Student volunteers from introductory psychology classes who received credit for participation were sampled near the beginning, middle, and end of the quarter. Half the subjects were given a hidden-figures task; half a visual-search task. All 174 subjects then rated several concepts using a semantic differential and completed a social desirability and an authoritarianism scale. A significant performance decrement was found for later samples on the visual-search task but not on the hidden-figures task. There was a significant decline in favorableness of self-evaluation over quarters for subjects given the visual-search task but not for those given the hidden-figures task. Females evaluated themselves more favorably when given the hidden-figures task; males did not. The hidden-figures task was rated more favorably, and females rated research more favorably. Results are discussed in terms of varying motivations in early vs late volunteers and in terms of the level of interest evoked by the tasks.

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The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) was given to 310 male and 302 female undergraduate volunteers who represented a cross section of students enrolled at a regional university. The responses of the 612 subjects to the EAT items were factor‐analyzed separately by sex using a principal components procedure and a varimax rotation. Both males and females produced a six‐factor structure which accounted for approximately 40% of the variance (39.8% males, 42.4% females). Three factors were common to the sexes, and each sex produced three sex‐specific factors. The implications of these findings for the use of the EAT scale as a measure of attitudes toward food and eating in a nonanorexic population are discussed.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. sists, Rychlak (1968) argues, of articulating a set of statements of conditions that render a particular state of affairs necessary. It relies upon explanation largely in terms of efficient causes. The implication in paradigmatic explanation is that if any one condition is altered, there will be a change in the observed phenomenon.By contrast, Bruner (1968) defines narrative knowing as ordering events through time in such a way as to render a particular state of affairs plausible. Narrative explanation does not emphasize efficient causal explanations, meaning it does not preclude other states of affairs as potentially deriving from that same set of circumstances. Rather it relies heavily upon the concepts of formal and final causality, as embodied in human intention.Bruner also makes clear that narrative explanations are never based upon an exact and chronologically precise recounting of all the antecedent events that might have relevance, but are always built on partial, if not selective, recall of relevant events. This observation is critical to an understanding of the narrative approach to psychotherapy because it is this fact that allows different stories to be constructed to explain the current state of affairs, stories which hopefully will be more empowering to the client, increasing her/his options and sense of agency.Bruner (1986) also stresses that each way of knowing results in a very different kind of understanding and that neither is superior to the other. Both Bruner (1968) and Sarbin (1968) argue that in attempting to understand themselves and others, people are much more likely to employ narrative than paradigmatic ways of knowing. But Sarbin goes beyond Bruner in arguing for narrative as "root metaphor" for psychology. Central to his argument is the idea that human life is inherently contextual. That is, things happen to people and people act in specific times and places. Traditional positivist science with its emphasis upon seeking general laws that apply regardless of time and place (i.e., acontextually) is, Sarbin (1986) argues, rather ill suited for purposes of understanding human functioningwhether by the psychologist or nonpsychologist. Narrative thinking, on the other hand, builds explanations specifically upon the particular context in which human intention is enacted, and is, therefore, more readily applicable to an understanding of human functioning.

This article briefly reviews the narrative and humanistic/existential approaches to conceptualizing self. In it, the author explores the possibility of a theoretical integration of these 2 positions on the basis of E.