Significant Evidence

The purpose of this column is to keep religious educators abreast of the relevant significant research in the general field of psychology. Its implications for methods and materials in religious education are clear. Religious educators may well take advantage of every new finding in scientific research.

Each abstract or group is preceded by an evaluation and interpretative comment, which aims to guide the reader in understanding the research reported.

All of these abstracts are from PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, and used by permission of that periodical. The abstract numbers are from Volume 27, Numbers 2 and 3, February and March, 1953.     

Attribution‐based strategies for initiating and terminating friendships

Research in attribution theory has almost exclusively focused on the perception process to the neglect of studying how communicators incorporate attribution‐based information in their message behavior. This study derived a typology of attribution‐based strategies from Kelley's attribution cube and Jones' ingratiation tactics to assess respondent strategies for initiating and for terminating same‐sex friendships. Respondents were 191 persons drawn from fifth grade, high school, college, and post‐college groups. Results of the study included: 1) distinctiveness information was disproportionately employed in the strategy repertoires to the neglect of consistency‐based and consensus‐based information; 2) respondents had greater variety in types of strategies for their initiation repertoires as opposed to their termination repertoires; 3) repertoire variety for both initiation and termination increased from childhood through adolescence.     

Safetyrama: Teaching children about traffic safety and drunk driving

If every child in every car would speak up when he or she sees an adult commit a driving violation, there would be fewer traffic accidents.Ernest J. Cipullo is Commissioner of Police, Garden City Police Department, Garden City, New York.