On the benefits of giving as well as receiving autonomy support: mutuality in close friendships

Two studies examined autonomy support within close friendships. The first showed that receiving autonomy support from a friend predicted the recipient's need satisfaction within the relationship and relationship quality as indexed by emotional reliance, security of attachment, dyadic adjustment, and inclusion of friend in self and that there was significant mutuality of receiving autonomy support and of each other variable. The relations of perceived autonomy support to need satisfaction and relationship quality held for both female-female and male-male pairs across the two studies. The second study replicated and extended the first, showing that receiving autonomy support also predicted psychological health. Furthermore, giving autonomy support to a friend predicted the givers' experience of relationship quality over and above the effects of receiving autonomy support from the friend. When both receiving and giving autonomy support competed for variance in predicting well-being, giving, rather than receiving, autonomy support was the stronger predictor.     

Relations of intrinsic spirituality with health status and symptom interference

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between spiritual experience and current health status and between spiritual experience and subjective experience of symptom interference. Symptom interference is the extent to which symptoms of physical or psychological illness limited participants' activities of daily living. Participants were 49 volunteers who were enrolled in a spiritual fitness class at a variety of denominational Christian churches in Plano, Texas. The sample ranged in age from 22 to 65 years, and 84% were women. The Index of Core Spiritual Experiences and the Medical Symptoms Checklist were administered. Current health status and symptom interference were utilized from the self-report checklist. It was predicted that Index scores would be significantly different based on participants' health status and that Index scores would correlate significantly with participants' ratings of symptom interference. Analysis indicated that Index scores were significantly higher (p = .02) for participants with no current medical diagnosis than for those currently experiencing either a life-threatening or a chronic medical or psychological disorder. Also, the percentage-bend correlation between Index scores and scores for interference of symptoms in daily life was significant ((r)Pb = -.33, p = .02). These results suggest that the report of core spiritual experiences may be related to better current health status. These findings have implications for understanding the role of spirituality in the prevention of illness and in an individual's ability to cope with illness.     

Minority and majority students' retrospective perceptions of social support in doctoral programs

This study examined the perceptions of amount and types of social support reported by minority and majority doctoral students during graduate school. Analysis of responses from 803 White, 292 African-American, 179 Asian-American, 151 Hispanic, and 29 Native American doctoral students (N = 1,454) using the Doctoral Student Survey showed that most doctoral students across groups were moderately satisfied with their programs and they perceived the academic environment and faculty advisors to be strong sources of social support. White doctoral students reported greater program satisfaction, more positive perceptions of the academic environment, and fewer program problems than African-American doctoral students, while the latter reported more negative perceptions of the social environment than the other group.     

Effects of signaled versus unsignaled delay of reinforcement on choice

Pigeons chose between 5-s and 15-s delay-of-reinforcement alternatives. The first key peck to satisfy the choice schedule began a delay timer, and food was delivered at the end of the interval. Key pecks during the delay interval were measured, but had no scheduled effect. In Experiment 1, signal conditions and choice schedules were varied across conditions. During unsignaled conditions, no stimulus change signaled the beginning of a delay interval. During differential and nondifferential signal conditions, offset of the choice stimuli and onset of a delay stimulus signaled the beginning of a delay interval. During differential signal conditions, different stimuli were correlated with the 5-s and 15-s delays, whereas the same stimulus appeared during both delay durations during nondifferential signal conditions. Pigeons showed similar, extreme levels of preference for the 5-s delay alternative during unsignaled and differentially signaled conditions. Preference levels were reliably lower with nondifferential signals. Experiment 2 assessed preference with two pairs of unsignaled delays in which the ratio of delays was held constant but the absolute duration was increased fourfold. No effect of absolute duration was found. The results highlight the importance of delayed primary reinforcement effects and challenge models of choice that focus solely on conditioned reinforcement.     

