John G Benjafield
Biographic Data
| ID | 1458233 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John G Benjafield |
| GIVEN NAMES | John G |
| FAMILY NAME | Benjafield |
| SIGNATURE | BENJAFIELD J G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brock University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8393-4551 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The use of emotion words by the sciences and other subjects
Exploring relationships among eminent psychologists using co-occurrence analysis
Forum for the History of the Human Sciences
Cause," followed by 17 articles by people who have known or worked with Mac from
Vocabulary sharing among subjects belonging to the hierarchy of sciences
The digital history of the anglophone vocabulary of psychology: An exploration using Zipfian methods
The digital humanities are being applied with increasing frequency to the analysis of historically important texts. In this study, the methods of G. K. Zipf are used to explore the digital history of the vocabulary of psychology. Zipf studied a great many phenomena, from word frequencies to city sizes, showing that they tend to have a characteristic distribution in which there are a few cases that occur very frequently and many more cases that oc…
History of Psychology
Patterns of similarity and difference between the vocabularies of psychology and other subjects
The vocabulary of Anglophone psychology is shared with many other subjects. Previous research using the Oxford English Dictionary has shown that the subjects having the most words in common with psychology are biology, chemistry, computing, electricity, law, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, pathology, philosophy, and physics. The present study presents a database of the vocabularies of these 12 subjects that is similar to one previously…
The vocabulary of anglophone psychology in the context of other subjects
Anglophone psychology shares its vocabulary with several other subjects. Some of the more obvious subjects that have parts of their vocabulary in common with Anglophone psychology include biology (e.g., dominance), chemistry (e.g., isomorphism), philosophy (e.g., phenomenology), and theology (e.g., mediator). Using data from the Oxford English Dictionary as well as other sources, the present study explored the history of these common vocabularies…
The long past and short history of the vocabulary of anglophone psychology
How do particular words come to be part of the vocabulary of Anglophone psychology? The present study sampled 600 words with psychological senses from the Oxford English Dictionary, which not only gives the number of senses for each word but also the date and author for the earliest known occurrence of each sense. Analogous information for the same words was taken from PsycINFO. One can distinguish between words for which their psychological sens…
The golden section and American psychology, 1892-1938
The golden section has been said by many to be the most beautiful proportion. Fechner was the first to investigate it experimentally, and several late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American psychologists followed up on his work. Among these were four prominent names: Lightner Witmer (1867-1956), Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949), Robert S. Woodworth (1869-1962), and Robert M. Ogden (1877-1959). Why did such well-known psychologists bother…
George Kelly: Cognitive psychologist, humanistic psychologist, or something else entirely
George Kelly was regarded by some of his contemporaries as a cognitive psychologist and by others as a humanistic psychologist. Kelly himself resisted being rubricized. He did, however, name several people who had been influential in his life and work, one of whom was J.F. Herbart. A comparison of Herbart and Kelly reveals several similarities. Both shared a belief that psychology was fundamentally a mathematical discipline. Both eliminated disti…
Revisiting Wittgenstein on Köhler and Gestalt psychology
In an article in this journal, Nicholas Pastore rejected Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of Wolfgang Köhler and Gestalt psychology. Pastore appears not to have appreciated Wittgenstein's argument that Köhler mistook conceptual questions for factual ones. A simi-lar confusion seems to underlie at least some aspects of contemporary neuroscience. Be that as it may, Wittgenstein has had minimal influence on the research practices of psychologists whil…
Are Economists Rational, or Just Different
There is evidence that American economics undergraduates are more likely than others to act self-interestedly and less likely to behave cooperatively. In two experiments, differences between Americans and Canadians and between economics students and psychology students were examined. Data from simple bargaining and a prisoner's dilemma game are presented, which suggest that Canadian students may be more co-operative than American students, and ps…
Dalzell's theorem and the analysis of proportions: A methodological note
The golden section is a well-known proportion that occurs when something (e.g. a line) is divided into two unequal parts such that the smaller (m) is to the larger (M) as the larger is to the sum of the two (i.e. m/M = M/(M + m) = .618). Dalzell';s theorem holds that the absolute value of the difference between M/(M + m) and .618 will tend to be smaller than the corresponding difference between m/M and .618. This means that the use of M/(M + m) r…
Is There a Home Field Disadvantage in Professional Sports Championships
