Altruistic personality in the context of the empathy–altruism hypothesis

In this study the influence of the altruistic personality in general and social responsibility in particular on prosocial behaviour were investigated in the context of the empathy–altruism hypothesis. In an experiment 56 female participants had an opportunity to help a person in distress. In this setting, ease of escape without helping was manipulated. In addition, on the basis of their self‐reports of situation‐specific emotions, participants were divided into an empathic‐concern and a personal‐distress group. The results of the 2 (ease of escape) × 2 (predominant emotional response) design were in agreement with the empathy–altruism hypothesis. Further results indicated that in the easy‐escape condition an altruistic motivation prevailed, whereas in the difficult‐escape condition an egoistic motivation was more dominant. Besides the full scale, two subscales of social responsibility were formed: Moral Fulfilment of the Justified Expectations of Others and Adherence to Social Prescriptions. The full social responsibility scale was significantly related to helpfulness only in the difficult‐escape condition. Further analyses including the subscales showed that the component Moral Fulfilment of the Justified Expectations of Others correlated positively with helping in the easy‐escape condition. Results were interpreted as showing that specific profiles of personality variables are associated with helpfulness in the easy‐escape and difficult‐escape conditions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

GENERIC PATTERNS OF BIFURCATION GOVERNING ESCAPE FROM POTENTIAL WELLS

Extensive numerical simulations have established the generic character of patterns of bifurcation governing the escape of a forced oscillator across a smooth potential barrier and the close relation with the familiar nonlinear resonance within a potential well. Subtle but significant differences are found, depending on whether the damping is high or low, and the differences are related to the problem of experimentally determining the optimal escape condition.

Punishment and Negative Reinforcement of Stuttering Using Electric Shock

Five adult male stutterers were subjected to electric shock under three conditions. After stuttering frequency was stable in base rate, three subjects were (1) presented electric shock continuously, but the shock was terminated for five seconds contingent on each stuttering (escape); (2) not presented electric shock continuously, but were given a burst of shock contingent on each stuttering (punish); and (3) allowed to choose the shock condition they preferred. Two other subjects followed the same procedure, except that the order of the escape and punish conditions was reversed. The five subjects behaved differently in the various experimental conditions. For three subjects, the percentage of words stuttered changed very little in the escape condition, whereas two subjects' stuttering increased in escape. In the punish condition, the percentage of words stuttered changed very little for one subject, increased for two subjects and decreased for two subjects. Little change in stuttering behavior occurred in the preferred choice condition.