Psychological research on death concern has been impeded by the absence of measuring instruments with high reliability and by the dearth of systematic research into the relationships of death concern with other personality variables. The present paper describes the construction of a Death Concern Scale with a high level of internal consistency and stability. Relationships between the Death Concern Scale and State Anxiety, Trait Anxiety, Manifest Anxiety, Repression-Sensitization, as well as needs Heterosexuality, Succorance, and Change of the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule are presented and discussed.

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Two explanations have been advanced to account for errors in reasoning with categorical syllogisms. Woodworth and Sells attributed the errors to the atmosphere created by the major and minor premises. Chapman and Chapman attributed the errors to illogical conversion and probabilistic inference. The present study provides two indirect sources of support for the explanation-of Chapman and Chapman. First, instructions designed to reduce errors of illogical conversion and probabilistic inference were successful in significantly improving performance, whereas instructions against atmosphere errors were not. Second, it proved possible to account for the differences in absolute difficulty of the. various premise combinations on the basis of the Chapman and Chapman principles, but not on the basis of the atmosphere effect principles. Finally, the ordering of the major and minor premises was found not to have a significant effect on performance although an unexpected interaction with instructions was obtained.Research on formal syllogistic reasoning in adults has revealed that people have a strong tendency to draw erroneous conclusions from indeterminate syllogisms that do not allow any valid conclusions (Begg & Denny, 1969;Chapman & Chapman, 1959;Roberge, 1970;Sells, 1936;Woodworth & Sells, 1935). Furthermore, these same studies show that there are preferred errors for the various premise combinations constituting the syllogistic task. This regularity, which has been repeatedly replicated, strongly suggests that subjects are engaged in systematic processes in drawing conclusions from premises. Two explanations have been advanced to account for the systematic erroneous performance.The first explanation (Sells, 1936;Woodworth & Sells, 1935) attributes the pattern of error preferences to an atmosphere effect. It is argued that the quantity and quality terms of the major and minor premises combine to produce a general atmosphere uncritically accepted by the subject in drawing a conclusion from the syllogism. The quan-

Previous research with categorical syllogisms indicates that subject performance is better on valid syllogisms than on syllogisms which are indeterminate. The present study tested the hypothesis that the poorer performance on invalid syllogisms is a function of the disproportionate number of invalid syllogisms in the traditional syllogism task. Subjects may not expect so many invalid syllogisms and may be reluctant to draw so many nonpropositional conclusions. One group of subjects received the standard set of 19 valid and 45 invalid syllogisms, while a second group received a set of 35 valid and 29 invalid syllogisms. There were no significant differences between the groups on valid or invalid syllogisms, disconfirming the hypothesis. Several previous findings with categorical syllogisms were replicated.Previous resea~ch utilizing both valid and invalid categorical syllogisms has found that performance is considerably better for syllogisms which have a specific propositional conclusion than for syllogisms which are indeterminate. Thus, Roberge (1970) has presented data for 59 syllogisms in which the percentage correct for 14 valid syllogisms was 51.2%, while the percentage correct for 45 invalid syllogisms was 35.8%. Similarly, Dickstein (1975) reported the percentage correct for all 19 possible valid syllogisms to be 72.6%, as compared to 58.2% for the 45 invalid syllogisms.These data indicate that subjects are more willing to endorse specific propositions as conclusions than they are to endorse the alternative that no valid conclusion may be deduced from the premises. Revlis (1975a) has argued that subjects possess a response bias against non propositional conclusions, and he attributes this response bias to the universe of problems which constitute the traditional syllogistic reasoning task. A complete set of categorical syllogisms consists of 64 different premise combinations. Of these, only 19 yield propositional conclusions while 45 have no valid conclusion. Revlis argues that this imbalance between valid and invalid syllogisms biases the subject toward propositional conclusions because the subject does not expect so many invalid syllogisms. According to this explanation, the poorer performance on invalid syllogisms does not necessarily reflect some fundamental aspect of the reasoning process but, rather, is an artifact of the task situation.The primary purpose of the present experiment was to test the hypothesis that performance on invalid syllogisms is a function of the proportion of valid and Dr. Lyle Bourne, Jr. sponsors this paper and takes full editorial responsibility for its content. This study was conducted while the author was on sabbatical leave from Wellesley College at the Institute for the Study of Intellectual Behavior, University of Colorado . The research was supported by a postdoctoral research fellowship to the author from the National Institute of Mental Health (l F32 MH05214.()1) under the sponsorship of Dr. Lyle Bourne, JI. invalid syllogisms constituting the task set. If the rel...

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