Polarities reflecting conflicts and tensions between approaches to psychology are attributed to an older, mistaken view of the nature of science. Salient features of a new philosophy of science that has developed over the past few decades are identified and their implications for psychology drawn. All science only approaches closure in the laboratory; outside of the laboratory, the world is radically open. Although scientific theory is equally valid in and out of the laboratory, it is not sufficient to explain behavior, nor is it easily applied. Neither natural nor social science has as its central role the explanation and prediction of individual behavior. Just as the application of physics requires engineering technology, explaining the behavior of particular individuals requires not only psychological theory but also situational, biographical, and historical information.
The purpose of this research was to discover the concepts used by persons in describing peers and to identify the systematic development of these concepts over a wide age range. Eighty participants, representing five age levels from kindergarten to college, described in their own words three friends and one disliked peer. A system for content analysis was developed which emphasized not only the use of traits, the usual focus, but that of other person concepts considered to be of a developmental nature. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and each item descriptive of a peer was coded on each of four person concept dimensions, which were descriptiveness, personal involvement, evaluative consistency, and depth. Among the many findings were striking age differences on the four dimensions, as well as differences between descriptions of liked and disliked peers.
B ODY-CATHEXIS is defined as the degree of satisfaction reported by a person with aspects of his own body. In an earlier study (6), the authors reported a method for the measurement of this variable, and demonstrated that mean body-cathexis ratings for 46 parts of the body were correlated with selfcathexis scores, a projective homonym test of anxious body-concern (5), and Maslow's test of psychological security-insecurity (3).This first study served to demonstrate that feeling toward the body is a significant personality variable with mental health implications.In a second study (2), the question was considered, why will a person report that he likes or dislikes a given part of his body? What scalable properties of a body aspect are related to the cathexis rating that an S will assign to it? It is obvious that a body part may be evaluated from many viewpoints, some readily scalable, and others not, viz: its shape, color, size, weight, attractiveness to others, etc. From among these possibilities, the writers selected size as a probable correlate of cathexis, and proceeded to test the prediction that with male subjects (5s), cathexis ratings for selected body parts would correlate with the measured size of these parts. The prediction was upheld, and the inference made that large size was a desirable quality to males.The present study, conducted with female 5s, is an extension of the previous one, with some revision of procedure. The aim is to explore the relationships between cathexis ratings for selected body parts, and three expressions of the size of those parts: measured size, selfestimated size, and self-ratings of ideal size.
METHOD
Hypotheses
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