Forms Of Social Behavior Research Articles

Coital behavior in dogs: V. Effects of estrogen and progesterone on mating and other forms of social behavior in the bitch.

Coital behavior in dogs: V. Effects of estrogen and progesterone on mating and other forms of social behavior in the bitch.

Maternal influence in learning by observation in kittens.

Kittens who observed their mothers perform a stimulus-controlled response (lever pressing to a visual stimulus for food) acquired and discriminated that response sooner than kittens who observed a strange female cat's performance. Kittens exposed to a trial and error condition never acquired the response. Initial differences in attentiveness to demonstrator performances disappeared by the second day. "Altruism" (food sharing) and other forms of social behavior were exhibited by both mother and stranger demonstrators.

Figure-ground differentiation under different perceptual sets.

Witkin and his colleagues have found that the ability to perceive figure independently of ground correlates with many personality traits and forms of social behavior. Rudin and Stagner extended these findings to include the perception of persons and proposed a more general concept to explain the results, that of ego autonomy. Witkin's position appears to be that ability to perceive figure independently of ground is a unitary trait measurable by such tests as the Rod-and-frame Test (RFT); Rudin and Stagner's position is that ability to change set and to select what is to be figure and ground is an operational definition of ego autonomy. To decide between the two positions, Ss were given both the RFT and the Self-contextual Influence test (SCI) under two sets: to be minimally influenced by the field and to be maximally influenced by the field. Results showed those Ss best able to ignore the ground when told to do so were also best able to let ground influence the perception of the figure when so instructed, thus supporting Rudin and Stagner's position.

Aggregation formation in planaria, Phagocata gracilis and Cura foremani: Species differentiation

Two species of planaria ( P. gracilis and C. foremani), maintained together as a single population, formed aggregations differentially according to species. The results were interpreted as being consistent with a chemotactic interpretation of aggregation formation. Aggregation formation among planaria was considered a form of social behaviour.

Adventitious Versus Purposive Occupational Choice: A Reply to Katz

Katz's criticism of our study presents an opportunity for a further clarification of the adventitious and purposive theories of occupational recruitment.1 Katz and Martin's study of nursing students takes a situational approach to occupational choice wherein a variety of external factors impinge on the choice.2 Our approach stresses the negotiated nature of choice, which is seen as involving a compromise between occupational aspirations and opportunities. purposive strategy assumes that choices are rational compromises between factors which of themselves are not necessarily rational. To the extent that there is a direct relation between means and ends we are justified in describing a choice-process as rational in the Weberian sense of the term. Adventitious choice of occupation would seem to be involved when careers are of temporary duration or subordinate to other considerations. Recruitment to female professions provides an excellent example of this phenomena as Davis and Olesen suggest: . . the middle-class girl's identification with and commitment to a choice, when she makes one, is almost of necessity more ambivalent, conflict-laden and tentative than it is for her male counterpart.3 In predominantly male professions, such as medicine, dentistry, law, engineering, etc., choice can be more readily made in terms of career relevant considerations such as economic resources, cost of training, occupational preferences, and future rewards. In essence, Katz's methodological critique consists of a veritable barrage of imputed motives, projected shortcomings, and shibboleths. Katz criticizes us for use of attitudinal rather than behavioral data. However, we assume that mental activity is a form of social behavior which may for some purposes be a better predictor of social action than more visible forms of behavior. What Katz implies are academic expedients are in fact necessary elements of our research approach. For example, Katz suggests that predental students are not proper subjects for determining patterns of choice. Yet, these students are at the closest point to the actual decision making, as represented by enrollment in a pre-professional curriculum. Dental students and practicing dentists are less preferable from a temporal standpoint since retrospective distortions may color their recollections to an unknown degree. Questions of who actually becomes a dentist and what are the behavior and attitudes of dental students are related but nevertheless separate issues. We are presently involved in a longitudinal study of the recruitment, socialization and patterns of successive cohorts of dental students. Analysis of data on dental students at three schools indicate similar patterns of recruitment to that of the predental sample, lending further substantiation to the purposive theory of occupational choice for male professionals. While our attempt to show the influences of background factors such as social mobility, occupational exposure, etc., upon career-choice perspective is certainly open to further development, we leave it to interested readers to determine which theoretical position is more amenable to empirical testing. 1 Fred E. Katz, A Comment on 'The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry,' Social Forces, 45 (September 1966), p. 120; and Basil Sherlock and Alan Cohen, The Strategy of Occupational Choice: Recruitment to Dentistry, Social Forces, 44 (March 1966), pp. 303-313. 2 Fred E. Katz and Harry W. Martin, Career Choice Processes, Social Forces, 41 (December 1962), pp. 149-154. 3 Fred Davis and Virginia L. Olesen, Initiation into a Women's Profession: Identity Problems in the Status Transition of Coed to Student Nurse, Sociometry, 26 (March 1963), p. 92.

