College Adjustment Problems and Attitudes Toward Drinking Reported by Feminine, Androgynous, and Masculine College Women

Two studies compared attitudes toward various issues and adaptations to demands of college life that were reported by feminine, androgynous, and masculine sex-typed females. Study 1 showed that feminine sex-typed females reported lower involvement in academic competition, fewer difficulties with peer pressures, and less exclusion by fraternities and sororities from college social life than did androgynous and masculine females. Androgynous and masculine females gave similar responses, showing high involvement in academic competition, negative reactions to peer pressures, and resentment toward male friends who cancel plans. Study 2 compared attitudes of feminine, androgynous, and masculine female college students toward drinking. Discriminant analysis showed that over 99% of the subjects could be correctly classified according to sex type on the basis of two dimensions: (1) sociable drinking and (2) drinking due to peer pressure and social discomfort. Masculine arid androgynous females were significantly more likely than feminine females to endorse questions related to social drinking. Masculine females showed the greatest potential for problem drinking from social pressures and for escape from social discomfort. Results supported Kelly and Worell's (1977) argument that the adaptive values of different sex-role orientations depend on the demands of the environment.     

Parental Suicide: An Organizing Event in the Development of Latency Age Children

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes that children who are especially vulnerable to parental suicide have not resolved earlier developmental issues of separation-individuation. Five children, ages 6 to 12, were studied intensively. Parental suicide during the child's latency age period has profound influences on children's ego development and character formation because during this time childhood ego functioning is rapidly maturing and superego functions are developing. The trauma of parental suicide is heightened when difficulties for the surviving parent in mourning interfere with open discussion between the parent and child about the death. Parental suicide may stimulate childhood suicidal impulses if the child identifies with and idealizes the dead parent and has wishes of reuniting with the deceased.     

Brief report Low positive affect and less extreme emotional encoding

Current theories suggest low positive affect (PA) should be associated with negative encoding of ambiguous information. However, recent findings (Lawson & MacLeod, 1999) paradoxically suggest that low positive affect may lead to less negative encoding. One possibility is that low positive affect is associated with less emotionally extreme encoding rather than less negative encoding. Undergraduates (22 Low PA, 23 High PA) read potentially negative and potentially positive ambiguous sentences followed by a word related to an emotional or a non‐emotional interpretation of the sentence, or by an unrelated word. Low PA participants demonstrated greater priming for neural interpretations, while High PA participations showed the opposite pattern. There was no interaction with valence, suggesting low positive affect may be related to encoding ambiguity as less emotionally extreme.