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Showing papers by "Tilburg University published in 1974"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The role of socialization experiences in the development of psychological differentiation is examined and it is hypothesized that within the pair of villages in each country children from the village which stressed social conformity would tend to be more field dependent and show other signs of less developed differentiation than children from a village in which social conformity was less emphasized.
Abstract: This study examined the role of socialization experiences in the development of psychological differentiation. In each of three countries (Holland, Italy, Mexico) two villages were selected as presenting a contrasting picture with regard to degree of emphasis on conformity to family, religious and political authority. It was hypothesized that within the pair of villages in each country children from the village which stressed social conformity would tend to be more field dependent and show other signs of less developed differentiation than children from the village in which social conformity was less emphasized. In each of the six villages approximately 100 children (boys and girls, aged 9–11 and 13–15) were studied. Differentiation was assessed by a battery of tests of field-dependence-independence and the figure-drawing test. In every comparison of mean test scores between pairs of villages, in each of the three countries, children from the village in which social conformity was stressed obtain...

114 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, seven experiments were conducted which measured changes in the subjects' actual performance resulting from manipulated personal and categorical comparison of performance with another subject, and it was found that subjects who were visually isolated from sources of evaluation showed relatively low performance after a VI (very inferior) or VS (very superior) outcome and relatively high performance after an EQ (equal) outcome.
Abstract: Seven experiments were conducted which measured changes in the subjects' actual performance resulting from manipulated personal and categorical comparison of performance with another subject. In line with Festinger's (1954) theory of social comparison of ability, it was found that subjects who were visually isolated from sources of evaluation (setting 2, experiment 2 and 3) showed relatively low performance after a VI (very inferior) or VS (very superior) outcome and relatively high performance after an EQ (equal) outcome, whereas subjects who were visually exposed to sources of evaluation (setting 1, experiment 1 and 4) showed relatively low performance only after a VS outcome and relatively high performance after both a VI and EQ outcome. When (also in setting 1) the manipulation of outcome was combined with a manipulation of expectation (experiment 5), it was found that an EQ expectation did not alter the original pattern of outcome effects, but that a VI or VS expectation markedly influenced the effect of outcome: A complete confirmation of VI expectation and an almost complete disconfirmation of VS expectation resulted in relatively high performance, whereas all other combinations of VI or VS expectation with a given outcome resulted in relatively low performance. Finally, it was found that changing the manipulation of personal comparison of performance of the previous experiments into a manipulation of categorical comparison of performance of the previous experiments into a manipulation of categorical comparison of performance (experiment 6a and 6b) resulted in a pattern of data wich was about the opposite of the typical previous pattern. In setting 1 (experiment 6a), the subjects' performance was relatively low after being categorized into a VI or EQ category and relatively high after being categorized into a VS category, whereas in setting 2 (experiment 6b) both the VI and VS categorization resulted in the same performance and the EQ categorzation resulted in a slightly lower performance.

59 citations