Carmi Schooler

University of Maryland Global Campus | UMUC · Sociology

An experiment carried out in the United States and China investigated how social context affects cognitive orientation. Explanations for cultural differences in cognitive orientation is that they are rooted in agricultural practices that encourage relatively more holistic or analytic orientations. Recent work has proposed that social network struct...

Purpose: To investigate two explanations for how variations in social network structure might produce differences in cognitive and perceptual orientation. One explanation is that the extent to which structures lead people to feel strong social bonds encourages holism. The other is that the extent to which a network leads individuals to be concerned...

We examine the effects of socio-environmental change on personality in Mali in three ways, using data from a longitudinal two-wave (1994, 2004) survey conducted in rural Mali. Firstly, we compare the between-wave personality stability of Anxiety, Self-confidence, Mastery/Fatalism, and Authoritarianism with that in USA, Japan, Poland, and Ukraine. S...

Herbert E. Spohn was born in Berlin on June 10, 1923 and on December 7, 2013 and passed away on December 7, 2013. Herb conducted intensive psychological research on schizophrenia. After retirement, Herb maintained the perspective of a scientist-psychologist but gave full vent to his interlocking practical, literary, historical, and philosophical in...

Concerns over a series of “differences” have been central to Leonard Pearlin’s research and thought. Throughout his career, his focus has been on the different ways in which different kinds of people deal with the different stresses that result from different types of strain (Pearlin 1989; Pearlin et al. 1981; Pearlin and Schooler 1978). A particul...

Some symptom dimensions in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients have a familial and putative genetic foundation, based on replicated findings in studies of sib-pairs with OCD. However, these symptom dimensions are all from exploratory factor analyses of Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale Symptom Checklist ratings based on non-empirically...

We analyzed the effects of patterns of brain lesions from penetrating head injuries on memory performance in participants of the Vietnam Head Injury Study (Grafman et al., 1988). Classes of lesion patterns were determined by mixture modeling (L. K. Muthén & B. O. Muthén, 1998-2004). Memory performance was assessed for short-term memory (STM), seman...

Cohen et al.'s (1990, 1999) concept of context has been employed to explain various schizophrenic cognitive deficits. Braver et al.'s (2001) modified definition allows us to link context to cognitive complexity and explain a range of our experimental findings. Saccadic and manual responses to experimental paradigms involving familiar and unfamiliar...

We examine how parents' relationships with their 13- to 25-year-old offspring affect the parents' willingness to ask them for help with financial and personal problems 20 years later. Husbands and wives were interviewed in 1974 and 1994; a child was interviewed in 1974. We used two aspects of parental style, responsiveness and restrictive dominance...

We examine the relations among socioeconomic status, control beliefs, and two coping styles (problem-focused vs. emotion-focused) in the context of financial stress. Findings indicate that low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to greater use of emotion-focused financial coping and lesser use of problem-focused financial coping. The effects of SE...

In this article, I call into serious question Salthouse's (2006) conclusions evaluating and disparaging the validity of the "use it or lose it" hypothesis regarding mental exercise and mental aging. I do so, in some part, by using data not discussed by Salthouse. The core of my argument relies heavily on a critical assessment of the conclusions tha...

This chapter details the history of the Laboratory of Socioenvironmental Studies (LSES) of the Intramural Research Program (IRP) of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) - a topic that might at first glance seem of little interest to any but the relatively few who were part of that history. Nevertheless, for better or for worse, the histor...

Using data from a U.S. longitudinal investigation of psychological effects of occupational conditions (a project of the National Institute of Mental Health’s unit on Socioenvironmental Studies), we examined the relationship between the complexity of household work and 2 psychological variables: intellectual flexibility and self-esteem. Longitudinal...

Using data from 1994-95 third-wave interviews, this study tests whether Kohn and Schooler's findings ( based on 1964 and 1974 interviews) that self-directed occupational conditions increase intellectual functioning and self-directed orientations hold when the respondents are 20 years older. Results confirm that even late in life self-directedness o...

