Goal agreement and relationship quality among college students and their parents

Two hundred eight parent–college student dyads (total N = 416) participated in the current study, which examined the link between goal agreement and perceived conflict within their relationships. Undergraduate participants (91 male, 117 female) completed a demographic form, a 65 items goal measure, and a measure of parental conflict. Parents (98 fathers, 110 mothers) were asked to rate the importance of the same 65 goals for their emerging adult children. College students tended to place more importance on independence, affect control, health, social relationships, and financial concern goals than their parents did, whereas parents placed more importance on moral and religious goals than their emerging adult children did. However, relative goal agreement between parents and college students was found to be moderately high. Those parent–college student dyads who experienced less conflict tended to have higher goal agreement, whereas those dyads with a higher level of conflict had lower goal agreement. These findings provide further evidence for the link between interpersonal relationships and the personality construct of goals.     

Sex-role orientation of college students and their same-sex parents

The study examined similarities and differences between sex-role orientations of college students and their same-sex parents. College undergraduates filled out the Bem Sex-role Inventory twice: once to describe themselves and the second time to describe their same-sex parents. The inventory was also used to obtain parental self-reports. Compared to their perceptions of their same-sex parents, male students described themselves as more feminine and female students described themselves as more masculine. Also, male students described their fathers as less feminine and female students described their mothers as both less masculine and less feminine than the parents described themselves. Students' femininity scores correlated significantly with the parental femininity scores both actual and perceived, however, no consistent relationship was found for the masculinity scores. Androgynous students and students with the reversed sex-role orientation perceived their parents as androgynous and reversed, respectively.     

Sex differences in the moral values of college students and their parents

A values survey eliciting judgments of the morality of 50 behaviors was administered to 93 college students and both of their parents. Among students, who were generally more lenient in their judgments than their parents were, sex differences were virtually nonexistent. By contrast, mothers were more severe in their judgments than fathers across a wide range of behavior. Students' subscale and total severity scores were generally positively, though modestly, related to the corresponding scores of both their parents, with mother-child correlations being somewhat higher than father-child correlations, and with strengths of relationships varying as a function of domain of judgment and sex of student.     

Family patterns of perfectionism: an examination of college students and their parents

We examined patterns of perfectionism among college students and their biological parents in a sample of 188 undergraduates from intact families. Ratings (self vs. other) showed the greatest degree of convergence when daughters were either the target or the rater. Levels of self-oriented perfectionism in students were positively associated with the levels characterizing the same-sex parent, but unrelated (father-daughter) or negatively related (mother-son) to the levels characterizing the opposite-sex parent. Finally, parents' other-oriented perfectionism was not significantly related to students' socially prescribed perfectionism.     

Collective self-esteem: role of social context among Asian-American college students

The present study explored several layers of individual and contextual variables as related to collective self-esteem among 304 Asian-American college students. The findings suggested that variables, such as immigration generation status and cultural identification, were significantly associated with Private collective self-esteem (personal evaluation of one's ethnic group), while contextual variables, including number of same-ethnicity peers and community ethnic composition, were associated with Public collective self-esteem (judgment of how other people evaluate one's ethnic group). In addition to these variables, age and fluency of heritage language were positively related to Membership esteem (how worthy one feels as a member of one's ethnic group). For the Importance of identity (the importance of ethnic group membership to one's self-concept), cultural identification, number of same-ethnicity peers, and perceived campus climate were statistically significant. The implication of the present findings for future research is discussed.     

Mother-blaming among college students

The purpose of this study was to examine the tendency for mother-blaming among college students to determine if such a bias existed outside the clinical profession. The subjects were 49 men and 50 women at a small private university, who were asked to attribute responsibility for 45 behavioral and personal-psychological problems to one of the following targets: Father, Individual, Mother, and Society. Analysis showed Individual receiving most attributions, followed by Society, Mother, and Father, in that order. Relatively more problems are blamed on Mother than on Father, with a tendency to blame mothers for emotional problems such as dependency and shyness and fathers for behavioral-physiological problems such as child abuse and alcoholism. Intercorrelations of the number of attributions made to different targets clearly suggest that there are parent-blamers, society-blamers, and individual-blamers. Implications of blame attribution for mental health are acknowledged.     

Sex differences in social support, loneliness, and depression among Korean college students

This study examined the sex differences in reports of social support (network size and satisfaction), loneliness, and depression among Korean college students and examined whether measures of social support and loneliness predicted depression scores. In the sample were 452 college students enrolled in four universities in Korea. The women reported a larger social support network size and being less satisfied with their support than the men. Women reported higher scores on the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory than men. Social support satisfaction scores and network size on the Social Support Questionnaire-6 and scores on the Loneliness Scale predicted scores on Depression in both the groups. Loneliness was the largest predictor of Depression for either sex. The amount of variance in Depression accounted for by Loneliness was 35% for women and 24% for men.     

Success and motivation among college students

The present research explores college students’ explanations of their success and failure in challenging activities and how it relates to students’ efficacy, value, and engagement. The results suggest most students hold one primary reason for success during the challenging activity, including grade/extrinsic, mastery/intrinsic, amotivation/working, social, and performance. These task reasons for success, if assumed to be goals, were more numerous than those suggested by goal theory. Task reason for success was important for engagement, intrinsic value, difficulty compared to others, and effort. As expected, engagement and intrinsic value were highest for those with mastery reasons but lowest for those in amotivation or those who succeeded because they made the grade. Unexpectedly, success was more important for motivation and experience of the activity. These results suggest that it is important to examine not only student goals, but also whether or not students reach their goals.     

Dating jealousy among college students

In a study of dating jealousy, questionnaires were administered to 147 male and 189 female college students. Subjects were asked to rate how they would feel about their dating partner's behavior in five hypothetical situations designed to measure jealousy. Results indicate that females are more jealous than males over situations involving the partner spending time on a hobby or with family members, but other situations evoke no sex differences. Sex-role orientation is the variable most consistently related to dating jealousy, with sex-role traditional subjects being the most jealous. A significant proportion of subjects expect dating partners to give up close personal friendships with others of the opposite sex, and most subjects begin to expect sexual exclusiveness from the earliest stages of their relationships.     

Identity and intimacy crises and their relationship to internet dependence among college students.

In an attempt to test Kandell's proposition that internet dependents used the internet as a coping mechanism against underlying psychological issues, this study investigated the extent to which the fifth and sixth Eriksonian crises (identity, intimacy), were related to internet dependence (online chatting, gaming) among college students. Students spending more than 10 hours per week on chatting/gaming were classified as dependents. On the basis of a national sample of freshmen in Taiwan, this study found that the dependents scored significantly lower on most of the measures that reflected the successful resolution of the crises, and higher on the measures that reflected unsuccessful resolution of the crises. Kandell's proposition was supported.     

Friends and family: A cross-cultural investigation of social support and subjective well-being among college students

Despite the growing number of cross-cultural studies focusing on well-being, little is known about social support outside of western civilization, particularly among people in Middle Eastern cultures. The current study examined the relationships between perceived social support and components of subjective well-being (i.e. positive and negative affect, satisfaction with life) among college students in Iran, Jordan, and the United States. Perceived support from family significantly predicted each aspect of well-being within each country. However, perceived support from friends did not predict any component of well-being in Iran; yet, in Jordan and the US, friend support predicted higher levels of positive mood. These results will be examined in terms of roles and relationship norms in these countries.     

Marriage and stress-coping among female college students

By an independent t test, mean scores on the social domain of the Coping Resources Inventory for 18 single and for 18 married female students were not significantly different, suggesting similar involvement in social networks supportive during stress.