Low self-esteem and hopelessness in childhood and suicidal ideation in early adulthood

This study examined the longitudinal relationship between family characteristics in early childhood, self-esteem, hopelessness and thoughts of self-harm in the midchildhood years, and suicidal ideation at ages 18 and 21. Path analysis was used to establish separate models for boys and girls. The results suggested different pathways to later suicidal ideation for boys and girls. For boys, suicidal ideation seemed to have stronger roots in childhood, with significant paths from low self-esteem and hopelessness to early thoughts of self-harm and thence to later ideation. For girls, self-esteem had a small but significant direct effect on later suicidal ideation. The findings provide support for the idea that individual characteristics such as feelings of hopelessness and low self-esteem act as generative mechanisms, linking early childhood family characteristics to suicidal ideation in early adulthood.     

Is it inherently prejudicial to try a juvenile as an adult?*

Given only information that a youth who could have been tried as either an adult or as a juvenile was being tried as an adult for murder, 218 undergraduate mock jurors were able to form consistent impressions of the defendant. A very high percent of our mock jurors included a criminal or juvenile justice history as part of that impression. A very large majority of the mock jurors also said that knowledge of that criminal history would be relevant to their vote of guilty. Almost all mock jurors said they would be influenced toward voting guilty by knowledge of a previous criminal history. Few of the other components of the impression were so closely correlated with a judgment of relevance, or with a judgment that they would be influenced toward voting guilty by the knowledge of that component of the stereotype. The effect is relatively specific to knowledge of a previous criminal history. The study has limited ecological validity. Nonetheless, we raise questions about whether the fact that a youth is put on trial as an adult is inherently prejudicial, and violates the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury.     

The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: I. The heuristic basis of feelings of familiarity

B. W. A. Whittlesea and L. D. Williams (1998, 2000) proposed the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis to explain the source of feelings of familiarity. By that hypothesis, people chronically evaluate the coherence of their processing. When the quality of processing is perceived as being discrepant from that which could be expected, people engage in an attributional process; the feeling of familiarity occurs when perceived discrepancy is attributed to prior experience. In the present article, the authors provide convergent evidence for that hypothesis and show that it can also explain feelings of familiarity for nonlinguistic stimuli. They demonstrate that the perception of discrepancy is not automatic but instead depends critically on the attitude that people adopt toward their processing, given the task and context. The connection between the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis and the "revelation effect" is also explored (e.g., D. L. Westerman & R. L. Greene, 1996).     

Silencing the self in college settings and adjustment

The correlations among several measures of silencing the self and scores on the College Adjustment Scale were assessed for male and female students at a midwestern university (N = 143). Analysis showed that high scores on Jack's 1991 Silencing the Self Scale and on one of three new measures designed to extend silencing the self to social group settings were associated with scores indicating poorer college adjustment. Also, men scored higher than women on Jack's 1991 measure, and no significant interactions were found for sex and adjustment for any of the silencing the self measures. Thus, silencing the self was generally associated with poorer adjustment scores and similarly for both women and men.     

Cognitive Dissonance and Post-Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

Data from the National Election Studies were examined in an effort to isolate cognitive dissonance of two kinds: dissonance arising from a behavioral commitment in the form of voting, and dissonance arising from inconsistencies associated with having supported the losing candidate. Feeling thermometer ratings of the two principal presidential candidates obtained before and immediately after six elections (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996) were analyzed. Regression estimates supported a dissonance reduction explanation of observed attitude changes. Voters, as compared to nonvoters, tended to increase the evaluative distance between candidates after an election, whereas supporters of the losing candidate were more likely than supporters of the winning candidate to decrease such evaluative distances. An additional examination of voters yielded results consistent with dissonance theory: After the election, respondents reporting favorable evaluations of both candidates (a difficult choice) tended to spread comparative candidate evaluations compared to respondents who were favorable toward only one candidate (an easy choice). The results both support and cast doubt on prior studies.