This chapter examines cross-national differences in individual values, attitudes, and behaviors. The central question raised is how social-structural and cultural factors account for the differences found. After discussing a series of theoretical issues raised by this question, the chapter reviews the findings of four quantitative sociological rese...

In this study, the authors examined the relations between 3 psychological variables-fatalism, self-confidence, and intellectual resources-and the subsequent development of illness and disability 20 years later in an adult sample. Results indicated that greater fatalism, assessed in 1974, predicted greater difficulty in everyday cognitive tasks as w...

Functional coupling of regional cerebral metabolic rates for glucose measured with [18F]-Fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose PET was compared in 18 drug-free patients with Tourette's Syndrome (TS) and 16 age- and sex-matched control subjects. Pearson product-moment correlation matrices containing correlations between metabolic rates in regions sampled through...

Using structural equation modeling techniques on data from a nationally representative longitudinal survey, we first explored the reciprocal relationships between socio-economic status (SES) and health status. We then estimated the degree to which health-related lifestyles/behaviors and psychosocial distress are mediating mechanisms of these relati...

By using data from a representative longitudinal survey, the authors provide strong evidence that complex leisure time activities increase intellectual functioning for workers and nonworkers. Although the effects were relatively moderate, both the present article and its predecessor on the effects of paid work (C. Schooler. Mulatu, & Oates. 1999) s...

By using data from a representative longitudinal survey, the authors provide strong evidence that complex leisure time activities increase intellectual functioning for workers and nonworkers. Although the effects were relatively moderate, both the present article and its predecessor on the effects of paid work (C. Schooler, Mulatu, & Oates, 1999) s...

We examined age influences on analogy-based learning, in particular, analogy-based text memory. Adults (20-72 years) read pairs of passages describing analogous topics. We manipulated encoding complexity for the first passage and superficial topic similarity between passages, and assessed second-passage memory. Across all age groups, memory was bet...

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to investigate the nature of memory distinctions underlying the performance of two samples: a sample of male Vietnam War veterans who had not received head injuries, and a second sample of male Vietnam War veterans who had suffered penetrating head injuries resulting in relatively small lesions (<10 cc volume l...

Self-esteem is an academic and popular phenomenon, vigorously researched and debated, sometimes imbued with magical qualities, other times vilified as the bane of the West's preoccupation with self. Though thousands of articles have been devoted to the topic, and bookshops work to feed the public's appetite for advice on revealing, enhancing and ma...

While agreeing with Rose's reasoning about why the causes of organisms' behaviors cannot be reduced to the solely biological and molecular, this review questions Rose's uses of the terms “determinism” and “contingency”; his occasional seemingly cavalier acceptance as fact of unproven hypotheses about social and psychological phenomena; and his...

Using a nationally representative sample of employed men and women in this longitudinal study, the authors extended for another 20 years findings based on 1964 and 1974 data (Kohn & Schooler, 1983) that substantively complex work improves intellectual functioning. This study provides evidence that intellectual functioning and substantive complexity...

A perceptual bias, the third person effect, has been observed where individuals believe themselves to differ from others regarding the perceived influence of media messages. Given the frequency with which youth encounter prosmoking messages and the reported negative effects of these messages, it is of value to study whether youth perceive cigarette...

In this article, we examine the role of analogy transfer in text comprehension. We tested the hypothesis that people would benefit more from manipulations encouraging the induction of common structure from source domains when they had previously engaged in complex encoding of those domains. Participants read sets of passages about analogous domains...

The authors describe a cross-cultural collaborative attempt between American and Malian investigators to apply standard sociological survey techniques to three generally preliterate, nonindustrial ethnic groups in rural Mali—the Dogon, Peulh, and Bozo. The study examines how socioenvironmental factors (e.g., occupational conditions, migration, expo...

Saccadic reaction time (RT) has been shown to be unimpaired in schizophrenia. Could this be due to its not requiring controlled information processing? The authors gave 49 schizophrenia patients and 34 controls manual and saccadic RT tasks with preparatory intervals of 1, 3, and 5 s given in regular and irregular sequences. If saccades require main...

