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Concepts and methods of psychophysics were adapted to a study of the relationship between the size of a pay increase and the subjective impressions it creates. Management personnel (n = 109) were asked to assign cognitive labels to an ordered series of pay increases, and estimates of just meaningful differences UMD) in pay were made for subjects grouped according to level of current salary. Contrary to predictions derived from Weber's Law, the JMD was a decreasing percentage of current pay. Regression analyses revealed that current salary, perceived equity of current salary and, in one instance, expectations regarding future promotions accounted for a significant portion of the individual differences in the size of the JMD. The use of the JMD as an index reflecting psychological sensitivity to changes in income is discussed.

The stability of estimates of test-retest reliability was studied in a situation in which the interval separating observation periods was permitted to vary. Weekly production data were collected from 24 women sewing-machine operators, and 16 women in folding and packaging jobs. Correlations between performance periods were assembled into arrays each containing weeks separated by a fixed interval, K. The variability of the distribution of coefficients, Sr, was determined for each value of K, and the regression of S r on K was found to fit the general form Sr = K/( a + bK) for each group. Most of the increase in Sr occurred between the interval K = 1 to 25, and subsequent analyses yielded no significant relationship between the presence of aberrant reliability estimates and the time separating observation periods. Both magnitude of the reliability estimate and the accuracy with which the estimate is made vary as a function of the temporal dimension of the test-retest design.

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The present investigation studied the structure of the liberalism-conservatism system of social attitudes and constructed a scale to measure the domain. Items were prepared that expressed ideas relating to such basic social considerations as the nature of man, the nature of social order, and the need for tradition or social change. The scale was constructed using a methodology which combined a Likert procedure with a series of item-discrimination procedures using known-affiliation groups as external criteria. The scale was also subjected to a series of factor analyses employing data generated by three independent samples. Two forms of the instrument are presented along with evidence bearing on reliability and validity. Consideration is given to the stability of the instrument's factor structure over samples of varying composition.

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An 18 month longitudinal study tested the assumption that the amount of prior political information influences the degree of ideological attitude change under conditions of exposure to counterattitudinal presentations. Male and female college students (n = 97) served as Ss, and the study was conceived as a natural experiment in which the attitudes of beginning freshmen were exposed to the questioning and challenge of college coursework. Results indicated that well and moderately informed students changed their political orientation less than poorly informed students.