This study employed the integrated threat theory of intergroup attitudes to examine the attitudes of Black and White students toward the other racial group. This theory synthesizes previous research on the relationships of threats to intergroup attitudes. Structural equation modeling revealed that for both racial groups, realistic threats, symbolic threats, and intergroup anxiety predicted attitudes toward the other group. To varying degrees, the effects of negative contact, strength of ingroup identity, perceptions of intergroup conflict, perceived status inequality, and negative stereotyping on negative racial attitudes were mediated by the three threat variables. The model accounted for more variance in the negative attitudes of Whites toward Blacks than in the negative attitudes of Blacks toward Whites. The implications of these findings are discussed.

s (1984) provocative, widely accepted analysis proposed that professional sports teams play unusually badly (choke) under the pressure created by their home fans and perform poorly in decisive home games of championship series. However, a reanalysis of the data, including the results of recent championships in baseball and basketball, finds no evidence of a home-field championship choke. The home field is an advantage, and the home team wins about as often late as early in championship series. Teams show an ability to triumph over pressure in asymmetrical "must-win" situations late in championship series. When choking occurs, it is associated with the anticipation of an important failure, not the distractions of possible success as suggested by Baumeister and Steinhilber.

Lab and field data did not support the home-choke hypothesis as it was articulated by R. F. Baumeister and A. Steinhilber (1984). Home teams do not perform poorly in key games. Furthermore, evidence favors a darker form of choking (social pressure plus self-doubts), not the kinder form (disruptive fantasies of success in front of a supportive audience) that explicitly distinguished the home choke. R. F. Baumeister's (1995) reply clouded the concept of the home choke and blurred the standards for its assessment. Even the new measure he proposed usually favored the home team. For coaches and players, the data offer a straightforward conclusion: Take the home field if you have a choice.The exquisite beauty of the scientific method lies in its demand for an interplay between ideas and data. For an idea to survive, much less prosper, its advocates must provide evidence to convince fans and skeptics that the data warrant the conclusion. In our view, the central issue here is simple and straightforward: Do the data support the home-choke hypothesis as it was articulated by Baumeister and Steinhilber (1984)? It is not whether people choke in pressure situations or whether archival data are messier than laboratory data. We looked closely at the home-field disadvantage and could not find satisfactory evidence for it. The baseball and basketball championships, on which the idea was based, usually showed a clear home-field advantage in key games. If a player or coach asks our advice, we confidently answer, "Take the home field if you have a choice."In his reply, Baumeister (1995) mentioned only the World Series data and ignored data from basketball and other baseball championships. He also took a different, more amorphous approach to choking than he did in his earlier article with Steinhilber (Baumeister & Steinhilber, 1984). Current research supports a darker form of choking, not the kinder form of the home choke. Furthermore, we do not agree that the problem is due to the sometimes messy nature of archival data. Any data set, lab or field, can be good or bad. The home-choke idea may be intriguing, but the data from both lab and field research do not support it.We agree with Baumeister (1995) about many aspects of performance pressure. Focusing attention on the details of skilled performances can be disruptive (e.g., the expert pianist concentrating on precise finger movements); social pressure can produce social anxiety; success can be problematic when it commits people to expectations that they think they cannot fulfill or do not want to

We propose a procedure for increasing student participation, particularly in large classes. The procedure establishes a token economy in which students earn tokens for participation and then exchange those tokens for extra credit. We evaluated the effectiveness of the procedure by recording the degree of participation in an introductory psychology class before, during, and after implementation of the token economy. Results revealed that the amount of directed and nondirected participation increased during the token economy and returned to baseline after removal of the token economy. Furthermore, students responded faster to questions from the instructor during the token economy than during baseline, and this decrease in response latency continued even after removal of the token economy.

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