The purposes of this study were, first, to examine the hypothesis that assumed similarity tendency (AS) is higher than real similarity (RS) in the perception of the likable other's attitude to values, and, second, to make sure the relationships among the three indices of AS and RS.
The subjects were 50 male and female students. They went through two copies of KikuchiGordon Scales of Personal Values (KG-SPV): one to measure their own attitude to values and the other to examine their inferences about the other best friend of the same sex. Based on the score of KG-SPV the three indices, (1) intra-personal correlation (IPC), (2) absolute difference value (AD), and (3) correlation based on the whole subjects (C), were calculated in AS, RS, respectively in terms of 6-value scores among one's own self, inference of other's and the real attitude of other's.
The results were as follows:
1) The hypothesis that AS is higher than RS was supported by IPC and AD, which were converted, and C.
2) The consistent relationship was found between converted AD and C. but converted IPC did not significantly related to converted AD and C.

View full abstract

This study aims to examine the relationship between leadership behavior and perceived supervisor's personality. Subjects were 230 workers employed in three enterprises. They rated the supervisor's personality on 20 character traits and 30 leader traits. In addition, they rated leadership behavior on 24 scales and their job characteristics on 19 scales.
Major findings were as follows.
1. Four factors extracted from character traits were interpreted as familiarity, kindheartedness, confidence in his own work, and dignity.
2. Four factors extracted from leader traits were interpreted as his subordinate-oriented, work-oriented, self-oriented, and interpersonaloriented.
3. M-behavior (group maintenance oriented behavior) has stronger influence on personality cognition than P-behhvior (task-oriented behavior). P-behavior has stronger influence on personality cognition in only one cognitive dimension, work-oriented, than M-behavior.
4. The moderating effects on the relationship between leadership behavior and perceived supervisor's personality were found in two job characteristics, namely variety and necessity of cooperation.

View full abstract

The purposes of the present study are to explore the cognitive structure of social situations and to examine sex differences in them.
One hundred and sixteen undergraduates (58 males and 58 females) served as subjects. The subjects were asked to classify thirty social situations into five to nine categories according to their similarities. Then, they were asked to rate social situations on twelve situation rating scales.
Major findings obtained are as follows:
1. The dimensions, which were extracted from rating situations, were (1) intimacy, (2) task-orientation, and (3) anxiety.
2. Sex differences in the relative salience of the dimensions in ratings, as presented by the INDSCAL weights, were found. Specifically, males gave greater weight to dimension (2), while females gave greater weight to dimension (3).
3. A fairly high degree of correspondence was found among the cognitive structures obtained by ratings and similarity judgments.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of some individual traits and a situational factor on causal attribution processes for group success. One hundred and three undergraduates read a story about either interpersonal or task success which resulted from group activities of a university tennis team. And then subjects were devided into either a high or a low cognitive complexity group and a high or a low interpersonal orientation group, on the basis of their scores on two questionnaires. Therefore, factorial design was 2×2×2. Results indicated that (1) cognitively simple individuals tended to attribute success more to a leader's ability, especially for task success, than cognitively complex individuals, (2) cognitively complex and highly interpersonaloriented individuals, when attributing for task success, tended to attribute success more to a subordinate's ability than cognitively simple and low interpersonal-oriented individuals attributing for interpersonal success. Furthermore, cognitively simple individuals were found to attribute cause more differently from leader to subordinate for interperspnal success than for task success. Causal attribution processes of cognitivly complex individuals were found to be even more complex than those of cognitively simple ones.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the arousal process of metacognitive affect. The metacognitive affect is the affect that is aroused as a result of metacognitive process. This contains such affect as interest, joy, humor, and curiosity.
In the first research, fifty college students as subjects were asked to rate the one hundred texts consisted of two sentences in terms of schema incongruity and interest. As a result, there was a positive correlation between schema incongruity and interest.
In the second research, fifty college students as subjects were asked to rate forty texts whith consisited of five solving strategies, congruity (co), assimilation (as), alternate schema (al), accommodation-successful (acs), accommodation-unsuccessful (acu), in terms of schema incongruity, solvability and interest. As a result, there were negative correlation between schema incongruity and solvability, and between solvability and interest. And, there was a positive correlation between schema incongruity and interest as well as in the first research. Further, the results show that the degree of interest varies among solving strategies.
These results may be taken to indicate that the affective value and intensity of metacognitive affect are determined by the degree of schema incongruity and problem solving process.

View full abstract

Environmental problems such as water-pollution by detergent, litter-disposal, and drought are assumed to be the “tragedy of commons” at the community level. This study examines a prediction model of how consumers cope with these problems.
Fifty-seven male undergraduates rated the expected total number of coping, perceived problem seriousness, probability of problem occurrence, perceived personal efficacy, and behaviorintention of coping in each of the hypothetical situations of detergent, litter, and drought.
Significant causal chains obtained by pathanalysis were as follows;
1. Detergent Pollution: total expectation→probability→seriqusness→coping intention, and total expectation→coping intention;
2. Litter Disposal: total expectation→probability→seriousness→coping intention, total expectation→coping intention, and personal efficacy→coping intention;
3. Drought: total expectation→coping intention, and probability→seriousness→coping intention.
Generally speaking, the above results supported the prediction model. However causal chains of personal efficacy→coping intention in two of the situations were not found. Three main evaluations of coping behavior including efficacy were discussed.

View full abstract

This study examined the effects of a interview situation and topical focus on interviewee's verbal fluency. The hypotheses were as follows: 1. An interviewee's verbal behavior in an embarrassing topic, in contrast to the interviewee's verbal behavior in a neutral topic, is associated with a longer reaction time, more unfilled pauses, more filled pauses, more speech disturbances and less verbal productivity. 2. In a neutral topic, an interviewee will speak more fluently, i. e., with shorter reaction time, fewer unfilled pauses, fewer filled pauses, fewer speech disturbances and greater verbal productivity when in the face-to-face condition than in the screen condition. In an embarrassing topic, an interviewee will speak more fluently when in the screen condition than in the face-to-face condition.
The subjects were ninety-two male university students. This study manipulated interview situations (face-to-face condition and screen condition) and topical focus (neutral topic and embarrassing topic) in a 2×2 factorial design. Subjects were randomly assigned to each of the four experimental groups. They were interviewed one by one by male confederates who were also university students. Each subject was interviewed in one of two conditions: one with a screen separating an interviewer and an interviewee and one without a screen. The interview consisted of neutral questions in the area of occupation and embarrassing questions in the area of sexual matters.
The results generally supported hypothesis 1. Hypothesis 2 was partially confirmed. The results showed that the interaction between the interview situation and the topical focus was significant only in the verbal productivity. It was demonstrated that in the embarrassing topic the interviewee was more verbally productive when in the screen condition than in the conventional face-to-face condition.

View full abstract