Relation of sympathy and personal distress to prosocial behavior: a multimethod study

Assessed sympathy and personal distress with facial and physiological indexes (heart rate) as well as self-report indexes and examined the relations of these various indexes to prosocial behavior for children and adults in an easy escape condition. Heart rate deceleration during exposure to the needy others was associated with increased willingness to help. In addition, adults' reports of sympathy, as well as facial sadness and concerned attention, were positively related to their intention to assist. For children, there was some indication that report of positive affect and facial distress were negatively related to prosocial intentions and behavior, whereas facial concern was positively related to the indexes of prosocial behavior. These findings are interpreted as providing additional, convergent support for the notion that sympathy and personal distress are differentially related to prosocial behavior.     

The structure of interpersonal traits: Wiggins's circumplex and the five-factor model

Using a sample of 315 adult men and women, self-reports on Wiggins's revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales were jointly factored with self-reports, peer ratings, and spouse ratings on the NEO Personality Inventory to examine the relations between the two models. Results suggest that the interpersonal circumplex is defined by the two dimensions of Extraversion and Agreeableness, and that the circular ordering of variables is not an artifact of response biases or cognitive schemata. Circumplex and dimensional models appear to complement each other in describing the structure of personality, and both may be useful to social psychologists in understanding interpersonal behavior.     

Perceptions of control, competence, and contingency as influences on the stress-behavior symptom relation in school-age children

Analyzed data from 154 school-age children and their mothers to examine the relations between stress, perceived competence and contingency, and behavior symptoms. Analyses focused on the relative merits of unidimensional vs multidimensional measures of control in predicting symptoms. The stress of undesirable life events and behavior symptoms were related in the expected direction. Multiple regression models with R2 ranging from .11 to .14 (all ps less than .0002) included significant main effects for stress, competence, and control. Analyses supported the relative superiority of the multidimensional measure of control. Models containing main effects and interaction terms were of equivalent magnitudes in accounting for variance in symptom scores. Findings support the idea of perceived control as a moderator of the stress-illness relation and are consistent with earlier suggestions that simple main effects models may be the most useful in examining these relations.     

Explanatory style across the life span: evidence for stability over 52 years

Analyzed explanatory style across the life span. 30 Ss whose average age was 72 responded to questions about their current life and provided diaries or letters written in their youth, an average of 52 years earlier. A blind content analysis of explanatory style derived from these 2 sources revealed that explanatory style for negative events was stable throughout adult life (r = .54, p less than .002). In contrast, there appeared to be no stability of explanatory style for positive events between the same 2 time periods. These results suggest that explanatory style for negative events may persist across the life span and may constitute an enduring risk factor for depression, low achievement, and physical illness.     

Relations between anger expression and cardiovascular reactivity: reconciling inconsistent findings through a matching hypothesis

Previous psychophysiological research has demonstrated that both anger expression and anger suppression are related to cardiovascular responses, but in an inconsistent fashion. The present study tested the following hypotheses: (a) that the influence of anger expression style on psychophysiological responses would be limited to Ss exposed to an anger instigation, and (b) that the specific pattern of psychophysiological responses would vary as a function of whether Ss were induced to use their preferred vs. nonpreferred mode of anger expression style in response to the instigation. Seventy-eight male college undergraduates were randomly assigned to work on a task with either an annoying or a pleasant confederate and subsequently to write either a negative or a positive evaluation of the confederate. Blood pressure was measured intermittently and heart rate continuously throughout task performance and a subsequent 15-min rest period. Ss' preferred method of anger expression had been previously assessed by a self-report questionnaire. Systolic blood pressure results generally were consistent with the hypotheses. Implications of the findings for the etiology of cardiovascular diseases are discussed.     

Boyhood separation anxiety disorder: thought disorder and object relations psychopathology as manifested in Rorschach imagery

Rorschach scales were used to examine the quality of thought disturbance and object relations in boys meeting the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, third edition (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) criteria for separation anxiety disorder (SAD). Nineteen urban, middle and low socioeconomic status (SES), SAD boys were compared to a group of 14 male control subjects. The hypotheses of the study were that SAD boys as compared to controls would: (a) have significantly more thought disordered responses as measured by a Rorschach Thought Disorder Scale (Blatt & Ritzler, 1974), and (b) evidence significantly less adaptive object relations scale scores as measured by the Mutuality of Autonomy Scale (Urist, 1977). Results confirmed both hypotheses. The SAD group had more thought disordered responses and more disrupted object relations scores than the controls. Ideas and images of these boys were found to generally be more unstable, boundary compromised, fluid, idiosyncratic, tangential, and psychotic-like than the controls. It was concluded that these boys possess a significant potential to have thinking abnormalities that will interfere with their independent functioning. Concerning their object relations scores, the SAD subjects were found to have significantly fewer benign, adaptive object interactional percepts, and a greater number of dependent and/or clinging interactional object representations (imagery) than the controls. This study supports the viewpoint that SAD boys are deeply psychologically troubled.     

Rorschach Egocentricity Index and self-concept in children and adolescents

In a sample of 65 child and adolescent psychiatric inpatients, the hypothesized relation between the Egocentricity Index from the Rorschach and standard self-report measures of self-concept was not supported. Although the sample as a group had a markedly low mean Egocentricity Index, self-reported self-concept was at a normative level. The validity of the Egocentricity Index and self-report measures of self-concept is discussed, and guidelines for their interpretation are presented.     

The sensitivity of the Bender-Gestalt Test as a screening instrument for neuropsychological impairment in older adults

We investigated the sensitivity of the Bender (1938) Visual-Motor Gestalt Test (BGT) using the Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery (HRB) as the criterion for cortical dysfunction. We studied 95 subjects over age 55 who had been diagnosed as having dementia or pseudodementia. Subjects were classified as mild, moderately, or severely impaired on the HRB and as impaired or unimpaired on the BGT. The results indicated that the BGT is less sensitive (36%) than was expected when used on an impaired geriatric population. The data further indicated that false negatives occurred more frequently with the BGT when individuals had mild neuropsychological impairment. Less frequent misclassifications occurred as the severity of impairment on HRB indices increased.     

Attributional differences for driving while impaired: a comparison of alcoholics, inmates, and impaired drivers

This study examines the differences among attributions for reasons for arrest and attributions for blame among groups of Canadian alcoholics, correctional facility inmates, and impaired drivers. Multiple-recidivist impaired driving offenders were more likely to attribute blame for impaired driving behavior to the mental-element factor alcoholism, even though they possessed lower General Alcoholism Scale (Wanberg, Horn, & Foster, 1977) scores than alcoholic subjects. They did not differ in their attributions to luck versus motivation or to general driving ability in their assessment of the reasons for arrest but did view the task of driving well while drunk as being less difficult than other groups. Inconsistencies in responses regarding responsibility for behavior are related to attribution theories which differentiate between perceptions of controllability and intentionality.