This study tests the hypothesis that in a setting in which service volunteers are likely to experience meager egoistic benefits their longevity of participation is inversely related to the extent to which they feel motivated to volunteer by the need for—or expectation of—egoistic benefits. We confirmed this hypothesis in a multiple-regression analysis based on the case records of all volunteers who terminated their participation during a nine-month period in a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program.
Low response rates remain the primary obstacle to the cost effective use mail surveys in market research. This study examines the efficacy of two cost-free techniques for improving the efficiency of this methodology. The effects of three different appear strategies and cover letter formats were examined in 3 x 3 factorial design. The egoistic appear produced higher response rates than either help-the-sponsor or social utility appears. This effect was most pronounced when the appeal was presented in the post script of the cover letter. Consistent with the results of a previous study, a control group which received no appeal manipulation yielded the highest response rate. Psychological reactance and self-perception theory were used to account for these results.
Stimulus-word concreteness and type of response were varied in two studies using different versions of the recognition-recall method for paired-associate learning. With stimulus-recognition ratings, criterion shifts were suggested that were a joint function of stimulus concreteness and type of response (noun, number, or consonant-vowel-consonant [cvc] trigram). When criterion shifts were controlled with a forced-choice recognition procedure, stimulus concreteness was found to affect response recall strongly even when it did not affect stimulus recognition for noun-cvc pairs as well as noun-noun pairs. The rating-bias effects and a triple interaction among distractor similarity, stimulus concreteness, and type of response suggested that response terms may affect stimulus processing even with highly codable stimuli and representative responses. Despite this and other potential artifacts of the recognition-recall method, results were seen as providing strong support for Paivio's interpretation of stimulus-concreteness effects with noun-cvc pairs. Since Martin's (1967) pioneering studies, the attempt to disentangle stimulus-recognition and associative processes in pairedassociate learning (PAL) by measuring stimulus recognition and response recall concurrently and by examining recall made conditional upon recognition (referred to here as the "recognition-recall method") has been much used but also much criticized. It has been used to help pinpoint the effects of such variables as word concreteness or imagery value (Nelson, Brooks,
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