Romantic beliefs, styles, and relationships among young people from Chinese, Southern European, and Anglo-Australian backgrounds

In this study, the romantic beliefs, styles of relating, sex-role traits, and social self-efficacy of 433 young people from three cultural groups were assessed and their links with relationship status and loneliness explored. A majority cultural group (Anglo-Australians) was compared with two minority groups (Chinese- and Southern European-background young people) within the same society. Chinese-background youth were less likely to be in a romantic relationship and more likely to be lonely than Anglo-Australian or Southern European-Australians. Greater loneliness was associated with non-secure relationship styles, lower social self-efficacy, and lower scores on psychosocial femininity and masculinity. Predictors of relationship status included romantic attitudes and relationship styles. Some evidence pointed to stronger social efficacy and more secure relationship styles being associated with greater acculturation but it was rather weak and inconsistent.     

Self‐esteem and its relationship to bullying behaviour

From the rapidly growing literature on bullying, it is increasingly recognised that peer relationship problems as manifested in being bullied are associated with low self‐esteem. However, the literature on self‐esteem in relation to children who bully others is controversial. The objective of this paper is to elucidate further our understanding of the relationship between self‐concept and bullying behaviour. Data from a nationwide study of bullying behaviour carried out in Ireland during 1993‐1994 have been reviewed. The relevant results from 8,249 school children aged 8 to 18 years are presented. The paper examines the global and dimensional nature of self‐esteem and how it relates to children and adolescents who either have been victimised or bullied others. A distinction is made between “pure victims,” “pure bullies,” and children and adolescents who were both bullied and who bullied others. In other words, pure victims were those who had not bullied others, and pure bullies had not themselves been bullied. Those who were both bullied and bullied others were subdivided further into victims who bully occasionally, sometimes, and frequently and bullies who are victimised, occasionally, sometimes, and frequently. The results show that children of both primary and post‐primary age who were involved in bullying as victims, bullies, or both had significantly lower global self‐esteem than did children who had neither bullied nor been bullied. However, the pure bullies, in contrast to the pure victims, placed the same value on their physical attractiveness and attributes and on their popularity as did their peers who had not bullied others or been bullied. The bully‐victims of all ages had the lowest self‐esteem of the subgroups in the study. Also, the more frequently children were victimised or bullied others, the lower was their global self‐esteem. The typology and frequency of bullying and the age of the children when they were involved in bullying influenced the status of the specific domains of self‐esteem. There were, e.g., significant differences in anxiety between the pure bullies of post‐primary age and their peers who had not bullied others or been bullied. The post‐primary children who bullied most frequently were the least anxious. The results indicate that high self‐esteem protects children and adolescents from involvement in bullying. Thus, in view of the strong relationship between self‐esteem and bullying that has been found in the present paper, it is recommended that top priority be given by parents and teachers to preventing and reducing feelings of poor self‐worth among children and adolescents. Aggr. Behav. 27:269–283, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Effects of task difficulty on use of advice

Although prior studies have found that people generally underweight advice from others, such discounting of advice is not universal. Two studies examined the impact of task difficulty on the use of advice. In both studies, the strategy participants used to weigh advice varied with task difficulty even when it should not have. In particular, the results show that people tend to overweight advice on difficult tasks and underweight advice on easy tasks. This pattern held regardless of whether advice was automatically provided or whether people had to seek it out. The paper discusses implications for the circumstances under which people will be open to influence by advisors. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Kinematic and electromyographic changes that occur as a function of learning a time-constrained aiming task

The present study attempted to examine the changes associated with learning two time-constrained aiming movements at the neuromuscular and behavioral levels of analysis. Electromyographic data and movement kinematics were used to assess changes due to practice. Eight right-handed females were required to perform a 45 degrees horizontal forearm extension in either 200 ms or 500 ms for 100 trials on each of four consecutive days. Both groups demonstrated an improvement in performance and a decrease in within-subject variability in the endpoint response measures, movement trajectory, and myoelectric pattern. With practice, there was a decrease in the amount of cocontraction between the agonist and antagonist muscles during movement execution, which indicated an elimination of unwanted neural activity. For the 200 ms task, the acceleration profile became symmetrical and triphasic myoelectric pattern became evident. The deceleratory phase of the 500 ms task was longer than the acceleratory phase, and a biphasic pattern became apparent. The results suggest that two different control strategies were developed in the execution of the two movements examined. In addition, the relative invariance of the spatial-temporal dependent measures, as compared to the variability of the EMG, led us tot he conclusion that the movement planning hierarchy was concerned with the spatial-temporal domain, whereas the amplitude and timing of muscular activity were planned at a lower level and thus played a subordinate role in movement production.     

Cooperative selection of movements: The optimal selection model

How one selects a movement when faced with alternative ways of doing a task is a central problem in human motor control. Moving the fingertip a short distance can be achieved with any of an infinite number of combinations of knuckle, wrist, elbow, shoulder, and hip movements. The question therefore arises: how is a unique combination chosen? In our model, choice is achieved by consideration of the similarity between the task requirements and the optimal biomechanical performance of each limb segment. Two variants of the model account for the movements that are selected when subjects freely oscillate the fingertip and when they tap against an obstacle. An important feature of both is that the impulse of collision with an obstacle (as in drumming with the hand or tapping with the finger) is assumed to be controlled in part by aiming for a point beyond the surface being struck. Thus, a force-related control variable may be represented and controlled spatially.     

Perspective-Taking Judgments of Medication Acceptance: Inferences from Relative Importance about the Impact and Combination of Information

Perspective-taking judgments of medication acceptance were studied for hypothetical mental health treatment scenarios. Three types of information were manipulated in all possible subsets: level of trust in the medication prescriber, severity of the hypothetical mental health condition being experienced, and the potential side effects of the medication. Subjects made judgments from four perspectives: self perspective and that of three other hypothetical people who were each said to place the most importance on one of the three cues. The results showed individual differences in self-reports of the relative importance of the cues which, in turn, predicted differences in judgment patterns. Subjects modified their cue use when making judgments from the perspectives of hypothetical others. The interaction patterns and rank orders of the perspective-taking judgments resembled the individual differences in judgments made from subjects’ own perspectives, but the perspective-taking judgments showed extreme effects of the most important cue. There was also some influence of subjects’ own perspectives on their perspective-taking judgments. When only a subset of the three cues was given, the judgment pattern depended on the importance of the cue that was omitted. The relative weight averaging model accounted for the judgments of only a minority of the subjects. Models which propose that subjects infer the value of missing information were also unsuccessful in explaining the data of the majority. Modifications of those models are proposed.