Younger Adults' Communication Experiences and Contact With Elders and Peers

Intergenerational communication research has overemphasized dissatisfying experiences and treated elderly conversation partners as an undifferentiated category. To redress these limitations, the authors surveyed 100 younger adults' (16–46 years) satisfying and dissatisfying experiences with both family and nonfamily elders, and compared these with own-age peers. Measures of social contact were also taken. As hypothesized, positivity of experiences and contact increased from nonfamily to family elders and to peers. Barriers of communication with nonfamily elders were due to contact more than experiences. For family elders and especially for peers, most measures of contact and experiences were positive. The authors also tested for effects due to respondents' gender and culture (New Zealanders of Chinese or European descent). Females had more positive experiences and contact on some of the measures. Views about elders held by Chinese were more favorable, yet this did not translate into improved experiences or contact.     

Relationships and the self‐concept

Progress in the study of relationships has depended in part on the recognition that relationships have properties not relevant to interactions or to the behavior of individuals, and may require additional principles of explanation. This has led to an emphasis on relationships as linking individuals. In this article we argue that relationship processes occur in the heads of individuals, with the participants having their own idiosyncratic views of the relationship as well as a shared one. The relationship is both affected by and affects the self‐concepts of the participants, so that the influences of the self‐concept may be critical for understanding the properties and dynamics of relationships Furthermore, consideration of the self‐concept can assist in the integration of different but not necessarily incompatible explanations for the same relationship phenomena.     

Relationship experiences and change in attachment characteristics of young adults: The role of relationship breakups and conflict avoidance

This study examined whether close relationship experiences predict change in individuals’attachment Characteristics. Partners from 301 dating couples each rated their attachment characteristics and their conflict avoidance. Five months later 184 women and 138 men reported whether their relationships were intact or broken‐up, and they rated their attachment characteristics again. Women became less secure after a breakup and more secure after remaining together. There was a similar result for men who initially had insecure attachment characteristics. Additionally, women low in conflict avoidance became more secure over time, and those high in conflict avoidance became less secure. For men whose relationships remained intact, conflict avoidance was not related to change in attachment characteristics. For men whose relationships ended, however, initial conflict avoidance predicted increased attachment security. These results extend previous research on the stability of attachment characteristics by exploring predictors of change.     

Demographic Profiles on AFDC Mothers Successfully Placed in Competitive Employment

The purposes of this study were to research demographic characteristics of participants in a government work incentive program for AFDC recipients and to identify those characteristics that lead to successful employment through the program. Implications of the results for clients and staff members of work incentive programs are discussed, and limitations of the study are identified.     

Selling Babies and Selling Bodies

I will argue the free market in babies or in women's bodies created by an institution of paid surrogate motherhood is contrary to Kantian principles of person-hood and to the feminist principle that men do not have—and cannot gain through contract, marriage, or payment of money—a right to the sexual or reproductive use of women's bodies.     

Using Cognitive Dissonance to Encourage Water Conservation1

In a field experiment on water conservation, we aroused dissonance in patrons of the campus recreation facility by making them feel hypocritical about their showering habits. Using a 2 × 2 factorial design, we manipulated subjects “‘mindfulness” that they had sometimes wasted water while showering, and then varied whether they made a “public commitment” urging other people to take shorter showers. The “hypocrisy” condition-in which subjects made the public commitment after being reminded of their past behavior-was expected to be dissonance-arousing, thereby motivating subjects to increase their efforts to conserve water. The results were consistent with this reasoning. Compared to controls, subjects in the hypocrisy condition took significantly shorter showers. Subjects who were merely reminded that they had wasted water, or who only made the public commitment, did not take shorter showers than control subjects. The findings have implications for using cognitive dissonance as means of changing behavior in applied settings, especially those in which people already support the desired goal, but their behavior is not consistent with those beliefs.     

Growing Pains: A Theory of Stress and Moral Conflict

This article outlines a relationship between the crises that create stress in our lives and periods of instability in moral development. Stressful issues, we suggest, are more difficult to resolve during periods of developmental instability. When problems are most stressful we often experience the impact of that stress physiologically. The physiological symptoms of stress, we argue, reflect unresolved problems in primary relationships that occurred during the early (sensorimotor) developmental stages when feelings are experienced physiologically. In this way the physiological symptoms of stress become a metaphoric map for the developmental resolution of moral issues. Thus, stress and its symptoms, rather than becoming debilitating, can be reconstructed as “Growing Pains.”     

Impacting Awareness of Child Abuse through a Spiritually Based Performing Arts Project

Using indigenous religious folklore images, a folk opera explored issues of child abuse, sexual assault and violence through a psychologically fictionalized character of Mary Magdalene. Befriended by an understanding Mary, Mary Magdalene is healed of her childhood ‘wounds through a religious conversion after almost refusing to encounter Jesus. Six hundred secondary students attended three daytime performances and 486 returned a Likert‐scaled questionnaire. The results indicated that most students perceived abuse as a personally relevant social problem, with this felt relevance increasing with age. Significant trends supported initial expectations that the play may help increase community and personal awareness of child abuse and sexual assault and that the play may also help increase a personal and community interest and effort toward helping others. Perplexing differences in school responses suggest that the schools in which prior discussion occurred may have led to students gaining more social insight and benefit from the play, although some of these same schools also tended to reject the personal relevance of the play. The latter may indicate community risk factors contributing to denial. More Hispanics responded positively to the sense of benefit, which may reflect the fact that there is a Hispanic Catholic majority in the community that sponsored the play itself. Overall, the findings suggest that performing arts can help increase awareness of child abuse as well as personal and community interest in helping and that this benefit increases with teacher discussion and age. In spite of procedural deprivations, the authors felt it was a relatively rare and useful effort to collect some data, hopefully to inspire more social scientists with more resources to consider collaborating with socially and spiritually meaningful fine arts productions in order to document scientifically the impact of the arts on human attitudes and behaviour. The reader's tolerance for the obvious limitations of investigation are requested and appreciated. A discussion of psychospiritual models of creativity and healing concludes the paper.     

MOTIVATION AND VALUES AMONG JAPANESE AND AMERICAN MANAGERS

There have been recent claims in the popular literature about the superiority of the Japanese-inspired participative principles of "Theory Z" management for business productivity. Yet motivational and value differences that might support these principles have seldom been evaluated psychometrically. In response to this need, middle-aged Japanese and American business managers were administered the Rokeach Values Survey and a questionnaire measure of upward mobility desires (Sarnoff). Results showed the Japanese attached greater importance to socially beneficial values in contrast to the American emphasis on individuality and straightforwardness. Yet the Japanese also showed greater valuation of accomplishments and, on the motivational instrument, more interest in advancement, money, and forward striving. Since the latter characteristics tend to be those most associated with success, it is suggested that achievement and advancement motivation may be one fuel for Japanese productivity and collective actions only their method for disciplining and rewarding it.