Fear of success and failure,or norms for achievement?

Previous research has indicated that success in competitive situations is differentially perceived, considering the level of success and sex of person who succeeded. The amount of projected negative imagery of 100 college students under various degrees of a man's or woman's failure in medical school was investigated in the present study. Data indicated a pervasive tendency to downgrade unsuccessful men in relation to unsuccessful women. The possibility that subjects' responses reflect anxiety about the level of success and failure obtained, rather than anxiety about success and failure in general, is discussed.The authors thank D. F. Ricks for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Portions of this article were presented at the 6th Annual Conference for Research on Women and Education, Pacific Grove, California, December, 1980.     

Parent and Teacher Ratings in the Assessment and Prediction of Antisocial and Delinquent Behaviors

ABSTRACT Subjects consisted of a sample of two cohorts of approximately 100 boys each whose behaviors were rated by their parents and teachers. Criterion variables included antisocial behavior, based on parent, child, teacher, and interviewer reports, and delinquency, based on parent and child reports in addition to cumulative arrest data taken from juvenile court records. The data suggest that mothers are focused on the daily, irritating behaviors of their sons. Teachers, on the other hand, appear to focus on a relatively small number of items (e.g., child physically attacks others, associates with deviant peers), and thereby provide ratings that are better predictors of delinquency and arrest. When the mothers' ratings were constrained to include only items that were salient for teachers, their predictive validity coefficients approached the magnitude of the teacher coefficients.     

Parental functioning and children's adjustment in families of divorce: A prospective study

This paper prospectively examined relations between marital status, predivorce parenting practices, and children's adjustment, using data from the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS). Prospective analyses of children's predivorce adjustment indicated that neither boys nor girls showed more problematic behavior prior to parental separation, and only boys had more difficulties after divorce. However, parents of to-be-divorced families reported more difficulties in childcare practices before divorce than did parents of always-married families. Parenting difficulties in to-be-divorced families were found consistently for boys but not for girls. Results suggest that the difficulties found among boys after divorce may be linked with parenting problems that begin before divorce.The authors are indebted to Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess, the original investigators of the project. We also would like to thank Jacqueline and Richard Lerner, and the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation for their efforts in preserving this data base.     

The Role of Emotion in the Construction of Career in Parent—Adolescent Conversations

The role of emotion in the construction of career has not always been clear despite its importance in people's lives and in counseling. Recent conceptualizations suggest that emotion is a complex relational process that is socially constructed. This study illustrates the role of emotion in the construction of career from an action theory perspective. Two parent—adolescent conversations about career from a group of 14 conversations are analysed in detail to demonstrate the ways in which emotions serve to energise action and career and lend context and meaning to the process of constructing career in the family setting.     

Images of occupations: Components of gender and status in occupational stereotypes

A multidimensional approach to occupational gender type was explored. In Study 1, participants' spontaneous images of various jobs were elicited. The attributes generated were used to develop a job images questionnaire employed in Study 2 on which participants rated a random sample of 100 occupational titles. Occupational images were primarily structured on two orthogonal dimensions: prestige and gender type. The multidimensional approach to occupational gender-type was supported in that important gender-related occupational attributes (masculine personality trait requirements and analytical skills) did not load on the gender-type factor, but did load highly on the prestige factor. Thus, even though the prestige and gender-type factors were orthogonal, specific gender-related attributes were related to perceived occupational prestige.     

Accounts of sexual identity formation in heterosexual students

Very little research has focused on the ways that heterosexual people perceive their sexual identity. This paper explores heterosexual identity from the standpoint of an established identity model, that of James Marcia. Twenty-six heterosexual undergraduate students (14 men: 3 African-American, 1 Latino, and 10 White, and 12 women: 3 African-American, 1 Latina, and 8 White) wrote two-three page essays on how their sexual identities formed and how they influence their daily lives. Students could be categorized into all four of Marcia's identity statuses. Additionally, six common themes were noted in their essays: had never thought about sexual identity; society made me heterosexual; gender determines sexual identity; issues of choice versus innateness of sexuality; no alternative to heterosexuality; and the influence of religion.     

Human Resource Management Group,University of Nottingham,UK

In a new series of regular reports, research groups active in personnel psychology from a number of countries will present a briefing on work-in-progress. In the first in this series, the HRM Group at the Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, describe their ongoing work into organization change and training validation, employee socialization, computer-based testing, and personality test construction and assessment centre validation.