A developmental approach examining social and personal correlates in relation to alcohol use over time

This study's aim was to determine the interrelationship of personality, peer, and parental domains and alcohol use over time during preadolescence and adolescence. Children and teenagers (N = 510; 9 to 18 years old) and their mothers were separately interviewed at two points in time, two years apart. The results were evaluated using multiple hierarchical regression analysis. In preadolescence, personality factors appear to serve as mediators for family and peer factors in relation to alcohol use over time whereas, in adolescence, peer and personality factors serve as mediators for family factors. Peer factors apparently become more important between preadolescence and adolescence, but parental factors do not seem to lose their importance. The theoretical implications and practical applications for alcohol education and alcohol abuse prevention programs are discussed.     

Perfectionism in relation to attributions for success or failure

The present study examined the association between dimensions of perfectionism and attributions for success and failure. A sample of 124 students (40 males, 84 females) completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS) and the Multidimensional Multiattributional Causation Scale (MMCS). The MPS consists of three subscales measuring self-oriented perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, and socially pre-scribed perfectionism. The MMCS measures internal attributions (i.e., ability, effort) and external attributions (i.e., luck, contextual factors) for positive and negative hypo-thetical outcomes in the achievement and affiliation domains. The main finding of this study was that socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with a general ten-dency to attribute outcomes to external causes. This external attribution pattern was obtained for successes and failures in both the achievement and interpersonal spheres. Overall, the main results suggest that socially prescribed perfectionism is associated with perceptions of learned helplessness. The implications of these findings are dis-cussed.     

Depressive symptoms, social support, and personal health behaviors in young men and women.

This study investigated the relationship of depressive symptoms, social support, and a range of personal health behaviors in 2,091 male and 3,438 female university students from 16 countries. Depressive symptoms and social support were measured using the short Beck Depression Inventory and the Social Support Questionnaire; 9 personal health behaviors were also assessed. After the authors took age, social support, and clustering by country into account, depressive symptoms were significantly associated with lack of physical activity, not eating breakfast, irregular sleep hours, and not using a seat belt in both men and women, and additionally with smoking, not eating fruit, and not using sunscreen among women. Low social support was independently associated with low alcohol consumption, lack of physical activity, irregular sleep hours, and not using a seat belt in men and women. Bidirectional causal pathways are likely to link health behaviors with depressed mood.     

Commitment to legal claiming: influences of attributions,social guidance,and organizational tenure

This study investigates antecedents of individuals' commitment to the legal-claiming process. Individuals were surveyed as they entered a district office of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to file an employment discrimination claim. Respondents' attributions regarding who they blamed for their grievance, the social guidance received, their organizational tenure, and their commitment to legal claiming were assessed. Results showed that individuals who made strong external attributions had a higher commitment to legal claiming than did those who made weak external attributions. Social guidance and organizational tenure were significant moderators of the attribution-claiming relationship. Specifically, commitment to legal claiming was more strongly related to external attributions when social guidance was low and organizational tenure was high. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Sex role orientations,attributions for achievement,and personal goals of Chinese youth

The role of women in the People's Republic of China has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. This study assesses what impact these changes have had on the attitudes of Chinese youth. The sample consisted of 164 subjects (77 men and 87 women) who completed the Bem Sex Role Inventory, the Objective Fear of Success Measure, a locus of control scale, and a personal goals questionnaire. They also evaluated a painting attributed to artists of different gender and status. The results indicate that the sex role orientations of Chinese students were similar to those of American students. On the Bem inventory, the direction of the sex differences on the sex role scales was the same for U.S. and Chinese students, but the latter had a sex role orientation that, in our culture, is regarded as more “traditional.” Chinese women were significantly more likely to endorse statements expressing fear of success than were Chinese men. On the locus of control measures, Chinese women were more likely than men to attribute their achievement successes to luck and failures to a lack of ability. The women students also attributed affiliation outcomes more to luck than did the men. The most important personal goal cited by both men and women was that of career success. Chinese men placed greater importance than women on achieving wealth, and their expectancy of actually becoming wealthy was higher. Finally, in an evaluation of a painting, Chinese men, but not the women, devalued a painting when it was supposedly the work of a female student artist.     

