A comparison of the psychological profiles of teenage mothers and their nonmother peers: I. Ego development.

Two projective techniques were employed to explore the psychological characteristics of teenage mothers who were found, in a previous study, to have experienced more traumatic childhoods than the nonmother control group. Part I, presented here, investigated ego development using the Loevinger Sentence Completion Test. (Part II, responses to a set of TAT cards, will appear in a subsequent issue of Adolescence.) In comparison with the nonmothers, teenage mothers demonstrated more mature ego development. This is in distinct contrast with most reports in the literature, and the ramifications of these results are discussed. In addition, content analyses of the responses to the Sentence Completion Test confirm the highly involved mother-daughter and negative father-daughter relationships found in the previous study with this sample.     

Runaway girls in distress: motivation, background, and personality.

This paper deals with girls aged 13 to 21 who have run away from home. Social workers who work with such girls point out that they are not a homogeneous population and that their motives can be very different. This study divides their motives for running away into two types, "running from" and "running to," and describes the specific personality traits associated with each. Findings indicate that girls who "run to" are younger, more impulsive, have an internal locus of control and a history of more runaways and longer periods of staying away from home. Girls who "run from," on the other hand, are older, more reflective, have an external locus of control and a history of fewer runaways and shorter periods away from home.     

The ecology of automaticity: toward establishing the conditions needed to produce automatic processing effects.

In the past 15 years, the single term automatic has been applied to a diversity of laboratory phenomena that differ as to the preconditions necessary for their occurrence. Several major strains of automaticity are distinguished, based on the experimental conditions under which they are obtained: preconscious automatic processes, requiring only the proximal stimulus event; postconscious automatic processes, similar to preconscious effects but needing a recent activation or "priming" event for their operation; and goal-dependent automatic processes, which occur only when a specific, intentional processing goal is in place. It is argued that to more accurately specify the conditions under which an automatic effect will occur in the natural environment, greater attention needs to be given to aspects of the experimental paradigm (e.g., subjects' task goal, questionnaire administrations, previous tasks) that might be necessary to produce the effect.     

Recurring thoughts on unconscious ego resistances.

Analysis of the unconscious ego resistances is one of those clinical concepts more honored in the breach than in the observance. This same point has been made periodically over the past fifty years. It has not been sufficiently realized that a true psychoanalytic understanding of resistance analysis could only begin with Freud's second theory of anxiety. Freud himself never fully embraced this theory, and clinical contributions since then have varied in their ability to use the techniques inherent in the second theory of anxiety. Recent contributions to the literature have not eliminated the espousal of theories of resistance based on earlier views of anxiety. Reasons cited for this include: the ambiguities in Freud's writing, the direction of the early ego theorists, and proclivities toward deeper interpretations.     

Neutrality, interpretation, and therapeutic intent.

Neutrality is a central concept within the theory of psychoanalytic technique. We spell out the major controversies in which the concept has become embroiled, and provide a definition that we believe coincides with actual psychoanalytic practice. We discuss its merits and weaknesses, noting also the negative consequences of relying on older definitions. We relate neutrality to the interpretive process, indicating ways interpretation protects neutrality and is made more effective by it. We discuss the complex and controversial relation between neutrality and the analyst's therapeutic intent.     

Selecting a best multiattribute alternative with partial information about attribute weights

Use of approximate weights would greatly simplify decision analysis under certainty since detailed weight elicitation could be avoided. This paper examines the degree to which rank order information about weights can be used to identify a best alternative, or falling uniqueness prescribes an easily implemented rule for selecting a ‘best’ alternative. The prescribed rule uses as weights the centroid of the feasible region defined by the rank order information. In conjunction with the rule, the value of the rank order information can be determined using an ‘expected gain from weight precision’ (EGWP) measure, analogous to ‘expected value of perfect information’ in decision analysis under uncertainty.     

Risk and behavior: The mediating role of risk appraisal

The main issue of this paper concerns the mediating role of risk appraisal in the relation between past and future behavior. We expected previous risky behavior to heighten risk appraisal, which, in turn, should stimulate preventive behavior. Results ofthree tests of this mediation hypothesis showed that past behavior was strongly related to future behavior; people who behaved hazardously in the past indicated that they tend to do so in the future. Generally, the expected relation between past behavior and risk appraisal was supported. More risky behavior in the past was associated with a heightened risk appraisal. Results also indicate a relation between risk appraisal and future behavior, but in the opposite direction as predicted. Heightened risk appraisal was related to increased levels of risk in future behavior. When predicting future behavior by both risk appraisal and past behavior the effect of risk appraisal on future behavior disappeared, while past behavior remained a strong predictor of future behavior. In a few cases risk appraisal still predicted future behavior when past behavior was controlled for. Unfortunately, these cases showed the opposite relation; i.e., heightened risk appraisal was related to more risky future behavior. Implications of these findings for research on the role of risk appraisal will be discussed.     

Line bisecting as a predictor of personal optimism and desirability of risky behaviors.

Our goal was to test whether current hemisphere predominance is a predictor of scores on standardized measures of personal optimism and preference for risk. In two between-subject experiments, current hemisphere predominance was measured by the direction and extent of line bisecting errors. Pearson correlations and median splits of the line bisecting errors showed significantly greater personal optimism and preference for risk with left hemisphere predominance. These results support previous research in which manipulation of hemisphere predominance produced similar effects on personal optimism in normal individuals and on risk taking in lesioned and normal samples. We conclude that the association of optimism and risk with left hemisphere predominance can be observed in resting as well as in manipulated situations.