Saccadic reaction time (RT) has been shown to be unimpaired in schizophrenia. Could this be due to its not requiring controlled information processing? The authors gave 49 schizophrenia patients and 34 controls manual and saccadic RT tasks with preparatory intervals of 1, 3, and 5 s given in regular and irregular sequences. If saccades require main...

This paper explores how history and social structure affect individualism in Japan. It integrates a variety of cross-cultural studies comparing Japan with the West whose methodological approaches vary considerably. Its historical comparisons point to many parallels between Japan and the West and reveal similar links between economic development and...

This paper explores how history and social structure affect individualism in Japan. It integrates a variety of cross-cultural studies comparing Japan with the West whose methodological approaches vary considerably. Its historical comparisons point to many parallels between Japan and the West and reveal similar links between economic development and...

Two negative priming experiments in older and younger adults are reported. Participants in Experiment 1, involving both positive and negative priming conditions, showed both types of priming. There were no significant differences between age groups. If anything, older participants showed more negative priming. In Experiment 2, involving only negati...

Using randomized stimulus onset asynchrony (SOAs), the authors traced the time course of Stroop interference and facilitation in normal participants and participants with schizophrenia. Unlike earlier findings using blocked SOAs, singular peaks in interference, facilitation, or both occurred at particular SOAs. The peaks of normal participants and...

In this article, the authors respond to J. D. Cohen, K. O. Dunbar, D. M. Barch and T. S. Braver's (1997) comment on their target article. The present article (a) takes issue with the characterization given by Cohen et al. of the authors' approach as a classical speed-of-processing account of Stroop effects, (b) discusses the value and relevance of...

In this article, the authors respond to J. D. Cohen, K. O. Dunbar, D. M. Barch and T. S. Braver's (see record 1997-02838-005) comment on their target article (see record 1997-02838-004). The present article (a) takes issue with the characterization given by Cohen et al. of the authors' approach as a classical speed-of-processing account of Stroop e...

Older and middle-aged adults recorded autobiographical events on one of two forms of a Personal History Calendar, organized either by year-of-occurrence or by life event category. In Experiment 1, calendars were completed in three stages. In Stage 1, subjects completed the calendar from memory (half were told to expect Stage 2). In Stage 2, each su...

In this paper, we attempt to shed light on the nature of, relevance of, and relationship between global self-esteem and specific self-esteem. We marshal evidence that the two types of self-esteem may have strikingly different consequences, global self-esteem being more relevant to psychological well-being, and specific self-esteem being more releva...

Using a small set of interlocking definitions, this paper presents a generally applicable conceptualization of social structure developed from recollections of Merton's late-1950s formulation. A brief review of the literature supports the view that the proposed conceptualization provides sociological researchers with a relatively simple and logical...

This paper evaluates the relationships of social class position, occupational status, and occupational self-direction to job income in three modern industrial societies, the United States, Japan, and Poland. In doing so, it goes beyond Wright and Perrone's analysis of 1977, which sought to establish the importance of social class by comparing the r...

Although my graduate training was to a large extent in psychological social psychology and my graduate degree itself from a department of psychology, through a combination of accident and intellectual proclivity a substantial portion of my professional career has taken place in the arena of sociology. Over forty percent of the papers in my bibliogr...

This paper shows that Japan underwent a sequence of historical periods during which the level of technical development and the place of the individual in society paralleled that of similar periods in Europe. Particular attention is paid to 16th-century Japan, a period remarkably similar to the European Renaissance in its individualism and socioecon...

This paper examines how Japanese women's occupational conditions affect their psychological processes. We find that self-directed work increases their intellectual flexibility and the self-directedness of their orientations; this finding replicates earlier findings about these important psychological outcomes of self-directed work, even in a cultur...

Subjects learned a microcomputer drawing package under different conditions of training organization and practice complexity. Training instructions were presented in either a random or an organized order, and with or without an analogical model of the software package. Practice trials varied in visual and logical complexity. Performance on paper-ar...