Verbal accounts and attributions of social motives

The effects of verbal accounts offered by a threatener on targets' subsequent attributions of the threatener's social motives was studied. Following a standardized interaction in a Prisoner's Dilemma game the subjects' opponent offered one of three accounts for using threats: cooperative intent, establishment of transrelational equity, or ignorance. In a fourth condition the confederate offered no account for his actions. Attributions were assessed by having subjects rate each of four responses representative of the social motives of cooperation, competition, apathy, and deceit in five different situations. It was found that the type of account had specific attributional effects. A cooperative account led to a correspondent inference of a cooperative disposition, a transrelational equity account was apparently perceived as illegitimate and led to an attribution of a deceitful motive, and an excuse of ignorance was linked with apathy.     

Children's interpretive understanding,moral judgments,and emotion attributions: Relations to social behaviour

The study investigated interpretive understanding, moral judgments, and emotion attributions in relation to social behaviour in a sample of 59 5‐year‐old, 123 7‐year‐old, and 130 9‐year‐old children. Interpretive understanding was assessed by two tasks measuring children's understanding of ambiguous situations. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were measured using two moral rule transgressions. Social behaviour was assessed using teachers' ratings of aggressive and prosocial behaviour. Aggressive behaviour was positively related to interpretive understanding and negatively related to moral reasoning. Prosocial behaviour was positively associated with attribution of fear. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were related, depending on age. Interpretive understanding was unrelated to moral judgments and emotion attributions. The findings are discussed in regard to the role of interpretive understanding and moral and affective knowledge in understanding children's social behaviour.     

A categorical analysis of the social attributions of learning-disabled children

The social attributions of learning-disabled and control children with either similar or higher social acceptance ratings were assessed within an open-ended interview format. In addition, measures of social self-esteem and expectation of social success were obtained. The learning-disabled group used luck more frequently and personality interaction less frequently as explanations for social outcomes than did the other two groups. Learning-disabled children also had the lowest expectation of social success and, like the low acceptance group, had a poorer social self-image. Possible explanations for the development of these attributions and the implications for holding them were discussed.     

Type A behavior in employed women: relation to work, marital, and leisure variables, social support, stress, tension, and health

Ninety-one women employed full-time were administered the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS; Jenkins, Rosenman, & Zyzanski; 1974) and the Framingham Type A Scale (FTAS; Haynes, Levine, Scotch, Feinleib, & Kennel, 1978). Information concerning various work and nonwork-related variables was obtained via questionnaire or interview. Type A women had higher occupational levels and reported more demanding jobs and higher stress and tension than Type B women. Type A and B women did not differ in their reports of marital adjustment or in total hours spent in leisure activities. Type A behavior was related to both self-reported stress and tension--and for married women only, poorer self-reported physical health. Social support from various sources was not found to be related to Type A or Type B. Curiously, Type A was related to more reported stress and tension for women who felt they had many sources of support but not for women who did not perceive their having many sources of support.     

Analytical psychology and its relation to psychoanalysis. A personal view

Jungian analysis is a process based on analytical psychology; it shows local variations giving emphasis to different aspects of Jung's work within the various societies which make up the IAAP. I describe the orientation of the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP). I have emphasized the different origins of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology and described how, because we encounter the same clinical phenomena, our differences centre on technique and interpretation in the context of our theoretical differences (see Astor 1998, p. 697 & 2001). In the main the link to psychoanalysis has come from the connection forged by Fordham, who recognized that Jung and Klein shared a similar perception of the significance of unconscious phantasy. For Klein unconscious phantasy was the primary unconscious content, and this is different, as Spillius has recently pointed out, from Freud for whom, 'the prime mover, so to speak, is the unconscious wish.     