Recent research has suggested that home teams tend to lose decisive championship games in professional sport. We present data, which suggests that this result is only true for championship series involving the New York Yankees, the Boston Celtics and the Montreal Canadiens. We argue that the home audiences of recurrent champions expect their teams to win. This pressure is communicated to the members of recurrent championship teams, and is the sou…
A Relationship Between Typical Script Events and Positive Interpersonal Judgements
There is considerable evidence that typical events are also evaluated as positive events. This study investigates the possibility that the extent to which people expect typical events to occur is correlated with the degree to which people make positive judgements about their acquaintances. The results supported this possibility, and were taken as suggesting that the typicality of scripts is indicative of the general positivity of a person's expec…
Some psychological hypotheses concerning the evolution of constructs
Evidence supporting five hypotheses concerning the psycholinguistic properties of constructs is presented: (1) The negative poles of overtly marked constructs have lower imagery values than their positive poles; (2) Overtly marked constructs are introduced later in the history of language than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (3) Overtly marked constructs are used less frequently than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (4) T…
The Golden Section: A Convenient Ideal
The observation that subjects conserve the golden section in an interpersonal judgment task calling for the employment of a broad range of judgment outcomes implies a compensation model of interpersonal judgment. Benjafield and Pomeroy (l978) suggest that the GS serves as an ideal around which such judgments are organized. This hypothesis is tested in two experiments, both of which indicate that subjects conserve the golden section by excluding f…
Golden section relations in interpersonal judgement
A model of the organization of interpersonal judgements, based on the hypothesis that people tend to organize their judgements in Golden Section ratios, was presented. A theory of the process of interpersonal judgement, based on the notion that people judge acquaintances using a Fibonacci-like decision rule, was then developed. A computer simulation of the theory yielded results consistent with the model. An experiment in which subjects judged a …
The Golden Section Hypothesis
The golden section is a proportion the aesthetic properties of which have been extolled since antiquity. The data from five experiments in which subjects made dichotomous judgements of acquaintances on bipolar dimensions (e.g. pleasant-unpleasant) were reported. These data indicated that the mean proportion of positive adjectives used in making interpersonal judgements is an excellent approximation of the golden section. An explanation of this fi…
Assimilative Projection and Construct Balance in the Repertory Grid
The relationship between the degree to which people see others as like themselves (assimilative projection) and the frequency with which they use positive adjectives to describe people was examined in the context of changing role perspectives. The assimilative projection scores of those persons who use a preponderance of positive over negative adjectives were found to be influenced by changes in role perspectives. By contrast, the assimilative pr…
The Golden Section Hypothesis
The golden section is a proportion the aesthetic properties of which have been extolled since antiquity. The data from five experiments in which subjects made dichotomous judgements of acquaintances on bipolar dimensions (e.g. pleasant-unpleasant) were reported. These data indicated that the mean proportion of positive adjectives used in making interpersonal judgements is an excellent approximation of the golden section. An explanation of this fi…
The vocabulary of anglophone psychology in the context of other subjects
Anglophone psychology shares its vocabulary with several other subjects. Some of the more obvious subjects that have parts of their vocabulary in common with Anglophone psychology include biology (e.g., dominance), chemistry (e.g., isomorphism), philosophy (e.g., phenomenology), and theology (e.g., mediator). Using data from the Oxford English Dictionary as well as other sources, the present study explored the history of these common vocabularies…
The long past and short history of the vocabulary of anglophone psychology
How do particular words come to be part of the vocabulary of Anglophone psychology? The present study sampled 600 words with psychological senses from the Oxford English Dictionary, which not only gives the number of senses for each word but also the date and author for the earliest known occurrence of each sense. Analogous information for the same words was taken from PsycINFO. One can distinguish between words for which their psychological sens…
George Kelly: Cognitive psychologist, humanistic psychologist, or something else entirely
George Kelly was regarded by some of his contemporaries as a cognitive psychologist and by others as a humanistic psychologist. Kelly himself resisted being rubricized. He did, however, name several people who had been influential in his life and work, one of whom was J.F. Herbart. A comparison of Herbart and Kelly reveals several similarities. Both shared a belief that psychology was fundamentally a mathematical discipline. Both eliminated disti…
Assimilative Projection and Construct Balance in the Repertory Grid
