Personality Adjustment in College Students With a Parent Perceived as Alcoholic or Nonalcoholic

Adjustment of 547 college students was examined by the variables of alcoholic parentage and participant gender. Results from a multivariate analysis of variance, using the Diagnostic Inventory of Personality and Symptoms, indicated significant main effects for gender but not for alcoholic parentage. Significant gender differences occurred for alcohol abuse, drug abuse, paranoid psychosis, affective depression, anxiety disorders, psychological factors affecting physical condition, immature character, and neurotic character. Findings suggest that college students from alcoholic homes should not be distinguished from the general population in terms of their adjustment.     

Organisational Form and People Development: The Team as a Vehicle for Developing the Individual-in-Community

It is argued that all social action serves specific power interests and that the organisational form of social agencies is strongly influenced by the theoretical assumptions and practical aims of those who establish them. The paper presents the case of radical humanism, as an appropriate theory of social action within social democracies in the late-twentieth century, and argues that the team is a highly effective form of social organisation which leads to the establishment of an organisational culture compatible with radical humanist principles.     

Participant differentiation of nonclinical fear and anxiety

Participants in four studies rated remembered experiences of fear and anxiety on scales reflecting characteristics postulated to distinguish anxiety from fear. Similarities and differences were found in ratings of the two emotion situations. Some obtained rating contrasts might indicate only quantitative differences, but many were consistent with qualitative distinctions in clinical and theoretical literatures and were interpreted as providing consensual validation for them. While both emotions involved pain, threat, uncertainty, and arousal, anxiety entailed greater future orientation, duration, frequency of occurrence, temporal uncertainty, inhibition, and sensitivity of self-concept to evaluation by self and others. A few rating contrasts appeared to contradict theoretical claims: e.g., noxiousness, helplessness, and response unavailability were greater with fear. It was suggested that some qualitative criteria for differentiating the two emotions are context-sensitive and may interact with a quantitative criterion.     

Referred sensations induced by a mirror box in healthy subjects

Twenty-one healthy subjects were instructed to observe the mirror image of the tactile stimulation of their own hand (control condition) or an assistant’s hand (experimental condition) while being queried about the referred sensation (RS) in their own masked hand behind the mirror. The rated intensity of the RS under the experimental condition was significantly stronger than that under the control condition. In a second experiment, the experimental condition was replaced with the tactile stimulation of a prosthetic (rubber) hand, and was compared with the tactile stimulation of the subject’s own hand (control condition). In both of the experiments, the rated intensity of RS was significantly stronger under the experimental condition than under the control condition. The qualitative characteristics of the induced RS on the mirror image hand—including the location, sense of ownership, and various subjective feelings—were also found to vary among subjects. In conclusion, an RS could be induced in healthy subjects on the mirror image of the hand by tactile stimulations, although this effect differed substantially among individuals.