Adulthood age differences in causal attributions for cognitive, physical, and social performance

Past research has revealed an unflattering pattern of attributions for the performance of the elderly. More specifically, poor performance by the elderly is attributed to internal and stable factors such as inability, whereas poor performance by the young is attributed to external and unstable factors such as bad luck. In the present study, 42 young (M age = 19.18 years) and 39 elderly (M age = 74.90 years) men and women made causal attributions for their own or for another person's hypothetical performance in the cognitive, physical, and social domains. When attributions for the same performance by young and elderly adults were compared, the results presented an unflattering view of the elderly, similar to the pattern in previous research. In contrast, when attributions for good versus poor performance by the elderly were compared, a more favorable picture emerged: The elderly were more likely to be given credit for their good performance than to be blamed for their poor performance. These findings give reason to question the pervasiveness of the negative view of the elderly that has been presented in previous studies.     

Intellectual differences in relation to personal and family handedness

Right, mixed and left-handed college students were given the complete WAIS, and a series of cognitive factor tests. Results showed left- and mixed-handed individuals to have a significantly lower full scale I.Q. than right-handers. There was no difference between the mixed and left-handers. In all three handedness groups, subjects with a positive family history of sinistrality had a lower full scale I.Q. than did subjects without left-handed relatives. Neither handedness nor family history differentially affected the Verbal or Performance subscales, nor did they have a significant effect on scores in the other cognitive tests. These results are discussed with respect to Levy's theory of hemispheric specialization, and to the role of inheritance and brain damage in the causation of left- and mixed-handedness.     

Observers' reactions to an equal or equitable allocator in relation to allocator input,causal attributions,and value importance

Reactions to an equal or equitable allocator working with a partner in a team situation were investigated using a 5-factor design with Sex of Subject, Sex of Allocator, Nature of Expectation (high or low expectation of success based upon either consensus or consistency information), Input of Allocator (high or low performance), and Type of Distribution (equal or equitable) as the 5 factors. Judgments concerning the fairness of the allocation, impressions of the allocator's personality, liking for the allocator, and the importance of possible causes of the allocator's performance were obtained from 339 male and female subjects for each hypothetical situation involving one of the combinations of the 5 factors. Rankings of the relative importance of the Rokeach terminal and instrumental values were also available for most of these subjects. Results were consistent with hypotheses and indicated that subjects use a range of cues and engage in a complex attributional process in making judgments about an allocator. In addition to replicating and extending past findings on the effects of allocator input, the results also indicated that confirmation and disconfirmation of expectancies affected subjects' judgments. Protestant ethic values, competence values, and the value assigned to wisdom also influenced reactions to the allocator, as did an Australian concern with [mateship]. Results were discussed in relation to the view that social justice may take different forms depending upon both situational context and task demands. The importance of further research into the effects of personal and cultural values on allocator decisions and reactions to them was emphasized.     

A reaction-time paradigm to measure reward-oriented bias in rats

The authors devised a nose-poke task with asymmetric position-reward mapping to distinguish between effects of bias and sensitivity in reaction times of rats. In all trials, the rats had to poke their noses into the hole to the left or to the right of center, corresponding to the side at which 4 lights were illuminated, while ignoring distracters on the other side. Reaction times were faster for large-reward trials than for small-reward trials. In large-reward trials, there was no influence of the number of distracters, whereas in small-reward trials, distracters produced an increase in reaction time. Analysis of reaction-time distributions according to a linear model of decision making suggests that most of the systematic variability was due to a reward-oriented bias.     

Concomitant short-term changes in the auditory evoked response, the EEG, and reaction-time performance in relation to the temporal parameters of stimulation

Abstract.— Two experiments are described in which short-term "habituation" of the auditory evoked response (AER) was examined using discrete trains of click stimuli and averaging across trains. In the first study, the stimuli consisted of randomly interspersed trains of regular clicks, at 3 or 10 sec interstimulus interval (ISI). In the second study, the ISIs were also short or long but were irregular varying between 2.4 and 3.6 sec in the former case and 6 to 12 sec in the latter. The N₁-P₂ component of the AER diminished within the 3 sec trains especially for the regular stimulation; no such development occurred with the longer ISI. The total voltage in the background EEG and the reaction-times to the stimuli showed essentially similar changes. The possible mechanisms governing the response decrement are discussed and it is concluded that the data may be interpreted in terms of the Groves and Thompson dual-process theory of habituation.