Young and middle-aged adults learned a microcomputer drawing package either with or without an analogical model of the package. Following training, problem-solving flexibility was assessed. Although no age differences were obtained following no-model training, middle-aged subjects performed worse than young subjects following model-based training....

This article conceptualizes and indexes social class for a Western capitalist country (the United States), a non-Western capitalist country (Japan), and a socialist country (Poland). The idea that social classes are to be distinguished in terms of ownership, control of the means of production, and control over the labor power of others is adapted t...

Past research has treated self-esteem either as a social force or as a social product. However, this research has not given adequate attention to the reciprocal effects of the self-concept and various social and personal factors. A panel of 1886 adolescent boys is used to explore the reciprocal relationships between self-esteem and three problems o...

Contents: M.W. Riley, Foreword: Why This Book? K.W. Schaie, Introduction: Social Structure and Behavior. R.C. Atchley, Demographic Factors and Adult Psychological Development. G.C. Myers, Discussion of "Demographic Factors and Adult Psychological Development." D.L. Featherman, "What Developments in Adulthood?": A Developmentalists's Response to Atc...

This article examines how working in a traditional industry and in an economically peripheral sector of the economy affects Japanese workers' attitudes toward their places in the socioeconomic system as well as their broader psychological functioning. In support of long-held sociological theories, the article indicates that workers in traditional i...

ABSTRACTA negative relationship between platelet monoamine oxidase (MAO) activity and Sensation Seeking (SS) has been reported in several studies. This study evaluates the possible contribution of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity to this relationship. Additionally, confirmatory factor analysis was used to create models of ANS concepts from a...

We examine the relationship between a central aspect of schooling--educational self-direction--and students' personalities. The data are from a small but substantially representative nationwide sample of white students in the seventh grade through the fourth year of college. We separately assess the reciprocal effects of educational self-direction...

This paper reports an analysis of data from a small but substantially representative nationwide sample of white students in seventh grade through college. We propose and measure a concept, educational self-direction, by which we mean the use of initiative, thought, and independent judgment in schoolwork. Reciprocal-effects causal models show that t...

Compares the occupational conditions of workers in Japan and the US, testing whether the reciprocal effects of occupational conditions and psychological functioning in Japan are similar to those found in the US. The comparisons of occupational conditions reveal a tendency for work in Japan to be done in a way in which consensus is promoted and indi...

This paper reviews evidence supporting a theory about the psychological effects of complex environments suggested by research on the causal relationships between occupational conditions and psychological functioning. The review indicates that environmental complexity leads to effective cognitive functioning across all stages of the life span. This...

This paper examines the conditions under which work for the household is performed, comparing these conditions and their effects with those of paid employment. Although there are some significant differences, the working conditions of housework do not differ greatly from those of paid employment. There are, however, as expected, marked sex differen...

In earlier work, we assessed a longitudinal causal model of the reciprocal effects of the substative complexity of work and intellectual flexibility. In this paper, we greatly expand the causal model to consider sumultaneously several structural imperatives of the job and three major dimensions of personality-ideational flexibility, a self directed...

Recent evaluation of a 20-year-old experimental ward resocialization program for chronic schizophrenics indicates that the general level of activity, much of it social, was disruptive to the psychological functioning of patients, particularly sicker ones. Antipsychotic drugs positively affected psychological functioning and also decreased social be...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Combining data gathered in a survey of Japanese women's attitudes toward their various roles with the findings of a comparative study of childrearing and child behavior in Japan and the United States, the present paper examines how social structural and cultural variables affect Japanese women's maternal values and behavior. We find that the matern...

Our previous research, based on cross-sectional data, provided prima facie evidence of a reciprocal relationship between the substantive complesity of men's work and their intellectual flexibility. The present study employs longitudinal data to make a more definitive assessment. Using maximum-likelihood confirmatory factor analysis to separate meas...

Coping refers to behavior that protects people from being psychologically harmed by problematic social experience, a behavior that importantly mediates the impact that societies have on their members. The protective function of coping behavior can be exercised in 3 ways: by eliminating or modifying conditions giving rise to problems; by perceptuall...

