Life-Threatening Indicators among the Indochinese Refugees

ABSTRACT: The Indochinese refugees have experienced more devastation than most Americans will know in a lifetime. The tremendous turmoil of war, the risking of one's life, the forced separation of families and relocation into the American culture have drastically changed the lives of every Indochinese individual. Nor do the emotional scars imprinted into the minds of these people disappear upon arrival into a neutral country. Rather, these psychological problems can show themselves as suicidal preoccupation, or attempts. This paper stresses related variables observed in those Indochinese people contemplating suicide. Of 4,192 Indochinese refugees sampled, ten suicidally inclined refugees were identified. Clinical findings revealed that multiple determinants were operating conjointly in creating the high risk of any particular refugee in relation to suicide.     

IMPROVING WOMEN'S PERFORMANCE IN MIXED-SEX SITUATIONS BY EFFORT ATTRIBUTIONS

Seventy-two males and 72 females in either mixed-sex, same-sex or alone situations were led to fail on an initial task. Prior to a second task, they were given either a neutral orientation or an ego-involving orientation emphasizing attributions to effort. Without the effort attribution, women in the mixed-sex situation had lower expectations than men, performed worse, rewarded themselves less and attributed their poor performance to a lack of ability more than men did. In the same-sex and alone situations, however, the women's expectations, performance and self-reward did not differ between the effort and neutral conditions, nor did their behaviors differ from the men's. The men's expectations, performance, and preference for task difficulty attributions were not affected by the experimental manipulations. These data demonstrated the benefit of "attribution therapy" for women working in the presence of men.     

CODEPENDENCY, LOSS OF SELF, AND POWER

The feminist critique that codependency and loss of self are related to power was tested in a sample of 122 college women and men in committed relationships. Participants completed two codependency measures, a loss of self scale, and three indices of power: perceived power, use of specific influence strategies, and decision making. Among both women and men, codependency and loss of self were positively related to the use of indirect strategies and negatively related to perceived power, and loss of self was negatively related to use of the direct strategies. Among women alone, codependency was also negatively related to use of direct strategies and loss of self negatively related to decision making. These correlational data provide support for a feminist critique of codependency as related to power; however, gender similarities suggest that the relations between power, loss of self, and codependency hold for college men as well as college women.