Objective Stimulus Research Articles

The Ratio Measurement of Social Status: Some Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Social scientists have recently found scale construction techniques developed in psychophysics relevant to problem in social science. This paper reports some efforts at ratio of social status, and some attempts at fitting functional forms to relation between valued social characteristics (e.g., education and income in our society) and status accorded various levels of these variables by judges from three distinct cultural groups. We take exception to some of forms fitted by earlier researchers. To social scientists in many disciplines social status is a crucial variable in explanation of social, political, and economic behavior of individuals. Most modern social scientists recognize necessity of adequate of that variable; however, attempts to measure status which is accorded to individuals by those with whom they interact seldom if ever transcend what Torgerson (1958: 22) terms measurement by fiat. S. S. Stevens (1968:172) characterizes as the assignment of numerals to objects or events according to rules; when rules are assigned arbitrarily (but not necessarily capriciously), by fiat obtains. This state of nature obviously exists when an index of social status is constructed from, say, income, education, and occupation, in which weights of three components are assigned arbitrarily. In present state of social science, weights in such indices as this are necessarily allocated arbitrarily, simply because we know so little about nature of relationship between status continuum and continua which are thought to indicate status, e.g., income, education and occupation. In a recent series of experimental investigations, Robert Hamblin has begun clarification of these relationships, using ratio techniques which have originated and matured in psychophysics; these experiments have been replicated and extended by Allen Shinn (1970). In these studies, status is treated as a consensual or norm variable, a variable which involves values which are so widely held within a cultural group or subgroup that any normal adult member of that group could constitute a competent observer (Shinn, 1970:18-19). These investigators also conceive status as an involuntary response to social stimuli. In any social system, individuals present certain characteristics to others with whom they interact. In mass society, status is likely to be accorded at presentation of objective stimuli of education, income, and occupation, although in less extensive social systems, status may be accorded because of superior knowledge, physical beauty, or experience, depending on group or organization. In short run characteristics for which status is accorded by others, and amount of status accorded for various amounts of these characteristics, are probably involuntary responses. Such connections between stimulus and response are established early in socialization process and, while they may be modified by later learning, are certainly intractable in immediate situation. As Shinn (1969:934-935) argues, it may also be that responses to social stimuli are nonvoluntary in short run-that an individual is in a sense a prisoner of his conditioned values. The impetus for assigning status-giving to stimulus-response paradigm has been corroboration of a general psychophysical law on various continua of sensations produced in sensory receptors by physical stimuli . .. [t]he magnitude of a psychological sensation

Test of a Multiplying Model for Estimated Area of Rectangles

Graphic ratings of physical size were obtained for 36 rectangles in a 6 X 6, width x height design, with each factor ranging from 3 to 18 cm. These judgments were approximately linear in physical area and followed a multiplying model reasonably well, though not perfectly. It is suggested that the underlying process was one of additive integration and that functionalmeasurement procedures can be used to scale phenomenal size of complex shapes. Previous work on judgments of area has been largely concerned with accuracy, and with the relation between the response and the physical area (Ekman and Junge, 1961; Stevens and Guirao, 1963; Teghtsoonian, 1963; Stanek, 1969). This orientation toward the physical stimulus measure has tended to pass over the psychological processes involved in area judgments. The importance of a process orientation is suggested by reports that judged area appears to be affected by shape as well as by physical area (Luckiesh, 1922, p. 97; Warren and Pinneau, 1955; Smith, 1969). An interesting example is cited by Paterson and Tinker (1938; see also Helson and Bevan, 1964; Tolansky, 1964, p. 49), who noted that, contrary to appearances, the marginal white space on a printed page is roughly equal to the central printed area. In a typical page of text in this journal, for example, the marginal area occupies approximately 44% of the page. The experiment reported here was designed to test a simple multiplying model for area of rectangles. The judged area was assumed to be, in effect, the product of the subjective values of width and height. A novel feature is the use of procedures from the theory of functional measurement (Anderson, 1970), procedures which test the model while allowing for subjective values of width and height. In this theory, no a priori assumption about the relation between subjective and objective stimulus values is needed. Differential weighting of the two stimulus dimensions is also allowed for, though this cannot be explicitly tested in a simple multiplying model.

Note on "facilitative distortion".

Pepitone (1965) has defined as that distortion manifested in the estimating of the attributes of others as facilitative or not with respect to the perceiver's achievement. He has specified that such distortion is a function of the level of motivation (of the perceiver to reach the in question) and the to which the stimulus offers restraint against the goal (p. 80). The phenomenon is most strongly demonstrated under conditions of relatively severe restraint in the objective stimulus environment (p. 80). One may infer then, from the foregoing and from the operational data, also that Pepitone assigns only the characteristic of degree to the restraint in question and that the term, severe, refers to the greater (as opposed to the lesser) restraint. Certain frustration-aggression research (e.g., Cohen, 1955), however, suggests that the restraint might include another dimension, its quality. Besides being a greater or lesser restraint, judged in magnitude or extensiveness only, the restraint might also be reasonable or unreasonable. This is, of course, not to deny that there may be some aspects to this dimension of quality other than that of its Further, just as the restraint's aspect must be placed on a continuum, so too must its quality or reasonableness. A restraint may be highly unreasonable, or somewhat unreasonable, or quite reasonable, and so forth. And, just as Pepitone suggests (p. 80), an independent effect of the restraint's on the pertinent motivation, an independent effect of the restraint's quality on the motivation-in-question is also a possibility. For example, what might we expect to occur to motivation to reach a not only when restraint to the goal-achievement activity increases, but also as it, while remaining quantitatively the same, becomes more unreasonable? Thus, in addition to the two variables identified by Pepitone as determinants of the of facilitative distortion, a third is proposed, as is the necessity of both further reducing at least two of the variables, and, following Pepitone, also the necessity of systematically examining, in the future, the relationship to the third variable, the relevant motivation of the perceiver.

Subjective variables in electro-physiological recording.

Electrophysiology deals with apparatus applied in a stimulus response situation. This technique is partly concerned with physical problems, partly with biological ones. The failure to appreciate differences in these problems leads to assumptions which require critical examination. Assumptions stating the constancy of objective stimuli, the meaning of inter and intra-individual variation, and the stability of the so-called “resting level” are examined.

To what Objective Stimuli do Six-Year-Old Children Respond with Intentional Misrepresentation of Facts

To what Objective Stimuli do Six-Year-Old Children Respond with Intentional Misrepresentation of Facts