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The widespread emphasis upon early release of convicted felons and misdemeanants led to investigation of the effects of variation in level of supervision of offenders subsequent to release. The authors describe a project in the State of Florida which included varying intensity of supervision for selected groups of probationers and parolees. The results indicated success in implementing the variations in supervision intensity; that is, the process measures were favorable. However, the product measures involving offender behavioral adjustment did not show clear advantages for either level of supervision intensity. Interpretations of the results depend heavily upon an understanding of the complexity of the just ice system as well as the complex interaction of the behavioral causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current investigation was designed to test the hypothesis that reassurance is at least one mechanism by which the presence of others reduces anxiety. In two separate experiments Ss (female undergraduates n = 38 and n = 40, respectively) waited to participate in an anxiety provoking shock experiment with two Cs. In one condition the Cs were reassuring and in the other they were not. Results of both experiments showed anxiety reduction only when the Cs were reassuring. Birth order differences could not be found; nor could the results of Experiment 2 confirm the hypothesis that reassurance causes people cognitively to re-evaluate the anxiety-arousing situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ratings of pattern goodness and of pattern preferences were made by 96 Brazilian subjects for each of 50 stimulus patterns of known pattern uncertainty. Equal numbers of male and female subjects were used in each of four age groups (9-10, 13-14, 17-18, 20-21). Ratings of pattern goodness were highly correlated with pattern uncertainty for all groups, with results very similar to those previously obtained with subjects in the United States. The youngest group showed more variability among patterns equivalent by reflection and/or rotation than did the older groups, consonant with the U. S. data. However, the two younger Brazilian groups showed even higher variability than the comparable U.S. subjects. The development of equivalency under such transformations occurred later for Brazilian as compared to U. S. students. Pattern preference was similar for all ages, and like that in the U. S., reflected preference for the least uncertain patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article studies personality correlates of two kinds of conforming behavior. Explorations of personality variables associated with conforming behavior have consistently implied that tendencies toward conformity in social situations are stably related to enduring personality factors in the individual. However, clear specification of these relationships, especially with respect to limiting situational conditions, has barely been attacked as a research problem. Certain patterns of personality correlates have documented "the want to be right" as a motivational basis for conformity, while others document "want for acceptance and prestige, or for avoidance of rejection by the group" as further bases of conforming researchers have outlined a distinction between "informational" and "normative" forms of social influence, the former emphasizing information-seeking as a motivator, and the latter emphasizing agreement purely for the sake of agreement. Despite several attempts to clarify a meaningful distinction between the occurrence of conformity as a blind, matching, agreement-seeking process as opposed to an information-seeking process, researchers have pointed out that a great deal of equivocality remains because most empirical research confounds the two processes.

It was argued in this paper that the appropriate theoretical posture in conformity at the present time is not further proliferation of theoretical concepts, but conservative synthesis from a number of theories to two generic ideas which may be supported empirically. The position was taken that conforming behavior was to be understood only in terms of the concerted interaction of both personal and situational variables. An empirical investigation was reported which described the development of a scale designed to measure the personal predispositions to respond in service of the two major conforming functions. Data were reported on the interaction of persons selected on the basis of this instrument with the manipulated situational variables of goal set and publicness of commitment. The results showed that conformity occurred in an informational manner, in a normative manner, or occurred not at all, depending on its functional relevance under various combinations of persons and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effect of reinforcement magnitude on nonconformity. One of the oldest and most fruitful research problems of social psychology has been the study of conformity-the operation of social pressures on an individual's attitudes and behavior. As a social operant, conforming behavior should result from various motives under various experimental situations and occur after various behavioral histories. This idea is consistent with modern social theories of conformity, which have discarded the earlier idea of a unitary motivational basis for conformity. There also have been studies using a social operant which have addressed the problem of magnitude of reinforcement, but these have been oriented primarily toward testing predictions made by dissonance theories. Such studies generally have found a negative relation between reinforcement magnitude and resistance to extinction, though the latter rarely has been referred to by that term. Behavioristic approaches with lower animals and other kinds of responses have been less concerned with such theoretical constructs as dissonance, but have failed to describe any more clearly the effect of reinforcement magnitude on resistance to extinction. Several investigators have obtained decreasing resistance to extinction with increasing magnitude.

Patterns of Negro and white conformity behavior were compared. A 2 by 2 by 2 factorial analysis of variance design was employed with Race, Sex, and Task Difficulty as independent variables. All three main effects were significant, with females yielding more than males, Negroes yielding more than whites, and greater yielding on difficult task items over easy task items. Extremely high yielding by Negro females produced the Race × Sex interaction and accounted for the two main effects. The Task Difficulty × Race interaction demonstrated a deviation by Negroes from the typical white student pattern of informational behavior in a task oriented setting. The Negro pattern was interpreted as a display of normative behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]