Decision making style and career indecision in college students

In an attempt to better understand the process of career indecision in college students, 203 college students enrolled in introductory psychology were given the Career Decision Scale, a measure of career undecidedness, and the Johnson Decision Making Inventory, a measure of typologies regarding decision making styles. The results indicate that one of the four Johnson types is associated with a significantly higher degree of career indecision. Spontaneous external decision making types scored highest on the Career Decision Scale, followed by spontaneous internals, whose scores were not significantly different from systematic externals, followed by systematic internals. The results must be cautiously interpreted because of the relatively small sample size, but do suggest that investigations of decision making typologies may prove to be productive in furthering understanding of the forces associated with career indecision in college students.     

Forgiveness and defense style

Within the literature on the psychology of forgiveness, researchers have hypothesized that the 1st stage in the process of being able to forgive is the role of psychological defense. To examine such a hypothesis, the authors explored the relationship between forgiveness and defense style. The 304 respondents (151 men, 153 women) completed measures of forgiveness (likelihood, presence of positive forgiveness, absence of negative forgiveness) and defense style. Among respondents, all measures of forgiveness shared a significant negative association with a neurotic defense style. The finding is discussed within the context of the consequences for those who may be experiencing barriers to forgiveness when dealing with conflict resolution in interpersonal situations.     

Conservatism and defense style

The dynamic theory of conservatism suggests that conservatism can be described as an ego-defensive behavior. Furthermore, the theory of defense style suggests that defensive behaviors are revealed in individuals' attitude structures. The present study was designed to examine the relationship between conservatism and defense style. Measures of conservatism, anal personality traits, and defense style were completed by 238 university students (103 men, 134 women, 1 unidentified). The measure of anal personality traits was included to replicate factors previously discovered with similar conservatism measures. A principal components analysis with oblimin rotation indicated that conservatism and anal personality traits loaded alongside mature defense style. The findings suggest that conservatism can be located within the theoretical model of defense style. However, it is suggested that the match between liberal attitudes and mature defense style be investigated in future research.     

Relationship of recalled parenting style to self-perception in Korean American college students

The authors examined the relationship of authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting styles and the number of years in the United States with self-perception (academic competence, morality, and self-reliance) as recalled by Korean American college students (N = 144). Authoritative parenting behaviors were most common in Korean American families, followed by authoritarian behaviors, with permissive behaviors a distant 3rd. Authoritative parenting styles and the number of years lived in the United States were predictive of higher academic competence. Authoritarian and permissive parenting styles were predictive of lower self-reliance, whereas number of years lived in the United States was related to higher self-reliance. Those findings provide partial support for generalizing D. Baumrind's (1971) model of parenting styles to Korean American families, and the findings demonstrate the importance of considering acculturation issues in parenting studies.     

Attributional style as a diathesis in predicting depression,hopelessness, and suicide ideation in college students

Attributional style was examined as a diathesis for depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation. A naturalistic stressor—obtaining a D or F on an Introductory Psychology exam—was used in a longitudinal design to test for the effects of stress in predicting these criteria. Controlling for preexam levels of depression, hopelessness, and suicide ideation, prestress attributional style was consistently related to poststress levels of each of these criteria. Both positive and negative attributional styles measured at Time 1 were predictive of these criteria at Time 2. Regression analyses revealed that exam grade, attributional style alone, and attributional style in interaction with stress predicted each of the three criteria. The results are seen as supportive of a prestress attributional style diathesis to depression, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation.     

ADHD in college students

OBJECTIVE: According to the American Psychiatric Association, 3% to 7% of the school-age population has ADHD and many children continue to display significant symptoms throughout adolescences and adulthood. Relative to the childhood literature, less is known about ADHD in adults, especially college students with ADHD. The principle purpose of this review articles is to summarize the major research findings concerning ADHD in the college student population with regard to prevalence of symptoms, neuropsychological and psychological functioning. Overall, findings suggest that college students with ADHD are at greater risk for academic and psychological difficulties, and they perform similar to non-ADHD controls on many neuropsychological tasks. These findings are preliminary, however, and are tempered by the small number of studies that have been conducted as well as the methodological limitations of these studies. CONCLUSION: Future research using larger sample sizes, rigorous assessment criteria, and a longitudinal design is needed to better understand the psychological, academic, and neuropsychological functioning of college students with ADHD. Studies are also needed to elucidate the effects of pharmacological and nonpharmacological effects of treatment on the functioning of college students with this disorder.     

Illusion of control in Internet users and college students.