The relationship between the degree to which people see others as like themselves (assimilative projection) and the frequency with which they use positive adjectives to describe people was examined in the context of changing role perspectives. The assimilative projection scores of those persons who use a preponderance of positive over negative adjectives were found to be influenced by changes in role perspectives. By contrast, the assimilative pr…
Patterns of similarity and difference between the vocabularies of psychology and other subjects
The vocabulary of Anglophone psychology is shared with many other subjects. Previous research using the Oxford English Dictionary has shown that the subjects having the most words in common with psychology are biology, chemistry, computing, electricity, law, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, pathology, philosophy, and physics. The present study presents a database of the vocabularies of these 12 subjects that is similar to one previously…
Dalzell's theorem and the analysis of proportions: A methodological note
The golden section is a well-known proportion that occurs when something (e.g. a line) is divided into two unequal parts such that the smaller (m) is to the larger (M) as the larger is to the sum of the two (i.e. m/M = M/(M + m) = .618). Dalzell';s theorem holds that the absolute value of the difference between M/(M + m) and .618 will tend to be smaller than the corresponding difference between m/M and .618. This means that the use of M/(M + m) r…
Some psychological hypotheses concerning the evolution of constructs
Evidence supporting five hypotheses concerning the psycholinguistic properties of constructs is presented: (1) The negative poles of overtly marked constructs have lower imagery values than their positive poles; (2) Overtly marked constructs are introduced later in the history of language than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (3) Overtly marked constructs are used less frequently than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (4) T…
Golden section relations in interpersonal judgement
A model of the organization of interpersonal judgements, based on the hypothesis that people tend to organize their judgements in Golden Section ratios, was presented. A theory of the process of interpersonal judgement, based on the notion that people judge acquaintances using a Fibonacci-like decision rule, was then developed. A computer simulation of the theory yielded results consistent with the model. An experiment in which subjects judged a …
Assimilative Projection and Construct Balance in the Repertory Grid
The relationship between the degree to which people see others as like themselves (assimilative projection) and the frequency with which they use positive adjectives to describe people was examined in the context of changing role perspectives. The assimilative projection scores of those persons who use a preponderance of positive over negative adjectives were found to be influenced by changes in role perspectives. By contrast, the assimilative pr…
The Golden Section Hypothesis
The golden section is a proportion the aesthetic properties of which have been extolled since antiquity. The data from five experiments in which subjects made dichotomous judgements of acquaintances on bipolar dimensions (e.g. pleasant-unpleasant) were reported. These data indicated that the mean proportion of positive adjectives used in making interpersonal judgements is an excellent approximation of the golden section. An explanation of this fi…
Golden section relations in interpersonal judgement
A model of the organization of interpersonal judgements, based on the hypothesis that people tend to organize their judgements in Golden Section ratios, was presented. A theory of the process of interpersonal judgement, based on the notion that people judge acquaintances using a Fibonacci-like decision rule, was then developed. A computer simulation of the theory yielded results consistent with the model. An experiment in which subjects judged a …
The Golden Section: A Convenient Ideal
The observation that subjects conserve the golden section in an interpersonal judgment task calling for the employment of a broad range of judgment outcomes implies a compensation model of interpersonal judgment. Benjafield and Pomeroy (l978) suggest that the GS serves as an ideal around which such judgments are organized. This hypothesis is tested in two experiments, both of which indicate that subjects conserve the golden section by excluding f…
A Relationship Between Typical Script Events and Positive Interpersonal Judgements
There is considerable evidence that typical events are also evaluated as positive events. This study investigates the possibility that the extent to which people expect typical events to occur is correlated with the degree to which people make positive judgements about their acquaintances. The results supported this possibility, and were taken as suggesting that the typicality of scripts is indicative of the general positivity of a person's expec…
Some psychological hypotheses concerning the evolution of constructs
Evidence supporting five hypotheses concerning the psycholinguistic properties of constructs is presented: (1) The negative poles of overtly marked constructs have lower imagery values than their positive poles; (2) Overtly marked constructs are introduced later in the history of language than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (3) Overtly marked constructs are used less frequently than are constructs which are not overtly marked; (4) T…
Is There a Home Field Disadvantage in Professional Sports Championships
