An Overview of Assessment and Treatment of Premenstrual Syndrome

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a commonly occurring problem that must be dealt with by both the helping and the health professions. The authors provide a brief update on recent advances in understanding and treating PMS. They emphasize points of contact among various health professionals in developing an interdisciplinary approach to intervention.     

Self-Actualization Need Strength: Moderator of Relationships Between Job Characteristics and Job Outcomes

The moderating effect of self-actualization need strength on the relationships between job characteristics and job outcomes was investigated. Results provide strong support for its effect on the relationships between job complexity and four of five outcome measures and suggest that responses of workers in the public and private sectors are similar.     

Young Children's Creative Solutions To Realistic and Fanciful Story Problems

This study examined the creative problem solving of young children as evidenced in their responses to realistic and fanciful stories posing similar problems (i.e., key character trapped and in need of rescue). One-hundred young children listened to two stories; one about a puppy trapped in a hole (realistic) and one about a prince caught in a tower (fanciful). The children were asked to complete the stories by thinking of ways to get the puppy or the prince out. The children's responses were scored for fluency (number), elaboration (detail), flexibility (conceptual shifts), originality (novelty), effectiveness, and realism. Overall, the results suggest that the children's performance improved with age and experience, although their solutions tended to remain ineffective and unoriginal. As predicted, the children strongly preferred the puppy to the prince story, although preference did not generally affect their creative performance. The practical and theoretical implications of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented.     

Reference List Inaccuracies: A Four-Decade Comparison

Errors in the reference lists of journal articles have been reported in studies conducted on journals issued in the 1970s and 1980s. On the average, faults and errors were found to occur in about 40% of the entries. The Personnel and Guidance Journal and a journal related to information science were the data sources for a four-decade study. Results indicated that error rates were lower in the mid-1950s in this sample but were very similar in the last three decades and similar to rates found in other studies. One or more errors occurred in about 40 to 45 of any 100 entries sampled from reference lists. Implications are explored.     

Cognition and Social Information-Gathering Strategies Reinterpretation Assessment in Second-Guessing

Effective social decision making often depends upon gathering needed information. Since the kind and quality of information obtained depends on the tactics used to gain it, the study of information-gathering tactics is of prime importance in understanding the processes of social decision making. We focused on one facet of information-gathering—the cognitive process of second-guessing developed by Hewes and Planalp (1982). We developed and tested a theory of reinterpretation assessment that explores the relationship between second-guessing and the use of social information-gathering tactics. Four of the five principles on which this theory is based are tested empirically. They concern the effects of motivational (need for accuracy), cognitive (processing load), and practical (social effort) antecedents on the tactics employed by social actors to improve subjectively the quality of their reinterpretations of messages. Moderate support is garnered for all four principles. Some challenging anomalies result in modifications of the theory.     

Liberalism and Democracy

ABSTRACT Political liberalism and the democratic ideal together supply the foundation of almost all contemporary political thinking. This essay explores the relation between them. It argues that, despite common parlance, there is an inevitable tension between the two. Furthermore, attempts to resolve this tension by showing that democracy is a good thing in its own right, or that it is the inevitable development of liberal aspirations, or that it is conceptually connected to fundamental liberal ideas, all fail. The conclusion to be drawn is that liberalism requires a pragmatic rather than a principled approach to democratic aspirations.