Attachment, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce During the First Fifteen Years of Parenthood

This study examines two overlapping longitudinal samples of U.S. couples with children, covering a period of 15 years after the first child's birth. The first sample extended from the pregnancy with a first child until that child was 5.5 years old; the second from ages 4.5 to 14.5. Growth curve analyses revealed that marital satisfaction declined over 15 years for both husbands and wives. Attachment security measured in the second sample was associated with greater marital satisfaction, but did not buffer against declines in marital satisfaction over time. Husbands' lower initial level of marital satisfaction measured around the first child's transition to school was the only significant predictor of marital dissolution. The discussion emphasizes theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Stability and Change in the Social Status of Occupations Over 21 and 42 Year Periods

Forty-two years ago, Counts (1925) surveyed the social status of occupations and found a well-defined prestige order, with banker at the top and ditch digger at the bottom. Because of changes wrought by the depression and World War II, Deeg and Paterson (1947) repeated Counts' study and found only minor relative changes in social status. Because of the extensive social and cultural changes since World War II, Counts' study was repeated again, and again only minor relative changes in the social status of occupations were found. The prestige order of the occupations surveyed is remarkably stable.     

Stability of Values of Junior High School Pupils and Their Parents Over Two Years

97 parent-daughter pairs and 80 parent-son pairs were administered a value-orientation instrument when the children were in junior high school and again 2 years later. Girls became more concerned with what they could give of themselves in their eventual work. Girls' parents began to stress home-making qualities. Boys became less concerned with the more tangible rewards of work and more concerned with utilizing their capabilities. Boys' parents rated all the values more important than did their sons. Boys and their parents evidenced more disagreement regarding values than did girls and their parents. However, when focusing on the most important value, there is considerable agreement between children and parents. Parents have remained consistent in their value ratings over the 2 years while children have changed their ratings in the direction of the values their parents hold for them. The children of parents who have changed their value ratings were not different from children of parents who remained consistent in the ratings. Nor were children who changed their value ratings different from those whose values were stable.     

Genes Determine Stability and the Environment Determines Change in Cognitive Ability During 35 Years of Adulthood

ABSTRACT— Previous research has demonstrated stability of cognitive ability and marked heritability during adulthood, but questions remain about the extent to which genetic factors account for this stability. We conducted a 35-year longitudinal assessment of general cognitive ability using the Armed Forces Qualification Test administered to 7,232 male twins in early adulthood and readministered to a subset of 1,237 twins during late middle age. The proportion of variance in cognitive functioning explained by genetic factors was .49 in young adulthood and .57 in late middle age. The correlation between the two administrations was .74 with a genetic correlation of 1.0, indicating that the same genetic influences operated at both times. Genetic factors were primarily responsible for stability, and nonshared environmental factors were primarily responsible for change. The genetic factors influencing cognition may change across other eras, but the same genetic influences are operating from early adulthood to late middle age.     

Stability and Change

SUMMARY

The author maintains the idea that the process of marital therapy must attend to stability (morphostasis) and change (morphogenesis) from both systemic-interpersonal and intrapersonal perspectives and argues from an attachment theory perspective that creating a secure base can provide the stability essential for allowing couples to identify, understand, and manage their experience of anxiety in creating therapeutic change.     

Stability and Change in Emotion-Organization

This investigation is based on the assumption that a person's emotion-organization is a stable, idiosyncratic property of great importance in determining that person's distinctive characteristics. The two main issues are whether a stable emotion-organization can be found in the turmoil of everyday life and whether life events affect this organization. A sequence of 323 daily assessments of an emotion list by a 26-year-old woman justifies the conclusion that stable, meaningful clusters of emotions can be distinguished. Highly emotional events have an enduring effect upon the organization of these clusters.     

The reliability of the Family-of-Origin Scale for adolescents

The Family-of-Origin Scale (FOS), a 40-item, ten-subscale measure of family processes, exhibits promise for assessing adolescents' perceptions of family health. While initial research has suggested that the instrument demonstrates factorial validity, the reliability of the FOS for adolescents has not been established. The present study involved administering the FOS to 88 adolescents on two occasions, with a two-week interval between testings. The global FOS index and ten subscale scores demonstrated high test-retest reliability. Internal consistency reliability for the instrument was also high. When taken together with previous research, the current study's results suggest that the FOS for adolescents is psychometrically sound.     

