A Comparison of the Influence of Conflictual and Supportive Social Interactions on Psychological Distress

Following a quantitative review examining the relative influence of positive and negative social exchanges on emotional health, a second-order factor model of negative social exchange was tested and supported in a sample of 906 college students. Structural equation analysis exploring the unique effects of negative social exchange and perceived support satisfaction on depression revealed both variables to predict this outcome, over and above the contribution of personality and coping variables. In addition to the direct effects of the Big Five personality dimensions on depression, indirect effects of the Big Five via negative social exchange, support satisfaction, and avoidant coping also were observed. Although the prevailing belief among support researchers is that the negative effects of conflictual social interactions outweigh the positive effects of social support, the results of the quantitative review suggest boundary conditions that qualify this conclusion. In addition to corroborating a hierarchical measurement model of negative social exchange, the results of the present investigation suggest that how social support and social negativity are measured substantially influences conclusions concerning their relative impact on psychological distress.     

SIGNS AS DETERRENTS OF ILLEGAL PARKING IN SPACES DESIGNATED FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH PHYSICAL DISABILITIES

The percentage of illegal parking in spaces reserved for the physically disabled was monitored under three sign conditions: ground markings, ground markings plus vertical signs, and vertical signs containing a message that concerned citizens were watching the spaces. Illegal parking dropped from 69.3% of 102 vehicles during the initial ground-sign condition to 57.3% of 36 vehicles in the first vertical-sign condition. Following removal of the vertical signs, illegal parking increased to 68.7% of 43 vehicles. During the second vertical-sign condition, illegal parking dropped to 53.7% of 32 vehicles, followed by an increase to 69.5% of 68 vehicles after the vertical signs were removed. The lowest rate of illegal parking (27.1% of 78 vehicles) occurred in the vertical-sign-plus-message condition. Illegal parking subsequently increased to 34.6% (of 94 vehicles) when the message sign was removed, followed by an increase to 65.2% (of 105 vehicles) when the vertical signs were removed.     

Generating makes words memorable,but so does effective reading

In many experiments, memorial benefits have been found when subjects generate items from fragments rather than read items in their complete forms. Does generation cause-this-difference, or are subjects disposed to adopt different strategies when generating as opposed to reading? If generating causes the difference, items processed in the same way apart from a generative stage should therefore benefit from that generative stage. Our experiments did result in benefits for generating as opposed to reading, but only when the readers processed the words poorly—by pronouncing them. When the readers processed the items well, by imagining them, generating was no better than reading. A new generation effect was found in meta memory. Subjects thought they would remember more generated items than read items; however, the act of making the prediction entailed meaningful processing, and the generated items were not actually remembered better than the read ones.     

Hard-to-manage preschool boys: Family context and the stability of externalizing behavior

Preschool boys identified by their teachers as active, inattentive, and impulsive (N=42) were compared with matched classroom controls (N=43) and with parentidentified problem boys (N=27) on measures of family functioning often associated with children's problem behaviors, including family history of psychopalhology, stressful life events, and family composition. Teacher-identified and parent-identified problem boys did not differ on measures of family adversity, and both groups came from less well functioning families than comparison boys. Mothers of problem boys, regardless of referral source, were more negative and controlling toward their sons when observed in a compliance task. Children's problem behaviors were moderately stable over a oneyear follow-up period; initial symptom levels, maternal self-reported depression, and negative maternal control predicted follow-up ratings of externalizing problems.Thanks are expressed to Clea Angell, Clare Flanagan, Julie Hunt, Patricia Huszar, Andrea Lurier, Sarah McAuliffe, Jasmine Sardessai, and Teri Sobolik for help with data collection, coding, and analysis. We are grateful to the staff of the many preschools in the Pittsburgh area who facilitated our work. Special appreciation is expressed to the children and parents who participated in this study.Portions of these data were presented at the Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology, Rochester, New York, October 1988, and at the Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Costa Mesa, California, February, 1990. This work was supported by grant R0I MH32735 from the National Institute of Mental Health to Dr. Campbell.     

The Situational Facilitation of Interpersonal Attraction: A Three-factor Hypothesis1

A theoretical analysis of observations of natural and man-made disasters, festive social events, and task-oriented crash programs led to a three-factor hypothesis of attraction facilitation. It was proposed that interpersonal attraction toward strangers is facilitated when there is emotional arousal, sharing, and out-of-role behavior. In a laboratory investigation (N= 120), postexperimental attraction toward a dissimilar stranger increased when all three factors were present but not when only two of the three factors were present (p < .01). Consistent with the reinforcement-affect model of attraction, increased attraction toward the stranger in the three-factor conditions was paralleled by more positive feelings about the experiment in the three-factor than in the two-factor conditions. Knowledge of the variables underlying facilitation effects could be utilized on a societal basis to create attraction-enhancing occurrences.     

Context effects and the recall of comparative sentences

Clark and Card (1969) have proposed that semantic components underlie memory for comparative (C) sentences. To test this hypothesis, six groups of 15 Ss each were given different sets of C sentences. In line with the theory, Ss tended to remember unmarked adjectives better than marked ones and positive constructions better than negatives. However, contrary to the theory, they also tended to bias their responding either toward the negative or the equative form. A two-stage theory of recall, based on the memory schema-memory trace distinction, is proposed to account for these data.     

The compensation for movement-produced changes of object orientation

When one moves forward, one views objects to the side of one’s path successively from different directions. In the mover’s visual field, such objects change their orientation; relative to him they undergo a partial rotation. Although this rotation is given in several ways, it is hardly ever perceived. This is due to a compensating process that takes O’s change in position relative to the object into account. We demonstrated the existence of this compensating process and measured the accuracy with which it operates by means of a device that made an object turn in response to O’s position change so that the normal rotation of a stationary object relative to the moving O could be augmented or diminished to various degrees.