When people try to obtain a desired event and this outcome occurs independently of their behavior, they often think that they are controlling its occurrence. This is known as the illusion of control, and it is the basis for most superstitions and pseudosciences. However, most experiments demonstrating this effect had been conducted many years ago and almost always in the controlled environment of the psychology laboratory and with psychology students as subjects. Here, we explore the generality of this effect and show that it is still today a robust phenomenon that can be observed even in the context of a very simple computer program that users try to control (and believe that they are controlling) over the Internet. Understanding how robust and general this effect is, is a first step towards eradicating irrational and pseudoscientific thinking.     

Measuring drinking patterns among college students.

Alcohol use among college students is of interest to clinicians and researchers. The results of such studies depend on the quality and nature of the measures used. The literature includes a wide variety of operational definitions of drinking patterns, making difficult comparisons across studies. For 109 men and 83 women attending college this paper provides data on the Drinking Practices Questionnaire, a self-report measure of drinking patterns designed specifically for use with college students. The three subscales, Negative Affect, Positive Expectancies, and Negative Consequences, have good internal consistency reliabilities, and scores correlate significantly with measures of problems associated with alcohol use. Appropriate uses of the measure are discussed.     

Self-derogation: Inner conflict and anxious vigilance

Chronic self-derogation is a common clinical problem, often difficult to treat. It is not a by-product of low self-esteem, but a coping strategy used to: (1) block impulsivity and overcome psychic immobilization, (2) ward off the hostility and aggression of others, and (3) defend against experiences of helplessness, humiliation, and shame. Successful treatment requires the exploration of the underlying presence of conflict, anxiety, helplessness, and threat, and the acquisition of alternate means of mastery and control.     

Head-injury prevalence among community college students.

835 community college students were surveyed to establish the prevalence of head injury or illness. Results are compared to prevalence rates among 4-year college students.     

Abortion attitudes among Catholic college students.

The present study has explored the abortion attitudes of 200 students attending a midwestern liberal arts college affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. The main findings were as follows: 1. Catholics in general tend to be more conservative in this area than Protestants. 2. There were no statistically significant differences between urban and rural residents and between single and engaged subjects. On the other hand, females, social science majors, and those having no plans for graduate studies were significantly more conservative than males, natural science majors, and those planning to do graduate work, respectively. 3. Abortion scores were correlated negatively and significantly with religious services attended, amount of Catholic education, and, to a limited extent, father's occupation, but nonsignificantly with age, number of siblings, birth order, college rank, parental education, and mother's occupation.     

Distractors interfere with numerical estimation in Chinese college students as a function of field-dependent or field-independent cognitive style

Field-dependent/independent groups' numerical estimation was assessed with respect to different distractors. Participants were 81 college students with field-dependent or field-independent cognitive styles. Cognitive style had a significant main effect on reaction without distractors. When the number of distractors was double the number of targets, the estimation accuracy of the field-dependent and field-independent groups differed. Under this double-distractors condition, both the field-dependent and field-independent participants used logarithmic representation more than linear representation in their numerical estimations, but no significant between-group differences were found.     

Monthly fluctuation in task concentration in female college students.

50 university women with consistent and rhythmic menstrual cycles were given Golden's version of the Stroop color-word test to evaluate their concentration accuracy. 50 male undergraduates were also tested as a control sample. The participants took the Stroop test every seven days for four consecutive weeks to allow examination of whether change in the color and word naming activity occurred. A split-plot analysis of the variance of the scores gave a significant difference for the sequence in which the tests were taken, the measures recited during the testing, and the sex of the respondent. When the values for the women were ordered to correspond to stages of their menstrual cycle, the over-all mean accuracy rose slowly to midcycle, then dropped as menses approached. This supports the hypothesis that the women's concentration was at the lowest level during the latter part of the monthly cycle. Women scored significantly higher on the color and word naming task on the Stroop test than men.     

Driving after use of alcohol and marijuana in college students.

Driving after use of marijuana is almost as common as driving after use of alcohol in youth (P. M. O'Malley & L. D. Johnston, 2003). The authors compared college students' attitudes, normative beliefs and perceived negative consequences of driving after use of either alcohol or marijuana and tested these cognitive factors as risk factors for substance-related driving. Results indicated that youth perceived driving after marijuana use as more acceptable to peers and the negative consequences as less likely than driving after alcohol use, even after controlling for substance use. Results of zero-inflated Poisson regression analyses indicated that lower perceived dangerousness and greater perceived peer acceptance were associated with increased engagement in, and frequency of, driving after use of either substance. Lower perceived likelihood of negative consequences was associated with increased frequency for those who engage in substance-related driving. These results provide a basis for comparing how youth perceive driving after use of alcohol and marijuana, as well as similarities in the risk factors for driving after use of these substances.