A Study of the Protestant Ministry of America

POSSIBLY one of the most significant developments in religion in America during the first half of the Sixties has been a rapidly expanding dialogue between religionists and sociologists.' Religionists have come to recognize that if the church is to continue to play a vital role in contemporary life its leadership must seek to better understand the significance of rapid social and technological change and, furthermore, that the relationship between the Christian faith and these changes must be continually reexamined. At the same time that the church is seeking to better understand its relationship to the world, sociologists seem to be discovering that religion is a far more important component of social structure and of individual life orientations than most social theorists of the first half of this century had thought. In study after study, the religious factor appears as one of the most important predictors of other forms of social behavior.2

The Function of Sociability in the Sociology of Music and Music Education

MUSIC iS, as Sir Jack Westrup puts it,1 not something which comes out of the blue; it is man-made. It is a conscious social phenomenon created by man to fulfill an individual and collectirre need. Man is considered here as a social being whose music is a form of social behavior that enables him to identify himself both as a culturally motivated individual and as a collective member whose characteristic is socio-cultural interaction with other members of his cultural community.

Ionesco and the Mechanisms of Language

MONSIEUR EUGENE IONESCO, whose university studies were those of a philologist, is obviously aware of the theory of language which makes of it a form of social behaviour and not a means of communicating ideas, or feelings. He does not choose as his starting point a group of characters as good dramatists are expected to do, calling upon dramatic language to perform its traditional function of recounting the action and elaborating the theme. Not for him, characters accredited with an inner life, of which words are a projection in an outward direction; of his plays language, the matter of language, verbal matter, is the stuff and substance. The resulting air of unreality, of behaviourist automatism, is intended to be the same as that produced by a language lesson heard on a gramophone. The process of equating a word in one language with a word in another, without taking any account of the real significance of the word, a process with which Ionesco as a language teacher was familiar, had, as he said himself in 1958, produced on him the impression of language separated from reality, and existing for its own purposes. The impression was confirmed by his study of a manual of English conversation, with its grotesque phrases. By painstakingly copying out lists of "useful" expressions from the manual, he relearned, he says, a number of general truths, e.g., that the ceiling is overhead and the floor underfoot, etc.; but these statements sounded completely absurd. He learned from the same manual that Mr. and Mrs. Smith lived in a London suburb and so ate an evening meal of fish, potatoes, and lettuce, and, that Mr. and Mrs. Martin carne from Manchester and had a little girl named Alice. He was however very surprised that they had to tell each other these things!

The relation between density regulation and natural selection.

Darwin (1859) introduced the notion of natural selection by showing that if the density of a species is to remain steady, most of the individuals in each generation must die prematurely. Nicholson (1954) has analyzed the factors determining the density of a species in great detail. Haldane (1953) did so more summarily. It is simplest to consider annual plants or animals. Their increase or decrease from one year to another is a function, among other things, of their density. A factor which leads to increase as the density increases is called density-disturbing (Nicholson), or positive density-dependent (Haldane). Such factors include all forms of mutual aid, from the mutual protection of trees from storms and the greater ease of finding mates if the population is not too sparse, to various forms of social behaviour. Density-regulating (Nicholson) or negative density-dependent (Haldane) factors include all forms of competition, including competition for food and space, and disease facilitated by overcrowding. Other factors, which Nicholson calls density-legislative and density-inactive, are independent of density. Examples are the effects of heat and cold, in so far as they are not modified by competition or co-operation. Clearly at high densities some negative density-dependent factor must come into action, or density would increase indefinitely. Positive density-dependent factors maybe important at low densities. If so there may be an unstable equilibrium, and populations which fall below it decrease further and die out, for example, sessile bisexual or self-sterile organisms with juvenile dispersal. They always make for instability of equilibrium. Negative density-dependent factors may do so if their effect increases very sharply with density, or if it is delayed (Nicholson & Bailey 1935).

The relationship of socio-economic status and aggression to the competitive behavior of preschool children.

Although competition has interested psychologists and educators for years, only Greenberg (4) and Leuba (7) have provided empirical data for the preschool years. And so far as the writers have been able to ascertain there is no empirical material concerning conditions responsible for the development of competitive behavior patterns. Nor is there adequate empirical information about the relationship of competition to other forms of social behavior during early childhood. Current textbooks, in facte.g. (5)-rather avoid this last question and progress from a discussion of competitive behavior through competitive motivation and the use of competitive incentives to sibling rivalry with no clear-cut indication that the last concept is frequently considered germane to the subject of aggression. The investigation reported below attempts to fill some of these lacunae. First, it seeks to determine the role of socio-economic origin in the development of competition. The hypothesis is that competitive behavior will appear earlier and be more intense among children from lower socioeconomic origins. This is suggested by the fact that in Leuba's American middle-class sample there was no competition among two-year-olds and very little among three- and four-year-olds while in Greenberg's underprivileged Viennese sample even some of the two-year-olds competed. Since the procedures, criteria and cultural background of the subjects differed considerably in the two investigations the evidence is only suggestive, but it agrees with the common sense notion that those who are deprived of 1 The protocols upon which this investigation is based were collected by the junior author under the senior author's direction as part of a thesis for the Master's Degree in Child Development at the University of California. The ratings used in the present report were made by the senior author and Miss Eva-Maria Peters whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged.