We would like to extend special thanks to Lee Beach, Andrew Davidson, Nickolaus Feimer, and Robert Sasanoff for reviewing initial drafts of this article and to Robert Bolles for his help on references to the animal literature.Requests for reprints should be sent to Donald Schmidt, who is now at the Societal Analysis Department, General
The present investigation was concerned with grading standards in different major fields. Specifically, adaptation-level theory was hypothesized as a model for describing grading behavior of instructors. In this model, the stringency of grading standards is positively related to average student ability. The regressions of GPA on HSGPA, SATV and SATM were computed for students in each of 12 major fields. This information was used to “project” hypothetical GPA’s if students were to major in fields other than their own. The results indicated that for middle and low ability students those fields with lowest ability students adopt lowest grading standards. Similarly, high grading standards are adopted by fields with high ability students. It appeared that adaptation-level theory was supported as a model of grading behavior at low and middle levels of ability but not for high levels of ability. The implications of the results were discussed with regard to: 1) changing college admission requirements, and, 2) open-enrollment experiments.
A field study was conducted to determine if a number of psychological and physical factors that had been previously associated with perceptions of environmental crowding differed with the cultural characteristics of urban residents. Six hundred ninety-seven subjects living in Riverside-San Bernardino, California, were surveyed to ascertain perceived crowding in the residence, neighborhood, and city. It was found by multiple regression analysis that psychological factors indicative of the impact of physical conditions on the individual provided the best explanation for the perception of crowding for white subjects. Black and Chicano groups, however, tended to view crowding at each of the analysis levels in terms of the total urban "gestalt", associating physical measures beyond their implicated impact. The implication of these findings are discussed.
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