Hugs or shrugs: Parental and peer influence on continuity of involvement in sport by female adolescents

The study was designed to examine the influence of significant others (mothers, fathers, and male and female peers) on continuing involvement in sport by adolescent females. Survey data were collected from 376 girls using a forced-choice, self-administered questionnaire. Maintenance of involvement was measured by the proportion of possible years in which the respondents were involved in physical activity within each of three participation contexts (intramural, interschool, and community sport). Several indicators of significant other influence were used. The degree to which involvement in physical activity is maintained is positively related to the source, amount and type of influence received from significant others, and varied by the participation context. Overall, the socializing influence of significant others was able to account for 11% of the variance in intramural activity, 20% of the variance in interschool sport, and 10% of the variance in community-based activity.This study was funded by a grant from Fitness Canada.     

Negativism and countertransference

The purpose of this work is to explore the phenomenon of negativism and the analyst's response to it during the course of analytic work with a patient in whom negativism is a central behavioral pattern. Melville's short story, "Bartleby the Scrivener," describing in telling detail the response of a sympathetic lawyer to profound and pervasive negativism in his legal scribe, is discussed as a literary analogy to the analyst-analysand dyad. Aspects of the concept of negativism within psychoanalysis are discussed. The potential usefulness of understanding certain unexpected countertransference responses to pervasive negativism is explored, as this is a relatively neglected area of psychoanalytic technique. A case is presented describing the analysis of a patient whose character, like Bartleby's, is a mixture of profound negativism along with schizoid, obsessional, and masochistic elements.     

Age-appropriate behaviors: a comparison of three generations of females

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in older adolescent and adult females' perceptions of age-appropriate behavior in adults. Subjects were three generations of maternally related females (95 older adolescents, 78 mothers, 83 grandmothers) who were administered a questionnaire designed to assess age-appropriate behaviors in three broad categories: recreation, occupation/career, and family. Major findings were that older adolescents were most tolerant of behaviors performed by individuals at varying ages while older women most closely ascribed to age constraints, and that the greatest agreement on appropriateness of age constraints concerned family relationships while least agreement concerned recreational activities. Results support the view that adolescents' values on family issues are consistent with those of their parents, and suggest that adherence to age norms increases throughout the life span or are the result of generational differences in socialization.     

Occupational choices of daughters of practicing rabbis

This paper examines the psychological impact that rabbis, as character types, have on their daughters. It describes how the father's impact psychologically predisposes these women to enter the helping professions in disporportionate numbers, and it shows how these job choices are often a means of coping with psychological issues connected to their upbringing.She is a candidate to become a psychoanalyst at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalytic Psychology.     

From rarity to evaluative extremity: effects of prevalence information on evaluations of positive and negative characteristics

Experiments showed a scarcity principle in evaluative judgments such that the identical characteristic is evaluated more extremely the lower its perceived prevalence. In Study 1, Ss evaluated a fictitious medical condition that was described as either beneficial or detrimental to health and as occurring in either 30% or in one half of 1% of a test population. The condition was evaluated more extremely--as as a more positive health asset or a more negative health liability--in the low-prevalence than in the high-prevalence conditions. Study 2 demonstrated the same effect in self-evaluations and with a different manipulation of perceived prevalence. Ss were told that they actually had the fictitious medical condition, that it was either beneficial or detrimental to their health, and either that they were the only 1 of 5 Ss who had it or that 4 of the 5 did. Low-prevalence Ss exhibited more extreme evaluative, affective, and behavioral reactions to the medical condition than did high-prevalence Ss. The origins and validity of the scarcity principle are discussed, as are its implications for uniqueness theory, reactance theory, and social evaluation theories.