Auditory Acuity and Musical Ability in the First Four Grades

The height of the b-wave in the electroretinogram of the turtle Pseudemys was used as an index of spectral sensitivity under conditions of light and dark adaptation. A series of discontinuous wavelengths of equal energy was used as stimuli. The peak scotopic sensitivity occurred in the region of 559 μ while the maximal sensitivity under photopic conditions occurred at approximately 658 μ. Although the present methods do not allow a precise localization of the peaks of these two visual functions, the values are accurate within approximately 15 μ either side of the stated peaks.     

Perceiving Persistence Under Change and Over Structure

We explored the hypothesis that to perceive an event is to detect an invariant specific to the style of change and an invariant specific to the object undergoing the style of change-the reciprocal invariants of transformation and structure, respectively. Events were defined by seven geometric transformations that produced a variety of styles of change over different objects. In Experiment 1, we examined the generative and abstract aspects of transformational invariants. An event was presented as a sequence of static samples and examined in interpolation and extrapolation tasks. The transformational invariant proved sufficiently generative and abstract to specify a unique style of change. In Experiment 2, we found that types of change and types of objects interacted, which implies that certain styles of change are more compatible with certain object structures. In Experiment 3, we found that the structural invariant was reliably detectable but that the degree to which structural properties were preserved depended on the kind and amount of transformation applied. Taken together, the experiments provide support for the hypothesis that perceiving an event is detecting the two reciprocal invariants of transformation and structure that together specify the event.     

价值观的稳定性与可变性

价值观是人们区分好坏、善恶、美丑、损益、是非的信念系统,通常是充满情感的。价值观具有稳定性与可变性的特点。价值观的稳定性表现为:基本价值观具有跨时间的稳定性和跨情境的一致性; 特别是保护性价值观和人生价值观具有较强的稳定性。个人的发展、经历重大事件以及实验干预可导致价值观的改变,可变性主要表现为价值观的重要性发生变化。从我国的实际出发,探讨个人的核心价值观问题、以及价值观研究中国化、价值观研究对价值观教育的启示,乃是我们今后研究的关注点。     

Prayer Beliefs and Change in Life Satisfaction Over Time

A considerable number of studies have focused on the relationship between prayer, health, and well-being. But the influence of some types of prayer (e.g., petitionary prayer) has received more attention than others. The purpose of this study is to examine an overlooked aspect of prayer: trust-based prayer beliefs. People with this orientation believe that God knows that best way to answer a prayer and He selects the best time to provide an answer. Three main findings emerge from data that were provided by a nationwide longitudinal survey of older people reveals. First, the results reveal that Conservative Protestants are more likely to endorse trust-based prayer beliefs. Second, the findings suggest that these prayer beliefs tend to be reinforced through prayer groups and informal support from fellow church members. Third, the data indicate that stronger trust-based prayer beliefs are associated with a greater sense of life satisfaction over time.     

Stability and Change in Personality Disorder

ABSTRACT— The standard view of personality disorder is that it is a maladaptive expression of personality traits, which are relatively stable and unchanging. Thus, personality disorder has been considered to have its roots in childhood and adolescence, to persist in adulthood, and to be difficult to change. However, recent research has challenged this view, revealing that personality continues to change, albeit more slowly, well into adulthood, and that the maladaptive manifestations of personality disorder are much less stable than previously believed. These research findings are described, and factors that influence stability and change in personality disorder are discussed. The emerging view of personality disorder has important implications for diagnosis, assessment, and treatment of personality pathology.     

Family-of-Origin Predictors of Hostile Conflict in Early Marriage*

This study used data from 367 married couples to examine the relationship between select family-of-origin variables measured during engagement and hostile marital conflict measured 4–7 years later. Each spouse completed family-of-origin measures from the PREParation for Marriage questionnaire during their engagement. Four to seven years later, they completed a measure of hostile marital conflict involving insults, name calling, unwillingness to listen, and lack of emotional involvement. Wives mother–child relationship and the quality of parental discipline, as well as the husbands perceived quality of their parents marriage, were predictive of wives perception of hostile conflict in their marriages. Only wives quality of parental discipline was predictive of husbands perception of hostile marital conflict. Implications for premarital counseling and marital therapy are discussed.This is a revised version of a poster presented at the Annual Conference of the National Council on Family Relations, Irvine, California, November, 1999.     

