Suicidal thoughts and their relationship to family stress and personal problems among high school seniors and college undergraduates

This study investigated the incidence of serious suicidal thoughts (ST's) among 207 high school seniors and 901 college students, and the relationship between ST's and family stress, drinking and drug-abuse problems, and delinquency in these groups. Over 10% of the high school and over 6% of the college students reported ST's. Those considering suicide attempts in both groups were more likely than their classmates to view their parents as having many conflicts with each other, to think of their relationship with their father as poor, to see at least one of their parents as either angry or depressed much of the time, and to perceive themselves as having a drinking or drug-abuse problem. These findings support the call for comprehensive counseling programs at both the high school and college levels.     

Adolescent substance abuse

We have become a drug-oriented society. Cummings (1979), citing evidence from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, reports that one of every eleven adult Americans suffers from a severe addictive problem. Drug addition is epidemic among teenagers; one of every six teenagers suffers from a severe addictive problem. This paper focuses on adolescent drug/substance abuse.     

Adolescent sexuality in a therapeutic community: staff countertransference issues

Issues connected with sexuality such as heterosexual relationships, homosexuality, sexual identity, and seductiveness, create conflict and countertransference dilemmas for staff who work with psychiatric patients in a therapeutic community. When the therapeutic community is composed of adolescents, these issues are exacerbated since sexual identity and sexual development are major concerns. The staff reacts strongly to the issue of self-determination and violation/infringement on a basic human need. These philosophical differences have their roots in countertransference feelings. Staff sometimes find it difficult to confront adolescents on emotionally charged issues that have a sexual coloring. A system is proposed for articulating and working through these feelings. A unique solution is posited for solving this conflictual attitude (based on object relations theory), whereby the residential treatment center serves as the analog of the home in order to allow adolescents to develop a sense of self before they can move on to the halfway house where heterosexual behavior is allowed (as part of the therapeutic process). This facilitates the meeting of the "self" with the "other." This procedure is explored in light of Sullivan's concept of intimacy.     

A short scale to measure self-righteousness

Two studies were conducted which created and tested a scale to measure self-righteousness. Self-righteousness was defined as the conviction that one's behaviors or beliefs are correct, especially in contrast to alternate behaviors or beliefs. In the first study, a 4-item scale to measure general self-righteousness was derived which demonstrated adequate levels of internal consistency and was related to dogmatism and ambiguity intolerance. In the second study, the items were worded to be specific to running a race. This study succeeded in demonstrating that the scale possessed predictive validity. This study also demonstrated the usefulness of rewording the general items to make them specific about the content of self-righteousness.     

Updating Norman's "Adequate Taxonomy": intelligence and personality dimensions in natural language and in questionnaires

Research on the dimensions of personality represented in the English language has repeatedly led to the identification of five factors (Norman, 1963). An alternative classification of personality traits, based on analyses of standardized questionnaires, is provided by the NEO (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness) model (Costa & McCrae, 1980b). In this study we examined the correspondence between these two systems in order to evaluate their comprehensiveness as models of personality. A sample of 498 men and women, participants in a longitudinal study of aging, completed an instrument containing 80 adjective pairs, which included 40 pairs proposed by Goldberg to measure the five dimensions. Neuroticism and extraversion factors from these items showed substantial correlations with corresponding NEO Inventory scales; however, analyses that included psychometric measures of intelligence suggested that the fifth factor in the Norman structure should be reconceptualized as openness to experience. Convergent correlations above .50 with spouse ratings on the NEO Inventory that were made three years earlier confirmed these relations across time, instrument, and source of data. We discuss the relations among culture, conscientiousness, openness, and intelligence, and we conclude that mental ability is a separate factor, though related to openness to experience.     

Another look at sex stereotypes and social judgments: an analysis of the social perceiver's use of subjective probabilities

Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, and Hepburn (1980) assert that subjects fall prey to the base-rate fallacy when they make stereotype-related trait judgments. They found that subjects ignored their stereotypes when trait judgments were made in the presence of trait-related behavioral information. The present article reexamines those findings with respect to two issues: (a) the use of a normative criterion in comparison with subjects' judgments and (b) the level of analysis (group vs. individual) of subjects' judgments. We conducted a replication of the Locksley et al. (1980) Study 2, and the results were examined with respect to these two issues. We found no support for the base-rate fallacy. When a Bayesian normative criterion was constructed for each subject based on the subject's own stereotype judgments and was compared with assertiveness judgments made in the presence of individuating information, there was no evidence that subjects ignored or underused their stereotypes as the base-rate fallacy predicts.