Recent research has suggested that home teams tend to lose decisive championship games in professional sport. We present data, which suggests that this result is only true for championship series involving the New York Yankees, the Boston Celtics and the Montreal Canadiens. We argue that the home audiences of recurrent champions expect their teams to win. This pressure is communicated to the members of recurrent championship teams, and is the sou…
Dalzell's theorem and the analysis of proportions: A methodological note
The golden section is a well-known proportion that occurs when something (e.g. a line) is divided into two unequal parts such that the smaller (m) is to the larger (M) as the larger is to the sum of the two (i.e. m/M = M/(M + m) = .618). Dalzell';s theorem holds that the absolute value of the difference between M/(M + m) and .618 will tend to be smaller than the corresponding difference between m/M and .618. This means that the use of M/(M + m) r…
Are Economists Rational, or Just Different
There is evidence that American economics undergraduates are more likely than others to act self-interestedly and less likely to behave cooperatively. In two experiments, differences between Americans and Canadians and between economics students and psychology students were examined. Data from simple bargaining and a prisoner's dilemma game are presented, which suggest that Canadian students may be more co-operative than American students, and ps…
George Kelly: Cognitive psychologist, humanistic psychologist, or something else entirely
George Kelly was regarded by some of his contemporaries as a cognitive psychologist and by others as a humanistic psychologist. Kelly himself resisted being rubricized. He did, however, name several people who had been influential in his life and work, one of whom was J.F. Herbart. A comparison of Herbart and Kelly reveals several similarities. Both shared a belief that psychology was fundamentally a mathematical discipline. Both eliminated disti…
Revisiting Wittgenstein on Köhler and Gestalt psychology
In an article in this journal, Nicholas Pastore rejected Ludwig Wittgenstein's critique of Wolfgang Köhler and Gestalt psychology. Pastore appears not to have appreciated Wittgenstein's argument that Köhler mistook conceptual questions for factual ones. A simi-lar confusion seems to underlie at least some aspects of contemporary neuroscience. Be that as it may, Wittgenstein has had minimal influence on the research practices of psychologists whil…
The golden section and American psychology, 1892-1938
The golden section has been said by many to be the most beautiful proportion. Fechner was the first to investigate it experimentally, and several late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American psychologists followed up on his work. Among these were four prominent names: Lightner Witmer (1867-1956), Edward L. Thorndike (1874-1949), Robert S. Woodworth (1869-1962), and Robert M. Ogden (1877-1959). Why did such well-known psychologists bother…
The long past and short history of the vocabulary of anglophone psychology
How do particular words come to be part of the vocabulary of Anglophone psychology? The present study sampled 600 words with psychological senses from the Oxford English Dictionary, which not only gives the number of senses for each word but also the date and author for the earliest known occurrence of each sense. Analogous information for the same words was taken from PsycINFO. One can distinguish between words for which their psychological sens…
The vocabulary of anglophone psychology in the context of other subjects
Anglophone psychology shares its vocabulary with several other subjects. Some of the more obvious subjects that have parts of their vocabulary in common with Anglophone psychology include biology (e.g., dominance), chemistry (e.g., isomorphism), philosophy (e.g., phenomenology), and theology (e.g., mediator). Using data from the Oxford English Dictionary as well as other sources, the present study explored the history of these common vocabularies…
Patterns of similarity and difference between the vocabularies of psychology and other subjects
The vocabulary of Anglophone psychology is shared with many other subjects. Previous research using the Oxford English Dictionary has shown that the subjects having the most words in common with psychology are biology, chemistry, computing, electricity, law, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, pathology, philosophy, and physics. The present study presents a database of the vocabularies of these 12 subjects that is similar to one previously…
History of Psychology
The digital history of the anglophone vocabulary of psychology: An exploration using Zipfian methods
The digital humanities are being applied with increasing frequency to the analysis of historically important texts. In this study, the methods of G. K. Zipf are used to explore the digital history of the vocabulary of psychology. Zipf studied a great many phenomena, from word frequencies to city sizes, showing that they tend to have a characteristic distribution in which there are a few cases that occur very frequently and many more cases that oc…
Vocabulary sharing among subjects belonging to the hierarchy of sciences
Exploring relationships among eminent psychologists using co-occurrence analysis
Forum for the History of the Human Sciences
Cause," followed by 17 articles by people who have known or worked with Mac from
The use of emotion words by the sciences and other subjects
Psychology (18 works) · Cognitive psychology (9 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (5 works) · History of psychology (5 works) · Linguistics (5 works)