INTRODUCTION: Basic to the judging process is the relating of a given item to a group of items* The simpler case of judging is one in which an item is compared with another which is simultaneously present while the more complex case consists in comparing an item with previously experienced items* Analysis of the latter process was given impetus by Wever and Zener (8) who introduced a method of investigation applicable to this problem of judgment in time* Positing that even simple comparisons draw heavily upon an extended context of experiences, these investigators demonstrated that their method of presenting for judgment single members of a stimulus series gives data comparable to that obtained with the traditional method of constant stimuli. Wever and Zener and investigators who subsequently utilized the method of single stimuli have demonstrated that subjects are able to make consistent judgments which are sensitive to small increments of change in the stimulus series* Additional studies have investigated some of the influences that modify judgments such as changes in end stimuli or stimulus density, and aspects of the stimulus distribution to which judgments are anchored. Several reviews of the research in this area are available (5,6,7). In addition to laboratory findings everyday life offers many examples of the utilization of judgments which reflect previous experiences with the stimulus dimension involved. The basis for such characterizations as “a tall man”, “a fascinating lecture”, “ a good meal” is admittedly more involved than the basis for usual laboratory judgments but the same general principles may be assumed to underlie both. In both the laboratory and the social situation the process of relating one item to a non-present set of items is dependent upon a temporal integration of the effects of previous contacts with items of that set. It is meaningful, therefore, to examine the functional dependence of distributions of judgments upon previous experience with items of the same set as the ones being judged. This problem is implicit in several different lines of research such as investigations of shifts in judgments, where the underlying assumption is that changes in judgment reflect changes in the fundamental character of the stimulus distributions, and empirical studies of anchoring, which in general follow the pattern of modifying essentially rectangular stimulus distributions. Both types of investigation represent efforts to discover the aspects of a stimulus distribution to which judgments are related. The present study is composed of several experiments which 4 were designed to investigate systematically general relationships obtaining between different distributions of stimulus items and distributions of judgments elicited by these items with attention to such factors as differences in the instructions, the number of judgment categories and the step-interval between items. In all experiments the subjects were required to judge the length of singly presented horizontal lines. The first group of four experiments represents an effort to discover the form of the basic functional relationship in relatively unstructured situations which are representative of most judging tasks. The initial experiment consisted of separate groups of subjects judging one of five different distributions of stimulus items. All the distributions (rectangular, symmetrical unimodal, bimodal, positively skewed, negatively skewed) had the same range and density of items and two categories of judgment (longer or shorter) were available to the subjects. The second experiment was designed to investigate the influence of the factor of stimulus distribution on judgments rendered by subjects who experience successively more than a single stimulus distribution, since in life situations individuals do not typically experience one clearly defined distribution of similar stimulus items. Rather they have a variety of contacts with items whose distribution may vary over a period of time. The aspect of the judging situation which was altered in the third experiment was the number of judgment categories. In order to determine the effect of the distributional properties of the stimulus items on judgments in multiple category situations the number of categories available to the subjects was increased from two to three (longer, medium, shorter). In the fourth experiment the step interval between stimulus Items was increased from a barely supraliminal to a clearly discriminable one. This was done in order not to restrict the findings of the study to situations such as those of the traditional psychophysical experiments where the step-interval is in the region of the Ilmen. In the first four experiments the instructions to the subjects were very general, and thus the question is raised whether the relationships obtained under these conditions depend upon varying individual interpretations of the task. The last two experiments in this study were designed to investigate the effect of more explicit instructions with the aim of obtaining results which could be compared with the relationships found between distributions of stimuli and distributions of judgments in the more representative unstructured situations. / This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded by Ciara Healy.

This dissertation employs modern psychometric techniques to estimate the item characteristics of the Conditional Reasoning Test of Aggression (CRT-A) and three related subscales. Using a sample size of 5,511 respondents, this dissertation provides an accurate assessment of the capability of the CRT-A to measure latent aggression. Additionally, a differential item functioning analysis compares student and applied samples. Results suggest that 21 of the 22 CRT-A items work as intended for the measurement of aggression and all 22 of the CRT-A items are good indicators of their respective factor subscales. Information curves indicate that the CRT-A is best suited for use with individuals who are high on latent aggression.

The purpose of the study was to develop a revision of the logical reasoning section of the California Test of Mental Maturity which increases its discriminative ability while maintaining an acceptable measure of reliability. Subjects were 102 students of general psychology classes at North Texas State University. All were administered the Logical Reasoning section of the California Test of Mental Maturity in its original form and an experimental revision of it (LRTR). The Wesman Personnel Classification Test was administered at the same time to demonstrate the tests' construct validity. Pearson product-moment correlations, item and homogeneity analyses were run. Results indicated that the revised test correlated significantly with the original test and the WPCT. Internal validity of the revised test was satisfactory, showing an improvement over the original test in terms of clarity, reliability and homogeneity.

Several decades of leadership research have failed to yield a personality measure that accurately predicts successful leaders (Bernus&Manis, 1985; Stogdill, 1974; Vroom&Yago, 2007; Yukl, 1989). A new implicit measure of personality, the Conditional Reasoning Test for Leadership (CRT-L), shows promise in this endeavor. This project investigated the construct and criterion-related validities of this measure. Previous research on implicit personality measures, and specifically conditional reasoning measures, has demonstrated that their relationship to their explicit measure counterparts tends to be modest or nonexistent. This was the case for the CRT-L, which had no relationship to the NEO Hostility Scale or the Motivation to Lead (MTL) Scale. As expected, the two explicit measures did have a significant and positive relationship (r = .42). The CRT-L was also effective at predicting leadership and power criteria. It had positive and significant relationships with Leadership Peer Nominations (r = .25) and Power Peer Nominations (r = .21) and was more successful in these predictions than either of the explicit measures. The results of this research provide evidence for the effectiveness of the CRT-L as a leadership measure and further validation work is encouraged.

