they would refuse to eat, etc. With aversion to food conceptualized as a personality variable, it has been found that the number of foods disliked is positively related to a number of relatively negative characteristics:
A scale designed to measure dependency in fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children was constructed by means of internal consistency item analysis procedures. Sixty-five, true-false items were administered to 219 elementary school children. The analysis yielded 33 cross-validated items. With a new sample, test-retest reliability (2 weeks) was .67 for fourth graders, .87 for fifth graders, and .82 for sixth graders. In subsequent concurrent validity studies, scores on the Children's Dependency Scale were found to decrease with the increasing age of children, to be higher for girls than for boys, and to be higher for children in dependent families. A slight relationship was obtained between scale scores and teacher ratings of dependency.
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