Are introverts still more religious?

The JEPQ and a religious attitude scale, ASC 4B, were completed by 1715 school children aged 11–17 yrs. Attitude to religion was found to decline across the age range, girls were found to be more religious than boys, and introverts more religious than extraverts. The relationship between introversion and religiosity is consistent with previous research and the present study adds substance to this relationship with the use of a more recent E scale on an extended age range.     

The relative efficacy of simulation experiments

A complex in-basket simulation and a paper-and-pencil scenario experiment were used to study relationships between organizational leadership and gender. Separate samples completed identical attitude instruments in the independent studies. Analysis revealed that substantially more of the total variance was accounted for in the simulation study than in the scenario investigation. Also, more overt, gender-based responses were observed in the scenario study. It was concluded that social simulation may tap a deeper level of psychological process and may elicit more subject involvement than typical experimental methods. Thus, the more complex procedures of the simulation, as compared to those of a typical method such as a scenario study, are justified in the study of organizational behavior.     

Framework for formal ontology

The discussions which follow rest on a distinction, first expounded by Husserl, between formal logic and formal ontology. The former concerns itself with (formal) meaning-structures; the latter with formal structures amongst objects and their parts. The paper attempts to show how, when formal ontological considerations are brought into play, contemporary extensionalist theories of part and whole, and above all the mereology of Leniewski, can be generalised to embrace not only relations between concrete objects and object-pieces, but also relations between what we shall call dependent parts or moments. A two-dimensional formal language is canvassed for the resultant ontological theory, a language which owes more to the tradition of Euler, Boole and Venn than to the quantifier-centred languages which have predominated amongst analytic philosophers since the time of Frege and Russell. Analytic philosophical arguments against moments, and against the entire project of a formal ontology, are considered and rejected. The paper concludes with a brief account of some applications of the theory presented.     

Sexual activity and contraceptive use among low-income urban black adolescent females.

A modified form of Nathanson and Becker's (1983) Health Belief Model Questionnaire and other measures designed to assess cognitive processing were administered to low-income black adolescent female clients of an inner-city comprehensive health care clinic. The purpose of the study was to explore determinants of sexual activity and contraceptive use. Subjects were classified as not sexually active (n = 50), sexually active/noncontracepting (n = 20), or sexually active/contracepting (n = 72). Not sexually active subjects tended to be younger, more career motivated, to have a father at home, to be more influenced by family values, and to have more conservative attitudes regarding adolescent sexuality than did sexually active subjects. Sexually active/noncontracepting subjects tended to report fewer benefits and more barriers to the use of contraception. Level of cognitive processing did not differ among the three groups, but was at a lower-than-expected level for age. Finally, inconsistent contraceptive use was common to both sexually active groups.     

Male sexual fantasy: multidimensionality in content

Sixty-six men provided ratings of the extent to which they regarded fantasies depicting nominated sexual activities as sexually arousing. A Male Sexual Fantasy Questionnaire (MSFQ) with five subscales was constructed following factor analysis of these ratings. The subscales yield separate scores for fantasies representing sensual, genital, public sex, sexual dominance-submission, and sexual aggression themes. Levels of penile tumescence recorded while men engaged in fantasies depicting content represented in the MSFQ correlated with the extent to which these men earlier had rated these same fantasies as sexually arousing. Since ratings on the MSFQ did not correlate substantially or consistently with scores on the Betts Questionnaire Upon Mental Imagery, the Imaginal Processes Inventory, and the Gordon Test of Visual Imagery Control, sexual fantasy may be mediated by processes different from those involved in non-sexual imagery and daydreaming. The need to validate use of the MSFQ in several clinical contexts is noted.     

The Mediational Role of Perceived Competence in Psychological Adjustment to Rheumatoid Arthritis1

Chronic illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have been linked to poor psychological adjustment, although individual differences in this relationship have been observed. This study examines the role of perceived competence as a mediator between RA and adjustment. Persons with RA (N= 208) were surveyed three times at 6-month intervals concerning several potential antecedents of adjustment (pain, psychosocial impairment, social support, and control beliefs), self-perceived level of competence, and level of adjustment (life satisfaction and depressive symptomatology). Within each observational period strong evidence was obtained for perceived competence as a mediator of adjustment. Longitudinally (across the year) the data were consistent with a mediational model, but strong evidence establishing mediation was not obtained. Implications of these findings, and the importance of examining the role of perceived competence in adaptation to chronic illness, are discussed.     

Teacher Gender and Nonverbal Behavior in the Teaching of Gender-Stereotyped Materials1

Twenty teachers each taught a male and a female student two different lessons. One of these lessons was in a stereotypically masculine domain (mechanics), the other in a stereotypically feminine domain (vocabulary). Judges viewed clips from the videotaped lessons and rated teachers' nonverbal behaviors. The students also rated their teachers on a variety of behavioral dimensions. The results showed that teachers exhibited more positive behavior toward the students for whose gender the material being taught was stereotypically appropriate. Similarly, teachers exhibited more negative behavior toward those students for whose gender the material being taught was considered stereotypically inappropriate. Additionally, teacher gender was shown to interact with the above-mentioned biased teaching behavior. Generally speaking, women teachers behaved in a less gender-biased way than did men teachers. It is suggested that these kinds of differential teaching behaviors may contribute to the differential performance of male and female students in traditionally gender-stereotyped academic domains.     

Classifying by dimensions and reading: a comparison of the auditory and visual modalities

Children have difficulty learning to read alphabetic writing systems, in part, because they have difficulty segmenting spoken language into phonemes. Young children also have difficulty attending to the individual dimensions of visual objects. Thus, children's early difficulty in reading may be one sign of a general inability to selectively attend to the parts of any perceptual wholes. To explore this notion, children in kindergarten through fourth grade (Experiments 1, 3, and 4) and adults (Experiment 2) classified triads of spoken syllables and triads of visual objects. Classifying speech by common parts was positively related to reading and spelling ability (Experiments 1 and 4), but usually not to classifying visual stimuli by common parts under free classification instructions (Experiments 1 through 3). However, classification was more consistent across the visual and auditory modalities when the children were told to classify based on a shared constituent (Experiment 4). Regardless of instructions, performance on the visual tasks did not usually relate to reading and spelling skill. The ability to attend selectively to phonemes seems to be a "special" skill--one which may require specific experiences with language, such as those involved in learning to read an alphabetic writing system.     

Teaching cotherapy: Instructional and supervisory processes

A course on cotherapy for mental health practitioners is described. The authors strongly recommend that clinicians from all disciplines be taught and trained to do cotherapy, since it is a highly effective therapeutic modality in treating individuals, families and groups.     

Rorschach assessment of purging and nonpurging bulimics

Research in bulimia has flourished in recent years, and yet minimal attention has been devoted to explorations of the bulimic's basic personality organization. We utilized the Rorschach to differentiate between purging and nonpurging bulimics and controls. There were 15 subjects in each group. The Comprehensive System (Exner, 1986) was used for the scoring of the protocols. Statistically significant differences were not found between the two bulimia groups, but interesting trends were detected in the areas of depression, anger, and self-preoccupation. Results appear to be constrained by the low rate of purging behavior. Comparisons between the combined bulimia groups and the controls resulted in solidly characterizing the bulimics as displaying perceptual inaccuracies, disordered thinking, a vulnerability to interpersonal problems, a damaged self-image, and a pessimistic outlook. The strengths of the study were its use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed., rev. [DSM-III-R]; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) nonpatients bulimic subtypes and a control group that was comparable in terms of demographics. Future Rorschach studies with bulimics displaying higher frequencies of binging and purging behaviors are suggested.