This study replicates and extends earlier work by finding that low levels of platelet monoamine oxidase (MAO) activity correlate with sensation seeking, high ego strength, positive affect, and high leisure time activity levels, somewhat similar psychological correlates also being found for plasma amine oxidase activity. Although there are several w...

Japanese women were asked to rank the relative importance they place on the role of wife, mother, woman, and person as well as the relative importance they believe their husbands place on similar male roles. Also asked were questions on the qualities of a good wife, the tone of interpersonal relationships with husbands, and the division of househol...

This study represents an attempt to replicate the central results of earlier work on stimulus intensity control. It uses a diverse sample of 40 hospitalized schizophrenic subjects, both chronic and acute. Two measures of stimulus intensity control were used: the Petrie kinesthetic figural aftereffects procedure (KFA), and the EEG method of average...

The first part summarizes, using his own words as much as possible, Caudill’s conclusions from his cross-cultural analyses of observations of the behavior of infants and their mothers. The second part describes the results of preliminary analyses of observations made of the same children and their caretakers at ages 21/2and 6.

Based on the analysis of symptoms of samples of consecutive admissions to representative mental hospitals in the two cultures, three major findings emerge in this paper. The first is that factor analysis of the symptom patterns of hospitalized Taiwan Chinese and Japanese mental patients reveals both cross-culturally applicable and culturally specif...

Answers H. M. Breland's assertions concerning birth order effects in verbal achievement. It is argued that if birth order differences in intellectual functioning exist in childhood, they are very slight and exert at most minimal effects on adult functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The central issue of this paper is whether men's adult occupational experiences affect or only reflect their psychological functioning. Our analysis isolates a small set of occupational conditions, twelve in all, which defines the structural imperatives of the job. These occupational conditions are found to be substantially related to men's psychol...

The variables of age, father's education, rural upbringing, religion, and region in which one was raised are related to the complexity of the child-rearing environment. Having been reared in a complex, multifaceted environment results in a relatively high level of intellectual functioning, a rejection of external constraints, and a subjectivism str...

A review of birth order effects, which considers previously reported and unreported data and recently hypothesized biases arising from long-term population trends, reveals (a) almost no reliable evidence for birth order effects among males living in the United States in the middle 1960s, and (b) only a marginal increase in such evidence when restri...

When the effects of relevant background variables and other family structure variables are controlled, coming from a large family is related to poor intellectual functioning and to having self-evaluative values while at the same time having a tendency toward authoritarianism. Individuals coming from families broken by divorce or separation are more...

Acute schizophrenics open to perceptual stimuli are receptive to emotional stimuli and are intellectually able. Conversely, chronics maintaining active internal lives are inattentive to external stimuli. The Petrie procedure appears uncorrelated with the Silverman KFA. Overestimation after Petrie large-stimulus interpolation relates to passive beha...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1958. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [118]-120). Microfilm.

Social class is consistently related to men's values--both their values for themselves and those for their children--and to their orientation to work, society, and self. Basic to all these class relationships is the distinction between self-direction and conformity to external authority, the former more highly valued by men of higher social class p...

Replicated the experimental procedures on which a tridimensional model of schizophrenic perceptual functioning was based, other potentially relevant procedures included, and the resultant relationships delineated and tested through multivariate statistical techniques. Factor analysis supported the existence of the 3 dimensions of the original model...

Since the change occurence of the various scale types is a function of the joint probability of the occurrence of their constituent responses, it is possible that Scalograms meeting currently acceptable levels of Scalabity and Reproducibility can occur by chance alone. Even Chilton's method, which determines whether the observed Reproducibility is...

Seventy-two chronic schizophrenics (36 regressed and 36 partially remitted) and 36 normals were given paired associates of 2 levels of association strength and 2 levels of intralist response competition to learn under positive, negative, and nonevaluation conditions. Regressed schizophrenics showed maximum decrement on low-association word pairs fo...