Perceived Fitness and Responses to Laboratory Induced Stress

This study sought to evaluate the contribution of perceived physical fitness beyond the contributions of gender, body mass index (BMI), and estimated actual physical fitness on both physiological and self-reported stress responsivity to laboratory induced stress. Seventy-two nonsymptomatic participants participated in the experiment. Participants completed a laboratory procedure measuring cardiovascular responses and self-reported rating of calmness while performing stressful laboratory tasks. Estimated aerobic fitness (VO_{2 max}) as well as perceived fitness were also determined. Perceived fitness significantly contributed to the variance associated with self-reported responses to laboratory stress as well as with some of the physiological measures. Perceived fitness significantly added to the variance beyond that attributed to gender, body mass, and estimated actual physical fitness while assessing systolic blood pressure and calmness. Overall, the results support the view that perception of fitness may be an important factor above and beyond aerobic fitness in its association with responses to stress.     

A Regional Study of Risk Factors for Drug Abuse and Delinquency: Sex and Racial Differences

Many juveniles are at high risk for delinquency and drug abuse by virtue of the characteristics of their neighborhoods, which are often economically impoverished, socially unstable, physically neglected, and rife with crime, drug use, and drug selling. However, a significant proportion of these youth do not engage in deviant behavior, while others participate to varying degrees. This study examined what factors discriminate between high-risk youth who do and who do not exhibit deviant behavior. Self-reported measures of several attitudes and behaviors known to correlate with drug abuse and delinquency were assessed in relation to reports of property offenses, person offenses, drug use, and drug selling. Additional analyses were conducted to distinguish between sex and racial groups to further qualify the relationships between deviant behaviors and attitudes. The most notable finding was that types of deviance that primarily involve material and monetary gain may be largely influenced by relationships with significant others, while deviance with potentially harmful consequences to both self and others are influenced largely by personal attitudes. Examination of individual variables showed that negative peer influences and positive attitudes toward fighting significantly increased the likelihood of reporting involvement in three of the four deviance measures, and that positive relationship with the father and prosocial values were inversely related to two of the behavioral deviance measures. There were very few differences in significant predictors of deviance for males versus females. Several self-reported attitudes and behaviors distinguished African Americans from Hispanics and Whites, even though Whites were reportedly responsible for a higher incidence of deviant behaviors.     

Authenticity as a eudaimonic construct: The relationships among authenticity,values, and valence

The construct of authenticity is thought of as an expression of individuality and eudaimonic well-being. Yet, previous research has related state authenticity more to positive affect and pleasant behavior. We examine the extent to which feeling authentic is a reflection of personally held standards of worth (values) and authenticity’s relationship with affective states. We also examine whether feelings of authenticity are facilitated by dispositional authenticity. Study 1 had participants debate benevolent behavior (N = 199). In study two (N = 124) and three (N = 146), participants described memories where they acted in concordance or against their values, in both pleasant and unpleasant contexts. We found a relationship between acting in accordance with one’s values and experiencing authenticity, thus demonstrating that authenticity is a form of eudaimonic well-being, which is closely related to, but distinct from, affective states. We found less consistent associations between dispositional authenticity and momentary authentic feelings.     

Perception and action influences on discrete and reciprocal bimanual coordination

For nearly four decades bimanual coordination, “a prototype of complex motor skills” and apparent “window into the design of the brain,” has been intensively studied. Past research has focused on describing and modeling the constraints that allow the production of some coordination patterns while limiting effective performance of other bimanual coordination patterns. More recently researchers have identified a coalition of perception-action constraints that hinder the effective production of bimanual skills. The result has been that given specially designed contexts where one or more of these constraints are minimized, bimanual skills once thought difficult, if not impossible, to effectively produce without very extensive practice can be executed effectively with little or no practice. The challenge is to understand how these contextual constraints interact to allow or inhibit the production of complex bimanual coordination skills. In addition, the factors affecting the stability of bimanual coordination tasks needs to be re-conceptualized in terms of perception-related constraints arising from the environmental context in which performance is conducted and action constraints resident in the neuromotor system.     

A meta-analysis of support variables and well-being in ethnic minority populations

Aims: The importance of social support as a predictor of well-being has been documented in the literature for decades. The extent to which social support may be uniquely relevant to the well-being of ethnic minority populations has not yet been empirically supported with meta-analytic techniques. The current meta-analytic study attempted to clarify the nuances of the relationship between support and well-being in ethnic minority populations and to identify what moderators may be relevant to understanding such relationships. Method: Data from 111 articles were included in the analyses that examined both the main effects and moderators of the relationship between social support and well-being. Results: Overall findings revealed a greater effect size (ES) between support and positive well-being (r = .38) than between support and negative well-being (r = −.27). Significant moderators included the proportion of females in the sample, age of the participants, and nature of support. Several ES differences were found in support type and ethnic group interactions as well. Conclusions: Implications of these data include the importance of social support enhancement in efforts to increase the positive well-being and attending to gender and other cultural modifiers in future studies of social support with racial and ethnic minorities.     

Correlational reasoning in an everyday context

In the context of everyday reasoning, individuals inferring a causal relation between an antecedent (A) and event (E) rarely have available as evidence for their inferences frequencies of all the four possible occurences, AE, A$\text{E}$, $\text{A}$E, and $\text{AE}$. The present study investigated the willingness of subjects in fourth, seventh, and tenth grades, and college to infer such a relation under the more typical condition of incomplete frequency data. There was some improvement with age, but even college subjects were remarkably willing to infer a relationship based on minimal data, notably the presence of cases in the AE cell. No subjects indicated the need for information regarding the remaining cells. Subsequent presentations of datafor the A$\text{E}$ cell did not substantially alter subjects' willingness to infer a relation, nor did subsequent presentation of data for the remaining two cells, despite the fact that complete frequency data indicated independence of A and E. A comparison group of subjects presented with all four cells at once showed somewhat more frequent application of quantitative reasoning strategies, but their willingness to infer a relationship between A and E was not notably less than that of subjects to whom the data were presented sequentially.     

Class,housework, and happiness: Women's work and life satisfaction

Large-sample surveys often fail to find a difference in self-reported satisfaction between housewives and employed women. Several explanations that have been offered for this failure are explored here in greater detail. The suggestion that the ease of housewives' lives is experienced as a benefit compensating for fewer satisfactions in other areas is rejected; greater time pressure is associated with greater satisfaction for housewives. The suggestion that working-class women are happier at home, while middle-class women prefer careers is also not supported; working-class women appear to be less satisfied with their lives and no more satisfied with their work whether the comparison group is working-class women with jobs or middle-class housewives. Social desirability, on the other hand, is found to be a major factor predicting the self-reported happiness of housewives, and the general issue of the role of social expectations in evaluating satisfaction is raised.     

Children's memory for a personally experienced event: Implications for testimony

This study was prompted by an interest in children's abilities to testify in legal settings. Based on the fundamental premise that children cannot provide accurate testimony about events that cannot be remembered, this investigation focused on 3- and 6-year-olds' memory of a salient, personally experienced event. The event selected was that of a visit to the doctor for a physical examination. Children at both ages remembered most of the features of the check-up at an immediate memory test, although the older children performed somewhat better than younger children. In addition, the performance of the 3-year-olds decreased over delay intervals of 1 and 3 weeks, whereas that of the 6-year-olds remained constant over this period. Moreover, at all assessment points the older children provided more information in response to open-ended general questions than did the younger children. Both groups of children were quite good at giving accurate responses to misleading questions, although the 3-year-olds performed below the level of 6-year-olds. The need for further controlled studies of children's memory capabilities is discussed.