ABSTRACT
The present study investigated schizophrenics' and college students' preference for and judgment of humor samples written by schizophrenics and normals. Twenty male hospitalized schizophrenics and 20 male undergraduate college students ranked from most to least funny two sets of captions that had been previously written by an independent group of 10 college students and 10 schizophrenics. In addition, all subjects identified which captions they thought were written by college students and which by schizophrenics. The schizophrenic judges ranked the schizophrenic captions significantly more humorous than the student judges did. Student judges found the student captions significantly more humorous than the schizophrenic judges found them. When presented with both schizophrenic and student captions, however, all 40 subjects found the student captions significantly more humorous than the schizophrenic captions. Schizophrenic judges were not significantly better than student judges in the identification of schizophrenic captions. Student judges, however, were significantly better judges of "normal" humor than schizophrenic judges were.
Subject(s)
Schizophrenic Psychology , Wit and Humor as Topic , Adolescent , Adult , Emotions , Humans , Judgment , Male , Students/psychologyABSTRACT
Choices of color crayons to portray mood stories were studied in a sample of first grade boys. The total sample (180) was divided into three treatment groups (60 subjects in each) who were told either the "Angry Boy" story, the "Happy Boy" story, or the "Sad Boy" story. Each subject selected one of six color crayons (red, yellow, green, blue, brown, or purple) to color the boy "to look" angry, happy, or sad. Racial, socioeconomic, and within-group differences were not significant, but significant differences were found between groups given angry and sad stories (x2 equal to 22.23, df equal to 5, p is less than .01). red was significantly associated with the angry boy when compared with the sad boy, while brown was significantly more often preferred for the sad boy than for the happy boy. By the age of first grade consequently the general preference for red by children is already significantly altered.
Subject(s)
Association , Color , Emotions , Black or African American , Age Factors , Anger , Child , Happiness , Humans , Male , Social ClassSubject(s)
Depression/epidemiology , Hospitalization , MMPI , Seasons , Adult , Female , Hospitals, Psychiatric , Humans , Male , OhioABSTRACT
This study examined the effects of type of training and level of education on clinical judgment, as demonstrated in "clinical" and "actuarial" evaluation of the Graham-Kendall Memory-for-Designs (1960). Protocols of 6 organic and 6 non-organic patients matched for age and IQ were evaluated by 18 judges. Nine of the judges were psychologists and nine had degrees in some field other than psychology. In each group 3 judges had PhDs, 3 had Master's degrees and 3 had Bachelor's degrees. There was no significant difference (p greater than .01) between the 2 groups in clinical or actuarial diagnoses of brain damage regardless of level of education, and inter-rater reliability was all but identical. Results were consistent with other research on clinical judgment.
