Gender Differences in Reasons for Entering and Leaving Education Administration: Discriminant Function Analyses

Using discriminant function analyses on survey data collected from 457 students in 29 education administration programs across the United States, the authors inquired into whether men and women decide to enter and possibly leave education administration for different reasons. There were statistically significant functions separating men and women in their reasons for entering and leaving education administration. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Mechanisms of change in adolescent life satisfaction: A longitudinal analysis

This study explored the psychosocial mechanisms of change associated with differences in levels and linear change of adolescents' global life satisfaction across a 2-year time period. Based on a theoretical model proposed by Evans (1994), this study tested the relations between selected personality (i.e., extraversion and neuroticism) and environmental (stressful life events) variables and global life satisfaction when mediated by internalizing and externalizing problems. The results suggested support for internalizing problems as a mediator of the relationship of personality and environmental variables with life satisfaction. Pathways mediated by internalizing problems significantly predicted levels and linear change of life satisfaction across a 2-year time span. Furthermore, pathways mediated by externalizing problems significantly predicted the level but not the linear change of life satisfaction. Thus, behavior problems and their antecedents appear to relate significantly to adolescents' perceptions of their quality of life. Implications for adolescent mental health promotion were discussed.     

Simple Discrimination Behavior of Young Chimpanzees: Comparisons with Human Aments and Domestic Animals

The authors' purpose in this paper was to examine how the use of the “sad passive” coping style may be related to adolescent self-reported loneliness. Subjects were asked to complete the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Peplau, & Cutrona, 1980) to determine self-reported loneliness and the Coping with Loneliness Questionnaire (CLQ; Rubenstein & Shaver, 1980) in order to examine coping styles. We hypothesized that those adolescents whose coping strategies fell into the category of sad passivity described by Rubenstein and Shaver would indicate greater loneliness than those adolescents whose coping strategies fell into other categories. Results indicated that sad passivity was used by both lonely and nonlonely adolescents, but that nonlonely youngsters resorted to this method only temporarily and in preparation for a more active coping style. Lonely teens, on the other hand, appeared to remain in the sad-passive mode to a maladaptive degree. These results were discussed in terms of their importance for theories of adolescent loneliness and for possible intervention strategies.     

Distraction Affects the Performance of Obstacle Avoidance During Walking

In this study, dual-task interference in obstacle-avoidance tasks during human walking was examined. Ten healthy young adults participated in the experiment. While they were walking on a treadmill, an obstacle suddenly fell on the treadmill in front of their left leg during either midswing, early stance, or late stance of the ipsilateral leg. Participants were instructed to avoid the obstacle, both as a single task and while they were concurrently performing a cognitive secondary task (dual task). Rates of failure, avoidance strategy, and a number of kinematic parameters were studied under both task conditions. When only a short response time was available, rates of failure on the avoidance task were larger during the dual task than during the single task. Smaller crossing swing velocities were found during the dual task as compared with those observed in the single task. The difference in crossing swing velocities was attributable to increased stiffness of the crossing swing limb. The results of the present study indicated that divided attention affects young and healthy individuals' obstacle-avoidance performance during walking.     

Empathy is a beautiful thing: Empathy predicts imitation only for attractive others

Research shows that we spontaneously imitate people. Moreover, empathy predicts the degree of this non‐conscious imitation. Little is known, however, if or how this expression of empathy is influenced by stable physical characteristics of our interaction‐partners. In two studies, we tested whether attractiveness of others moderated the relation between empathy and imitation. While seeing a woman performing joystick movements, participants either imitated, or non‐imitated these movements. Results showed that the higher participants empathy score, the faster they imitated an attractive person. The level of empathy did not predict the degree of imitation of unattractive targets. The findings demonstrate that the expression of empathy through imitation can be moderated by attractiveness, thereby introducing a new dimension to the conditionality of empathy.     

Effects of Multiple Maternal Relationship Transitions on Offspring Antisocial Behavior in Childhood and Adolescence: A Cousin-Comparison Analysis

Previous studies of the association between multiple parental relationship transitions (i.e., when a parent begins or terminates an intimate relationship involving cohabitation) and offspring antisocial behavior have varied in their efforts to rule out confounding influences, such as parental antisocial behavior and low income. They also have been limited in the representativeness of their samples. Thus, it remains unclear to what degree parents’ multiple relationship transitions have independent effects on children’s antisocial behavior. Analyses were conducted using data on 8,652 6–9-year-old, 6,911 10–13-year-old, and 6,495 14–17-year-old offspring of a nationally representative sample of U.S. women. Cousin-comparisons were used in combination with statistical covariates to evaluate the associations between maternal relationship transitions and offspring antisocial behavior in childhood and adolescence. Cousin-comparisons suggested that associations between maternal relationship transitions and antisocial behavior in childhood and early adolescence are largely explained by confounding factors. In contrast, the associations between maternal relationship transitions and offspring delinquency in late adolescence were robust to measured and unmeasured confounds. The present findings suggest that interventions aimed at reducing exposure to parental relationship transitions or addressing the psychosocial consequences of exposure to parental relationship transitions could reduce risk for offspring delinquency in late adolescence.     

A Longitudinal Assessment of the Associations Among Response Access, Attention Problems, and Aggression during Childhood

Children with ADHD symptoms often display social competence deficits, yet mechanisms for their social difficulties remain unclear. Using data from the normative sample of non-intervention respondents (N?=?387; 50 % male; 49 % non-European-American; age at initial assessment: M?=?6.5 years, SD?=?0.48) in the Fast Track project (Lochman and CPPRG Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 63:549–59, 1995), the social-information processing ability of accessing responses for social situations was modeled across four time points from kindergarten to third grade. Teacher-rated aggression and ADHD symptoms were included as predictors of the intercept and slope. Low ADHD symptoms were associated with a decline in aggressive responses across childhood, whereas high ADHD symptoms were linked to an increase in aggressive responses that decelerated between second and third grade. Regarding competent responses, low ADHD symptoms predicted increases in competent responses, but this increase decelerated between second and third grade. High ADHD symptoms were also associated with a slight increase in competent responses into first grade, but competent responses decreased from first to third grade. Neither aggression nor the interaction of ADHD symptoms and aggression accounted for a significant amount of variance in aggressive or competent responses. Future research should identify if differences in response access associated with high and low ADHD symptoms link to difficulties making and keeping friendships.     

When motivation backfires: Optimal levels of motivation as a function of cognitive capacity in information relevance perception and social judgment

Motivation and cognitive capacity are central variables in major models of social judgment and persuasion. However, the exact nature of their interplay in judgment processes has remained ambiguous. The present paper reports on two experimental studies tackling this issue. In Study 1 we demonstrated a cross-over pattern of means for the interaction effect of motivation and cognitive capacity on judgment, with high motivation being beneficial under high cognitive capacity but detrimental under low cognitive capacity. This effect was explained by the participants’ subjective perception of information relevance. In Study 2, the role of information relevance was further investigated, showing that for highly motivated participants, judgment was differently affected by information with low versus high relevance when cognitive capacity was high but not when it was low. In the discussion, we elaborate on these effects, advocating a more dynamic perspective on (social) judgment, acknowledging the conditional (opposite) effects of motivation, in function of cognitive capacity.