Premise Acceptability and Message Effectiveness

Previous research shows inconsistent evidence in regard to gender differences in optimism for experiencing a happy marriage or avoiding divorce depending on whether optimism is measured as comparative optimism (thinking you are better off than your peers) or as personal optimism (estimating your own chances). Results from four samples of unmarried college students (N = 814) indicated that men exhibited greater comparative optimism than women for having a happy marriage but not for getting divorced. For having a happy marriage and avoiding divorce, men exhibited greater personal optimism relative to women. Experience (with parental divorce) moderated the gender difference in personal optimism and perceived control partially mediated the gender difference in comparative optimism (but only for having a happy marriage) and in personal optimism (for both having a happy marriage and avoiding divorce). Results are discussed as they relate to the existing literatures on risk perception and gender differences in romantic relationships.     

Traditional Literacy Skills and Internet Use Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Children

Ninety children in third through sixth grade attending an elementary school in western Canada completed a 15-item rating scale of their Internet use across home, school, and community contexts. Children's literacy skills were assessed with standardized measures of reading fluency and sentence comprehension and teacher ratings of reading and writing ability. Results suggest that Internet use during childhood is a complex behavior that varies across children and across contexts. Instant messaging and community-based Internet use during childhood were associated with decreased literacy skills, while other applications used at home and school were associated with increased literacy skills.     

Coping Functions of Prayer and Posttraumatic Growth

Research on prayer and posttraumatic growth (PTG) indicates that those who pray report more PTG. Research is beginning to identify which types of prayer may be operating in this relationship. We sought to identify specific prayer functions related to PTG while considering differences due to the types of trauma experienced. Participants were trauma survivors from diverse, Midwestern Christian churches (N = 327). Participants completed questionnaires assessing trauma history, prayer coping functions, and PTG. Multiple linear regression analyses found that praying for calm and focus was independently related to higher levels of PTG. When considering all variables in the model, the relationship between prayer for calm and focus and PTG was not significant for those whose most significant trauma was interpersonal in nature, but significant for those with noninterpersonal trauma.     

A Developmental Study of Sexual Functioning by Means of a Cognitive Analysis

Zeldow and McAdams (1993) recently presented artifactual explanations for our data showing dissimilarity between the content of speech elicited by the Thematic Apperception Test (Murray, 1943) and free speech tasks (Schnurr, Rosenberg, &; Oxman, 1992). In particular, they alleged that our findings resulted from a lack of psychological meaning in our content categories and in the free speech task. We cite empirical and theoretical support to refute this allegation and provide additional analyses of our data that are consistent with our earlier suggestion that text samples elicited under different conditions may not be interchangeable.     

A Meta‐Analytic Structural Model of Dispositonal Affectivity and Emotional Labor

The exponential growth of the service economy has increased the attention that organizational researchers have paid to the concept of emotional labor. Although much progress has been made in the field, few studies have provided an integrated picture of how individual dispositions, perceived display rules, and emotional labor behaviors shape employee outcomes. To clarify and compare results across this growing body of literature, a quantitative review was developed, along with a theoretically derived path diagram of key emotional labor constructs. Evidence from our structural meta‐analytic model based on 116 primary studies demonstrates that examining affective dispositions and emotional labor constructs and the pattern of positive and negative results helps to clarify and add specificity to the literature. Results were consistent with the perspective that surface acting emotion regulation strategies have a pattern of negative relationships with work outcomes of job satisfaction and stress/exhaustion (but not with job performance), whereas deep acting emotion regulation strategies have a pattern of positive relationships with all of these work outcomes.     

Pine ridge places—Feral,liminal, sacred

Animal dreams can bring us into deeper relationship with our own instinctual nature. They seem to communicate something from the ancient vestiges of our functioning on earth—all the head knowledge in the world cannot match the sheer vibrancy and power of our own animal. In an age characterized by alienation from the rhythms of natural life, animal dreams can remind us that we still retain access to the deepest layers of instinctual wisdom. This is particularly relevant for women, as they tend to suffer the consequences of an overly technological society most keenly. Women's lives are anchored in natural rhythms, and the impact of living in a culture that ignores and denigrates nature is therefore especially wounding. This essay explores the ways in which dreams of animals can help guide women back toward a relationship with their embodied nature. The author researches and explores several examples of animals in women's dreams and the ways in which these dreams can support a return to what is most vital and “natural” in their lives.     

