Personality influences in the stability of early (teen-age) marriage in the United States

Previous research indicated that similarities and differences in specific personality factors are associated with differences in marital stability. Most findings were based on assessments of personality after marriage, thus confounding the effects of marriage on personality. The findings reported here relate congruence between spouses’ personality assessed prior to marriage with the status of the marriage three to five years after marriage. Each partner in a group of 72 teenage couples completed the 16PF prior to obtaining approval to marry. These data were examined using intraclass and multivariate analyses. The findings indicate that hypothesized patterns of personality factors differentiated stable from unstable marriages.     

The familial menage-a-trois: Mother-daughter sexuality and father-daughter incest

It is proposed that poorly integrated sexual feelings between mother and daughter are frequent early precursors of later incestuous interactions between father and daughter. Father-daughter molestation may be seen as an enactment of erotic urges and fantasies between mother and daughter that find origin in pre-Oedipal, mother-child qualities of relatedness. The familial menage-a-trois is an intrapsychic and interpersonal compromise for mother and daughter between a more deeply disturbed and a more fully severed internal and external bond; it allows both partners enough distance from their dissociated feelings to feel safe, enough proximity to feel vicariously connected, and enough libidinization to maintain an alliance with the exciting object.     

Narrative abilities in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and normal peers

A story retelling task was used to assess narrative abilities in 30 boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 30 normally developing boys, matched on age and IQ. Each boy listened to two stories and retold them for another child. Results indicated that the two groups did not differ in their ability to comprehend and extract the main ideas from the stories, but did differ in the production of narratives. Boys with ADHD provided less information overall, and their stories were more poorly organized and less cohesive and contained more inaccuracies. As a result, their stories were often confused and hard to follow. Organization and monitoring of information are functions of executive control. Thus the observed deficits in narrative production in children with ADHD may reflect underlying deficits in executive processes.This work was supported by funds from Health and Welfare Canada (NHRDP) and Medical Research Council of Canada. Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Zandvoort, The Netherlands, June 1991. The authors gratefully acknowledge Michael Marriott and Patricia Fulford for their assistance with data collection and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.     

Gender,creativity, depression,and attributional style in adolescents with high academic ability

The present study examined the relationship among gender, creativity, depression, and attributional style among high-achieving adolescents. One hundred twenty-eight eighth-and ninth-grade high-achieving students completed the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT), the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), and the Children's Attribution Style Questionnaire — Revised (KASTAN-R CASQ). The results indicate that there were gender differences only on the verbal component of the TTCT, with females scoring significantly higher. For both sexes, there was a significant relationship between figurai creativity and a depressogenic attributional style. However, for females, high verbal creativity was associated with low levels of depression and a positive attributional style.The authors wish to acknowledge Monica Harris and Mike Nietzel for their helpful comments, and the Fayette County Public School System, especially Ben Oldham, for their cooperation and assistance.     

Leadership Perceptions in Relation to a Presidential Vote1

In the 1988 American presidential election, leadership perceptions and perceived platforms were used to predict votes for one of the two final candidates (Governor Michael Dukakis and Vice President George Bush). Both leadership perceptions and perceived platforms were found to be related to voting. However, political involvement moderated the relationship between the perceived platforms and the votes, while leadership perceptions were found to be a consistent predictor of voting across levels of political involvement. Leadership perceptions, perceived platforms, and the interaction between involvement and perceived platforms predicted voting above and beyond the voters’ political affiliations. Consistent with a categorization model of leadership perceptions, the prototypicality of perceived leader traits was found to be strongly related to a tendency to vote for a candidate who was perceived to possess those traits. In comparing general favorability of characteristics versus prototypicality with respect to an effective political leadership category, general favorability played a larger role in uninvolved voters’ decisions than in involved voters’ decisions. Differences in mean leadership prototype ratings were also explored as a function of political affiliation and political involvement. The implications of these findings for campaign strategies and for leadership in organizational contexts are discussed.     

Sexual assault and stranger aggression on a candian university campus

There is a severe lack of knowledge about sexual assault on Canadian college campuses. This exploratory study of 259 Canadian undergraduate women (mostly white, of British or European heritage, with about half from families of total incomes of over Can $50,000) provides evidence that although Canada generally has a lower crime rate than the United States, sexual aggression against women does not seem to be lower. Further, there is an extraordinary victimization rate for the stranger sexual advances that are legal or barely illegal, but which form a major component of women's fear. Most surveyed women have in the past year been victimized by uncomfortable stranger aggression in public places, while approximately one-third of those who date reported at least one episode of physical, verbal, or psychological sexual coercion. Close to 25% of the women said they had sexual intercourse when they did not want to during the past year.An earlier and substantially different version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Pittsburgh, March 1992.     

Interactions Between Goal Instability and Social Support on College Freshman Adjustment

The authors examined the moderating effect of goal instability on the benefits of components of perceived social support on entering freshmen's academic and personal adjustment. A significant interaction was identified between goal instability and two components of social support: appraised and belonging. Low goal-directed individuals reporting low appraised social support reported lower levels of personal adjustment than did high goal-directed individuals with the same level of appraised social support. In addition, high goal-directed individuals reporting a high sense of belonging reported greater personal adjustment than did high goal-directed individuals with low reported sense of belonging. Implications for the role of goal directedness and social support on improving college adjustment are discussed.     

Assessment of In-Basket Performance by Quickly-Scored Methods: Development and Psychometric Evaluation

The present research was aimed primarily at establishing and evaluating an In-Basket exercise and scoring procedures that greatly reduce training and scoring time while retaining adequate reliability and validity. In the first of two studies, an optimal subset of In-Basket items was identified for scoring. Their reliability and concurrent validity were then re-evaluated in a second, cross-validation study. No loss in reliability and little in validity resulted from the scoring-item reduction. In addition, results emerged that shed light on attainable In-Basket reliability and criterion-related validity. Implications for In-Basket use are noted.     

The McCollough effect: Dissociating retinal from spatial coordinates

Three experiments were conducted to dissociate the perceived orientation of a stimulus from its orientation on the retina while inducing the McCollough effect. In the first experiment, the typical contingency between color and retinal orientation was eliminated by having subjects tilt their head 90° for half of the induction trials while the stimuli remained the same. The only relation remaining was that between color and the perceived or spatial orientation, which led to only a small contingent aftereffect. In contrast, when the spatial contingency was eliminated in the second experiment, the aftereffect was as large as when both contingencies were present. Finally, a third experiment determined that part of the small spatial effect obtained in the first experiment could be traced to hidden higher order retinal contingencies. The study suggested that even under optimal conditions the McCollough effect is not concerned with real-world properties of objects or events. Implications for several classes of theories are discussed.     

Behavioural knowledge amongst staffing groups for the care of the intellectually disabled

A multiple choice inventory was used to assess the behavioural knowledge of staff providing services to people with an intellectual disability. The relationships between performance on the inventory and other staff related variables were investigated. Results support previous research and indicate a low level of behavioural knowledge amongst direct care staff. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to staff training and selection.