Intentional Parenthood and the Nuclear Family

Reproductive techniques and practices, ranging from ordinary birth-control measures and artificial insemination to embryo transfer and surrogate motherhood, have greatly enhanced our range of reproductive choices. As a consequence, they pose a number of difficult moral and legal questions with regard to the formation of a family and our conception of parenthood. A view that is becoming increasingly common is that parental rights and responsibilities should not be based on genetic relationships but should instead be seen as arising from agreements or contracts between individuals. Accordingly, a man who consents to his wife's artificial insemination by donor (AID) and not the sperm donor, is the legal father of the child; in surrogacy agreements, the intending mother, and not the surrogate, has the right to raise the resulting child. While agreeing that biology should not form the basis for assigning legal parenthood, I argue that the theory of intentional parenthood, despite being put forward as a liberal theory, is geared toward or will have the function of protecting the nuclear family and inhibiting the formation of alternative family forms.     

Longitudinal Validation of the Urgency Traits Over the First Year of College

Research has identified 2 emotion-based dispositions to rash action, referred to as positive urgency and negative urgency. They are thought to reflect tendencies to engage in rash acts when in extremely positive and extremely negative moods, respectively. In this article, we describe the first direct test of this hypothesis. We measured the urgency traits and risky behavior involvement while in extremely positive and negative moods over the course of the first year of college for 292 students. After controlling for sex, typical mood state, and prior mood-based rash behavior, positive urgency predicted increases in positive mood-based rash action, and negative urgency predicted increases in negative mood-based rash action during the first year of college. These results provide further evidence for the validity of the theory of emotion-based rash action and for the measures of positive and negative urgency.     

Stability and Change of Social Goals in Adolescence

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of continuity and change in social goals using the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) model across adolescence (ages 11–16). Five complementary definitions of stability were examined: structural, rank‐order, absolute, individual, and ipsative. Data were taken from a longitudinal study of early adolescent problem behavior. Social goals were assessed during each wave, with data collection occurring at three annual intervals (Wave 1, ages 10–12). A community sample of adolescents (N = 387) was recruited. Adolescents were evenly split on gender, and a majority (82.7%) was White. Results suggest a modest increase in stability across social goals, yet significant interindividual heterogeneity. Although levels of Agentic and Communal factors increase over time, these patterns were driven by decreases in the Submissive and Separate octants. This offers evidence for the utility of examining lower‐order facets of interpersonal dispositions, as it provides a nuanced picture of adolescent personality development. Furthermore, findings suggest that change and continuity in social goals may both be relevant in this developmental period. The difficulty is accounting for trait stability as well as change, and the IPC model may be particularly useful for meeting this challenge.     

Choices Chance and Change: Luck Egalitarianism Over Time

The family of theories dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ represent an attempt to infuse egalitarian thinking with a concern for personal responsibility, arguing that inequalities are just when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, choice, but are unjust when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, luck. In this essay I argue that luck egalitarians should sometimes seek to limit inequalities, even when they have a fully choice-based pedigree (i.e., result only from the choices of agents). I grant that the broad approach is correct but argue that the temporal standpoint from which we judge whether the person can be held responsible, or the extent to which they can be held responsible, should be radically altered. Instead of asking, as Standard (or Static) Luck Egalitarianism seems to, whether or not, or to what extent, a person was responsible for the choice at the time of choosing, and asking the question of responsibility only once, we should ask whether, or to what extent, they are responsible for the choice at the point at which we are seeking to discover whether, or to what extent, the inequality is just, and so the question of responsibility is not settled but constantly under review. Such an approach will differ from Standard Luck Egalitarianism only if responsibility for a choice is not set in stone—if responsibility can weaken then we should not see the boundary between luck and responsibility within a particular action as static. Drawing on Derek Parfit’s illuminating discussions of personal identity, and contemporary literature on moral responsibility, I suggest there are good reasons to think that responsibility can weaken—that we are not necessarily fully responsible for a choice for ever, even if we were fully responsible at the time of choosing. I call the variant of luck egalitarianism that recognises this shift in temporal standpoint and that responsibility can weaken Dynamic Luck Egalitarianism (DLE). In conclusion I offer a preliminary discussion of what kind of policies DLE would support.