How residents cope with living near a hazardous waste landfill: An example of substantive theorizing

It is hard to be a community or environmental psychologist and not be interested in newspaper stories on global warming, oil spills, or toxic wastes in your own backyard. To the general public, these issues tend to be viewed as environmental, technological, toxicological, or governmental, but not psychological. As psychologists, we see many ways in which psychology does play a role in understanding these events. We have been engaged in a study of residents living near a hazardous waste landfill in which many subdisciplines of psychology have played an illuminating role. Wicker's (this issue) article on substantive theorizing outlines an approach to theory and research that helps communicate the structure and process of doing research on a complex area. We use his article to help us describe key aspects of our research that are not usually discussed in research articles. We believe that the type of research Wicker describes occurs more often than people realize. Unfortunately, however, journal conventions cause investigators to omit discussions of substantive theorizing aspects of their work. We hope that reading this article increases your understanding of substantive theorizing and our research as much as writing it increased our own.     

The Relationship Between the Francis Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity and Measures of Intrinsic,Extrinsic and Quest Religiosity

A sample of 244 churchgoers completed the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity, together with measures of intrinsic, extrinsic and quest religiosity proposed by Batson. The findings support the view that, among a religiously committed sample, a positive attitude toward Christianity is associated positively with intrinsic religiosity and negatively with both extrinsic religiosity and quest religiosity. Pastoral Theology and Mansel Jones Fellow at     

Onset of disordered eating attitudes and behaviors in early adolescence: interplay of pubertal status, gender, weight, and age

The interplay of puberty, gender, weight, and age in regard to body image and disordered eating behaviors and attitudes was investigated in a sample of early adolescents. It was found that, after menarche, females had increased personal expectations and were dissatisfied with weight/shape changes. They wanted to reduce their weight and between-meal eating (which was associated with increased feelings of inadequacy, loss of control, and decreased self-esteem). Young postmenarcheal females who were higher achievers and had higher trait anxiety were more likely to have lower weight. Young males at puberty desired to build up their bodies, believing that appearance was important to their sexual appeal. They were also more willing to form close relationships. Postpubertal males felt most in control of their lives, had the highest self-esteem, and were more trusting of their body cues. Overall, high achieving, more anxious postmenarcheal females were at greatest risk for eating disturbances. These results indicate that the interaction of pubertal status and gender must be considered when developing intervention programs.     

Personality, learning style and work performance

Just over two hundred telephone sales staff completed the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) and Honey and Mumford's Learning Styles Questionnaire (LSQ). Extraversion was highly correlated both positively and negatively with three of the four LSQ measures. The lie scale from the EPI was also systematically correlated with the Activist and Reflector scales of the LSQ. Both the EPI and LSQ traits were modestly correlated with two criteria: ratings of Actual Performance and Development Potential. Regressions were used to determine the best predictors of the two ratings measures. Personality variables (extraversion, neuroticism) and certain learning styles (reflector, pragmatist) were statistically significant predictors of rated performance, though they accounted for less than 10% of the explained variance. The results concur with recent meta-analytical studies that show personality variables account for a small but important amount of variance in measures of work performance.     

Sex-Role Stereotyping in Television Commercials: A Review and Comparison of Fourteen Studies Done on Five Continents Over 25 Years

Since the pioneering content-analytic study byMcArthur and Resko (1975) on sex-role stereotyping oftelevision advertisements in America, many others haveused a similar methodology and coding scheme to examine similar stereotypes in their owncountries. This study compares and contrasts 14 studies,all using the McArthur and Resko (1975) scheme: 3 fromAmerica, 1 each from Australia, Denmark, and France, and 2 and one from Great Britain, Hong Kong,Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Portugal. Problemsof such a comparison are considered: specifically, theequivalence of the channel, the three different time periods, and slight variations in thecontentcategories. Nevertheless, clear patterns arisewhich attestto the universality of sex-role stereotypingin television commercials.     

Self-of-the-Therapist Work: A Balance Between Removing Restraints and Identifying Resources

The authors propose that self-of-the-therapist work is most productive when therapists and supervisors approach family of origin issues and historical life events in a balanced way and suggest that they move to an approach that ideally liberates restraints posed by self-of-the-therapist issues, while at the same time accesses resources available to therapists because of the same issues. This is a shift from the primarily restraint focus that has dominated self-of-the-therapist work. This paper also provides personal experiences of the authors, guidelines on how to create safety and balance, as well as practical examples of self-of-the-therapist exercises.     

Organizational cynicism: bases and consequences

Organizational cynicism is the belief that an organization lacks integrity, which, when coupled with a powerful negative emotional reaction, leads to disparaging and critical behavior. In this article, the author attempts to theoretically clarify the process by which five forms of cynicism develop in the workplace and to empirically relate them to affective outcomes. Societal, employee, and organizational change cynicisms may be attributed to psychological contract violations; work cynicism may be related to burnout; and person-role conflict and personality cynicism may be related to innate hostility. Empirically, personality cynicism emerged as the strongest predictor of organizational cynicism, adversely affecting all of the criteria. Other forms of cynicism had more selective effects. Organizational change cynicism induced job dissatisfaction and alienation, and employee cynicism affected organizational commitment. Societal cynicism actually increased both job satisfaction and commitment. Both personality and work cynicisms were related to organizational citizenship indirectly, through alienation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

The thought control questionnaire: A measure of individual differences in the control of unwanted thoughts

Previous research has suggested that unpleasant and unwanted thoughts are a frequent experience in both normal and clinical populations. This paper describes the development and validation of a questionnaire that assesses strategies for controlling such thoughts. Analyses of the Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ) demonstrated five replicable factors: Distraction; Social Control; Worry; Punishment and Reappraisal. Significant associations were found between the punishment and worry subscales of the TCQ and various measures of emotional vulnerability and perceptions of impaired control over cognition. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the literature on thought suppression, worry and mental self-regulation.     

Actual and perceived attitudes of wheelchair users

The sub-section of the disabled population who use a wheelchair has largely been neglected in the research Concerned with attitudes towards people with a disability. This study had two aims: firstly, to compare the attitudes towards wheelchair users of able-bodied people with people who actually use a wheelchair, and secondly, to examine the difference between how each group perceives the attitudes of the other towards this condition. The results revealed a number of interesting differences between the expressed attitudes of the two groups, although their overall mean scores were comparable. The wheelchair user group were found to believe non-disabled people to hold more negative attitudes than they actually expressed. A few age and sex differences were found, as well as a number of differences depending on whether the respondents had congenital or acquired disabilities. Finally, the amount of contact with those using wheelchairs was found to be associated with slightly more realistic attitudes among the non-disabled respondents. The results are discussed in the light of previous research, and possible reasons for, and ways to counter, the lack of empathy between the two groups are considered.     

Unemployment and self-conception: A symbolic interactionist analysis

A symbolic interactionist analysis of the relationship between unemployment and self-conception was tested using a cross-sectional questionnaire design (n = 88). Job loss had significant negative associations with reflected appraisals (perceived evaluations) from friends, family, employers, unemployed people and people in general. Significant relationships between reflected appraisals and the evaluative, consistency and involvement dimensions of self-concept were also observed. Consistent with symbolic interactionist theory, path analysis showed that reflected appraisals mediated the relationship between employment status and self-conception. Unemployment duration and gender both moderated the effects of reflected appraisal upon self-conception such that reflected appraisals were associated with different self-concept dimensions for unemployed men versus unemployed women and ‘shorter’ versus ‘longer-term’ unemployed people. Results are discussed in the context of recent developments in the social psychology of the self-concept. Suggestions for future research are outlined.