Profile of cognitive deficits and associations with depressive symptoms and intelligence in chronic early‐onset schizophrenia patients

Cognitive deficits in several domains have been demonstrated in early‐onset schizophrenia patients but their profile and relation to depressive symptoms and intelligence need further characterization. The purpose was to characterize the profile of cognitive deficits in chronic, early‐onset schizophrenia patients, assess the potential associations with depressive symptom severity, and examine whether cognitive deficits within several domains reflect intelligence impairments. This study compared attention, visual‐construction, aspects of visual and verbal memory, and executive functions in chronic, early‐onset schizophrenia patients (mean age = 20.7 years) (N = 18) and healthy controls (N = 38). Schizophrenia diagnoses were established at the time of the patients' first clinical presentation during childhood or adolescence and were confirmed five years later. In the chronic phase of early‐onset schizophrenia, significant deficits were observed in all specific cognitive functions. The profile of cognitive deficits was jagged, and visual‐construction, attention, and one aspect of verbal memory (verbal stories recall) were differentially impaired. Deficits of visual recall, visual recognition, and executive functions were accounted for by deficits in intelligence, while this was not the case for deficits of verbal recall of stories or attention. No significant associations were observed between the severity of cognitive deficits and that of depressive symptoms. Chronic, early‐onset schizophrenia is characterized by a broad and jagged profile of cognitive deficits. Deficits of attention and verbal recall of stories appear not to be accounted for by deficits in intelligence, and the severity of cognitive deficits seems independent from that of depressive symptoms     

The limits of selflessness: semantic relativism and the epistemology of de se thoughts

It has recently been proposed that the framework of semantic relativism be put to use to describe mental content, as deployed in some of the fundamental operations of the mind. This programme has inspired in particular a novel strategy of accounting for the essential egocentricity of first-personal or de se thoughts in relativist terms, with the advantage of dispensing with a notion of self-representation. This paper is a critical discussion of this strategy. While it is based on a plausible appeal to cognitive economy, the relativist theory does not fully account for the epistemic profile that distinguishes de se thinking, as some of its proponents hope to do. A deeper worry concerns the reliance of the theory on a primitive notion of “centre” that hasn’t yet received enough critical attention, and is ambiguous between a thin and a rich reading. I argue that while the rich reading is required if the relativist analysis of the de se is to achieve its most ambitious aims, it also deprives the theory of much of its explanatory power.     

Studies of Rorschach Content; A Review of Research Literature Part II; Non-Traditional Uses of Content Indicators

This paper deals with the extension of research on Rorschach content to new modes of scoring and classifying test reponses that lie outside of the conventional classification scheme. Four avenues of going beyond the traditional content categories are presented and reviewed: study of subdivisions within the units of the generally used scoring system, exploration of the symbolic meaning of Rorschach responses, investigation of constellations of content signs, and development and validation of content scales. Little systematic work has been done in the first two areas of endeavor. As far as the latter two research topics are concerned, the evidence accumulated suggests that, at best, scales and signs derived from content yield overlap, and not correspondence, with their respective real-life referents. The study of mediating variables that act to magnify or reduce the extent of this relationship has merely begun and remains the major unfulfilled task in Rorschach content research.     

Development of Body Build Stereotypes,Peer Ratings,and Self-Esteem in Australian Children

The relationships between self-esteem and peer group judgments to stereotypes attached to fat, average, and thin body builds were investigated in a study of 84 Australian boys and girls in grades 2, 4, and 6. 5 s performed three tasks: (a) rated drawings of fat, average, and thin children of their own age and sex on a 56-item checklist; (b) completed the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory; and (c) named classmates who fitted 12 of the items of task a. Results indicated that all age groups held firm body build stereotypes: negative for fat figures, positive for average figures. The strength of the stereotypes increased with age. However, S s did not apply these stereotypic judgments to their classmates, nor were Ss’ self-esteem scores related to their own body build or popularity. Thus, the use of stereotypes in relation to the social inculcation hypothesis must be seriously questioned, as there was no evidence that Ss related their idealized body build norms to themselves or to peers.