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the joint effects of culture and attribution of outcome feedback on reasoning performance. This study attempted to address four major research questions: (a) Do Canadian and Chinese students have different cultural values and causal attribution patterns? (b) Do pre-experimental individual differences in causal attribution patterns lead to differences in Canadian and Chinese students' inductive reasoning performance? (c) Does attribution of outcome feedback affect Canadian and Chinese students' inductive reasoning performance? (d) Do Canadian and Chinese students conduct deductive reasoning differently as a function of outcome feedback and reasoning task contents? A total of 120 college students (60 Canadian and 60 Chinese) performed three phases of computerized experimental tasks. The research design involved 2 types of culture groups (Canadian and Chinese) under 3 conditions of outcome feedback (success, failure, and control) as two independent variables. The dependent variables observed were the number of instances used or correct responses made and response time, when possible. In terms of culture differences, Canadian students appear to be distinct and articulate about the matters of socio-cultural values, while Chinese students are relatively less distinct and articulate. When making attribution for other people's success, both Canadian and Chinese students held internal factors (i. e., good effort and high ability) as responsible. When accounting for other people's failure, Canadian students picked controllable factors (i.e., lack of effort), while Chinese students picked both controllable and uncontrollable factors (i.e., largely lack of effort and occasionally difficult task) as the reasons. However, following the success outcome feedback about their own reasoning performance, Canadian students emphasized mostly high ability and, occasionally, effort as the reasons, while Chinese students picked mostly good luck and, occasionally, high ability. Given the failure outcome feedback about their own task performance, Canadian students attributed to lack of effort and bad luck as causes, while Chinese students exclusively picked lack of effort as the explanation. Chinese subjects' inductive and deductive reasoning performances remained relatively unswayed by success or failure outcome feedback, whereas Canadian subjects' reasoning performance remained good only when success feedback was received. When failure feedback was provided, Canadian subjects' reasoning performances deteriorated and remained poor throughout the experiment. While Chinese students' reasoning performance is not predictable from their low-ability attribution of other people's failure outcome, Canadian students' reasoning performance is highly predictable; that is, the more they attributed others' failure to low ability, the faster they completed the culture-fair inductive reasoning task. On the other hand, when making attribution based on their own experience, given success feedback, Canadian students attributed their performance to their high ability. Given failure feedback, Canadian students attributed their performance to their lack of effort, with improved performance commensurable to their verbal causal attribution. The present findings indicate that Canadian and Chinese college students showed differences in causal attribution patterns, depending on when they explain others' success/failure experiences or their own, and further that upon receipt of failure outcome feedback, Canadian students' reasoning performance deteriorated, while Chinese students' performance remained insensitive to success or failure outcome feedback. Further fine-grained analyses of such causal attribution patterns interacting with outcome feedbacks and cognitive performance needs some more careful studies.

The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the joint effects of culture and attribution of outcome feedback on reasoning performance. This study attempted to address four major research questions: (a) Do Canadian and Chinese students have different cultural values and causal attribution patterns? (b) Do pre-experimental individual differences in causal attribution patterns lead to differences in Canadian and Chinese students' inductive reasoning performance? (c) Does attribution of outcome feedback affect Canadian and Chinese students' inductive reasoning performance? (d) Do Canadian and Chinese students conduct deductive reasoning differently as a function of outcome feedback and reasoning task contents? A total of 120 college students (60 Canadian and 60 Chinese) performed three phases of computerized experimental tasks. The research design involved 2 types of culture groups (Canadian and Chinese) under 3 conditions of outcome feedback (success, failure, and control) as two independent variables. The dependent variables observed were the number of instances used or correct responses made and response time, when possible. In terms of culture differences, Canadian students appear to be distinct and articulate about the matters of socio-cultural values, while Chinese students are relatively less distinct and articulate. When making attribution for other people's success, both Canadian and Chinese students held internal factors (i. e., good effort and high ability) as responsible. When accounting for other people's failure, Canadian students picked controllable factors (i.e., lack of effort), while Chinese students picked both controllable and uncontrollable factors (i.e., largely lack of effort and occasionally difficult task) as the reasons. However, following the success outcome feedback about their own reasoning performance, Canadian students emphasized mostly high ability and, occasionally, effort as the reasons, while Chinese students picked mostly good luck and, occasionally, high ability. Given the failure outcome feedback about their own task performance, Canadian students attributed to lack of effort and bad luck as causes, while Chinese students exclusively picked lack of effort as the explanation. Chinese subjects' inductive and deductive reasoning performances remained relatively unswayed by success or failure outcome feedback, whereas Canadian subjects' reasoning performance remained good only when success feedback was received. When failure feedback was provided, Canadian subjects' reasoning performances deteriorated and remained poor throughout the experiment. While Chinese students' reasoning performance is not predictable from their low-ability attribution of other people's failure outcome, Canadian students' reasoning performance is highly predictable; that is, the more they attributed others' failure to low ability, the faster they completed the culture-fair inductive reasoning task. On the other hand, when making attribution based on their own experience, given success feedback, Canadian students attributed their performance to their high ability. Given failure feedback, Canadian students attributed their performance to their lack of effort, with improved performance commensurable to their verbal causal attribution. The present findings indicate that Canadian and Chinese college students showed differences in causal attribution patterns, depending on when they explain others' success/failure experiences or their own, and further that upon receipt of failure outcome feedback, Canadian students' reasoning performance deteriorated, while Chinese students' performance remained insensitive to success or failure outcome feedback. Further fine-grained analyses of such causal attribution patterns interacting with outcome feedbacks and cognitive performance needs some more careful studies. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate