Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to P G Erwin.
In 1987 Hazan and Shaver showed that patterns of romantic love reflected attachment styles. In an extension of that study with 39 men and 33 women in college (ages 18-36 years), this research shows that family relationships may also affect romantic relationships indirectly through their association with attachment styles.
Confirming Hendrick and Hendrick's (1988) findings with American college students, British students reporting they were currently "in love" scored significantly higher on the Love Attitude Scale dimensions of Eros and Agape but significantly lower on Ludus when compared to subjects not currently in love.
Children's attitudes toward television violence were studied. A 47-item questionnaire collecting attitudinal and personal information was administered to 316 children aged 11 to 16 years. Cluster analysis was used to split the participants into two groups based on their attitudes toward television violence. A stepwise discriminant function analysis was performed to determine which personal characteristics would predict group membership. The only significant predictor of attitudes toward violence on television was the amount of television watched on school days (p < .05), but we also found that the impact of other predictor variables may have been mediated by this factor.
This study examined social problem-solving ability and peer social behavior in popular and unpopular 5-6-year-old children. The 4 most popular and 4 least popular individuals in a school class of 26 children were identified. Responses to a series of four social dilemmas were obtained, and the children were videotaped during free class activities. Popular children gave significantly more effective (p < .01) and relationship oriented (p < .05) strategies for resolving social dilemmas than unpopular children, and they were involved in more peer interactions (p < .05), were more positively reinforcing (p < .01), and showed more positive activity when alone (p < .01).
I examined the impact of first names on ratings of physical attractiveness as judged by British undergraduate subjects using male and female full-face pictures presented on photographic slides. The photographs were identified with attractive names, unattractive names, or without any name indicated. Subjects rated the stimulus figures for physical attractiveness. Names accounted for approximately 6% of the variance in subjects' ratings of physical attractiveness. This effect was highly significant for pictures of women (p < .001), but nonsignificant for pictures of men (p > .05).
This study uses matched tasks methodology, and shows that unipolar depressives perform better on recognition than on recall. Since they also show a low level of item clustering in free recall, this suggests that the memory deficit of depressives is partly due to an associative disturbance.