No abstract

A theory of self-perception is proposed to provide an alternative interpretation for several of the major phenomena embraced by Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance and to explicate some of the secondary patterns of data that have appeared in dissonance experiments. It is suggested that the attitude statements which comprise the major dependent variables in dissonance experiments may be regarded as interpersonal judgments in which the observer and the observed happen to be the same individual and that it is unnecessary to postulate an aversive motivational drive toward consistency to account for the attitude change phenomena observed. Supporting experiments are presented, and metatheoretical contrasts between the "radical" behavioral approach utilized and the phenomenological approach typified by dissonance theory are discussed.

The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by "time-reversing" well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed.

The historically recurring controversy over the existence of cross-situational consistencies in behavior is sustained by the discrepancy between our intuitions, which affirm their existence, and the research literature, which does not. It is argued that the nomothetic assumptions of the traditional research paradigm are incorrect and that by adopting some of the idiographic assumptions employed by our intuitions, higher cross-situational correlation coefficients can be obtained. A study is reported which shows that it is possible to identify on a priori grounds those individuals who will be crosssituationally consistent and those who will not, and it is concluded that not only must personality assessment attend to situations-as has been recently urged-but to persons as well. Our persistent belief in personality traits, the stubborn assumption that there are pervasive cross-situational consistencies in an individual's behavior, is, quite literally, one of our most ancient convictions: Penuriousness is economy carried beyond all measure. A Penurious Man is one who goes to a debtor to ask for his half-obol interest before the end of the month. At a dinner where expenses are shared, he counts the number of cups each person drinks, and he makes a smaller libation to Artemis than anyone.. .. If his wife drops a copper, he moves furniture, beds, chests and hunts in the curtains.. .. [P]enurious men have hair cut short and do not put on their shoes until midday; and when they take their cloak to the fuller they urge him to use plenty of earth so that it will not be spotted so soon [Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.), quoted in Allport, 1937, p. 57].

Do ill-tempered children become ill-tempered adults? What are the life-course consequences of such an explosive interactional style? What processes can account for the persistence of maladaptive behavior across time and circumstance? To answer these questions, this study used data from the Berkeley Guidance Study (Macfarlane, Allen, & Honzik, 1954) to identify children with a pattern of temper tantrums in late childhood (ages 8-10) and to trace the continuities and consequences of this behavioral style across the subsequent 30 years of their lives. Life-course continuities in this behavioral style were found for both sexes. Men with histories of childhood tantrums experienced downward occupational mobility, erratic work lives, and were likely to divorce. Women with such histories married men with lower occupational status, were likely to divorce, and became ill-tempered mothers. It is proposed that maladaptive behaviors are sustained through the progressive accumulation of their own consequences (cumulative continuity) and by evoking maintaining responses from others during reciprocal social interaction (interactional continuity).